[MarkLowenstein]

Reliving the days when the possibilities were endless and we weren't already captured by an entrenched computing path is important. 50 years ago, every marketer intuited that a home computer would be used for storing recipes. It never happened. Why not? (Reasons aren't hard to come up with, but the process of doing so draws our imagination toward what computer interfaces could have been and should still be.)

[spankibalt]

> "[...] every marketer intuited that a home computer would be used for storing recipes. It never happened."

Storing recipes "never happened"? Rubbish! Even famous cook Casey Ryback used his Apple Newton to store recipes, as evidenced in the 1995 documentary Under Siege 2 [1].

1. [https://starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=23]

[PeaceTed]

Yeah easy to say that but that is because they are the elite. They have a newton, do you? I don't! Time for Newton 2, I mean they are doing iPod sock 2 so why not Newton 2.

[whartung]

We thought about selling a recipe program for the Mac. The tag line was going to be "The only time you want a mouse in your kitchen."

[eigencoder]

Hey, I store recipes on my home computer! Having a portable handheld terminal that can view the recipes makes it much more practical than it would have been in the 80s.

[saulpw]

What recipe storing app do you use?

[fragmede]

It didn't? Who knows how many copies of Americas_test_kitchen.pdf are floating around out there, how many recipes are in Apple notes or in Google Keep. Sure, you might just Google for "banana bread recipe" and get lost on a tangent about technology, and the smartphone isn't the personal computer of yore, but recipes existing in a digital format has happened.

[allturtles]

I think in the context of the GP's comment, 'never' means it never (or hardly ever) happened on the products it was expected to happen on (home computers, as understood circa late 70s/early 80s). Yes, it has happened on very different devices decades later.

[youainti]

My spouse does. Google docs provides an editable, sharable, easy to use way to do recipes.

[asdefghyk]

RE ".... a home computer would be used for storing recipes...."

No doubt, some home computers where used for this purpose, However, (QUICKLY) much more interesting applications where discovered, for example games and educational applications, business applications, engineering applications including spreadsheets ... Look at old software catalogs of software around 1980 (say) .. to verify this range of available applications or CD application archive CDs .....

Example Apple II catalog from cira 1980 from archive.org https://ia903201.us.archive.org/12/items/Programma_Catalog_S...

[Antibabelic]

Interesting that by far the majority of the programs in this catalog happen to be games.

[gwbas1c]

What are you talking about? I store recipes in my computer, and routinely look them up on Google.

[MarkLowenstein]

The spirit of GWBasic lives! How do you view them when you're cooking? Do you print them from your home computer or do you use a mobile screen?