How PowerPoint was created

[pesco]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/01/how-powerpoint-was-created.html

…

[cementimental]

Sci-fi writing cue: utopian parallel universe 2017 in which software designers in the 80s made scaling preserve the ratio by default and only unconstrain it with shift held down.

[anon81034786]

@pesco

In 1987, a company called Forethought, founded by two ex-Apple marketing managers, rolled out PowerPoint and business meetings have never been the same since.

Excellent. I now have names to direct my rage towards…

[Sludge]

@pesco

In 1987, a company called Forethought, founded by two ex-Apple marketing managers, rolled out PowerPoint…

…and meanwhile in Soviet Union, power points at you.

[ugh]

It will always be an underpowered HyperCard, in my opinion.

[joelfinkle]

There were other product out for PC (and maybe even early Windows). Lotus, Borland, and Ashton-Tate, I think, all had presentation tools, but they were very clunky, and based around charts, not bullet points.

[One_Brown_Mouse]

@pesco

And just over three months after PowerPoint’s introduction, Microsoft purchased Forethought outright for $14 million in cash.

So, when selling the product line that let managers bypass the art department, they clearly bypassed their own accounting department. Or was this -before- MBAs?

That’s damn cheap. Even in 1987 dollars.

[LeprechnGangstr]

@pesco

The presentation would spring directly from the mind of the business user, without having to first transit through the corporate art department.

Whether business people should be attempting graphic design is a question that has answered itself in the intervening decades.

[Boundegar]

I remember HyperCard! It was fun, which is probably what killed it. How many executives would choose the less-powerful option on purpose, so employees wouldn’t start playing around on the company dime?

[dragonfrog]

I like the use of dark and medium-light backgrounds, to make it hard to find any text colour that’s legible across the whole thing. Now it just needs four bullet points that the presenter will just read verbatim before clicking on to the next slide.

[Cunk]

Counterpoint: business meetings have been the same since PowerPoint was rolled out in 1987. Mainly because of PowerPoint.

[One_Brown_Mouse]

@dragonfrog

Now it just needs four bullet points that the presenter will just read verbatim before clicking on to the next slide.

I see you’ve met my boss.

[David_Friedman]

This is inaccurate. We all know PowerPoint was created in Hell when Satan was constipated. When Satan finally evacuated his bowels, PowerPoint emerged.

[ugh]

@Boundegar

I remember HyperCard! It was fun, which is probably what killed it. How many executives would choose the less-powerful option on purpose, so employees wouldn’t start playing around on the company dime?

Agreed. You couldn’t make Myst using PowerPoint!

[Boundegar]

Cosmic Osmo? I think not!

[thefool]

Does anyone else remember a lot of early presentations being either blue text on black background or white on blue? Was this an artifact printing eventually to slide negatives or transparencies, or were the people making the presentations I was looking at just crazy/blind?

[Brainspore]

Forget about how it was created. How do we destroy it? Must we journey through the toxic sprawl of Palo Alto and hurl it back into the source code from whence it was forged?

[One_Brown_Mouse]

and @ugh

Run Hypercard on Modern Mac OS via Web Browser

[One_Brown_Mouse]

[MyPrecious.ppt]

I hear the Bill Gates, of Mordor, is even harder to get through!

[fuzzyfungus]

I suspect that you could(at least in slightly later versions; VBA dates back to the early 90s; and more recent versions have enough features to be,horribly, turing complete without VBA or macros); but the misery involved in doing so would be a lesson in why people think fondly of Hypercard.

Powerpoint, like most of Office, doesn’t lack for capability; but the cruel, capricious, insanity gets to you after a while.