Posted on 12/07/2009 11:03:42 PM PST by Swordmaker
"In the classroom at Harvard Business School where Dan Bricklin came up with the idea for an electronic spreadsheet, there now hangs a plaque that designates the resulting software program as the 'original killer app of the information age,'" Scott Kirsner reports for Boston.com.
"Bricklin and his colleague Bob Frankston formed a company in 1979, Software Arts, which would eventually sell the VisiCalc spreadsheet program for $99. It ran on a new 'personal computer' called the Apple II," Kirsner reports.
"Thirty years later, Bricklin is now selling a $1.99 app for the iPhone called Dan Bricklin's NoteTaker," Kirsner reports. "It debuted last Friday on Apple's iTunes Store, and is climbing up the list of most-popular productivity apps sold through the online store."
Direct link via YouTube here.
Kirsner reports, "Bricklin told me he has been interested in developing a mobile app for some time; his last big project was SocialCalc, a collaborative online spreadsheet that is being marketed by Palo Alto-baed SocialText and may soon be included on the One Laptop Per Child initiative's low-cost laptops. He considered developing for the Palm Pre and Google's Android operating system, but instead chose the iPhone since Apple's customers had already proven their willingness to pay for all kinds of software."
kk
No, it's not an AT. It's an XT, or more accurately -- an XT clone. The XT was just the original PC with a hard disc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT
The subsequent AT had a 286 processor. It was originally 6 MHZ, and later versions were 8 MHZ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT
IBM's successor (the PS/2) and the clones started diverging after this. However, the 80386 (386) processor used by all started at 12 MHZ and was as fast as 33 MHZ:
Hand raised. I thought I was supernatural, for just a bit.
Lotus123?
I used 1-2-3, Multiplan, Quattro Pro 5. I still fire them up once in a while and take them for a spin. They work great under XP, especially Quattro Pro.
There's a downloadable version of Visicalc at Dan Bricklin's website, its only 27k.
As a matter of fact, yes. I wrote a driver for a friend to interface dBase 2 with a magnetic card stripe reader/writer.
>>Hand raised. I thought I was supernatural, for just a bit.<<
No doubt a flashback to coding Z80 assembler. Index Registers, Hot Damn!
Thanks for bringing me back from the precipice. And you do remind me that 25-33 was the 386 — we didn’t start kicking butt like 50-64 Mhz until the 486!
Of course, Vista has reduced performance of our multi Ghz, multi-CPU systems to about the same as our old 4 MhZ XTs.
Wow — the memories are killing me (in a good way).
>>There’s a downloadable version of Visicalc at Dan Bricklin’s website, its only 27k.<<
Lordy — I am going to download it after I get some sleep. I remember having discussions on Bitnet Relay and I wouldn’t sleep for days. But I had dark hair and no paunch back then... LOL
‘Night.
Watch vid or dd
The 486 started at 20 MHz:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i486
The chip's front-side bus was eventually as fast as 50 MHz (albeit with thermal problems, initially). But, I think it was the first consumer microprocessor chip that used a clock multiplier in the CPU -- first with 2X (33 MHz FSB and 66 MHz CPU) and eventually 3X (33 MHz FSB and 100 MHz CPU)
PCjr.
I also started with Dr. Paul’s Aldus PageMaker, way, way back in the day.
Changed my life.
Ed
I still maintain that Vista sold more Macs than those silly Apple ads with the hipster and the suit.
Lol
Booyah! Akin to "retro" videogames (market demographic, I would just guess, is paying attention to this FR thread), retro "software" could be a terrific marketplace. Under current conditions, anything in texted script would be almost bulletproof.
?
Unfortunately I can’t use PageMaker anymore...I’m on Leopard, which doesn’t allow me to run Mac OS software 9x and below...darnit!
I use InDesign now, but I really loved PM, quite user friendly and I got to where I could run it in my sleep...hotkeys, utilities and all.
See ya’,
Ed
Wait until intellectual properties expire - any batch of eager retro script-kids could set up an OS that can run at text-level. K.I.S.S.
Much of the old stuff was so well-designed and user-subservient we need to issue retroactive prizes.
Hey
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