4 ms·
We developed it and sold it initially to the government - using that revenue to make it stable. It was Lyrix word processor and a spreadsheet and graphics progr
by MrTonyD 8y ago
We developed it and sold it initially to the government - using that revenue to make it stable. It was Lyrix word processor and a spreadsheet and graphics program (the graphics program was pretty bad, but the spreadsheet had gone through a few major revisions and was getting competetitive with Lotus 123 (the major spreadsheet at the time.) So sure we had printer drivers and WYSIWIG, kind of like WordPerfect which was the major competitor at the time. Microsoft was still trying to assemble all the pieces of an Office Suite and get users from MSDOS to Windows. After meeting with Bill, and promises to break Windows networking so that UNIX could have the TCP/IP-based back-office business, we killed it. (So people who can't figure out why networking was broken for so long in Apple and Windows products just don't know the trades which were made.)
- mixmastamyk 8y agoWhat does broken mean in this context?
- cpach 8y agoIIRC, Windows 3.x didn’t have a TCP/IP stack. One had to install additional software such as Trumpet Winsock in order to connect to Internet.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoThought it was about the limits of netbios and appletalk, but lack of tcpip is probably another factor. I worked with netware/ipx at the time.
- MrTonyD 8y agoApple had installed the entire networking code from UNIX under appletalk. But Steve personally fired the head of Apple networking. Then he fired the next engineering manager too, until he got one who wouldn't keep trying to expose the full tcp/ip capability that they had built into the Apple kernel. So the initial capability was appletalk with low cost chips, but their tech guys quickly realized that they needed more. There is a lot of unpublished history - a lot of it completely illegal in order to build the fortunes of the tech leaders (and not just Apple, Microsoft, and SCO.)
- cpach 8y agoSo that’s the reason why Window’s network stack was so crappy before Windows 95? :) I remember using Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.11 back in 1995.