This alone-in-the-crowd phenomenon is acutely apparent in the Macintosh realm where software juggernaut Microsoft has a virtual lock on the big two software applications, word processing (via its Word program) and spreadsheets (via Excel). Buy a new Mac, ask for a word processor, and your dealer will almost automatically plunk down a box of Word, probably along with the advice that "Everybody uses it, so it must be good."
While it's debatable whether Word is in fact "good," it's objectively true that not everybody uses it. WordPerfect has its adherents too. Active in the Mac market for about four years, WordPerfect has been aggressive in incorporating whiz-bang new Apple technologies like QuickTime (which can record and play jerky "movies" in an onscreen window) and the PowerMacintosh (WordPerfect shipped a "PowerMac-native" version of its eponymous word processor the day the PowerMac itself was released). WordPerfect also has more than a decade's lineage on other, sometimes obscure computer "platforms," and it's that kind of pedigree that sold law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt on the program.
John Clement, senior manager of information services at Osler's Toronto headquarters, explains that Osler used WordPerfect in the early '80s on Data General mainframe computers. "So when WordPerfect became available for the Macs," Clement recalls, "we took a look at that, and we hadn't at that moment taken a decision as to whether we were going to the IBM, or the Intel, world or to the Macintosh world, and I guess we had decided that if WordPerfect were available on the Maintosh, we would go Macintosh." It's a textbook case of software selling hardware.
Though Osler is still using WordPerfect version 2.1-- version 3.0 has been out for almost a year, and 3.1 is in final testing stages-- Clement foresees a company-wide upgrade to version three-point-something to facilitate importing information from the company's Oracle database, a feature version 2.1 does not handle well.
Meanwhile, Lotus Development Canada Inc. quietly admits it has been quite difficult to persuade Macintosh users to even consider Lotus' flagship 1-2-3 program. Still, though the Mac version accounts for less than 2% of annual 1-2-3 sales on all platforms and Lotus confirms it intends never to upgrade the product, the Macintosh 1-2-3 version does have its adherents.
Case in point: Jeremy Fontana, market analyst at Spectrum Medical Market Consultants in Montreal. "I was a longtime Lotus user in the IBM environment," Fontana explains, "and I came to a company that was using Macintosh. And they didn't have Excel, actually; they had Wingz, which is an absolutely atrocious program. Atrocious, atrocious!" Fontana saw a spiffy promotional video on 1-2-3; he says "it looked pretty good, and they had actually a very good upgrade offer" from competitive programs, making it easy and inexpensive to clip Wingz and let Lotus blossom.
What's it like out on a Lotus limb in the Mac world? "It's tough. I mean, everybody uses Excel. [But now] with Macs, and I guess now with IBMs, it doesn't really matter. The conversion is so good" among platforms and files.
"The graphing feature is great," Fontana continues. "It's so fast, and it's so visual it's almost like a game using it. It's almost to the point where you have so many ways to make adjustments to the graphs and tables, it's almost crazy."
But that kind of graphical flexibility paid off for Scott Inch, owner of Scott Inch Custom Building, a renovation contractor in Vinemount, Ontario. Inch uses WordPerfect and 1-2-3 on his Macintosh PowerBook 165c. Buying 1-2-3 wasn't a conscious choice; it came as part of a bundle package. Even so, Inch says that "I guess what I liked about it is it has pretty extensive macro capabilities [and] graph capabilities, and so I was able to, [by] just using their macro language and the graphing, make up a program which shows my daytime activities in chart form as an active graph."
Inch's customized calendar spreadsheet uses bar graphs extending across the hours of the day to illustrate, for example, a meeting from 10:00 to noon. Data labels can show the details-- e.g., "meeting with John, or something like that."
Inch is happy with the program but "a little disappointed" about Lotus's abandonment of the Macintosh platform. "Well, I guess that's life! I like the Mac because I like the way it works, but there's no doubt that 85% of the marketplace is PC-based and they're all using Windows."
Ken Brown, VP of operations at Baton Broadcasting Inc. in Toronto, explains that he uses 1-2-3 on a Macintosh LC III at home and 1-2-3 version 4 for Windows at work. He likes both 1-2-3 variants and, like Fontana, is impressed with the programs' file compatibility. Still, Brown is rather displeased with Lotus's desertion of the Mac market. "I'm quite frankly very disappointed that, [even] with the PowerPC, they have so readily blown that platform away. I think there's a pretty good future with PowerPC, and I'm a bit angry that they've succumbed to Microsoft so easily rather than spend some time and market it appropriately."