Tech Nostalgia: The Killer App ⭐

In November 1998, I was standing in line behind a casino in Las Vegas, as one does, waiting to be let inside with other members of the press--there were no bloggers, YouTubers, or influencers muddying that distinction yet--to watch a Bill Gates keynote address. And then I saw him. An unassuming bearded man with glasses, wearing a heavy flannel shirt, alone and standing in line with the rest of us.

I walked over to him, held out my hand, and said something like, "No one else here recognizes you for some reason, but I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done; we wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you." He smiled, thanked me, and shook my hand. It was Dan Bricklin, the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet--alternatively called the "calcu-ledger"--and co-author of VisiCalc, the first software of its kind.

VisiCalc is perhaps even more famous for being the first killer app, a software program so revolutionary and unique that it becomes the reason for people to buy the personal computing hardware on which it runs. In this case, that hardware was the Apple II, one of the so-called "Trinity" of initial 1977 personal computer releases that also included the Commodore PET 2001 and Tandy TRS-80.

There are two interesting and contradictory historical anecdotes to that.

First, though killer apps typically rely on hardware or software capabilities that are unique to the computer on which they run, VisiCalc being released first on the Apple II was just an accident of history, a coincidence that had nothing to do with that hardware. Bricklin and his VisiCalc co-author Bob Frankston could have just as easily released the app on any other personal computer of the day, which would have changed the course of history of our industry in potentially dramatic ways.

Second, VisiCalc predates the coining and usage of the term killer app by almost a decade, so the nearly universal acceptance of this app as the first true killer app--software that defines a computer platform--nicely highlights its historical importance. In many ways, VisiCalc wasn't just the killer app for the Apple II; it was the killer app for personal computers, and it triggered a massive shift in the public's perception of technology and how useful it could be in our daily lives.

There are almost as many killer apps as there are successful computer platforms. For example, desktop publishing emerged as the killer app for the Macintosh, a product that was failing badly until the inventions of Adobe PostScript and the first commercial laser printer. The Commodore Amiga likewise struggled until a tiny company called NewTek invented the Video Toaster, a genlock hardware add-on that democratized video production and was only possible because of a hardware quirk of a computer system that was originally designed to be a videogame console that would output to TV sets. Speaking of which, videogame systems have killer apps too, like Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo...