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A comment on How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M. Parent comment

Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by dogma1138 on Friday June 10, 2016 @11:24AM (#11877006)
Where's the irony? Microsoft started (ignore the DOS part) as a company that developed applications for Macintosh specifically word and excel which started on the Mac and only got Windows support in later versions with Word 4/Word for Windows 1.0 and Excel 2.0.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by bdcravens on Friday June 10, 2016 @03:17PM (#11879161)
> Microsoft started (ignore the DOS part) as a company that developed applications for Macintosh

I think you're saying we should ignore the first 10 years of the company. The company started in 1975 creating a BASIC interpreter for the Altair; the first version of Excel for Macintosh was released in 1985.

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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by xerxes777 on Saturday June 11, 2016 @10:17AM (#11883520)
Don't forget Xenix - first OS by Microsoft.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by bdcravens on Saturday June 11, 2016 @07:01PM (#11885796)
sshhh... if you tell HN that Bill Gates built a Unix-based OS before Steve Jobs, it might cause a riot.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by vidarh on Friday June 10, 2016 @02:00PM (#11878448)
The Macintosh didn't exist when Microsoft started, and neither did the PC.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by kalleboo on Friday June 10, 2016 @02:28PM (#11878706)
The first version of MS Word was for MS-DOS, not the Mac
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by dogma1138 on Friday June 10, 2016 @02:43PM (#11878846)
Looks like you are correct Excel 1.0 and Word 1.0 were released for the Mac in 1985, Word 1.0 was released for MS-DOS 18 months earlier. Excel was never released for the MSDOS and both it and Word came to Windows in 1987.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by scholia on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:53PM (#11879932)
The first Microsoft spreadsheet, which ran on DOS, was called Multiplan.

The graphical versions of Word and Excel were developed for the Mac. Windows versions of Word and Excel superseded the DOS versions of Word and Multiplan.

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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by xorcist on Friday June 10, 2016 @03:23PM (#11879214)
Excel and Word for Windows was created to showcase Windows, but I doubt it was as early as 1987.

Multiplan was the DOS based spreadsheet software they sold (successfully) at the time.

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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by dogma1138 on Saturday June 11, 2016 @04:57AM (#11882727)
The dates were from MSFT and Wikipedia, I was 1 year old then so I would have to take your word for it.
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Re:How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M by dreamcompiler on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:33PM (#11885680)
Multiplan was also sold for the Mac in 1984 or 85. I still have a copy of it.
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