[Will88]

He entered the networking market long after Unix/BSD!

And in the early '80s Microsoft fell well behind Lotus 1-2-3 in electronic spread sheet sales, the software programs that really moved PCs into common business usage. Took them at least ten years to catch up in that application.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: And in the early ‘80s Microsoft fell well behind Lotus 1-2-3 in electronic spread sheet sales

Microsoft killed the 1-2-3 product with Excel, now the spreadsheet standard that almost everyone is using.

Microsoft also killed WordPerfect with MS- Word, now the word processing standard that almost everyone is using.

Need I mention Powerpoint, which almost everyone uses for slide shows?

As for networking, what ever happened to the once popular Novel Netware? Microsoft killed them too.

[I got the rope]

MS ripped off everything everyone else did.

[Hootowl99]

Yep, that's about right regarding the timeline of Lotus 123 versus MS Excel spreadsheets. Lotus kicked off the spreadsheet application but never really innovated on the HMI side. The innovator was the Quatro spreadsheet that brought tabbed workbooks and the ability to link between workbooks. MS Excel became dominant not because of a superior product but because of the MS Office bundling.

I am radically ticked off using MS Office now because the latest incarnation of Office and Windows 8.X have thrown KISS out in favor of HMI chaos.