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On Tuesday, with no fanfare, IBM closed the last chapter in the life of one of the most iconic early computer programs, Lotus 1-2-3, when it withdrew support for the final build of the software.
IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x, and Organizer have now officially all passed their end of life support date and, according to IBM's website, "No service extensions will be offered" ( http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS913-091 ) – not that anyone is seriously using the spreadsheet any more.
It's a sadly muted end for what was, at one time, the world's premier spreadsheet. Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the first applications that made IBM's original PC a serious business tool, but it fell by the wayside due to poor coding decisions, failure to adapt, and the crushing tactics of Microsoft.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday October 03 2014, @02:22PM
On Tuesday, with no fanfare, IBM closed the last chapter in the life of one of the most iconic early computer programs
It wasn't an early computer program. 123 came out in 1983, but computers and computer programs were 38 years old by then. Replace "computer" with "PC" and it's accurate. PCs (or rather "microcomputers" as they were called then) were only a few years old, and the IBM-XT was released the same year as Lotus.
Lotus was the best spreadsheet on the market for years. At one time at work I had three different spreadsheet programs installed because the feds used Lotus, the state used Corel and most everyone else was on Excel, and I needed to read files from all of them and convert the data to go into NOMAD on the mainframe.
I hadn't had Lotus installed for years. After they put it on my PC I was appalled at what IBM had done to a once great program.
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