The Presentation Software Wars: How Microsoft PowerPoint Beat Lotus & Harvard Graphics

[@MK-of7qw]

the most brain dead meetings I've ever been in have used PowerPoint.

[@Ratkwad]

I dont think powerpoint is really the issue

[@MK-of7qw]

@@Ratkwad Probably not, but didn't help either.

[@JeordieEH]

same with this video, and its viewers, i checked out early and you still remain lol

[@CarlosPCmx]

Thank you for talking about Harvard Graphics. It's one of many softwares that dissappeared and are never mentioned in video essays about personal computer history. I used to read about Harvard Graphics in computer magazines but the PCs at my University did not have enough power to run it. So it was like a legend to me.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

You are welcome, glad you enjoyed the video!

[@thelorax9622]

Brazil and Office Space - two of my favourite movies, and good examples of the kind of thing I have experienced in the last 35 years of being an office drone.

[@todortodorov6056]

Let me sum up why the others failed: 1. "... inability to adapt to changing market conditions ... " 2. "... inability to create a bundle of software programs for office use, or sell at competitive prices ... " 3. "... inability to understand the paradigm shift to Windows as the dominant user interface ... " And in my own opinion: 4. The introduction of OLE in Office, i.e. the ability to embed PowerPoint in Word, Excel and vice versa.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Brilliant Summary!!

[@JeffRyman69]

Back in DOS days I was a Harvard Graphics fan. Later I preferred the WordPerfect suite but times change. WordPerfect is still a better editor for technical reports with equations and for legal pleadings. After about 125 pages of technical stuff, and pulling in text files from technical software, Word starts to have issues with retaining style information and table of contents.

[@brodriguez11000]

@@JeffRyman69 Wordperfect is still available. Primary difference is the way they treat a documents internally. Also another reason for Microsoft's success is proprietary data formats.

[@UKSCIENCEORG]

I used Harvard Graphics a great deal in the early 90s. I still use it sometimes today on my MS-DOS machine (I import the slides into PowerPoint).

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Wow that's pretty cool :)

[@victorgw]

Buying PowerPoint for only $14 Million dollars seems like a steal

[@Tech_History_Channel]

True but we have the benefit of hindsight :)

[@CarlosPCmx]

I like that the photo that represents a box of Lotus Freelance Graphics is from a CD from PC Plus magazine. Great video!

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thanks!

[@davinp]

Apple doesn't make its presentation software for Windows, just for Mac while Powerpoint is available for both Windows and Mac. I don't like that Apple doesn't it make its software cross platform

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Yeah Apple's walled Garden philosophy really sucks :(

[@ettoreatalan8303]

@@Tech_History_Channel Steve Jobs was committed to the walled garden throughout his entire career.

[@sureshmukhi2316]

In college in the late 1980s we used Storyboard / Storyteller. Apparently that wasn't goog enough to even be mentioned here. Was it only used in academia?

[@Tech_History_Channel]

I looked into IBM storyboard, from what I gathered it was not a significant player in the presentation wars.

[@sureshmukhi2316]

@@Tech_History_Channel maybe not in the US but here in The Philippines it certainly was because it was cheap.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

That’s quite interesting🤔

[@PeterSiroki]

It's object oriented, not orientated.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

apologies for that error :(

[@PeterSiroki]

@@Tech_History_Channel It's OK

[@melgross]

The big one back then was really Adobe Persuasion. The others were more minor. PowerPoint wasn’t really very good. Microsoft could never sell it. Only when they gave it away for free in Office, did it do well, as Office was a monopoly, thought it was never ruled as such. I used these in my commercial photo lab, back then. When Adobe discontinued Persuasion and we had to go to PowerPoint, it was a sad day as PowerPoint was notably inferior. I could go on about this for a long time. PowerPoint cost us a lot of wasted time and money, which wasn’t a problem for Persuasion.

[@eijentwun5509]

YOu must be smoking Crack. The Biggest or perhaps I should say the BEST was SCALA (MM 300). PC or Mac did not catch up till the late 90's. it was for the Amiga computer. Still the BEST interface ver created for Presentation software. I am super spoiled by it and cant ever get too comfortable with Powerpoint, Keynote, WPS Office and the others. I run it on an emulator sometimes. Sadly it is Digital Signage based today and hasnt been updated in the proper way and now sucks compared to other DIgital Signage.

[@melgross]

@@eijentwun5509 that’s just your opinion. Not shared by most.

[@mitchelleva]

Great video! Well done.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thank you very much!

[@davinp]

the problem is doesn't want to license it's OS to manufactures or let the operating system be installed on any PC the way Microsoft does with Windows. Apple likes to restrict software to just the Mac they make.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Exactly, it's a bad practice :(

[@jsmorley]

"Sofware" ? Really?

[@Tech_History_Channel]

apologies :(

[@militaryav8r]

What the hell is sofware?

[@Tech_History_Channel]

apologies :(

[@militaryav8r]

@@Tech_History_Channel no worries at all. I was just using sarcasm to try to be a little funny.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Oh no worries🤣

[@apricebcd]

I hated PowerPoint in the 90s. Every manager I worked for wanted to write reports in Powerpoint, no make a presentation WRITE A REPORT. Every time they edited anything the whole flow changed. I would put in extra slides, pull out slides, change heading sizes, never making my manager happy. Please just let em use Word in landscape mode !!!!!

[@eijentwun5509]

You would have been SUPER Blown away by SCALA MM 300 on the Amiga. TIll this day in 2024 nothing comes close to its interface and east and speed to create Presentaitons.

[@apricebcd]

@@eijentwun5509 I’m actually perfectly happy generally using Keynote on the Apple to create presentations and I have PowerPoint as a backup when I get something sent to me in PowerPoint format and want to make sure the formatting doesn’t screw up. Making presentations I could do it all day every day. As long as they ARE present. Using presentation software to write 80 page business reports layout book design or any other non-presentation related nonsense is what gets me upset. That’s what the other software in your office package is for.

[@aaakmm1785]

Great job.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thank You!!

[@mahkhi7154]

Relational NOTES: For a Sci-Fi SPECIES. "NOT" a P1G, Running a CHARADE.

[@martynhaggerty2294]

Power point sucks the air out of originality.

[@stoychorusinov5519]

I use latex Beamer

[@Tech_History_Channel]

pretty cool :)

[@eijentwun5509]

How can you make a Video about PRESENTATION software and not Mention the BEST Software and Best Computer in the 80's and 90's for it? SCALA MM300, MM400, & Infochannel 500 on the Mighty Amiga Computer? Microsoft Went Balistic Psycho when they saw it and tried to up their ante. Powerpoint NEVER caught up to it until Apple released Keynote and they copied the transitions in the 2000's..insane it took them that long. SCALA still has the Best interface ever created for Presentation software.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

That's quite interesting might make a dedicated video on SCALA👍

[@gilberttello08]

✋✋ Philippines

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Hey that's pretty cool !!!

[@colin-nekritz]

The only thing that sucks more than PowerPoint are the people who feel the need to use it

[@Tech_History_Channel]

🤣

[@modernscholar02]

Unfortunately in science we have to use it for our many many seminars we have to give. I do my best to make them not boring though