Softape

Softape is one of the first 3rd-party publishers of software for the Apple II computer.

History
In 1977, the company was founded as Softech by William V. Smith, Bill DePew, and Gary Koffler, three classmates from in, California. The company first did business out of a 900 square foot (84 m2) building in that was being rented for $195 a month. A few months later, they were forced to change their name to Softape when another company in was found to have already been using the "Softech" name. After Koffler left the company, it was renamed to Artsci. Softape and Artsci sold over 100,000 cassettes and 200,000 floppy disks, reaching peak annual sales of over $3 million. Some of its programmers, such as Bob Bishop and Gary Shannon, were hired by Apple Computer.

Current business
In 1989, Artsci Publishing began producing books for the amateur radio community. Depew died on August 2, 2011. Smith remains with the company as CEO.