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The First Killer App: VisiCalc
Sabah Arif writes "The first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, helped transform the Apple II from a home computer into a business computer. Without VisiCalc, it is possible IBM would not have introduced the IBM PC in 1981. Read about the software at VisiCalc's creator Dan Bricklin's site and a brief history at Braeburn."
I thought the first killer app was email?
If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Although I am very familiar with the history of Visicalc as it was one of the first programs I bought for my Apple ][+ back in 1982, I am happy to see articles like this on Slashdot. We need more stories about this history of computing and the Internet to educate all the N003Ies out here.
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After Visi-Calc, though, it was Lotus 1-2-3 that defined the spreadsheet; to ease transition, it could read .vc files. (Version 1 was pretty lame, though, as it couldn't do any string based functions. Version 2, though, was much better)
.wks and, to some extent .wk3 files to ease transition.
Lotus, though, was a real pain when it came to graphing - it was a case of "set this; try it out", rather than real-time drawing. So, Excel took over the mantle. Again, it could read
So, the next question is: what is the killer feature that will make people convert from Excel to something else? Or, to put it another way, what feature of Excel is still a bit clunky to use?
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Here's a perfect example of how software patents would have drasticly changed how things are today...
Imagine if the folks that came up with Visicalc had gotten a software patent for it?... Which big software and OS manufacturer wouldn't have a huge chunk of their current profits and wouldn't have at least one of the apps in their office pack?... How might the software landscape be different today?
I was always told that "you can't patent an idea," but software patents come close to that....
The success of VisiCalc turned Apple into a successful company, selling tens of thousands Apple II's to businesses who wanted them only for the spreadsheet.
///. Subpar engineering and other bad choices (such as intentionally limiting backward compatibility) was a perhaps mortal blow against Apple's business entry. Undoubtedly the Mac made up for some of this later, but I've always been of the opinion that Apple should have focused on and expanded their core, the ][ line. It was similar to IBM's PC (and later clones) in its expandability and presented far more possibilities. Why did they not simply pursue a GUI for the ][ series instead of branching off with a completely different product?
Here we have the promising beginnings of a company that could revolutionize the business market with personal computers. Why, then, did it end up being someone other than Apple that did so? Here are my thoughts.
- Apple
- The ][ platform wasn't opened up to cloning. Granted, no one, including IBM, was prepared to actually sanction this; the culture back then was of every microcomputer manufacturer having its own hardware, OS, disk format, et cetera - each one dreamed of total domination with its own platform. It took Compaq's sleight-of-hand on IBM to do it. Why was no such cleverness pulled with the Apple ][ platform?
Your thoughts?
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But neither of these makes quick-and-dirty graphing as easy as MS Excel does. Until that happens, I don't think we need to figure out what to add.
However, the arbitrary row/column limit in Excel has frustrated some of our users. Personally, I think the solution is to use something other than a spreadsheet once you reach that limit (scientific plotting/analysis software and/or a database). However, showing them that you can set the row/column limit in Gnumeric (at compile time), made their jaws drop & they started using that instead. If the F/OSS spreadsheets offered this at runtime and made it easy, they might pick up a few more converts.
I'll jump in with some speculation here. I remember reading here on /. a while ago that Apple had trademarked the term Numbers. That would fit their naming schema perfectly for a spreadsheet, so maybe...
They have a spreadsheet already as part of AppleWorks, but it is crufty and OS 9ish. Using the underlying technology, however, I would think it would not be terribly hard to release an OS X spreadsheet as part of the iWork suite. My work certainly includes more than page layout and presentations, so the spreadsheet would be most welcome. I suspect this would be true for most of us here.
If Apple would also modernize the database included in AppleWorks, they would have a truly viable alternative to Office. Pages and Keynote both do a good (not perfect) job of importing and exporting .doc and .ppt files, so it's reasonable to assume Numbers and [Database] would do the same with their MS Office counterparts.
I will leave the arguments about whether Keynote or PowerPoint is "better", or Pages v. Word, to others - to each their own. I will just say, Choice is good.
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Also, you're talking Apples to oranges -- the Apple /// didn't have a GUI, so giving the Apple ][ a GUI wouldn't have helped it replace the Apple ///. In fact, the reason the Apple /// failed is because most people felt the Apple ][ was a superior, more flexible computer, so they kept buying those.
Apple did eventually paste a GUI onto the Apple ][ series, as well -- have you forgotten the Apple //gs? The problem there was, not only was the IBM PC already going like gangbusters by the time it was released, not only was the //gs competing with both the Amiga and the Atari ST for the color games market, but Apple had already released its first Mac by the time the //gs came out. There was a well-documented battle going on between the Apple ][ camp and the Mac camp at Apple, and the Mac camp won. Nobody was going to promote the Apple //gs as Apple's gold-standard software development platform if it meant cannibalizing Mac sales.
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I worked at a computer store in a dinky little town in the midwest, back in the days of VisiCalc. I distinctly remember the shift in the public's attitude towards personal computers when VisiCalc hit the shelves.
Before VisiCalc, people used to struggle with the whole concept of personal computers, and the most common question I got was "WHY would anyone need a computer?" Then after VisiCalc shipped, I could do demos with immediate obvious applicability to any business. The question shifted to "HOW would I apply this computer to my business?"
This was the true start of the personal computer business. Sure, word processing was the killer app for some people, but it offered no real advantages to some people who should have been the core markets, like trained professional secretaries who could bang out a perfect business letter on a Selectric typewriter on the first pass, they saw no speed advantages out of word processing. But when people saw Visicalc instantly add up a column of numbers, and when they saw it instantly recalculate the sums when a number was changed, they GOT it, they immediately saw the advantage over old manual methods. I just loved doing demos, and watching the reactions on peoples' faces.
People also forget that VisiCalc was the core of the first integrated office suites (of a sort), I recall VisiPlot, I think there were some other Visi apps, but I mostly used databases like DBMaster to collate data and export to CSV for use in VisiCalc. It seemed like we had all the computer tools we could ever think of a use for.
We're working on making them runtime extensible.
I didn't see this in the linked history, but once in an interview Bricklin (IIRC) said that in the early days they personally demonstrated VisiCalc at trade show booths. Sometimes accountants would actually cry, as they realized how many hours they'd spent adding up rows and columns of numbers, and how quickly they'd be able to do it now.
You know you've got a "killer app" when members of your target market burst into tears, realizing how much your software is going to change their lives!
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Let's see:
"Open source software is just as user friendly as closed-source software." - Standard claim on this site.
"Sure you have your dependencies right?" - AC.
Those two sentences don't add up.