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Good. Had they bought PowerPoint and then became successful they’d get big, rich, and lazy. And we’d never have gotten the iMac or later the iPhone.
by gigatexal 4y ago
Good. Had they bought PowerPoint and then became successful they’d get big, rich, and lazy. And we’d never have gotten the iMac or later the iPhone.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoPowerPoint is not, and never had been, the crown jewel of Office, which is Excel.
- ghaff 4y agoExcel was the product that really overwhelmed the competition--including Lotus 1-2-3--when the world transitioned to Windows. Word and Powerpoint were decent programs but there were plenty of competitive options out there. But getting Powerpoint and Word for "free" as part of a Microsoft bundle pretty much sealed the deal. (And arguably pretty much froze office suites in amber.)
- fortran77 4y agoI still use Excel all the time. Most of my work is digital signal processing, and I use the Complex number features in Excel for analysis.
- Grustaf 4y agoMore importantly, we wouldn't have Keynote and we'd be stuck using Powerpoint
- ascagnel_ 4y agoI doubt it. By 1987, Office was already well on its way to its dominant position, and whatever presentation tool Microsoft bought would have become the de facto presentation tool, be it PowerPoint, Keynote, or some other tool that's been forgotten, simply because it was available in a package the business was already buying.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoIs "1987" a typo? "[Office] was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_office
- ascagnel_ 4y agoAh, I got my timelines mixed up. I thought Office was already out by 1987; 1987 was when Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for Office.
- rchaud 4y agoThey already had Hypercard, and did nothing to make it mainstream, leaving it entirely to artists and creative people. HC was miles ahead of PowerPoint, it had a scripting language under the hood that people used to develop games, early offline websites, and even inventory management and small business invoicing systems.