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Maximum Output Software |
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Doug Johnson is the owner of Maximum Output Software, and the author of all of the software on this site. He is currently in his early thirties and resides in Orem, Utah.
He took an early interest in computers, and more specifically, programming them. In the late 1970s, at the age of 5, he had spent a lot of time watching his father work on a DEC PDP-11 computer that was being leased to run a small business out of the family home. His father took note of this, and soon began introducing his son to basic tasks on the computer - beginning with playing simple text games, but moving on to more complicated tasks, such as programming in the BASIC language. Doug's course in life was already set.
Much to Doug's dismay, the lease on the computer was terminated before long, leaving the family without a computer. Santa Claus came to the rescue with not one, but two computers, first a TI 99/4A, which was nearly immediately replaced with an Atari 600XL when the TI did not pose enough challenge for the budding programmer. Doug also had access to Apple II computers at school, where, instead of using the allocated time to play the educational games, he taught himself Apple BASIC. When the 600XL no longer offered sufficient resources, it was replaced by an 800XL with four times the memory.
By the age of twelve, his skills had developed to the point where, with some help and direction from his dad, Doug had his first contract programming job on an IBM PC-based system. The software was simple, but this was a great opportunity. At 14 an Atari ST arrived at home, and with its drastically improved capabilities, offered a new set of challenges. By the age of 16, Doug had procured and delivered on several contract programming jobs, in addition to developing several shareware applications. By the time he started his college education at Brigham Young University in the early 1990s a substantial portion of his college expenses were being paid for by sales of versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the MOS Disk Utilities, a collection of disk maintenance programs for the Atari ST, vaguely similar in capability to the Norton Utilities on the PC. One of these utilities, designed to backup critical files each time the computer was started, was called AutoBack ST.
Doug served a two-year proselyting mission for his church between his freshman and sophomore years at BYU, and upon returning from his mission picked right back up where he left off, but this time on a new platform, Microsoft Windows. He took a job working for the Missionary Training Center (an arm of BYU) first doing technical support, but was soon moved to the programming staff. Before long he was promoted to lead programmer and finally became the Oracle database administrator. Outside his job in his spare time he built computers for local dentists offices, and began working on developing his own software ideas, one of which was a new incarnation of the AutoBack ST software developed years before, now renamed FileBack PC. Initially developed for his own use only, with a little encouragement from friends it was posted to the Internet and between sales of FileBack PC and other outside income Doug was able to realize his lifelong dream of working from home, enabling an early 'retirement' from his job at the MTC in early 1998. When FileBack PC was given the software-of-the-year award by the popular Windows95.com web site, Doug knew he had something good going on.
Development of FileBack PC 3.0 was essentially a full-time job from mid 1997 through mid 1998, even while he was still building and supporting PCs and programming for the MTC. Changes in the 3.1 and 3.2 versions occupied his time for several following years. In 2000 work on PicSwitcher began, with version 1.0 being released later that year. PicSwitcher 2.0 came the following year, requiring several long months of development. Work on FileBack PC 4.0 began in mid 2002 and continued at a frantic pace for a full year before its release in July 2003.
The latest published MOS utility, EZ Pinger, began development stages in February 2006, after watching friend and fellow business owner Brian struggle with the task of managing and monitoring multiple remote PCs. Within hours the basic framework was in place and a usable product was being tested.
Doug is very focused when he is working on any given project, spending between 10-18 hours each day designing, coding, and testing. Even sleeping and eating become burdensome during these times. Many of the products that he develops never make it to the MOS web site, being written just to keep his skills sharp or to meet a particular challenge or need for himself or a friend. He has actually mapped out a whole series of utilities for later development, some of which will be published under the Maximum Output Software name.
When software design and development and the day-to-day chores of MOS are not occupying his time, Doug enjoys building another side business providing audio and video production services, ranging from running a recording studio in his home, to photography, to multi-camera live video productions. Doug considers this the perfect combination because neither business is demanding on his schedule unless he chooses it to be. He also has numerous hobbies, including car audio and video, car maintenance, spending time in the nearby Wasatch mountains, and recently he has taken up learning the bass guitar as well. He also spends a considerable amount of time doing volunteer work for his church and community. Lately he as added blogging and podcasting to his arsenal of hobbies. On occasion he even manages to find time to date and socialize, but as of yet has not managed to find anyone to fill the role of Mrs. Johnson.