Internet Explorer (1995) 63 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

OS/2 Warp 4 (1996) 32 OS2

OS/2 Warp 4 incorporated a number of new technologies over OS/2 Warp 3, such as Java, OpenGL, OpenDoc, and VoiceType. It also updated the appearance of the Workplace Shell. | 1.x | 2.x | 3.x | 4.x | All |

• OS/2 Warp 4.0
• OS/2 Warp 4.52

Mac OS 9 (1999) 26 MacOS

Mac OS 9.x, based on Mac OS 8 was the final product based on the classic MacOS architecture. Like previous version, it lacks true protected memory or pre-emptive multitasking. MacOS 9 was abandoned in favor of of the Unix-ish NextStep/Openstep based Mac OS X. | 1.x-6.x | 7.x | 8.x | 9.x | MacOS X | All |

• 9.0
• 9.1
• 9.2

Mac OS X (1997) 25 MacOS

MacOS X was Apple's replacement for their classic MacOS. MacOS X is based on NeXTSTEP, a Unix-based OS. The first consumer release also featured a new user interface appearance called "Aqua". | 1.x-6.x | 7.x | 8.x | 9.x | MacOS X | All |

• Rhapsody
• Developer Previews
• Server 1.0
• 10.0
• 10.1
• 10.2

Microsoft Office (1991) 21 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.

• 97/98
• 2001 (Mac)

Mac OS 7 (1991) 19 MacOS

Mac OS 7 was a major change from the earlier System Software, introducing integrated multitasking, a revamped desktop, networking, and transitioning the name from "Macintosh System Software" To "MacOS'. It was followed by MacOS 8.x. | 1.x-6.x | 7.x | 8.x | 9.x | MacOS X | All |

• 7.6

Netscape (1994) 16 Web Browser Windows OS2 Unix Linux MacOS 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.

• 3.0.x
• 4.0x
• 4.5x
• 6.x

Mac OS 8 (1994) 11 MacOS

Apple Mac OS 8 was another major overhaul of the OS from the earlier Mac OS 7. It added a new Platinum visual theme, a multi threaded Finder, better virtual memory, and many customization options. 8.5 and later require a PPC CPU. It was followed up by Mac OS 9. | 1.x-6.x | 7.x | 8.x | 9.x | MacOS X | All |

• 8.0
• 8.2 Beta
• 8.1
• 8.5
• 8.6
• 8.7 Beta

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 8 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
• 4.x

Encarta (1993) 6 Reference Windows MacOS

Microsoft Encarta was a home oriented interactive encyclopedia that was often sold with new OEM machines. Unlike a paper encyclopedia, Encarta took full advantage of being on a computer, with updates from the Internet, sound clips and movies, interactive charts and games, and good navigation.

• 1997

After Dark (1989) 6 Novelty MacOS

After Dark, from Berkeley Systems, Inc, is a set of entertaining screen savers for Mac and Windows. After Dark for Windows started off as "Magic Screen Saver" for Windows 2.x. After Dark was most famous for its "Flying Toasters" screen saver. Afterdark was very popular on both the early Macintosh computers and Windows 3.0, as neither included any kind of screen saver or screen blanker that would help prevent screen burn-in.

• 9

Adobe Type Manager (1991) 5 Windows MacOS

Adobe Type Manager was designed to provide scalable fonts on early Mac and Windows 3.0 systems that did not provide similar functionality natively. ATM is required by a number of graphics application originally designed to work in these environments. ATM is packaged as a "lite" installable runtime. Later releases offer a "Deluxe" version with extra font management abilities. Other OSes including NeXTSTEP, DESQview, and OS/2 come with ATM functionality built-in.

• 4.x

Lotus SmartSuite (1992) 5 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations PIM Database OS2

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.

• For OS2 Warp 4

Age of Empires (1997) 5 MacOS

Age of Empires is a civilization simulator strategy game where different empires fight to rule.

• 1.0

Photoshop (1988) 4 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

Norton Utilities (1983) 3 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

Adobe Acrobat Reader (1994) 3 Document Windows OS2

Acrobat Reader is the free software from Adobe used to read, view, and print documents created by the commercial Adobe Acrobat product. Its primary strength is that documents appear and print identically across differing systems.

• 3.x

Virtual PC (1996) 3 Virtualization MacOS Windows OS2 Mac OS X

Virtual PC started off originally as an x86 emulator for PowerPC Macintosh to run MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Connectix, the company that made it, was purchased by Microsoft. Virtual PC was then retooled into a virtualization tool for x86 systems. Microsoft discontinued Virtual PC in favor of a server-oriented virtualization product called Hyper-V.

• 1.x (Mac)
• 2.x (Mac)
• 3.x (Mac)
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

StarOffice (1995) 3 Word Processor Windows OS2

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

• 3.1

FileMaker (1984) 2 Database MacOS Windows

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 4.x
• Pro 5.x

Persuasion (1991) 2 Presentations Windows MacOS

Aldus Persuasion is a presentation and slide creation program. "With the support that Persuasion offers - professional quality slides, overheads, handouts, and speaker notes - you can deliver your presentation with more confidence and ease than ever before." After version 2.x, Persuasion was purchased by Adobe.

• 4.0

SoftWindows (1993) 1 Virtualization MacOS

Insignia Solution SoftPC, or "SoftWindows" when bundled with Windows, is an x86 emulator UNIX and MacOS that enables them to run DOS and Windows. SoftWindows is unique in that it uses native CPU recompiled Windows binaries providing near native speed for some application. It was also ported to platforms such as SGI Irix, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, NeXT, Motorola 88000, DEC VAX/VMS, DEC ULTRIX, and was the emulator used by Microsoft to run DOS and Windows 3.1 application on the DEC Alpha CPU Windows NT.

• 3.0
• 95
• 98

Norton SystemWorks (1998) 1 Utility MacOS

Norton SystemWorks was a utility software suite by Symantec Corp. It integrates three of Symantec's most popular products – Norton Utilities, Norton CrashGuard and Norton AntiVirus – into one program designed to simplify solving common PC issues. Backup software was added later to high-end editions. SystemWorks was innovative in that it combined several applications into an all-in-one software for managing computer health, thus saving significant costs and time often spent on using different unrelated programs.

• 1.x

THINK C (1988) 1 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

Lotus Notes (1993) 1 Communications PIM Windows MacOS

Lotus Notes is a powerful e-mail and collaboration tool. It was heavily used by large corporations. It was sometimes criticized for its complexity and bloat. Notes is a client server tool, and uses the Lotus Domino server (originally just called Lotus Notes server). Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino competed against Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.

• 5.x