> One question maybe worth asking: "How did they go about finding the various > companies and each company's Apple II software products?"
That lore is not going to be recoverable. This is what I was told today:
When PA-based Black Box bought CA-based MENU, Black Box hoped to extract value from the deal by turning MENU's databases into print products; the database data were simply imported into a desktop-publishing program, formatted, and dressed up with covers, mail-in postcards, and the like. (This Apple II guide might have been the largest directory derived from MENU's databases, but there were several other smaller ones.) What happened next is unclear; either the response to the MENU directories was underwhelming, causing management to abandon the effort, or the MENU directories were one of several projects abandoned after new management representing the backers of a contemporaneous leveraged buyout of Black Box decided to reduce the number of profit centers in which the company was involved.
I think that's about all that I'm gonna be able to come up with.
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