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End of an Era: After a 30 Year Run, IBM Drops Support For Lotus 1-2-3
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.
Though it took some doing to supplant Visicalc.
So it was Lotus 1-2-3 that made the Apple ][ a success. Good to know after all these years.
I can't wait for Michael Bay to make a movie about it.
1-2-3 on OS/2 was also much slower at calculating than the contemporary Win32 version. Something like half the speed on certain tasks, IIRC.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Ok, that I know of Lotus was never on Apple... wasn't that Visicalc?
Anyways... when I was a kid, my father brought home a Commodore Vic20 and said "Son! This is the future!" and told me to figure out how to plug it into the TV. I'll not lie... to me it was a video game machine for years. The command line reminded me of exploring some cave... the directories different tunnels, etc... I was a kid.
But as the computers got better and I eventually found myself on an Apple IIe and a Compaq PC it got more interesting. And what finally made me realize what computers could do was when my dad brought home copies of Lotus and Visicalc. I would sit for hours making spreadsheets with formulas in pale monochrome ASCII. You could change something in one cell and watch all the other cells change in response. Prior to that I had no idea what programming even was... or how variables and functions worked. Those first spreadsheets are what made it all real to me. I thought it was amazing. I put my famillies finances on it. I budgeted my allowance. I made rudimentary war games. Really, Lotus (because I always liked the PC better) is what finally made me realize computers were important, and it was something I wanted to do.
Thanks Lotus!
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.
Goodby Lotus 1-2-3 in 3 - 2 - 1.....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I had the pleasure of using it for a couple months several years ago. It sucked so badly I couldn't imagine why any company would pay for it.
As a finance guy, I well remember the sudden switch from 123 to Excel. Excel started to gain traction by having a WIMP version that followed the emerging Windows HIG standards long before 123, but most accountants were happy with what they knew and saw no reason to shift.
Then Microsoft Office arrived, and Lotus responded with Smartsuite. The problem was that the other parts of Smartsuite completely lacked credibility. Word was already a standard piece of software, and AmiPro lacked essential features. PowerPoint was much better than any alternative, and the Microsoft software was much better integrated with consistent menus and the ability to link and embed spreadsheets within documents and vice versa.
Although 123 remained arguably the best spreadsheet for some time, it was impossible to justify the extra cost of buying a standalone package. IIRC, 123 cost around £350, a huge amount of cash in the early 90s.
So, in my somewhat anecdotal experience, 123 didn't fall out of favour because Lotus/IBM preferred OS/2. It disappeared because it was too expensive and lacked a wider software ecosystem.
Now if they would only do the same with Notes!
OS/2 failed because of its Windows 3.1 compatibility. If you can run DOS and Windows 3.1 applications already, why would you want native OS/2 ones? And why not just run the real thing with less cost (such as 4MB RAM instead of 8MB) and no worries about configuring the compatibility layers.
The DOS support could have been enough for games and legacy apps. An ecosystem of OS/2 games and apps could have become a new "legacy".The Windows compatibility wasn't able to keep up with Windows 95, NT4.0 and later, which killed it for good.
Ugh notes. That deserves a trigger warning...
IBM, why not open source it? It could be of at least historical value to someone, and it could allow for porting to linux and allow it to be used in a DOSBOX or VM. If someone here from IBM reads this, could you advance this idea?
Quattro Pro was the shiznits. Once it came out, Lotus 1-2-3 disappeared from our lab.
One of my gripes with OS/2 is that Windows software was even more unstable under OS/2 than under pure Windows. They didn't trash the whole system, but they did take down every Windows program when they crashed. OS/2 was rock solid running its native apps. Both of them.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"You really need to just shoot yourself if that made you happy." You have obviously never had to use Lotus notes. If I had to choose between using Lotus Notes again, or being devoured by fire ants, I think I would go with the ants.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Notes has security that Exchange lacks, so I hope not. Of course MS promised a decade or so ago to have built in functional secure mail at the same standard specs as Lotus Notes. It has gotten better recently, but still not up to the bar yet. MS could have fixed this long ago by adopting open standards, but as with everything else their goal is to make everything proprietary.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
please please please kill Notes.
Lotus 1-2-3: universally loved, ground breaking program: killed off.
Lotus Notes: universally hated me-too program: still survives.
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.
Actually, 1-2-3 is over a year older. It was first released on January 26, 1983. Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984.
I love lotus notes. . Long live the Domino server!
. .
I imagine some Milton Waddams doppelganger in a basement at IBM headquarters who was the "Lotus 1-2-3 support guy" and finally decided enough was enough
I love lotus notes. . Long live the Domino server!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One major thing I remember about Lotus 1-2-3 was how easy it allowed spreadsheet power-users to become programmers (maintainability of code aside) via "Macros". Since it was designed in the pre-mouse era, one typically learned and memorized key-strokes based on the menu choices. (The corresponding letters were highlighted, similar to underscores in Windows menus.)
Thus, to "program", you just gave the menu letter sequence in a Macro function. Thus, "FSfoo{enter}" would mean "File, Save as name 'foo' (fictitious example using Windows idioms). An IF function allowed conditionals, and one could "GO TO" cells that had further letter sequence macros and/or create loops. That's enough to make it Turing Complete. It leveraged existing spreadsheet idioms and menu letters to build programs around.
Accountants and clerks did amazing programming using Lotus 1-2-3. Of course it was spaghetti code, but in the short term they were "programmers".
I haven't seen anything like it before or since. Programming Excel is a PITA even for experienced programmers (in other products).
Table-ized A.I.
That was a problem with OS/2. I remember getting disks of software for it, but you had to find them, and once you had them, that was it. IBM was never one to promote 3rd party software, and the ecosystem wasn't exactly strong, and IBM didn't make it easy or cheap. The OS/2 system (the operating system) was very solid and very reliable. If only it had more software.
Same reason P.T. Barnum got rich.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
where they would offer huge discounts on Office (or even just Works)
God I miss Works! Now @#$@$ Microsoft tries to sell expensive billion featured "business" applications to home users...when they'd be better off with Works. Sure it's not 100 percent compatible with the "business class" applications, but most home users don't need that.
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.
Program Intellivision!
Lotus 1-2-3 was great. I figured out how to use it without a manual and did some impressive stuff, back in 81. I still can't figure out how to use Excel though.
The internet really is home to the worse perversions...
Ah, boundary conditions on the dates. Makes sense.
I had read that Excel had preview copies out in 1984 (which is fairly quick, considering the Mac itself launched in 1984), but didn't launch officially until 1985. And I suppose, since Windows was still deridingly referred to as "Wintendo" in some circles and generally not widely adopted on PCs, it makes sense that Microsoft would go with an "Excel for MS-DOS 3" marketing stance, even though it really was a Windows app.
FWIW, WordPerfect, my favorite word processor of the early-to-mid-90s (replacing AppleWorks and ///EasyPieces on the Apple //e and Apple ///) got subsumed in the same way as Lotus 1-2-3 did by Excel. While Word for DOS was nothing special, Word for Windows actually was a proper Windows application by the time Word 6 came out. WordPerfect 5.1 on DOS was great, but WordPerfect 6 lost it somehow. The DOS version overreached, trying to bring WYSIWYG into the character-oriented DOS world. The Windows version clung too strongly to their DOS traditions and never really embraced the GUI properly. It was a messy disaster. Microsoft Word 6, for all its faults, was at least largely consistent with itself and the Windows environment around it. (I still miss Reveal Codes though, to this day.)
Program Intellivision!
I'll vouch for that since I'm over 40. ;) Darned millenials who get their microcomputer history from vague recollections of wikipedia articles.