Sweating Bullets Notes about Inventing PowerPoint
PowerPoint was the first presentation software designed for Macintosh and Windows, received the first venture capital investment ever made by Apple, then became the first significant acquisition ever made by Microsoft, who set up a new Graphics Business Unit in Silicon Valley to develop it further. Now, twenty-five years later, PowerPoint is installed on more than one billion computers, worldwide. In this book, Robert Gaskins (who invented the idea, managed its design and development, and then headed the new Microsoft group) tells the story of its first years, recounting the perils and disasters narrowly evaded as a startup, dissecting the complexities of being the first distant development group in Microsoft, and explaining decisions and insights that enabled PowerPoint to become a lasting success well beyond its original business uses.
Reviews
Palash Karia@plsh
This is a brilliant, insightful book which makes you think about the most basic interactions in current software, & how they might've been affected by older software, like PowerPoint! This is the stuff of legends, much like how film-making works, where you can see clear influences from the likes of Citizen Kane in current films. You also see how messed up the whole Windows ecosystem was, how far ahead was the Mac & how PowerPoint (possibly) helped breach the gap! Of course, Robert Gaskins is brilliant in his own way, with his meticulous, voluminous notes, & careful little details, which give you great context, & a good idea of what went into making of PowerPoint.
Chris Rabl@crabl