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How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M
- whyleyc 10y agoThere are some timeless tips on acquisition here. Notably once more players are interested suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier to dictate terms for the deal ... like not relocating from Silicon Valley to Redmond.
- giarc 10y agoI think the main point was that Microsoft felt they needed to simply buy a product rather than develop their own. They may have arrived at the same terms without Apple et al knocking at the door.
- martin-adams 10y agoI think it's so ironic that the first version of Powerpoint was for Mac which ended up helping give Windows it's name when running Office. I've seen Powerpoint used for so many crazy things. Most notably non-technical managers designing a UI in Powerpoint. It's just one of those, lets just get the job done pieces of software.
- hexane360 10y agoI love me some powerpoint jeopardy. Buttons to go to hidden question slides, have used options grey out after being clicked, put in some cheesy sound effects. . .
- martin-adams 10y agoI put some cheesy sound effects in a powerpoint slide when I was up late working on it, then forgot when I was presenting. Completely threw me off.
- matt4077 10y agoNah, Powerpoint karaoke is where it's at :)
- mikehearn 10y agoI am unabashedly in support of using presentation software for initial UI design. For basic wireframing, you don't need much more than the ability add shapes, text, color, images + a way to demonstrate user flow (e.g. by ordering slides). Presentation software is perfect for this. It is accessible to everyone, lets non-technical users offer constructive input and is just incredibly fast to get something basic circulated.
- martin-adams 10y agoActually you're right. I know a UX designer who had all the UI elements in wireframes and would move things around in Powerpoint based on feedback on conference calls. I think my observation is when someone who 'thinks' they know what the right thing to do is from a UI point of view and shares it around before getting the actual designers involved. The ones who say, we need another button here, rather than asking, what is the user trying to achieve.
- surganov 10y ago> Keynotopia transforms Keynote and PowerPoint into the best rapid prototyping tools for creating mobile, web and desktop app mockups http://keynotopia.com http://keynotopia.com
- hnal943 10y agoI agree that you want a lightweight wireframing tool; Balsamiq Mockups has my allegiance. Powerpoint is incredibly slow and frustrating to use by comparison, even for non-developers.
- nashashmi 10y agoYou just inspired me to see everything in its simplest yet powerful form. Hell with intent!
- derriz 10y agoAgreed. I've also used (pre-ribbon) Excel effectively for this purpose by drawing the UI using cell background colors and border effects on multiple sheets. Occasionally breaking out some controls and bits of VBA if necessary.
- pmarreck 10y agoThe first version of Excel was ALSO for Mac. I think the Macintosh doesn't get enough credit for what it inspired at the time.
- Razengan 10y agoAs well as the first SimCity and a few other series that started in the Apple ecosystem. One of the bigger ironies is how Doom was developed on NeXTSTEP then went on to make the IBM PC cool among gamers. Also the first web server if I'm not mistaken. Thankfully, unlike the Amiga etc. the Mac didn't completely die and has been having a great resurgence in the past half-decade. Looking forward to this Monday and hoping for Apple to focus on making this platform even better.
- wlesieutre 10y agoHalo was being developed for Mac as well, until MS went and bought Bungie. They presented on stage at MacWorld in 1999.
- ethbro 10y agosighs Oh, Marathon.
- lostlogin 10y agoI still hear the rocket launcher occasionally.
- vt240 10y agoSomewhere I have DATs with like 1GB of custom Marathon levels and texture designs. Including a complete model of our Junior High School a friend of mine made. I'm not sure how I missed the announcement they open-sourced them.
- uxp 10y agoIt was released on Mac. http://halo.bungie.net/projects/halo/ http://halo.bungie.net/projects/halo/
- dogma1138 10y agoWhere's the irony? Microsoft started (ignore the DOS part) as a company that developed applications for Macintosh specifically word and excel which started on the Mac and only got Windows support in later versions with Word 4/Word for Windows 1.0 and Excel 2.0.
- vidarh 10y agoThe Macintosh didn't exist when Microsoft started, and neither did the PC.
- kalleboo 10y agoThe first version of MS Word was for MS-DOS, not the Mac
- dogma1138 10y agoLooks like you are correct Excel 1.0 and Word 1.0 were released for the Mac in 1985, Word 1.0 was released for MS-DOS 18 months earlier. Excel was never released for the MSDOS and both it and Word came to Windows in 1987.
- xorcist 10y agoExcel and Word for Windows was created to showcase Windows, but I doubt it was as early as 1987. Multiplan was the DOS based spreadsheet software they sold (successfully) at the time.
- dogma1138 10y agoThe dates were from MSFT and Wikipedia, I was 1 year old then so I would have to take your word for it.
- dreamcompiler 10y agoMultiplan was also sold for the Mac in 1984 or 85. I still have a copy of it.
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- rogerbinns 10y agoI work with someone who uses PowerPoint as a digital whiteboard. It does turn out to be very effective at that, and as a bonus the results can easily be shared without viewers having to use some obscure whiteboard software.
- Tomte 10y agoIt's my go-to vector graphics tool. Easy to use and understand, powerful _enough_. For my simple uses I'm not fighting Inkscape or Visio ever again.
- tboughen 10y agoMine too. Though I've never been sure why PowerPoint is so much more capable for this than Publisher. When creating resources I intend to be printed I've had to make things in PowerPoint then copy them over after finding out Publisher doesn't have the feature I need but PowerPoint does.
- treebeard901 10y agoSame here. I had one of the stereotypical insecure manager types try to compete on an enterprise business intelligence solution by creating something in powerpoint that read some data point from an excel file. Not too sure how that worked out for him.
- d33 10y ago...just $14M?! Wow, it looks like the tech bubble really grew over the years. On the other hand, the number of people affected by the software grew a lot too...
- oblio 10y agoThat's true, but I still can't shake the feeling that a ton more actual money cycled through Powerpoint (and Word, Excel, etc.) than Snapchat or Instagram will ever make. I could be wrong.
- giarc 10y agoYes, but with PPT, Excel, Word you bought it once and then no longer paid MS any more (until a new version of Office came out). With Snapchat/IG you advertise to your user forever.
- AmVess 10y agoCrazy, right? It's barely even an accounting error (0.02%) of the Dell/EMC deal.
- philjohn 10y agoRoughly $30m in 2016 dollars, still not a lot, but this was back in 1987, which was still before computers were as ubiquitous as they are now.
- yuhong 10y agoThinking about it, delaying Windows 3.0 to fix problems with DOS 5.0 would have delayed PowerPoint for Windows further, but I still think that it would be worth it.
- baldfat 10y agoNot a deal of the century it would have just delayed the MS machine a little. Back then they either bought you out (Power Point) or they out Advertised or eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect).
- bluedino 10y ago>> they out Advertised or eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect). WordPerfect kind of killed itself. They never embraced the GUI because they thought Windows was ugly. The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. They were all over the map trying to make a suite of strange, semi-office-related programs. When they went from 4.x to 5.0 they had to re-do the printer driver model, just as Windows was making specific dos printer drivers for your application obsolete.
- joshaidan 10y ago>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other tasks. And I also find myself preferring Markdown more and more whenever I can for a variety of tasks, from planning meetings to preparing presentations.
- eli 10y agoVim is a tiny fraction of a percent of word processor usage. Most people like GUIs.
- babuskov 10y agoYes. Most people who aren't in the tech just launch a word processor (word, libreoffice, etc.) Tech people on Windows use Notepad or a similar GUI program. Vim is used by a tiny, tiny fraction of people in the world.
- Spivak 10y ago> Tech people on Windows use Notepad. I'm always horrified to see this. MS really shot themselves in the foot with the dev community by not providing a powerful text editor as the default. Getting a WinAdmin to enjoy the UNIX'y way of doing things is like trying to feed a child broccoli.
- raldi 10y agoThe deal of the century was when SAIC bought Network Solutions for $4.7M in 1995. Five years later, they sold it to VeriSign for $21B.
- ralfd 10y ago4 years?? Holy shit, what a return.
- babuskov 10y agoThat's interesting. I also read it as "Four", but now I look at it and it reads "five". Could be some brain trick.
- hamilyon2 10y agoSame for me. Very interesting. Non-native speaker from mobile device
- situationista 10y agoSame. Fascinating.
- Quinner 10y agoInteresting, same here, perhaps we actually processed the numeral in the child comment subconsciously while reading the written-out five in the parent.
- abritinthebay 10y agoPowerPoint would never have become what it was without being on Windows and part of Office. So no, not really. Ignoring network effects makes this kind of silly. Keynote has also been better for a number of years now. Still not as popular just because Macs are less common than PCs with office.
- efaref 10y agoYou're right. Powerpoint has the advantage of being good enough, and ubiquitously available (for people with Office, which is pretty much everyone).
- coldcode 10y agoHaving worked on Persuasion 1.0 (Powerpoint's only real competitor for a while) being part of Office eventually killed Persuasion (when Adobe owned it later) because Powerpoint was "free".
- abritinthebay 10y agoRight, exactly. It came with Word/Excel so basically anyone at an office already had it because they had Office. Never underestimate the power of "it's already installed"
- scholia 10y agoWhat's more, PowerPoint was pretty much free. The Microsoft Office bundle was cheaper than buying the programs separately. You probably bought Office even if you just wanted Word and Excel.
- dreamcompiler 10y agoToo bad that. Persuasion was a vastly superior program.
- gritzko 10y agoIndeed7d97deaa9e5bd76065573ff9cd26500f5045bcd
- chime 10y agoRandom trivia for tech history buffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc. under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple. Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let anyone create a full-featured database. And even today, if you are running a small business and want basic data-collection features for internal use, it is still relevant and useful: http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-solutions.html http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-solutions.html 90% of "please make me a typical DB app" requests I get, I just point them to FileMaker. I say spend $75/mo for 5 users for a couple of months to work out the process. If the process works and the pain-point is FileMaker, come back to me and I will make a custom solution.
- Scarbutt 10y agoAccess seems way more cheaper and more advanced? and with access you get the whole suit(excel and word).
- extra88 10y agoAccess is Windows only and is way harder to build with. AFAIK, FileMaker also has an easier path for getting your data on the web or on mobile devices.
- a2tech 10y agoYeah in FileMaker its as simple as opening the database configuration screen and checking 'web enable'. You need a FileMaker server install, but if you do you just drop that file in its serving directory and bam, web enabled.
- giarc 10y agoI developed on Filemaker for awhile, being an Apple product I found it much more user friendly than Access. I still get the periodic promo email from FM and they have pushed the web/mobile/app side quite a bit lately.
- 27182818284 10y agoI know lots of folks my age that loved Hypercard. Deal of the century? No, but Hypercard not going mainstream was a huge missed opportunity. I mean I know a generation now of people my age that grew up with that and loved that product in elementary school and all of us ended up doing lousy powerpoints in high school, college, and beyond. (Additionally given the programming-like nature of Hypercard, I wonder how many more young folks would have entered programming related fields...)
- LaMarseillaise 10y agoMy sister and I learned how to make things with HyperCard (and HyperTalk) when I was about 6 or 7 years old. We quite enjoyed it, but it took me many years to rediscover programming as an adult.
- serge2k 10y ago> The new offer, however, was for cash rather than MSFT stock, overcoming one hesitation of our investors. Whoops.
- nitroscott 10y agoThe adjusted price of a share of MSFT on 6/25/87 was $0.37. Had they received $14m in Microsoft stock, almost 38 million shares would be worth about $2B today.
- peter303 10y agoDante created a new circle of Hell for PowerPoint
- Exras 10y agoInferno or not, PowerPoint is a special product, for you can buy hardware to control it. An image search on PowerPoint remote will fill the screen with different devices. What other windows app has that same kind of hardware support?
- jboles 10y agoSolitaire/Minesweeper. One of the original purposes of including them with Windows was to familiarise users with mouse techniques.
- hnal943 10y agoWhile obviously PowerPoint is ubiquitous and influential, it's interesting - I don't think I've ever used PowerPoint in professional life. The last time I needed to prepare a slide presentation was in high school.
- engi_nerd 10y agoWe are lacking context here. What do you do?
- hnal943 10y agoGood point. I'm a dev lead in an "enterprise" company (retail). I spend my time in Balsamiq Mockups and Visio. Meeting topics are usually complex enought that we spend the time discussing a single diagram/flow.
- engi_nerd 10y agoInteresting. Thanks for answering. I'd say that not having PowerPoint presentations reflects well on you. Unfortunately in my line of work (aerospace engineering), PowerPoint is endemic. All kinds of documents that should be actual reports are just PowerPoint slides.
- bdcravens 10y agoMy job doesn't require Powerpoint, but I've used it when given user group/conference talks.
- epx 10y agoGood, so they invented Keynote that is a ton better. I use it even for things that I should be using Photoshop/GIMP.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- xbmcuser 10y ago$12million worth Microsoft shares in 89 vs $14million in cash. Some of the investors might be kicking themselves for not taking the shares.
- known 10y agoReminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc
- erikb 10y agoA serious question remains: How did they pitch it without PowerPoint slides?
- phodo 10y agoHarvard Graphics ?
- erikb 10y agoIf they know in the offer round already that they want a deal from Microsoft, then why is the title "how Microsoft beat Apple"? They didn't do anything to beat Apple if they had already won.