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Apple Emerging Again?

One thing I don't get..."now that Microsoft Office is available on Mac"...call me crazy, but didn't Microsoft Office first appear on the Macintosh wayyyyyy before it ever appeared on Windows? Not only that, but wasn't Powerpoint originally a Mac only application?
 
Powerbook G5 said:
One thing I don't get..."now that Microsoft Office is available on Mac"...call me crazy, but didn't Microsoft Office first appear on the Macintosh wayyyyyy before it ever appeared on Windows? Not only that, but wasn't Powerpoint originally a Mac only application?
Click to expand...
Microsoft Word first appeared on MS-DOS as a CLI application using graphics mode. However, it was an also-ran on the MS-DOS platform. Microsoft Word 1.0 for the Mac was one of the first third-party apps for the Mac where it was much more successful than it was on MS-DOS. Microsoft Excel was originally a Mac application. IIRC, Microsoft developed Excel the old fashioned way, it bought the product from its original developer.

The office suite concept originated on Windows. Its selling point was that because all the applications in the suite were from the same vendor, they were guaranteed to work together. Interoperability was a novel concept in the Win/DOS world. Mac users took it for granted. We expected our applications to work together no matter which developer produced them. Having said that, Apple software subsidiary Claris sold Claris MacDraw II, Claris MacWrite II, and ClarisWorks which sported similar menus and using a single set of support files. However, Claris did not market the applications as a "suite."

The other selling point for suites was that the bundle was cheaper than buying each application separately. However, a large number of suite buyers didn't actually need all of the applications in it. Selling buyers more software than they needed was one thing. Microsoft Office had two other more profound effects. The prize in Office was Microsoft Excel. Word lagged badly in respect, sales, or both to WordPerfect and AmiPro (later WordPro). However, Office leveraged Excel to give Word the dominant position that it enjoys today. Microsoft Access was the answer to a question that no one asked. It was one of the least reliable applications ever sold. By including that pile of dog poop in Office, Microsoft leveraged Office to make Access the top-selling database application on the Windows platform. I contend that M$ leveraged Office to give Windows its position as the dominant OS in Intel-compatible market.
 
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