MS-DOS (1981) 753 DOS

Originally 86-DOS, written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, DOS was a rough clone of CP/M for 8086 based hardware. Microsoft purchased it and licensed it to IBM for use with Microsoft's IBM PC language products. In 1982, Microsoft began licensing DOS to other OEMs that ported it to their custom x86 hardware and IBM PC clones.

• 7.1 (CDU)

PC-DOS (1981) 158 DOS

IBM PC-DOS was an IBM branded version of MS-DOS licensed from Microsoft for use on the IBM PC system. Versions of PC-DOS paralleled that of MS-DOS up until version 6.1, where PC-DOS was independently maintained by IBM up until 7.1, the last version. Although not the only OS available for the IBM PC when it came out, it quickly became popular due to its low cost in comparison to the others. Its direct competitors on the PC at the time were CP/M-86 and UCSD p-System. The major differences between PC-DOS and MS-DOS were only in terms of driver support and built in programs until version 6.1 where development diverged.

• 2000

QNX (1982) 9 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.

• 4.2
• 1.44mb Demo

WordPerfect (1983) 98 Word Processor Unix DOS 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.

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

Norton Utilities (1983) 12 Utility MacOS

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.

• 4.x for Mac
• 5.0 for Mac
• 6.0 for Mac

Xenix (1984) 38 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

• OpenServer 5.x
• UnixWare 7.x

DESQView (1984) 1 Utility DOS

DESQView, from Quarterdeck, was a DOS application multi-tasker and in later versions functioned as an X client for applications on remote UNIX systems. It competed against IBM Topview. The original DESQ was just a task switcher, but subsequent versions offered preemptive multitasking of well behaved DOS programs on real-mode 8088 PCs. It gained popularity when DESQView 386 added virtual x86 support. This enabled the ability to multi task many poorly behaved programs, and was often used on BBSes due to its excellent COM port handling. It was later overtaken by OS/2 and Windows.

• DESQView X 2.x

Microsoft Mouse (1984) 26 DOS Windows

These are drivers provided by Microsoft for the Microsoft BusPort, serial, and PS/2 mice. Introduced in 1983, The Microsoft Mouse is historically important as it was one of Microsoft's earliest hardware products (The other being an Apple II Z-80 CP/M card). The first Mouse for the IBM PC was actually from Mouse Systems, not Microsoft. However, most clone mice emulated Microsoft's serial protocol and DOS driver software interface. The first application designed to make full use of the mouse was Microsoft Word for DOS, and they hyped a product called "Microsoft Windows" (not released until several years later) that was to compete against the upcoming Apple Macintosh and the Mouse Systems based Viscorp Visi On.

• 11.x

FileMaker (1984) 2 Database Windows MacOS

FileMaker is a very easy to use graphical flat-file database management tool from Claris that allows for visual form and report creation. Originally for DOS, there were Macintosh versions and later it was ported to Windows.

• Pro 3.x
• Pro 4.x
• Pro 5.x

HyperAccess (1985) 0 Communications OS2

HyperAccess is a telecommunications program that features easy to use scripting and a large number of file transfer protocols. There were versions for DOS, OS/2 and Windows.

• 7.x

Microsoft Works (1986) 49 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.

• 4.0

AIX (1986) 14 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.

• 4.1.x
• 4.3.x
• 5.1

Norton Commander (1986) 36 Utility DOS

Norton Commander is a MS-DOS based file shell that was widely popular due to it's two column design. You could easily copy and move files between one folder or another, execute DOS commands and more. It competed against many other file managers including Gazelle Q-DOS and Xtree

• 5.x
• 5.5x

AppleWorks (1986) 2 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Communications Database MacOS Mac OS X

AppleWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool. The original product was a text-based product for the Apple II. The Apple Macintosh and Windows versions were forked from ClarisWorks in 1998 by Apple. At the time, Apple was under a lot of pressure to have a direct alternative to Microsoft Office. There were serious concerns that Microsoft might pull Microsoft Office for the Macintosh from development.

• 5.x
• 6.x

NeXTStep (1987) 26 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.

• 4.x

PowerPoint (1987) 24 Presentations 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.

• 97/98

Quattro Pro (1987) 3 Spreadsheet DOS

Quattro Pro, initially just named "Quattro", is a spreadsheet application from Borland International. It competed against Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel, and had several advantages including tabbed sheets, and the ability to handle up to a million rows. Quattro Pro was the subject a lawsuit by Lotus, simply because because Quattro Pro copied their menu user interface, but Lotus claimed this was not allowed. This also affected The Twin and VP-Planner.

• 5.6 (DOS)

Bookshelf (1987) 3 Reference MacOS

Microsoft Bookshelf is a CD-ROM based multimedia reference tool from Microsoft, including a dictionary, thesaurus, quotations, atlas, and other types of references. Some versions were included and integrated with Microsoft Office, albeit sometimes stripped down.

• 96-97

Ontrack Disk Manager (1987) 10 DOS

Ontrack Disk Manager is a BIOS overlay and partitioning tool that helps you overcome various BIOS hard drive size limits. It was commonly bundled with hard drives.

• 7.x
• 8.x
• 9.x

Logitech Mouseware (1987) 3 DOS Windows

Logitech mice and pointing devices were popular competition to Microsoft or Microsoft clone mice. Logitech mice often had extra features that required Logitech drivers, and early Logitech mice were not Microsoft or Mouse Systems protocol compatible.

• 7.x
• 8.x

SpinRite (1988) 13 Utility DOS

SpinRite, by Gibson Research, is a tool that can diagnose, repair, and rejuvenate the low-level formatting and optimize the interleave of MFM and RLL (ST412/506 interface) hard disk drives. Its pattern testing ability is also useful for verifying the operation of SCSI and IDE hard drives.

• 4.x
• 5.0

Photoshop (1988) 28 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.

• 4.x
• 5.x

THINK C (1988) 0 MacOS

THINK C, originally from THINK Technologies and later Symantec, was a C compiler for the Apple Macintosh. Initially released in 1986 under the name "Lightspeed C", it featured libraries and extensions useful to creating native Macintosh applications. It competed with Macintosh Programmers Workshop.

• C++ 8.x

Watcom C/C++ (1989) 3 DOS Windows

The Watcom C/C++ is a powerful compiler for DOS, Windows, and OS/2. Its key selling point was superior cross platform support. It supported DOS, extended DOS 32-bit, Win16, Win32, and OS/2. Notably, it was used to produce the video game DOOM as a 32-bit DOS extended program.

• 10.5
• 11.0

Sun Solaris (1989) 52 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.

• 7.x
• 8