Slashdot Mirror
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."
it turns out VisiCalc looked more like a giant chick than a lizard.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say the first killer app was probably pr0n.
Even if it was 20 character wide, uppercase ASCII, downloaded on a 110 baud accoustic-coupled modem and printed to a teletype machine hooked up to a CDC mainframe.
That was probably the point where someone said, "holy crap, this computer thing is gonna take off!"
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"
And here is the original article :)
Simply amazing, Slashdot is these days.
we discovered a new way to think.
To be fair, I'd argue the first killer app was cracking. The very reason the first computers were ever built was to do this task which really was a matter of life or death.
Ironic, when you think about it: The first killer app, the reason computers first got built, the app that saved civilization, was encryption cracking. Now we have the DMCA to save us from it and the MPAA arresting sixteen year old Swedish kids for doing it.
Why didn't you just download the torrent?
Slashdot. News for teens. Stuff that mattered.
gtkaml.org
I thought the first killer app was email?
Not for a Microsoft MS-DOS PC it wasn't. These PCs didn't even have any other viable networking option with the OS until Novell came along. Microsoft didn't really get much networking until Windows 3.0 and it was a hacked up mess. So how could a PC transmit email? It didn't unless you loaded Novell with ccMail or some other similar infrastructure add in. Novell got a start here as people were tired of copying to floppies (sneakernet).
VisiCalc, SuperCalc and later Lotus was the rage that drove the PCs in business. For home, but shorty after business it was Procomm to a local Fido BBS or perhaps to a UNIX system running mmdf or uucp. For PCs, email was second or perhaps third.
The raw fact of the mater is Microsoft has invented nothing but FUD. Every technology they use or sell has been borrowed from someone else, except perhaps for NETBIOS that no one wants to use any more. The only thing really innovative about Microsoft is the strong arm marketing tactics used to create a monopoly. History of the technology is best gotten from more neutral sources than Microsoft that would have you believe they invented the internet.
So I hope you were being funny.
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?
The coolest voice ever.
Visicalc still runs on all of them.
http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm
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.
Breakfast served all day!
>>So how could a PC transmit email? It didn't unless you loaded Novell with ccMail or some other similar infrastructure add in.
Well, there was the serial port and a Hayes Modem. A popular communications app was a shareware one: ProComm. Email was available via Compuserve, a BBS, perhaps a university, and later AOL.
So the PC could send and receive email. It just wasn't a straightforward thing to set up, at least for the business types.
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.
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