I’m sure we had kid pix studio for windows, may have come bundled with something like a graphics card. Definitely unusual, although I don’t remember my kids engaging with it as there were a lot of other kid oriented programs when the whole multimedia PC was in vogue. Hard to compete with Reader Rabbit. Great story though.
Also fyi, ours run it on their Raspi 400 via dosbox, they love it too. The DOS games library is full of educational-ish gems (they really like Lemmings and The Settlers, too).
This is my 4-year old's favorite. It's the only thing we've let her use the iPad for and I have it set up so that saves of her artwork end up in my iCloud.
Found Cosmic Osmo on there, one of my favourite games as a child. All black and white and very trippy, but so full of creativity, exploration and wonder. Also my gateway to the Myst series.
Kid Pix is/was amazing. If you're looking for a modern-ish alternative thing in the category "fun painting program for kids", Tux Paint is also really fun. All it's missing (and it's a big thing to be missing) is the dynamite eraser.
The lack of experience in a child can lead to some funny situations. I want to say this happened in first grade or so, had a teacher, Mr Macintosh, who had several of his own Mac computers available in his classroom, and Kid Pix was loaded up on them (amongst other classics of the time). I was obsessed, particularly with the Bomb, thought it was just the coolest way to clear the screen, this ostensibly serious concept of a program made fun.
I also had difficulty connecting with my classmates, combination of untreated ADHD, and issues at home. For some reason I got it into my head that the bomb was cool, so if I told the others I had a bomb in my backpack I'd be cool! This was very shortly after the Columbine massacre, and of course the policy at that moment was to immediately call in the police. They talked with me, impressed upon my young mind the seriousness of such claims, and we all thankfully just moved on.
My family isn't religious but I used to go to church with a friend on Wednesday nights.
There were a bunch of new kids at the Bible School thing that Wednesday for some reason, and so there was a game where you'd say your name, use the first letter of your name as a pretend occupation, and a place, also with the first letter of your name. An example might be something like "My name is Jordan, I am a Janitor from Jamaica".
I guess I was a bit of an edgelord even at age 10, because I said "My name is Tommy, I am a Terrorist, from Tennessee". For context, this was September 5th, 2001. Everyone kind of laughed, the teachers rolled their eyes, and we moved on.
The following week, September 12, the teachers pulled me aside and gave me a very long, very stern lecture about why you can't joke about these things. I know they meant well, but to be honest I don't think I ever went back to church with my friend after that.
This is such a charming and human story about one of these whimsical things that I miss about software development these days. Sure, a few people might be annoyed by this, but for so many it would just bring a smile on their face amidst a dull working day. Too bad they didn’t get to implement him properly.
The UI really was easy to use like the article says. Part of this was there were so many fun options that we put extra effort into understanding the menus.
Yet another reminder to begin with the thing that sparks joy, and go from there. Thanks for posting. His photography in the deep archive section is great.
I set up an old Mac Mini G4 with a patched version of Mac OS 9 with the sole purpose of allowing my 3 year old son to play point and click games, Kid Pix being one of them.
My dad's Mac had it - I remember some versions of Kid Pix had a sort of "I don't know what to draw" menu item, which would generate complete nonsense like "[An astronaut] [on the surface of the Moon] is [riding horseback] but he needs [someone to take a photo]. Try that". Makes me wonder if it inspired the AI image model prompting modality.
I think my elementary school had Kid Pix 1.0 when I was in kindergarten, but they upgraded to Kid Pix Deluxe 3 pretty early on, and I ended up convincing my parents to buy a copy of that on DVD, which I still have. The bright, glossy colors and sound effects from that version are what I remember the most.
(I actually spent a lot of time just sitting on our home computer browsing the webpage for a Mac-only "3X" edition[1], which had a fire extinguisher instead of the bomb, among other minor differences. But one day, we got a mysterious email making an offer of the normal version for Windows on sale. In hindsight, I have no idea where that email came from, and it's a small wonder my parents didn't get scammed buying through it.)
I remember playing Kid Pix on Windows as a kid. Back then, many programs required you to switch to 256-color mode and wouldn't run unless you did. But somehow, Kid Pix would still let you use it without having to switch modes.
Oh man, Kid Pix takes me back. That was my very first interaction with a Mac back in 2nd grade in my school's computer lab. It was definitely the favorite app amongst all the students back then, and a helluva improved experience over using the old Apple IIs we had access to prior.
S.F.'s California Academy of Sciences used to have an open room near the lobby with a ton of Macintoshes loaded with children's software. I always remembered trying out Kid Pix.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 59.8 ms ] threadhttps://kidpix.app/
Emulator Crash: Memory out of bounds (bummer).
I had no idea we had basically the first commercial version but the timing lines up.
As an adult I now feel for those teachers who had to hear a whole bunch of computers making constant sound effects though.
I also had difficulty connecting with my classmates, combination of untreated ADHD, and issues at home. For some reason I got it into my head that the bomb was cool, so if I told the others I had a bomb in my backpack I'd be cool! This was very shortly after the Columbine massacre, and of course the policy at that moment was to immediately call in the police. They talked with me, impressed upon my young mind the seriousness of such claims, and we all thankfully just moved on.
Odd to think back on now.
I remember kids maxing out the sound on the Performas until the teacher got justifiably annoyed.
My family isn't religious but I used to go to church with a friend on Wednesday nights.
There were a bunch of new kids at the Bible School thing that Wednesday for some reason, and so there was a game where you'd say your name, use the first letter of your name as a pretend occupation, and a place, also with the first letter of your name. An example might be something like "My name is Jordan, I am a Janitor from Jamaica".
I guess I was a bit of an edgelord even at age 10, because I said "My name is Tommy, I am a Terrorist, from Tennessee". For context, this was September 5th, 2001. Everyone kind of laughed, the teachers rolled their eyes, and we moved on.
The following week, September 12, the teachers pulled me aside and gave me a very long, very stern lecture about why you can't joke about these things. I know they meant well, but to be honest I don't think I ever went back to church with my friend after that.
(I actually spent a lot of time just sitting on our home computer browsing the webpage for a Mac-only "3X" edition[1], which had a fire extinguisher instead of the bomb, among other minor differences. But one day, we got a mysterious email making an offer of the normal version for Windows on sale. In hindsight, I have no idea where that email came from, and it's a small wonder my parents didn't get scammed buying through it.)
[1] https://www.mackiev.com/kp_big_screen.html
I remember wasting way too much time with the rudimentary speech-to-text