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Office on the Mac was called Multiplan in 1984 [1] Office 1.0 came out November 19, 1990 but Word itself was 1983 [2] People still used the original VisiCalc

Office on the Mac was called Multiplan in 1984 [1] Office 1.0 came out November 19, 1990 but Word itself was 1983 [2] People still used the original VisiCalc in the DOS days. Visicalc itself was an Apple II program [3] Lotus bought and killed it but botched the transition to Windows, leaving the door open for Excel (ably assisted by the Windows API team no doubt). [1] http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AT&p_theme=at&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EADA384959B6DA0&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AT&p_... [2] http://toastytech.com/guis/word115.html http://toastytech.com/guis/word115.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

scholia 11y ago
> Office on the Mac was called Multiplan in 1984 [1] No it wasn't: that's nonsense. Microsoft wrote some DOS programs in the early 1980s, including Word and Multiplan. Multiplan was a spreadsheet, similar to VisiCalc. It was never Office 1.0. VisiCalc appeared on the Apple II, Apple III, Tandy TRS-80 and Atari 800. After Lotus launched 1-2-3 and killed VisiCalc, it bought Software Arts and closed it. However, Software Arts was almost dead by then anyway (and Bob Frankston went to work for Lotus). http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/09/business/lotus-set-to-acquire-software-arts.html http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/09/business/lotus-set-to-acqu... Lotus certainly botched the transition to Windows, partly because it was still making tons of money from 1-2-3 for DOS, and partly because it was best buddies with IBM, and both of them hated Microsoft. That ended happily when IBM bought Lotus Development. (Well, happily for all the executives, not for poor blooming users....)

scholia 11y ago

> Office on the Mac was called Multiplan in 1984 [1] No it wasn't: that's nonsense. Microsoft wrote some DOS programs in the early 1980s, including Word and Multiplan. Multiplan was a spreadsheet, similar to VisiCalc. It was never Office 1.0. VisiCalc appeared on the Apple II, Apple III, Tandy TRS-80 and Atari 800. After Lotus launched 1-2-3 and killed VisiCalc, it bought Software Arts and closed it. However, Software Arts was almost dead by then anyway (and Bob Frankston went to work for Lotus). http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/09/business/lotus-set-to-acquire-software-arts.html http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/09/business/lotus-set-to-acqu... Lotus certainly botched the transition to Windows, partly because it was still making tons of money from 1-2-3 for DOS, and partly because it was best buddies with IBM, and both of them hated Microsoft. That ended happily when IBM bought Lotus Development. (Well, happily for all the executives, not for poor blooming users....)