We received two top of the
line Apple Macintosh G4 MP 500 computers the other day. They seem
to work fine and there are few surprises. However...
Amazingly, my copy of Lotus 123 still runs. Lotus 123 you ask? Believe it or not, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Lotus released a full up version of 1-2-3 for the Macintosh. The copy I own is version 1.1, created October 8 1992 (back when the Mac IIci was still in production.). It was the last Mac version Lotus ever shipped. It's native to the 68000 processor. Discontinued for 7 or 8 years, yet it still runs fine. Let me summarize Lotus' characteristics:
Comparing this to your own experiences, does this strike you as a little odd?
Not only does it work on the new Mac G4 MP, it works better than on my old PM9500. Better? The only real problem I'd seen with 123 was it wouldn't load on the 9500 and other people's Macs if it was above 128MB in the address space. This is not true on the G4 MP. Basically the program runs exactly as it did almost a decade ago, still bug free, just faster. Cost? Nada zip nothing...
I can't help but wonder if the guys who wrote the program were blacklisted and never worked in the industry again after producing the program.
Now contrast this with Microsoft. The key to their success is a forced upgrade cycle. Many of their products are buggy. Are the bugs ever fixed? Not if they can help it. Every version of MS Office has new "features". Why? Are they things users clamor for? Based on the fact that I use a 10 year old spreadsheet I have my doubts.
I suspect the real purpose
of new features is to justify the creation of new incompatible
file formats. If I have an business with a hundred copies of Office,
and I buy a new computer what do I want to do? I want to buy a
copy of the same software all my other computers already use.
Will Microsoft sell that to me? (Go ahead and try to buy a copy
of Word 5.1.) What Microsoft really wants is to sell me a copy
of a new incompatible version of Office. Why? Because then, file
exchange problems will ensue and I'll be forced to buy a hundred
upgrades I don't want.
Am I imagining this? When was
the last time Microsoft added a feature to Word you actually wanted?
And more to the point, one you wanted so much you would've happily
paid to get it? Probably not for the last five years. Excel? Same
answer probably. What can you do? Stop being used. Keep your old
software and don't upgrade unless you really need the new features
or file exchange has become impossibly difficult. In any case
I'd strongly suggest investing in file translation utilities like
those from Dataviz.
Tom Black informs me that 123 works just fine under the beta of Mac OSX. Mind you the underlying Mac OS has been ripped out and replaced with a UNIX variant and Lotus is running seemlessly in the Apple supplied compatability box. So, here we are with Lotus 123 still chugging along just fine under ever increasingly different versions of the Mac OS, apparently until Hell freezes over...