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do you think it was a better or easier time to start a company back then and bootstrap it VS today and why or why not?

I don't have any experience starting a company so I can't say. I will say that computers (and therefore expectations) were vastly simpler back then. You could reasonably believe you understood exactly what was happening in every piece of your Apple ][, and that allowed you to sometimes do some clever/tricky stuff with it.

My point is that this scale meant that one person could write a program of publishable quality all by themselves. This would be borderline impossible today. I'm thinking of AAA video games and their enormous development costs. It's still possible to do some quirky or cult products (like agar.io or homestuck or whatever) that could be the work of one person.

In some ways, I think it was easier to get something unique going. The market was quite new and hungry for applications that made computers useful for everyday people.

Print Shop was absolutely one of those "applications that made computers useful for everyday people" for sure! Also, Print Shop on an Apple ][+ (Wow! A whole 64K of RAM and a 1Mhz CPU! So powerful! LOL!) with one of the earliest Epson 24pin dot-matrix printers, in combination with some crafty "cut and paste" skills (back when "cut and paste" still meant exacto-knife, rubber cement, and photocopy) made teenage-me a whole lotta spending money back then sellin' my "document design skills" to local businesses. My eternal thanks to all y'all folks who created Print Shop! May it live forever in the history books as the masterful achievement it was! ;)

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