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Dennis Austin dies at 76. * Born in Pittsburgh, studied engineering at the University of Virginia * Collaborated with Robert Gaskins at Forethought to create
by davidw 3y ago
Dennis Austin dies at 76.
* Born in Pittsburgh, studied engineering at the University of Virginia
* Collaborated with Robert Gaskins at Forethought to create PowerPoint
* Forethought acquired by Microsoft
* By 1993, PowerPoint generating more than $100 million in sales
* Product is widely used, but controversial and target of jokes
> Mr. Austin and Gaskins acknowledged the complaints, but thought they were unfairly aimed at the software and not the people who were using it to make lazy, poor presentations.
> “It’s just like the printing press,” Mr. Austin told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It enabled all sorts of garbage to be printed.”
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoRobert Gaskins wrote an interesting book on the development of Powerpoint and the collaboration with Apple and Microsoft.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 3y agoThank you for making a proper slide for this. (Suggestion: Remove "." from slide title.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wredue 3y ago>thought they were unfairly aimed at the software Yeah. I’ll bet that all of the Microsoft office engineers feel this way, and it explains a lot about why the suite is such a bug ridden, shitty performing fucking mess. The only thing keeping the office suite alive at this point is the enormity of the task to disrupt it.
- no_wizard 3y agoI surmise that Google workspace has managed to supplant it in a very real ways. For the last 3 places I’ve worked everything is done in Google Workspace. The only thing that Microsoft has a hold over is with Excel, that’s all anyone used from MS
- irrational 3y agoAt my work (Fortune 100 company), it is Excel and Outlook. I’m not certain why the powers that be settled on outlook.
- mcny 3y agoI worked at a company that used IBM's Lotus for six months. Outlook was no longer the worst for me.
- srazzaque 3y agoAs did I. Lotus Notes is something that cannot be unseen.
- PhasmaFelis 3y agoI worked at a place that used Lotus Notes in the late '00s. Used to say that, when Notes launched in 1989, it was 10 years ahead of its time; and even today it's still 10 years ahead of 1989.
- nikau 3y agoOutlook is very good when coupled with exchange. Microsoft are doing their best to alienate their established userbase however, the next versions are just going to be the garbage webmail version wrapped as an app.
- srazzaque 3y agoYep, I've long conjectured that Excel is what sells MS office. Every other product in the Office suite, including PowerPoint, has very viable alternatives. Excel has a 100% a strong-hold in most finance departments. I've worked with many finance professionals who's very first instinct for any type of work is to open Excel. When interacting with any data outside of Excel, they'll demand a way to get it into Excel.