Microsoft Office (1991) 268 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 95
• 97/98
• 2000
• XP (2002 Beta)

Microsoft Word (1983) 119 Word Processor Unix Windows DOS MacOS

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)
• 1.x (Windows)
• 5.x (UNIX)
• 2.x (Windows)
• 6.x
• 95
• 97

Microsoft Works (1986) 101 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Works was an all-in-one scaled-down Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Database geared towards the home user. It was released in variants for early DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. Microsoft Works competed against Lotus Jazz, FrameWork, AlphaWorks/LotusWorks, PFS First Choice, and many others.

• 2.x (Win)
• 3.x (Win)
• 4.0
• 4.5
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 9.0

WordPerfect (1983) 85 Word Processor Unix Windows 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)
• 5.x (Win)
• 6.0 (Win)
• 6.1 (Win)
• 6.0 (Unix)
• 7.x (Win)
• 8.x
• 8.x (Unix)
• 9.x (2000)

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 64 Graphics Windows

JASC Paint Shop Pro is a simple and easy to use bit-mapped graphics editor. It supports a wide variety of file formats, and photo manipulation functions that were comparable to PhotoShop. It has good support for editing 256 color palletized images that made it ideal for editing web graphics. It was first released in 1990 for Windows 3.0 as just "Paint Shop", and early versions gained popularity through the distribution of shareware releases. It lost popularity in 2003 when 8.0 was introduced with a redesigned UI and in 2004, JASC was acquired by Corel.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

WordStar (1981) 54 Word Processor Windows

WordStar, originally from MicroPro, was a popular word processor during the early 80s. It was ported to a number of CP/M architectures as well as Unix and PC/MS-DOS. It competed directly against many word processors, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word for DOS, and Multimate. By the late 80s most business word processing had moved to WordPerfect. In the early 90s, Microsoft Word for Windows took over.

• 1.5 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 48 Publishing Windows MacOS Unix

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.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Adobe Illustrator (1988) 45 Graphics Windows 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.

• 1.x
• 4.x
• 5.5
• 7.0
• 8.0
• 9.0
• 10.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 42 Graphics Publishing Windows 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.

• 1.x
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 3.5 (Unix)
• 6.0
• 7.0

StarOffice (1995) 40 Word Processor Windows OS2 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

• Business Pack
• 3.0
• 3.1
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.0

PageMaker (1987) 32 Publishing Windows OS2 MacOS

Aldus PageMaker, later Adobe PageMaker, is a desktop publishing program for Mac and Windows. First released in 1985, PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program for the Macintosh. It was followed over a year later with the release of 1.0 for the IBM PC. The PC version was a notable application as it was one of the few rare applications which would run under Windows 1.x. PC PageMaker 1.0 bundled a runtime version of Windows. This enabled MS-DOS users who had not decided to buy Windows to run PageMaker. Aldus skipped version 2.0 on the PC to bring version number in sync with the 3.0 Mac product.

• 1.00
• 1.0A
• 3.00
• 3.01
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.x

Lotus SmartSuite (1992) 31 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations PIM Database Windows

IBM/Lotus SmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus software for Windows and OS/2. SmartSuite includes SmartCenter, 1-2-3, Word Pro, Freelance Graphics, Approach, Organizer, and ScreenCam.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 96
• 97
• 9.0
• 9.1
• 9.5
• 9.6
• 9.7
• 9.8

Visio (1992) 29 Graphics Windows

Visio is a flow-chart diagramming program for Microsoft Windows originally from Shapeware/Visio Corp. Visio was specifically designed as a flow charting tool rather than a generic drawing tool. It featured easy to use drag-and-drop diagram creation, and shipped with a wide variety of stencils. In 2000 Visio Corp was acquired by Microsoft. It competed with Aldus Intellidraw and Micrografx Snapgraphics and Meta Software's MetaDesign.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 2000

Adobe Photoshop Elements (2001) 28 Graphics Windows MacOS

Adobe Photoshop Elements is the successor to Photoshop LE, a somewhat reduced, home-oriented version of Adobe Photoshop.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Photoshop (1988) 26 Graphics Windows MacOS

Photoshop is a powerful drawing and photo manipulation program for both Mac and Windows. The Macintosh version was released by Adobe in 1990, although a very small number were bundled with Barneyscan slide scanners prior to that. Photoshop contained many advanced features including layered images, advanced color control, and plug-ins. Prior to its release, many of its features were only found in high end dedicated photo pre-processing systems.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 24 Publishing Windows

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor/Cuisinart for Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 97 (v2)
• 98 (v3)

PowerPoint (1987) 22 Presentations Windows MacOS

Microsoft PowerPoint is a graphical presentation tool that is today part of Microsoft Office. Prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, it was known as "Presenter" from Forethought Inc. These are the standalone versions. For the Office bundled versions, see Microsoft Office.

• 2.0
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 95 (7.0)

AmiPro (1991) 22 Word Processor Windows

Ami Pro, also called just Ami initially, was a word processor sold by Samna and later Lotus Software, where it became Lotus Word Pro. Ami was one of the first word processors for Microsoft Windows, beating MS Word by about a year. Other early Windows word processors included NBI Legend and WinText

• 1.2
• 2.x
• 3.x

Harvard Graphics (1986) 21 Graphics Windows

Harvard Graphics, from Software Publishing Corporation and initially called Harvard Presentation Graphics, is a graphing/plotting/presentation creation application for DOS. It was extremely popular in the late 1980s. At release, it competed against many graphing products such as PFS:Graph (AKA IBM Graphing Assistant ), Microsoft Chart, ChartMaster, and Cricket Graph, just to name a small few. A Windows port was released in 1991, but it lost out to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows

3D Home Architect (1993) 21 Graphics Windows

Broderbund's 3D Home Architect is a home-design oriented CAD program. It includes a variety of home decor related objects, and can render the results in 3D.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 17 Graphics Publishing Novelty Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 6.0
• 8.0

The Print Shop (1984) 17 Publishing Windows

The Print Shop is a home oriented publisher capable of creating calendars, banners, greeting cards and other printable goods. It started off on the Apple II and Commodore 64 where it became popular for its simplicity and ease of use. From day one, it featured interactive editing, on-screen artwork/layout selection, print previewing, and a library of customizable clipart.

• Deluxe (Win)
• Deluxe 2.0 (Win)
• Deluxe III
• Premier 5.x (Win)
• Deluxe 6.0 (Win)
• Ensemble III
• 2002 (Mac)

ArcView GIS (1996) 17 Graphics Other Database Windows

ArcView, from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. is a geographical information system program for Win9x/NT.

• 3.0
• 3.3

Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 15 Graphics Engineering Unix Windows

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)
• r11 (Win)

Freelance Graphics (1985) 14 Presentations Graphics Windows

GCI/Lotus/IBM Freelance Graphics is a vector based presentation and graphing package developed for DOS, OS/2, and Windows. It was intended for use alongside Lotus 1-2-3. Later versions were part of SmartSuite. Before it was acquired by Lotus it was known Freelance, from Graphic Communications.

• 1.0 (Win)