J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

35 Years Of Microsoft

Preston Gralla reminisces: Microsoft turns 35: Best, worst, most notable moments.

As Microsoft celebrates its 35th anniversary, I've decided to take an idiosyncratic and opinionated look at the best, worst and most notable moments, technologies, products, decisions and people in the company's history.

Excel gets only two mentions:

Smartest software bundling

Clearly the smartest software bundling move Microsoft ever made was combining Word, Excel and PowerPoint into Microsoft Office, first for the Mac in 1989 and then for Windows in 1990.

Microsoft Word, which Microsoft originally (internally) called Multi-Tool Word, was released in 1983 for MS-DOS, in 1985 for the Mac and in 1989 for Windows. Excel was launched in 1985 for the Mac and in 1987 for Windows. Also in 1987, Microsoft released PowerPoint for the Mac, essentially a version of an application called Presenter that was created by Forethought, a company Microsoft had purchased that year. In 1990, PowerPoint for Windows was released.