Internet Explorer (1995) 329 Web Browser Windows Unix MacOS Mac OS X

Microsoft Internet Explorer is a web browser application created by Microsoft primarily for Microsoft Windows. It was initially based on Spyglass Mosaic. At various points, Internet Explorer was also available for MacOS, Solaris, and HP-UX.

• 4
• 5

Microsoft Word (1983) 180 Word Processor Unix

The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.

• 3.x (Unix)
• 5.x (UNIX)

Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) 129 Spreadsheet Unix

Lotus 1-2-3 was an early spreadsheet application available for MS-DOS. It became extremely popular in the late 1980s, displacing the former leader VisiCalc. Lotus had difficulties adapting 1-2-3 to the Windows environment, and was overtaken by Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet functionality was also included in Lotus Symphony. Later versions were included in Lotus SmartSuite.

• 1.x (Unix)

WordPerfect (1983) 115 Word Processor Unix Linux

During the late 1980's, WordPerfect was THE standard word processor for DOS based PCs in big business. Under DOS, it competed mostly against Wordstar. WordPerfect for Windows enjoyed some success in the early Windows environments, but was quickly displaced by Microsoft Word for Windows. Later Windows versions were part of Borland Office/Novell PerfectOffice/Corel Office/Corel WordPerfect Office.

• 5.x (Unix)
• 6.0 (Unix)
• 8.x (Unix)

Adobe Illustrator (1988) 106 Graphics Unix MacOS

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. It was often sold as a companion product to the bit-map/photo editor Adobe Photoshop. Illustrator was originally released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh. Early versions were ported to NexT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris.

• 5.5

Norton Utilities (1983) 92 Utility Unix

The Norton Utilities is a suite of disk and system utilities designed to enhance system performance and stability. It started off as a set of disk utilities written by Peter Norton, and later was sold by Symantec. It competed against Central Point PC Tools and the Mace Utilities. In 2003, Norton Utilities was merged with Norton SystemWorks, but later split back out.

• For System V

NeXTStep (1987) 91 Unix

NeXTSTEP, from NeXT Computers headed by Steve Jobs, is a Unix based operating system designed to run on m68K NeXT workstations. It later became the basis for OS X, with APIs and concepts preserved today.

• 0.x
• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

QNX (1982) 86 Unix

QNX is a compact Unix-like real-time operating system that was originally designed for the IBM PC and later used in embedded devices. The versions here are for IBM PC compatibles.

• 1.2
• 1989 Demo
• 2.2
• 4.2
• 1.44mb Demo

AIX (1986) 83 Unix

AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a Unix port originally developed by IBM and released in 1986 for the IBM RT 6150, a RISC based desktop workstation. It was later ported to the RS/6000, POWER, and PowerPC platforms as well as IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, and the PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server.

• AIX PS/2
• 3.x
• 4.1.x
• 4.3.x
• 5.1

CorelDraw! (1989) 83 Graphics Publishing Unix

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 3.5 (Unix)

FoxPro (1990) 78 DOS Windows Unix MacOS

FoxPro, originally from Fox Software and later Microsoft, is a relational database that clones the functionality of dBase IV, but offers vast speed improvements. It was based on Fox Software's FoxBASE (a dBASE II clone) and FoxBASE+ (a dBase III Plus clone). It adds a new mac-like user interface that was first developed for FoxBASE+/Mac.

• 2.6

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 64 Publishing Windows Unix MacOS

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 3.x

Xenix (1984) 62 Unix

Xenix was the variant of UNIX originally published by Microsoft, later sold to SCO. It added a variety of technical enhancements over System V Unix, including a menu-driven business shell. It was ported to many different platforms from a PDP-11 including the Altos 8600 (First x86 port), IBM PC, Intel System 86, TRS-80 Model 16, SCP Gazelle II, and Apple Lisa. The Xenix Software Development System, Microsoft Multiplan 2.x and Microsoft Multiplan 3.x, Microsoft Word 3.0 and Microsoft Word 5.x, and FoxBase Plus 1.00

• IBM PC 1.00
• Tandy 16/6000 3.x
• 8086
• 286
• 386
• SysV 386 v3.x
• OpenServer 5.x
• UnixWare 7.x

Microsoft BASIC (1981) 61 Unix

Although Microsoft did not invent BASIC, their founding product was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer. The descendants below includes Microsoft's BASIC-80 (MBASIC), BASIC-86 (pre-GWBasic), BASIC for Mac, BASIC Compiler 86/88, Basic Compiler for Mac, and Professional Development System 7.x. IBM Personal Computer Basic Compiler, GW-BASIC, QuickBasic, and Visual Basic are listed separately.

• 5.x for Xenix

StarOffice (1995) 52 Word Processor Windows Unix Linux

StarOffice, initially from Star Division GmbH is an office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, and graphing program. It was later owned by Sun Microsystems and then Oracle, and spawned the open source OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Also see the earlier StarWriter

• 6.0

Sun Solaris (1989) 47 Unix

Solaris is a Unix based operating system created by Sun Microsystems (now purchased by Oracle in 2010). It is the successor to SunOS and was released initially in June of 1992. The OS is based off of System V Unix and its first release was known internally as SunOS 5. This OS was typically used on SPARC based processors, up until 1994 when it began to support x86 and x86-64 based machines. Versions of Solaris up until version 8 are considered abandoned, with version 9's support ending in October 2014.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 7.x
• 8

SunOS (1985) 39 Unix

SunOS was a UNIX based OS derived from BSD. Initially released in 1982, it was the standard OS on Sun Machines at that time. Platforms supported by this OS were the Motorola 68000, the Sun 386i, and the SPARC. SunOS machines are still actually in use today powering dams and bread factories.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Netscape (1994) 36 Web Browser Windows Unix MacOS OS2 Linux Other

Netscape Navigator/Communicator was the first commercial web browser, displacing the free NCSA Mosaic. 1.0 was first released in December 1994, and initially offered advanced features such as progressively rendering pages as they loaded. It quickly gained many other features and capabilities and became the most popular web browser in the mid 1990s. One reason for its popularity, it was licensed freely for personal and non-profit use, although companies were expected to pay for a license. It later competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, and eventually was open sourced in to the Mozilla browser.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.0.x
• 4.0x
• 4.5x

IRIX (1998) 28 Unix

IRIX was a operating system created by SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc) that was based off of System V Unix. In addition, this OS had additional BSD elements. It's initial release was in 1988 and was designed to on MIPS processors. IRIX machines were typically used for visual effects in the entertainment industry and in the scientific community for several years after the fall of Amiga in the early 90s.

• 3.x
• 4.x
• 6.5
• 6.5.9
• Patches

AT&T System V Unix (1991) 21 Unix

AT&T UNIX System V ("System Five"), first released in 1983, is significant as it was one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was the result of much collaboration between vendors and became the core basis for many other operating systems including Xenix, AIX, UnixWare, Solaris, and HP-UX.

• 2.x

Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 21 Graphics Engineering Unix

AutoCAD, from Autodesk and first released in 1982, is a powerful Computer Aided Design tool. It was, and still is, often considered the standard for CAD tools. Primarily for the IBM PC platform, it was ported to x86 machines with higher video resolutions such as the Zenith Z-100 and NEC APC. Intermittently, versions for the Macintosh appeared. Later versions use a dongle copy protection.

• r10 (Unix)

A/UX (1988) 14 Unix

Apple A/UX is an early port of Unix to Apple's 68k based Macintosh platform. It features a full Unix system with a Mac OS GUI and the ability to run classic Mac OS applications.

• 1.x

FoxBASE (1987) 14 Database DOS Unix MacOS

FoxBASE, a relational database from Fox Software, started off in 1984 as a clone of dBase II that boasted many speed improvements. FoxBASE+ adds feature parity and compatibility with dBase III Plus. It was later aquired by Microsoft and became FoxPro

• Plus 1.x
• Plus 2.x

PC/IX (1984) 12 Unix

Interactive UNIX, also known as PC/IX, and 386/ix were UNIX derivitives created for the IBM PC in the early 1980's. PC/IX was the first UNIX sold directly from IBM, but not the first UNIX sold for the IBM PC. (Venix/86 was the first.) The original PC/IX software sold was on 19 floppy disks and sold for 900 dollars. In 1985, 386/ix was introduced, later named Interactive UNIX. The last version released was 4.1.1 in July 1998 and was supported up until 2006.

• 1.0
• 2.x
• 4.x

Xenix Software Development System (1983) 10 Unix

The Xenix Development System is a set of compiler and code tools for the Xenix operating system.

• 1.x (TRS)
• 1.00 (IBM)
• 2.00 (IBM)
• 2.x (SCO)