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How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

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Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#91

Post by giarc »

Scarbutt wrote: post #63
chime wrote: post #33

Random trivia for tech history buffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc . under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple. Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let anyone create a full-featured databa…

Access seems way more cheaper and more advanced? and with access you get the whole suit(excel and word).

I developed on Filemaker for awhile, being an Apple product I found it much more user friendly than Access. I still get the periodic promo email from FM and they have pushed the web/mobile/app side quite a bit lately.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#92

Post by philjohn »

d33 wrote: post #4

...just $14M?! Wow, it looks like the tech bubble really grew over the years. On the other hand, the number of people affected by the software grew a lot too...

Roughly $30m in 2016 dollars, still not a lot, but this was back in 1987, which was still before computers were as ubiquitous as they are now.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#93

Post by giarc »

oblio wrote: post #7
d33 wrote: post #4

...just $14M?! Wow, it looks like the tech bubble really grew over the years. On the other hand, the number of people affected by the software grew a lot too...

That's true, but I still can't shake the feeling that a ton more actual money cycled through Powerpoint (and Word, Excel, etc.) than Snapchat or Instagram will ever make. I could be wrong.

Yes, but with PPT, Excel, Word you bought it once and then no longer paid MS any more (until a new version of Office came out). With Snapchat/IG you advertise to your user forever.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#94

Post by giarc »

whyleyc wrote: post #2

There are some timeless tips on acquisition here. Notably once more players are interested suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier to dictate terms for the deal ... like not relocating from Silicon Valley to Redmond.

I think the main point was that Microsoft felt they needed to simply buy a product rather than develop their own. They may have arrived at the same terms without Apple et al knocking at the door.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#96

Post by smacktoward »

pivo wrote: post #25
joshaidan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other tasks. And I also find myself preferring Markdown more and more whenever I can for a variety of tasks, from planning meetings to preparing presentations.

I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in and day out and were very efficient at it's keystroke commands and loved it because it was fast. With its focus on the mouse and GUI slowness, Word was a very painful transition and productivity drain for them.

But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing.

Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#97

Post by maxxxxx »

NDizzle wrote: post #69
chime wrote: post #33

Random trivia for tech history buffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc . under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple. Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let anyone create a full-featured databa…

Filemaker is in the same bin as Lotus Notes/Domino and Access. They sure do a lot, and some of it is good, but most of it is not good.

I would say Access, FileMaker and Excel are the apps that really opened up computers for small businesses. You may not like them but they are certainly some of the most important pieces of software ever.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#98

Post by Keyframe »

chime wrote: post #33

Random trivia for tech history buffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc . under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple. Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let anyone create a full-featured databa…

90's Apple (the beige phase, hah) users knew about FileMaker. At least in my own little circle. There was even a debate FileMake vs 4D (I was in 4D camp). Weird time to be alive. RAD tools and UML, everything visual basically, seemed to be THE FUTURE. Look at us now.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#99

Post by Keyframe »

babuskov wrote: post #27
ralfd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 years?? Holy shit, what a return.

That's interesting. I also read it as "Four", but now I look at it and it reads "five". Could be some brain trick.

Same, must be a caching issue with that 4 in the sentence before (F our F ive)... hail mary attempt at explanation.

Re: How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

#100

Post by uxp »

wlesieutre wrote: post #43
Razengan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as the first SimCity and a few other series that started in the Apple ecosystem. One of the bigger ironies is how Doom was developed on NeXTSTEP then went on to make the IBM PC cool among gamers. Also the first web server if I'm not mistaken. Thankfully, unlike the Amiga etc. the Mac didn't completely die and has been having a great resurgence in the past half-decade. Looking forward to this Monday and hoping…

Halo was being developed for Mac as well, until MS went and bought Bungie. They presented on stage at MacWorld in 1999.

It was released on Mac.

http://halo.bungie.net/projects/halo/

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