THE RISE OF "KILLER" APPS
The Rise of "Killer" Apps
The microcomputers that started the PC Revolution only had the capability to run small programs in BASIC or machine language, designed for specific applications. They found many uses in laboratories, classrooms and engineering. However they seldom found uses in business firms who were just beginning to use computer applications supplied by computer services using mainframe computers. Minicomputers were just starting to be used by some businesses and scientific facilities.
Word processing was another computer application that became popular with law offices and the publishing industry. The word processing machines were really dedicated minicomputers operated with keyboards, CRT displays and high speed impact printers. They had the capability of saving text on some type of magnetic tape for future use but they did not compute, or do graphics.
It is not surprising that one of the first microcomputer applications was word processing. A programmer name Michael Shrayer was writing programs for the Altair 8080 computer and decided to write the manuals for the programs on the same machine that the programs ran on. He wrote a word processing program for the Altair in 1976 and called it The Electric Pencil. This was written up in several personal computer magazines and became quite popular. It eventually ran on, many 8080 and Z-80 machines and was available in both cassette and floppy disk versions.
Other word processing programs were developed for the Apple II ( Apple Write 1) and TRS-80 (Scripsit) both these computers had problems due to screen character size or lack of both upper and lower case fonts. Other early word processing programs were PC Write, Easy Writer and Samna III.
There was a problem obtaining letter quality printers to use with PC word processors. Most of the daisy wheel or ball type printers were sold to manufacturers of dedicated word processing systems with proprietary interfaces and it was difficult and expensive to adapt them for use with PC’s. Eventually, letter quality dot matrix printers were sold at a price that made them perfect for PC word processing.
With the development of larger capacity floppy disks and CP/M operating systems, much more capable word processing programs like WordStar and Word Perfect were introduced. These had even more features than the dedicated word processing machines and rapidly replaced them. Word Perfect was popular because its structure was similar to the old word processor machines and it was easy to re-train the operators to this new system.
When IBM introduced the IBM PC neither WordStar nor Word Perfect had a 16-bit version that would run on the PC. IBM supplied a version of Easy Writer for their computer that was not as capable as either of the popular programs. Both companies rushed to upgrade their word processors to run on the IBM PC.
Microsoft quick to move into any profitable software field introduced their own word processor called Word. By integrating Word with their DOS system, it was possible to use a great variety of printers with their program. This made Word very popular. Then Microsoft also integrated Word with their spreadsheet (Excel) and data base (Access) forming a unified system called Microsoft Office. This proved to be too much for the competition which faded into second tier systems. Microsoft has continued to add features to Office which now dominates the field.
Accountants have always used large ruled sheets of paper
upon which they could list the figures related to business over a
period of time. These spreadsheets enabled them to analyze the
relationships between business factors affecting the profit and loss
of the firm. In 1961Prof. Richard Mattessich at the
An electronic spreadsheet enables the user to organize information into columns and rows. The data can then be processed according to a formula entered into the program
The numbers can be added, subtracted, averaged, either across the rows or down the columns. If the numbers referenced in the formula are changed, the result is automatically changed.
The Apple II was the ideal machine to implement Visi Calc on because of its graphics capability, low cost, portability and floppy disk storage. An accountant could take the Apple II computer to the job and work with it almost as easily as a large book of ruled pads. It was so popular that the Apple II became known as the Visi Calc Machine among accountants. It helped make the Apple II one of the most successful computers ever sold.
Because of the difficulty obtaining software patents, Visi Calc was not patented, but it was protected by copyright of its appearance and methods. Nevertheless, other electronic spreadsheets appeared on the market. Super Calc for use with CP/M computers was very popular as well as DIF and Twain. In some cases Visi Calc sued the publishers of competing programs, but as the cases proceeded through the courts, in 1983, IBM came out with the 16-bit IBM PC.
In 1983, Mitch Kapor came out with Lotus 123 for the IBM PC that included features not found in Visi Calc and this became the most popular microcomputer program. Although Visi Calc was later ported to the PC, it was too little and too late.
In 1987, Borland International produced a spreadsheet called Quattro Pro and Microsoft developed Excel, both of these new spreadsheets had graphic capabilities not available in other programs.
The development of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office which included Excel, proved too much competition for stand-alone spreadsheet programs. This integrated software system enables the user to move data between spreadsheet, data base and word processing programs and makes the same information available in many forms.
Data Base systems have been one the main functions of large
mainframe computers, but early microcomputers did not have the memory
capacity or data storage to run effective data base systems.
However Wayne Ratliff, a young programmer who worked with data
base systems at Jet Propulsion Labs in
When Microsoft released Windows 3.0 and it became a great success, and there was great rush by software companies to release versions of their products to run under Windows. Ashton –Tate was unable to meet this demand and other systems were adopted by Windows users. Eventually Ashton-Tate was bought out by Borland who did manage to bring out a Windows version of dBase. However by then the market had moved elsewhere.
As Microsoft further developed Windows into its dominant position, it brought along its data base system Access as part of Microsoft Office. Today Access is the most used data base system for simpler applications while more robust systems like Oracle are used for complex applications.