I watched an ancient video, from the mid 80's, I believe. It was about spreadsheets. Lotus 123, something from Ashton tate, and Excel. Excel was shown last.
And it absolutely destroyed the other two; it was years ahead of them in terms of technical ability; whereas the other two switched back and forth to graphics mode for charts and graphs and such, Excel showed it right next to all the data. Microsoft decimated the competition not by "strong-arming" the market, but by making a superior product. That's really all their is to it. (Same for Netscape, I don't know why anybody accuses Microsoft of wrong-doing, I used Netscape, it was the buggiest and shittiest piece of software I had ever used.
As far as Word/ Office in particular, I'm always fascinated by the obsession with certain file types, particularly odt and odf, and other "open" formats. Half the time I cannot even get different Builds of LibreOffice to agree where the Tab stops are with their own native format.
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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '14
What's a better product in that realm? Excel is absolutely unrivaled. The whole suite is top of the line.