And with large spreadsheets, recalculations could last minutes!Ĭontext Management Systems President G.H. Unfortunately, as we saw in an early “What Ever Happened To?” column, the p-System’s portability came at the expense of performance. At a time when portability was at a premium because of the variety of computer sytems in use, the ease with which the p-System allowed developers to port their programs from one system to the next must have seemed attractive. Unfortunately, Context MBA was written in the UCSD Pascal p-System. With all this under one roof, MBA made it possible to automate common computing tasks. That, combined with features such as the telecommunications “context” and the simple macro facility that were added in later versions, allowed the user to store a memo, a graph, a communications script, and a macro in separate cells of a spreadsheet. One of the unique features of Context MBA was that a single cell, in the so-called modeling context, was capable of holding approximately four pages of text, as opposed to the normal 256 characters. MBA also allowed the user to open separate proto-windows for different spreadsheet, graph, database, or word processing files. It allowed managers to quickly and easily prepare reports, graphs, and spreadsheets that otherwise took days to prepare by hand. When it did, users hailed MBA’s features.
#Whatever happened to lotus 123 Pc#
Meanwhile, Context MBA 1.2 for the IBM PC didn’t leave the shipping dock until May 1982.
#Whatever happened to lotus 123 software#
That, together with VisiCalc’s established reputation as the leader in spreadsheet software, propelled it to the top of the PC software sales charts. With VisiCalc’s dramatic impact on the sales of Apple II’s to business users fresh in their minds, IBM executives were careful to display a demonstration of the PC version of VisiCalc at the PC’s unveiling. However, Microsoft’s rivals were both so late that MS-DOS was never seriously challenged. When IBM introduced the PC in August 1981, they promised that in addition to Microsoft’s DOS, which shipped with each PC, both Digital Research’s CP/M 86 and the UCSD p-System would be available. Although few remember it now, Microsoft’s Disk Operating System was not the only operating system to receive the official Big Blue stamp of approval. Even in the days of supertight coding, 32K was barely enough space to carry out one program’s operations, much less those of four or more.Īt the same time, IBM was busy lining up software for its new machine, the PC, behind a heavy veil of security and non-disclosure statements. This was a major first for microcomputers because, prior to the introduction of the IBM PC, most applications’ programmers had to fit their program’s operations into what now seems like a ridiculously small amount of memory–32K of RAM or so. Apart from the bad luck of having chosen a doomed platform, MBA successfully combined financial modeling, business graphics, relational database management, and word processing functions into one package. As VisiCalc sales began soaring towards the one million, rumors were circulating that IBM would soon enter the microcomputer market. At the same time, however, Personal Software, which later changed its name to VisiCorp, neglected the CP/M market, allowing Sorcim to dominate with a VisiCalc knock-off called SuperCalc. It also made the Apple II important for business users. Within months of its release in 1979, on the Apple II, it topped all the software sales charts. VisiCalc, written by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, was the first successful spreadsheet program. As a result, MBA was usually compared to “financial modeling” or “electronic” spreadsheet programs. One magazine even called it an “Omnibus” program when it first appeared, which couldn’t have helped its marketability. Although we look back on MBA as an integrated package, when it was released in mid-1982, there were no such convenient pigeon-holdes. At $695, it, like most of the other early integrated packages, was targeted at the high end of the market.
MBA was the first integrated software package. Context MBA was one of the few programs to fulfill that promise. Now what?” Even at the time, this must have sounded corny, yet in 1982 an unopened box of software still held the promise of something completely new, something that hadn’t been done before. The reviewer, reflecting on the “powerful” IBM PC that had been “loaded” with 384K of RAM, wrote, “OK, here we are with this big PC just ticking over like a 1964 V-8. A strange line in an old review of Context MBA reminded me of this. Or that Lotus 1-2-3 didn’t always own the spreadsheet market. It’s easy to forget that it was the microcomputer industry that gave birth to the IBM PC and not the reverse.