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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Where's the irony? Microsoft started (ignore the DOS part) as a company that developed applications for Macintosh specifically word and excel which started on the Mac and only got Windows support in later versions with Word 4/Word for Windows 1.0 and Excel 2.0.

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> Microsoft started (ignore the DOS part) as a company that developed applications for Macintosh

I think you're saying we should ignore the first 10 years of the company. The company started in 1975 creating a BASIC interpreter for the Altair; the first version of Excel for Macintosh was released in 1985.

Don't forget Xenix - first OS by Microsoft.

sshhh... if you tell HN that Bill Gates built a Unix-based OS before Steve Jobs, it might cause a riot.

The Macintosh didn't exist when Microsoft started, and neither did the PC.

The first version of MS Word was for MS-DOS, not the Mac

Looks like you are correct Excel 1.0 and Word 1.0 were released for the Mac in 1985, Word 1.0 was released for MS-DOS 18 months earlier. Excel was never released for the MSDOS and both it and Word came to Windows in 1987.

The first Microsoft spreadsheet, which ran on DOS, was called Multiplan.

The graphical versions of Word and Excel were developed for the Mac. Windows versions of Word and Excel superseded the DOS versions of Word and Multiplan.

Excel and Word for Windows was created to showcase Windows, but I doubt it was as early as 1987.

Multiplan was the DOS based spreadsheet software they sold (successfully) at the time.

The dates were from MSFT and Wikipedia, I was 1 year old then so I would have to take your word for it.

Multiplan was also sold for the Mac in 1984 or 85. I still have a copy of it.

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