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The Lost Apps of the 80s

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Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#31

Post by watersb »

gecko wrote: post #15

Whenever this comes up, I always ask, even though I can anticipate the answer: has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop…

Odessa Helix was really good, a combination spreadsheet and database, and the extensive the scripting language was pretty much straight HyperTalk (AppleScript).

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#32

Post by Exmoor »

Arainach wrote: post #27
gerikson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OneDrive had its origins in Groove back in the day.

No, SkyDrive was always centralized server-side without any of the conflict resolution coauth concepts that Groove had. It was a completely separate project.

What about OneDrive For Business? I recall the executable was, confusingly, Groove.exe for quite a long time.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#33

Post by divbzero »

I’m intrigued by the comment that “there is nothing out there with the power and usability that Lotus Notes had back-in-the-day”. I didn’t have the opportunity to experience Lotus Notes personally, would be curious to hear the perspective of someone who used (or developed) the application.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#34

Post by rwallace »

divbzero wrote: post #33

I’m intrigued by the comment that “there is nothing out there with the power and usability that Lotus Notes had back-in-the-day”. I didn’t have the opportunity to experience Lotus Notes personally, would be curious to hear the perspective of someone who used (or developed) the application.

A surprising remark! The usability of Lotus Notes was so bad that it earned itself an entire section on a site called the User Interface Hall of Shame.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#35

Post by Arainach »

Exmoor wrote: post #32
Arainach wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, SkyDrive was always centralized server-side without any of the conflict resolution coauth concepts that Groove had. It was a completely separate project.

What about OneDrive For Business? I recall the executable was, confusingly, Groove.exe for quite a long time.

As I recall, OneDrive for Business had absolutely nothing in common with OneDrive except that marketing in all their wisdom decided to throw that name on it for maximum confusion (a very popular technique at Microsoft - see also Skype for Business). I don't know its history, but assuming it evolved out of some Sharepoint product it wouldn't surprise me if it had some Groove DNA.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#36

Post by Exmoor »

Arainach wrote: post #35
Exmoor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about OneDrive For Business? I recall the executable was, confusingly, Groove.exe for quite a long time.

As I recall, OneDrive for Business had absolutely nothing in common with OneDrive except that marketing in all their wisdom decided to throw that name on it for maximum confusion (a very popular technique at Microsoft - see also Skype for Business). I don't know its history, but assuming it evolved out of some Sharepoint product it wouldn't surprise me if it had some Groove DNA.

> a very popular technique at Microsoft

Indeed. See also: Surface...everything.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#38

Post by lukeck »

Exmoor wrote: post #36
Arainach wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, OneDrive for Business had absolutely nothing in common with OneDrive except that marketing in all their wisdom decided to throw that name on it for maximum confusion (a very popular technique at Microsoft - see also Skype for Business). I don't know its history, but assuming it evolved out of some Sharepoint product it wouldn't surprise me if it had some Groove DNA.

> a very popular technique at Microsoft Indeed. See also: Surface...everything.

And slapping .net on everything.

Re: The Lost Apps of the 80s

#39

Post by webmaven »

rozzie wrote: post #14
webmaven wrote: post #9

I wonder if Ozzie considers Groove to be one of the products he expended energy on and failed. From my perspective it seemed to actually be succeeding as a deeply network-aware thick client for collaborative knowledge work when Microsoft acquired it and killed it off. Or if not outright killed it, then managed it to death by strapping it to the SharePoint boat anchor. I wouldn't count that as a failure per-se. It did…

Undeniably the product failed commercially. By the time we decided to sell the company, the product was doing ~20M+ of revenue but on a low growth rate, after having gone through ~140M of capital with (not unreasonable) investor expectations of unicorn-like returns. That said, I absolutely loved Groove the product and Groove the team. It was a dapp with a wonderfully-usable interface, built on a pure P2P blockchain-l…

> Undeniably the product failed commercially. By the time we decided to sell the company, the product was doing ~20M+ of revenue but on a low growth rate, after having gone through ~140M of capital with (not unreasonable) investor expectations of unicorn-like returns.

Groove's revenue exceeded expenditures, though, right? Or could have? I'm not sure it was reasonable to expect success at that scale for an entirely novel class of application in an era where startup investments were still expected to 'mature' only after about a decade or more. Groove was only ~8 years old, and 1.0 had been released ~6 years prior.

> But the enterprise and consumers chose centralization as the winning architecture, and the rest is history.

As I recall, around 2.x you were more-or-less switching from a distributed architecture to a decentralized one, but... your point is taken. I suppose I should admire that you saw the writing on the wall as soon as you did.

The wheel keeps turning though, and I wonder if another stab at the idea could succeed today. Certainly the various risks of centralization are much more apparent, and to a broader audience, now.

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