Posted on 12/18/2006 10:09:46 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Peter Coffee, an editor of eWeek magazine has published a list of 25 killer apps of all time. This list totally reflects his personal timeline in the computer publishing business and sets a benchmark for ‘killer apps’ although I’m a fan of his work. I’ve been in technology since 197x…’ Big deal. I wrote code on a DEC PDP-11 using a Hazeltine terminal at Univ of Miami back in 1979. The technology sucked big time.
Mitch Kapor made boucoup $$ from Lotus 1-2-3. Many of us cut our teeth on 1-2-3’s macros. The Lotus Magazine from the 1980’s was a GOLDMINE of information for spreadsheet nerds. My 1-2-3 macros were sometimes pages long and could repaint the bathroom and regrout the kitchen counter. Then came Excel with VBA and oh-my-God it was the equivalent of programming nirvana. 1-2-3 was reserved for the back shelf at Goodwill. And of course we didn’t have to shoe-horn it into dBaseIII+ > we just linked or cut-n-pasted it into MS-Access and instant database relativity. Woo hoo!!
So what is the real ‘killer app’ list? I could list my own. Peter has DEFINITELY set off an interesting discussion with this article. Sad part is, many folk don’t have tools in their toolbox and wouldn’t know how to maniuplate data (or want to, for that matter). But if you’re a ‘data guy’ (or gal) what does work for you? Does it work for your corporation? Many of us have jobs because we know how to manipulate data when others don’t. Makes for a strange ‘niche’ in life.
fyi
Oh, yeah, and this little Star Trek game I have on a floppy at home. If you want to keep Klingons from circling Uranus, this is the app for you!!
OK.....ROFL!
Primarily Lotus, Excel, AutoCAD, MSProject, PowerPoint, MOST, and our ERP is Vantage.
I first played this game as "Rogue" on an IBM portable PC in 1984. The screen was a seven-inch amber monochrome, there were two 5 1/4 floppy drives and no hard drive, and the keyboard went "tacka-tacka-tacka" like an Underwood electric typewriter...but the game was addictive, and I was badly hooked.
1998 VMWare.
matlab 4.0 (for windows, unix, VMS, and what have you) made engineers and analysts 10X more productive. Matlab truly is the language of engineering.
OK, I read his, now let's read yours. Thanks.
P.S. My first computer was a DEC Rainbow. It was very expensive and almost obsolete the minute it came out because of it's weird version of MS DOS. Thanks Ken Olsen.
Windows 3.0 was not an OS. It was a GUI app running on top of DOS, which was the OS.
Hey, the boss brought it in from home, so I just went with it.
It had the most unique feature - when you hit "Ctrl B" [the Boss key] it shut off all sound and images and plopped a graph onto your screen. So in 1 second you could pause the game and make the boss think you were looking at some kind of business related graph.
I think the original MAC OS should be number 1 as an OS, with kudos to the PARC syatem at Palo Alto Xerox for spawning it. Everything done since by MicroSoft and Apple came from that system; apple trying to get better and MS trying to keep up.
I have this game called Fleet Commander, where you control the ships, planes, etc.. I removed it from my computer after playing one game...for 6 hours. I saved the world at 4am and the planet was ungrateful.
No more..no more....
guiding Big Blue into virtual-reality realms such as Second Life
Irving thinks this is the next Killer App....
It's not really an app but I vote for yEnc.
If you have to ask.....
Let me add Quicken to the list.
I still insist on a keyboard that goes "tacka-tacka-tacka". I can't type on the soft mushy ones.
Yes, technically you are correct. I forgot about that tidbit...Like DosShell.
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