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Comment by martin-adams | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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

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

> 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 ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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