- #Lotus symphony compatibility software#
- #Lotus symphony compatibility Pc#
- #Lotus symphony compatibility simulator#
- #Lotus symphony compatibility windows#
Many thousands of PCs were sold solely for the purpose of running 1-2-3, and its near-monopoly of the spreadsheet market remained unchallenged for a decade.
#Lotus symphony compatibility Pc#
Lotus 1-2-3 became the first "killer app" for PC compatibles, especially as it was available exclusively on that platform and no other computers. Because spreadsheets use large amounts of memory, 1‐2‐3 helped popularize greater RAM capacities in PCs, and especially the advent of "expanded memory" which allowed greater than 640k to be accessed. 1-2-3 required two disk drives and at least 192K of memory, which made it incompatible with the IBM PCjr Lotus produced a version for the PCjr that was on two cartridges but otherwise identical.
#Lotus symphony compatibility simulator#
1-2-3 was used to test general application compatibility, with Microsoft Flight Simulator being used to test graphics compatibility. This reliance on the specific hardware of the IBM PC led to 1-2-3 being utilized as one of the two stress test applications for true 100% compatibility when PC clones started to appear in the early 1980s. It was cleanly programmed and relatively bug-free, gained speed from being written completely in x86 assembly language (this remained the case for all versions until 3.0 when Lotus switched to C ) and wrote directly to video memory rather than use the slow DOS and/or BIOS text output functions. Unlike Microsoft Multiplan, it stayed very close to the model of VisiCalc, including the "A1" letter and number cell notation, and slash-menu structure. Template:Citation neededġ-2-3 was released on Januand immediately overtook Visicalc in sales.
#Lotus symphony compatibility software#
To aid its growth, in the UK, and possibly elsewhere, Lotus 1-2-3 was the very first computer software to use television consumer advertising. 1-2-3 was originally written by Jonathan Sachs, who had written two spreadsheet programs previously while working at Concentric Data Systems, Inc. The Lotus Development Corporation was founded by Mitchell Kapor, a friend of the developers of VisiCalc. In spite of these, and others, VisiCalc continued to outsell them all.īeginnings File: One early example was 1980's SuperCalc, which solved the problem of circular references, while a slightly later example was Microsoft Multiplan from 1981, which offered larger sheets and other improvements. There were well known problems with VisiCalc, and several competitors appeared to address some of these issues. This included the IBM PC when it launched in 1981, where it quickly became another best-seller, with an estimated 300,000 sales in the first six months on the market. VisiCalc's runaway success on the Apple led to direct bug compatible ports to other platforms, including the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore PET and many others. The application was so compelling that there were numerous stories of people buying Apple II's to run the program. Compared to earlier programs, VisiCalc allowed one to easily construct free-form calculation systems for practically any purpose, the limitations being primarily memory and speed related. VisiCalc was launched in 1979 on the Apple II and immediately became a best-seller. IBM purchased Lotus and continued sales, only officially ending sales in 2013. As the early 1990s ended, 1-2-3 was in the number three position, and never recovered. None of these companies had seriously considered the graphical user interface in the DOS era, and responded slowly to Microsoft's own products, Excel and Word.
#Lotus symphony compatibility windows#
It was not until the acceptance of Windows 3.0 started to grow that the market began to change. 1-2-3 quickly overtook VisiCalc, as well as MultiPlan and SuperCalc, two VisiCalc competitors.ġ-2-3 was the de-facto standard throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, part of a triumvirate of products that included dBASE and Word Perfect to build a complete small business platform. Lotus' solution was marketed as a three-in-one solution, handing spreadsheet calculations, charting and database functionality - thus the name "1-2-3".
With IBMs entry into the market, VisiCalc was slow to respond, and when they did they launched what was essentially a straight port of their existing system in spite of the greatly expanded hardware capabilities. The first spreadsheet, Visicalc, had helped launch the Apple II as one of the earliest personal computers in business use.
It was the IBM PC's first " killer application" its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment. Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (now part of IBM).