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End of an Era: After a 30 Year Run, IBM Drops Support For Lotus 1-2-3

Posted by timothy on from the final-death-knell-is-the-best-one dept.

klubar writes Although it has been fading for years, the final death knell came recently for the iconic Lotus 1-2-3. In many ways, Lotus 1-2-3 launched the PC era (and ensured the Apple II success), and once was a serious competitor for Excel (and prior to that Multiplan and VisiCalc). Although I doubt if anyone is creating new Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, I'm sure there are spreadsheets still being used who trace their origin to Lotus 1-2-3, and even Office 2013 still has some functions and key compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen.

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Errr. No. It *WAS* Excel, before Excel. by Slartibartfast · · Score: 4, Informative

    Though it took some doing to supplant Visicalc.

  2. Re:Oh rly? by msauve · · Score: 4, Informative

    Submitter is a tyro. It was, of course, Visicalc which added to the Apple ]['s success. And, before Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC, there was Multiplan.

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    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  3. And yet IBM soldiers on... by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Informative
    IBM has sold off or abandoned many of their best consumer products:
    • OS/2
    • ThinkPads (and ThinkCentres)
    • The PowerPC CPU line
    • (what became) Lexmark Printers
    • DeskStar hard drives
    • x86 servers

    And yet they still seem to be doing fine. While some of us may miss Lotus it doesn't appear that IBM will.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  4. Re:Errr.. no... by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thay're talking 30 years ago -- that'd be 1984.

    VisiCalc was from 1979. In 1982, Lotus 1-2-3 was born. It ran well on the Apple II. That's 32 years, not 30 years. Lotus 1-2-3 includes the bits that were supposed to go into VisiCalc's front end and presentation modules, but were rejected. Excel was 1984, and was released for the Mac. In 1986, Lotus bought VisiCalc. In 1987, when MS DOS 3 was released, Excel 2.0 was ported to it and was one of the flagship packages. IBM bought Lotus in 1995, same year that Excel became a flagship Office product for Windows 95.

    Quattro, Foxbase, etc. are kind of a footnote to this.

  5. Re:Errr.. no... by Mr+Z · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, Mod GP -1 inaccurate. Lotus 1-2-3 never ran on the Apple ][ family. It ran on the PC from the get-go. It was launched in 1983, not 1982.

    Lotus bought VisiCalc in 1985, not 1986.

    Excel didn't come out until 1985 (not 1984), and it was never ported to DOS. Its first appearance on a PC was as a Windows version in 1987. It came with a run-time version of Windows if you didn't already have Windows. Excel managed to kill Lotus 1-2-3 primarily because it was born as a GUI app and was native GUI all the way through. Lotus 1-2-3 stumbled on its way to the GUI, which allowed Excel to eventually overtake it.

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