Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a looong time…
We do what we must, because we can!
Lotus was so intent on protecting their revenue stream from software piracy that they built copy protection into the program. If the program was copied from one drive to another, it would not run. So if one bought a new computer or if the hard drive failed, the program could not be transferred to a new drive. The first versions of the software were pretty buggy too. I always visualized a Lotus company with a few programmers and many lawyers. They finally included a floppy disk that would allow a very limited number of copies, but still a PITA.
What is lotus 123?
Boomer spreadsheet program.
Not literally, it came out in 83 - it was the original ‘killer app’, and was behind the widespread adoption of microcomputers into business in the pre-network and internet days.
The last release was in 2002. It’s not limited to Gen X. As an older millennial, I leaned Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Word Pro before I was introduced to Microsoft’s Suite.
it was the original ‘killer app’
That’d be VisiCalc from all the way back in 1979. The slam-dunk argument against Steve Jobs wanting the Apple II to be a glorified appliance with only built-in applications. A lesson he still hadn’t fucking learned by the time the iPhone came out.
Lotus 1-2-3 was the IBM PC answer to that 8-bit microcomputer program. VisiCalc had a DOS version, but it was a deliberately identical port. Bugs and all. Lotus bought the company within two years of launching its properly modern competitor.
A popular spreadsheeting program that was displaced by Microsoft Excel in the '90s.
There’s also this infamous quote:
DOS ain’t done until Lotus can’t run
More information investigating the source of this quote: https://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
For a sec I thought this was !retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org. They’d love this over there.
