How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M | Hacker News Reader

How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M

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219 pointswhyleyc151 comments

Random trivia for tech history buffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc. under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple.

Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let anyone create a full-featured database. And even today, if you are running a small business and want basic data-collection features for internal use, it is still relevant and useful: http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-solutions.html

90% of "please make me a typical DB app" requests I get, I just point them to FileMaker. I say spend $75/mo for 5 users for a couple of months to work out the process. If the process works and the pain-point is FileMaker, come back to me and I will make a custom solution.

Access seems way more cheaper and more advanced? and with access you get the whole suit(excel and word).

Access is Windows only and is way harder to build with. AFAIK, FileMaker also has an easier path for getting your data on the web or on mobile devices.

Yeah in FileMaker its as simple as opening the database configuration screen and checking 'web enable'. You need a FileMaker server install, but if you do you just drop that file in its serving directory and bam, web enabled.

I developed on Filemaker for awhile, being an Apple product I found it much more user friendly than Access. I still get the periodic promo email from FM and they have pushed the web/mobile/app side quite a bit lately.

Filemaker is in the same bin as Lotus Notes/Domino and Access. They sure do a lot, and some of it is good, but most of it is not good.

I would say Access, FileMaker and Excel are the apps that really opened up computers for small businesses. You may not like them but they are certainly some of the most important pieces of software ever.

there are six fascinating hours of personal history with taylor pohlman of forethought here https://youtu.be/5i6mR3LHOB4

Oh man, I played with FileMaker a ton as a kid. I made so many cool random databases for my stuff.

I had no idea what a database even was, but it was still fun to play with.

90's Apple (the beige phase, hah) users knew about FileMaker. At least in my own little circle. There was even a debate FileMake vs 4D (I was in 4D camp). Weird time to be alive. RAD tools and UML, everything visual basically, seemed to be THE FUTURE. Look at us now.

I forgot all about 4D. At my first real job we had a business management package based on 4D. The website was LAMP and eventually we wanted to offer B2B stuff so I had to build systems to keep 4D and MySQL in sync. Later we purchased and merged with a company using a system with an Oracle backend and for some reason we had to keep the systems separate. So I got to add Oracle in to mix syncing to the website. Fun times.

LAMP? that must've been the tail-end phase then. When I was around these tools (as a kid, but a working kid heh) everything visual was all the rage. We will click solutions away, they've said. Solaris and other cumbersome CLI only crap would go away, they've said. Linux, what is that? - they've said. Fun times, indeed!

It's a sad day when one regrets UML.

It was a good idea, until it got all enterprisey.

I never got to know the early UML. I get its value, large project, intangible potential and actual mess, need to abstract over diabolic languages like c++. I went into it around UML 2.x, just when XML was peaking too. The enterprise era.

It's juvenile, but I can't help laughing at "Visual Basic-ally."

It was a sad attempt at humor :)

Heck, there are full commercial products being sold built on Filemaker.

I've had the displeasure of managing environments that use software like: http://www.simplyreliable.com/

It was based on FileMaker 6 last I worked with them (circa 2 years ago).

The deal of the century was when SAIC bought Network Solutions for $4.7M in 1995.

Five years later, they sold it to VeriSign for $21B.

4 years?? Holy shit, what a return.

That's interesting. I also read it as "Four", but now I look at it and it reads "five". Could be some brain trick.

Same for me. Very interesting. Non-native speaker from mobile device

Same. Fascinating.

Interesting, same here, perhaps we actually processed the numeral in the child comment subconsciously while reading the written-out five in the parent.

Or the numeral in the buy price.

This seems more plausible, because the initial comment only had that one.

> only had that one.

Did it?

The deal of the century was when SAIC bought Network Solutions for $4.7M in 1995. Five years later, they sold it to VeriSign for $21B.

You misunderstood.

He couldn't see a comment on his own post because it wasn't written yet. He could only see the $4.7M which you quoted.

Same, must be a caching issue with that 4 in the sentence before (F our F ive)... hail mary attempt at explanation.

That's what happens when get to buy a company with a fixed price government contract at a low-ish multiple of the contract value (fair enough price based on the contract), that you can get revised to let you charge end-users for the service months later in a field that's growing at a ridiculous rate.

Network Solutions was getting paid per registration even under the original contract; it's just that it was originally the National Science Foundation that was obligated to foot the bill for each domain.

That's why the government was so eager to renegotiate.

Hedge fund bought Skype for around $1B and sold it to MS for $8B

So let this be a lesson in ROI

4.7m to 21B is more impressive

In sheer headline factor, sure. But it also depends on the time frame.

After the first Billion, the same multiplier becomes more difficult.

Softbank bought roughly 1/3 of Alibaba for $20 million.

A stake worth ~$63 billion today

That's the deal of the century (so far).

Also worth noting, SAIC did not own 100% of Network Solutions when it was bought from the public market by Verisign. SAIC had sold off a massive stake in the company by that point. They basically liquidated 80% of their ownership in Network Solutions for about three billion dollars over several years (at the IPO point, and then multiple secondary offerings). For example, it sold off 38% of Network Solutions for $765 million in February 1999 in a secondary offering, and then another 21% for $1.8 billion later.

A similar deal was Naspers buying 45% of Tencent for $34 million (current size of stake is around 34%), worth roughly $70 billion.

I think it's so ironic that the first version of Powerpoint was for Mac which ended up helping give Windows it's name when running Office.

I've seen Powerpoint used for so many crazy things. Most notably non-technical managers designing a UI in Powerpoint. It's just one of those, lets just get the job done pieces of software.

I love me some powerpoint jeopardy. Buttons to go to hidden question slides, have used options grey out after being clicked, put in some cheesy sound effects. . .

I put some cheesy sound effects in a powerpoint slide when I was up late working on it, then forgot when I was presenting. Completely threw me off.

Nah, Powerpoint karaoke is where it's at :)

I am unabashedly in support of using presentation software for initial UI design. For basic wireframing, you don't need much more than the ability add shapes, text, color, images + a way to demonstrate user flow (e.g. by ordering slides). Presentation software is perfect for this. It is accessible to everyone, lets non-technical users offer constructive input and is just incredibly fast to get something basic circulated.

Actually you're right. I know a UX designer who had all the UI elements in wireframes and would move things around in Powerpoint based on feedback on conference calls.

I think my observation is when someone who 'thinks' they know what the right thing to do is from a UI point of view and shares it around before getting the actual designers involved. The ones who say, we need another button here, rather than asking, what is the user trying to achieve.

> Keynotopia transforms Keynote and PowerPoint into the best rapid prototyping tools for creating mobile, web and desktop app mockups

http://keynotopia.com

I agree that you want a lightweight wireframing tool; Balsamiq Mockups has my allegiance. Powerpoint is incredibly slow and frustrating to use by comparison, even for non-developers.

You just inspired me to see everything in its simplest yet powerful form. Hell with intent!

Agreed. I've also used (pre-ribbon) Excel effectively for this purpose by drawing the UI using cell background colors and border effects on multiple sheets. Occasionally breaking out some controls and bits of VBA if necessary.

I was shocked the first time I saw someone use Powerpoint to make diagrams for an academic paper. Then I realized it's the closest thing to a real vector graphics editor in a typical person's toolbox. I won't stop being an Illustrator/LaTeX snob for my own work, but I can't fault people for using something they already know to get the job done and move on.

The first version of Excel was ALSO for Mac.

I think the Macintosh doesn't get enough credit for what it inspired at the time.

As well as the first SimCity and a few other series that started in the Apple ecosystem.

One of the bigger ironies is how Doom was developed on NeXTSTEP then went on to make the IBM PC cool among gamers. Also the first web server if I'm not mistaken.

Thankfully, unlike the Amiga etc. the Mac didn't completely die and has been having a great resurgence in the past half-decade. Looking forward to this Monday and hoping for Apple to focus on making this platform even better.

Halo was being developed for Mac as well, until MS went and bought Bungie. They presented on stage at MacWorld in 1999.

sighs Oh, Marathon.

I still hear the rocket launcher occasionally.

Somewhere I have DATs with like 1GB of custom Marathon levels and texture designs. Including a complete model of our Junior High School a friend of mine made. I'm not sure how I missed the announcement they open-sourced them.

It was released on Mac.

http://halo.bungie.net/projects/halo/

It was, but not until over two years later as a Mac port of a Windows port of an Xbox title. That was done by MacSoft, Bungie (presumably) having been tasked with sequels on Xbox as soon as resources freed up from the original.

After the Bungie sale, Xbox was the primary platform they designed for. Before that it had been planned as a Mac/PC title.

As a 20something Mac gamer at the time, you can't imagine how much that felt like a kick in the stomach.

That and Myst being ported to Windows, which I knew meant the beginning of the end of "Mac gaming"

Link to demo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2RVje3MyhQ

The Amiga will never die [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] ;) (become irrelevant to the vast majority, sure).

That last link is for a new FPGA based M68k clone that adds additional instructions, pipelining and other fun stuff as an accelerator for classic Amiga's (it sprung out of the ashes of the now defunct "Natami" project to create a new M68k compatible Amiga-compatible machine).

[1] http://www.a-eon.com/?page=x1000

[2] http://amigakit.com/

[3] http://www.amigaos.net/

[4] http://aminet.net/

[5] http://amigaworld.net/

[6] http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/

I love Amiga fans - they are a special type of awesome/crazy!

As someone who has contributed code to AROS (AmigaOS compatible portable OS), I can confirm we're crazy. For my part I'm not hardcore enough to have any Amigas any more, though I want to (I have a Minimig, though - an FPGA re-implementation).

Simcity was developed for the C64 originally and was released at the same time on the Mac and the Amiga.

Didn't Excel descend from Multiplan which was originally for DOS?

No they were completely separate products and teams. You could correctly say that Excel was a do-over of Multiplan.

Everything (modern, not DOS) debuted on the Mac first in the mid-end 80's. Windows was not a viable first platform until 3.0. I worked on three apps all of which debuted on Mac and two were eventually ported to Windows in the 90's. By the time Office took over the Mac become the second platform or not at all.

I believe Halo, one of the Xbox's most popular games, had its first version (first one you could buy, i mean) on Mac

No, Microsoft bought Bungie while Halo was in development, you could never buy Halo for Mac.

And the Mac version was a very different game from what Halo on the Xbox turned into. You can find old trailers. Among other things I think it was 3rd person with a heavier emphasis on vehicles.

The Mac version was the same as all the others at release, Microsoft had Bungie dumb it down for the Xbox. The trailers you are watching are for what HALO was suppose to be, not what it ended up being.

I know. I was referring to the original design for the game before MS bought Bungie.

As I remember the Mac version of the Xbox game didn't get released until years after the Xbox.

I own and still play Halo for Mac frequently. Not sure what you mean.

I wasn't aware years later another company ported the original Halo.

It was released by Bungie/Microsoft for Mac at about the same time as they released the desktop PC version.

> I think the Macintosh doesn't get enough credit for what it inspired at the time.

I think Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for what it did for the Macintosh ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

I work with someone who uses PowerPoint as a digital whiteboard. It does turn out to be very effective at that, and as a bonus the results can easily be shared without viewers having to use some obscure whiteboard software.

It's my go-to vector graphics tool.

Easy to use and understand, powerful _enough_.

For my simple uses I'm not fighting Inkscape or Visio ever again.

Mine too. Though I've never been sure why PowerPoint is so much more capable for this than Publisher. When creating resources I intend to be printed I've had to make things in PowerPoint then copy them over after finding out Publisher doesn't have the feature I need but PowerPoint does.

Same here. I had one of the stereotypical insecure manager types try to compete on an enterprise business intelligence solution by creating something in powerpoint that read some data point from an excel file. Not too sure how that worked out for him.

Not a deal of the century it would have just delayed the MS machine a little.

Back then they either bought you out (Power Point) or they out Advertised or eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect).

>> they out Advertised or eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect).

WordPerfect kind of killed itself. They never embraced the GUI because they thought Windows was ugly. The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics. They were all over the map trying to make a suite of strange, semi-office-related programs.

When they went from 4.x to 5.0 they had to re-do the printer driver model, just as Windows was making specific dos printer drivers for your application obsolete.

>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics.

It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other tasks. And I also find myself preferring Markdown more and more whenever I can for a variety of tasks, from planning meetings to preparing presentations.

Vim is a tiny fraction of a percent of word processor usage. Most people like GUIs.

Yes.

Most people who aren't in the tech just launch a word processor (word, libreoffice, etc.)

Tech people on Windows use Notepad or a similar GUI program.

Vim is used by a tiny, tiny fraction of people in the world.

> Tech people on Windows use Notepad.

I'm always horrified to see this. MS really shot themselves in the foot with the dev community by not providing a powerful text editor as the default. Getting a WinAdmin to enjoy the UNIX'y way of doing things is like trying to feed a child broccoli.

Also cmd.exe being a steaming pile of shit and the handful of commandline utilities that ship by default are mostly ancient DOS versions from the 80s.

There are a couple of gems (netsh for example), but commandline on Windows is just painful.

Powershell does give you a lot more potential, but I've found its syntax to be too verbose to be a comfortable commandline replacement.

Powershell is an interesting environment.

On one hand, it's almost a C#/CLR REPL with amazing power to program and script almost anything you could think of, but on the other it's not a shell and anyone coming from *nix that tries to think like a shell will be sorely disappointed in how verbose and unintuitive it behaves.

> Tech people on Windows use Notepad.

Tech people on Windows use Notepad++ when they can.

Vim is rarely used outside of editing config files on appliances.

This. Notepad++ has been my goto for years. It's tabbed, it does some highlighting. Opens literally anything. I've never wanted for more than Notepad++ offers by default. And if I did... there's plugins.

I know a bunch of people who swear by UltraEdit too. I think Notepad++ vs. UltraEdit is like the far tamer Windows version of Vim vs. Emacs.

I swear by Autosave. My favorite IDE is N++ and a Powershell window. I code in N++, then click on Powershell and reload the already-saved file.

And a compare plugin does exist as well, it's functional.

ViEmu adds Vim to Office (Word/Outlook, SQL Server Management Studio, and Visual Studio. I wouldn't ever consider using a source editor without Vim support now (I started a few years ago and am amazed how awesome Vim is.)

Vim is not a word processor.

How awesome would vim key bindings for Libreoffice be though?

I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in and day out and were very efficient at it's keystroke commands and loved it because it was fast.

With its focus on the mouse and GUI slowness, Word was a very painful transition and productivity drain for them.

Mouse is always easier for new users to learn. Keyboard is always faster for trained users and anywhere with tight processing performance metrics you'll see almost exclusively-keyboard users.

Ironically, a lot of users still prefer mainframe applications over newer GUIs for the same reason.

Source: I've worked for quite a few "on the floor" user processing centers for various types of data. 30s-2min per work item type of stuff.

But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing.

Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.

Correct. The sufferings of the ones who'd learned IBM Displaywrite were even worse....

It's kind of ironic how nowadays more people are using Vim.

Are they? Based on my totally unscientific observations vi(m)s popularity has dropped over the past 15-20 years

I think a lot of people are using vim emulators that bring the modal concept and keybindings in other software. Maybe NeoVim will eventually change this once vim can be embedded in a decent GUI and have addons that don't slow the how thing down to a crawl.

P.S. I love vim but I love it enough to recognise flaws.

OK same kind of idea:

Netscape vs Internet Explorer (MS just gave the browser away for free) For a good 6 months Netscape was out "selling" IE but eventually IE won the war for a good 15 years.

microsoft publisher - licensed from the authors, rebranded, then given away killing the entire windows market for the original product on windows or any other platform

Source? What was this original product?

Back then Internet Explorer was the superior product, being fast and clutter free.

It's weird, but I really do remember IE4 being great.

IE4 came out in Sept 1997 vs August 1995 IE. IE4 was the first time that IE was bundled with Windows. There was a ton of development with a huge IE development to catch up and eventually surpass Netscape.

FUNNY IE 4 release story: > In October 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 was released. The release party in San Francisco featured a ten-foot-tall letter "e" logo. Netscape employees showing up to work the following morning found the giant logo on their front lawn, with a sign attached that read "From the IE team ... We Love You". The Netscape employees promptly knocked it over and set a giant figure of their Mozilla dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution. http://home.snafu.de/tilman/mozilla/stomps.html

> Fifteen months ago, the Redmond giant decided to get serious about the Internet. Never too proud to imitate a competitor's success, Microsoft issued its own browser, the Microsoft Explorer, offered it for free over the Net, made deals to ship it with new computers and versions of America Online and CompuServe, and vowed to build Web-browsing into its Windows operating system and business software. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...

Let's not forget that IE was actually a bought product by MS:

> The first iteration of the Internet Explorer platform shipped on August 16, 1995 but was essentially a rehash for an existing product called Spyglass Mosaic which Microsoft had licensed. IE was originally shipped to retail as part of the “Internet Jumpstart Kit” but could also be pre-installed with a new Windows 95 PC. http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-version-1-10-a-...

Netscape at that time was very buggy I couldn't print to a HP laser jet on windows via a netware print queue. It's why I gave up on it.

Or they just hire away all of your key employees because VB cannot compete with Delphi. Microsoft did it with Borland, when in 30 months, Microsoft has hired 34 of the ailing software developer's key employees by offering large signing bonuses of several millions of dollars and other incentives.

I know lots of folks my age that loved Hypercard. Deal of the century? No, but Hypercard not going mainstream was a huge missed opportunity. I mean I know a generation now of people my age that grew up with that and loved that product in elementary school and all of us ended up doing lousy powerpoints in high school, college, and beyond.

(Additionally given the programming-like nature of Hypercard, I wonder how many more young folks would have entered programming related fields...)

My sister and I learned how to make things with HyperCard (and HyperTalk) when I was about 6 or 7 years old. We quite enjoyed it, but it took me many years to rediscover programming as an adult.

...just $14M?! Wow, it looks like the tech bubble really grew over the years. On the other hand, the number of people affected by the software grew a lot too...

That's true, but I still can't shake the feeling that a ton more actual money cycled through Powerpoint (and Word, Excel, etc.) than Snapchat or Instagram will ever make.

I could be wrong.

Yes, but with PPT, Excel, Word you bought it once and then no longer paid MS any more (until a new version of Office came out). With Snapchat/IG you advertise to your user forever.

Crazy, right? It's barely even an accounting error (0.02%) of the Dell/EMC deal.

Roughly $30m in 2016 dollars, still not a lot, but this was back in 1987, which was still before computers were as ubiquitous as they are now.

PowerPoint would never have become what it was without being on Windows and part of Office. So no, not really.

Ignoring network effects makes this kind of silly.

Keynote has also been better for a number of years now. Still not as popular just because Macs are less common than PCs with office.

You're right. Powerpoint has the advantage of being good enough, and ubiquitously available (for people with Office, which is pretty much everyone).

Having worked on Persuasion 1.0 (Powerpoint's only real competitor for a while) being part of Office eventually killed Persuasion (when Adobe owned it later) because Powerpoint was "free".

Right, exactly. It came with Word/Excel so basically anyone at an office already had it because they had Office.

Never underestimate the power of "it's already installed"

What's more, PowerPoint was pretty much free. The Microsoft Office bundle was cheaper than buying the programs separately. You probably bought Office even if you just wanted Word and Excel.

Too bad that. Persuasion was a vastly superior program.

Indeed7d97deaa9e5bd76065573ff9cd26500f5045bcd

There are some timeless tips on acquisition here. Notably once more players are interested suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier to dictate terms for the deal ... like not relocating from Silicon Valley to Redmond.

I think the main point was that Microsoft felt they needed to simply buy a product rather than develop their own. They may have arrived at the same terms without Apple et al knocking at the door.

While obviously PowerPoint is ubiquitous and influential, it's interesting - I don't think I've ever used PowerPoint in professional life.

The last time I needed to prepare a slide presentation was in high school.

We are lacking context here. What do you do?

Good point. I'm a dev lead in an "enterprise" company (retail). I spend my time in Balsamiq Mockups and Visio. Meeting topics are usually complex enought that we spend the time discussing a single diagram/flow.

Interesting. Thanks for answering. I'd say that not having PowerPoint presentations reflects well on you.

Unfortunately in my line of work (aerospace engineering), PowerPoint is endemic. All kinds of documents that should be actual reports are just PowerPoint slides.

My job doesn't require Powerpoint, but I've used it when given user group/conference talks.

Thinking about it, delaying Windows 3.0 to fix problems with DOS 5.0 would have delayed PowerPoint for Windows further, but I still think that it would be worth it.

$12million worth Microsoft shares in 89 vs $14million in cash. Some of the investors might be kicking themselves for not taking the shares.

Good, so they invented Keynote that is a ton better. I use it even for things that I should be using Photoshop/GIMP.

If they know in the offer round already that they want a deal from Microsoft, then why is the title "how Microsoft beat Apple"? They didn't do anything to beat Apple if they had already won.

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

A serious question remains: How did they pitch it without PowerPoint slides?

Harvard Graphics ?

> The new offer, however, was for cash rather than MSFT stock, overcoming one hesitation of our investors.

Whoops.

The adjusted price of a share of MSFT on 6/25/87 was $0.37. Had they received $14m in Microsoft stock, almost 38 million shares would be worth about $2B today.

Dante created a new circle of Hell for PowerPoint

Inferno or not, PowerPoint is a special product, for you can buy hardware to control it.

An image search on PowerPoint remote will fill the screen with different devices.

What other windows app has that same kind of hardware support?

Solitaire/Minesweeper. One of the original purposes of including them with Windows was to familiarise users with mouse techniques.

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