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Last I checked, Lotus did themselves by not innovating, and betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) then not doing well on a pivot to Windows. Meanwhile Excel was ga

by p_l 3y ago

Last I checked, Lotus did themselves by not innovating, and betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) then not doing well on a pivot to Windows. Meanwhile Excel was gaining features and winning users with them even before Windows was in play.

dadadad100 3y ago
This is a key point. Before windows we had all the dos players - WordPerfect was king. Microsoft was more focused on the Mac. I’ve always assumed that Microsoft understood that a GUI was coming and trained a generation of developers on the main gui of the day. Once windows came out the dos focused apps could not adapt in time
robocat 3y ago
> betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) Ahhhh, your hindsight is well developed. I would be interested to know the background on the reasons why Lotus made that bet. We can't know the counterfactual, but Lotus delivering on a platform owned by their deadly competitor Microsoft would seem to me to be a clearly worrysome idea to Lotus at the time. Turned out it was an existentially bad idea. Did Lotus fear Microsoft? "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run" is a myth[1] for a reason. Edit: DRDOS errors[2] were one reason Lotus might fear Microsoft. We can just imagine a narritive of a different timeline where Lotus delivered on Windows but did some things differently to beat Excel. I agree, Lotus made other mistakes and Microsoft made some great decisions, but the point remains. We can also suspect that AMD have a similar choice now where they are forked. Depending on Nvidea/CUDA may be a similar choice for AMD - fail if they do and fail if they don't. [1] http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... [2] https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_inc...
- p_l 3y ago
  I've seen rumours from self-claimed ex-Lotus employees that IBM made a deal with Lotus to prioritise OS/2

by p_l 3y ago

dadadad100 3y ago

This is a key point. Before windows we had all the dos players - WordPerfect was king. Microsoft was more focused on the Mac. I’ve always assumed that Microsoft understood that a GUI was coming and trained a generation of developers on the main gui of the day. Once windows came out the dos focused apps could not adapt in time

robocat 3y ago

> betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) Ahhhh, your hindsight is well developed. I would be interested to know the background on the reasons why Lotus made that bet. We can't know the counterfactual, but Lotus delivering on a platform owned by their deadly competitor Microsoft would seem to me to be a clearly worrysome idea to Lotus at the time. Turned out it was an existentially bad idea. Did Lotus fear Microsoft? "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run" is a myth[1] for a reason. Edit: DRDOS errors[2] were one reason Lotus might fear Microsoft. We can just imagine a narritive of a different timeline where Lotus delivered on Windows but did some things differently to beat Excel. I agree, Lotus made other mistakes and Microsoft made some great decisions, but the point remains. We can also suspect that AMD have a similar choice now where they are forked. Depending on Nvidea/CUDA may be a similar choice for AMD - fail if they do and fail if they don't. [1] http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... [2] https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_inc...

p_l 3y ago
I've seen rumours from self-claimed ex-Lotus employees that IBM made a deal with Lotus to prioritise OS/2