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The Word Processor Wars: How Microsoft Word Crushed WordPerfect

Our story begins in 1975 with Michael Shrayer and a program he called the Electric Pencil, officially released in December 1976 for Altair microcomputers. Through his company, he advertised his software in computer magazines such as BYTE and sold the program via mail order. Electric Pencil's market dominance started to decline in the early 80s mainly due to Shrayer’s lack of updates to the software. Many clones appeared as it became more evident that people wanted word processors these included a then little-known company called WordStar which went on to surpass the original Electric Pencil’s which it had copied in popularity. It also didn't help that the popularity of Electric Pencil made it an early target for software pirates. By one estimate, for every copy sold by Eletric Penicil, ten copies were pirated. So Shrayer seemingly not up for the intensifying word processor wars decided to sell the rights to his software. Electric Pencil remained on the market through the 1980s, including a version for the IBM PC in 1983 but by 1982 it had already lost its lead in the word processing market owing to its lack of updates and feature additions. It would be ironically a product that started its life off as a clone of Electric Pencil that took the market lead. Micropro International debuted its word processor Word Star in 1978 and it quickly became the dominant word processor for the CP/M market. It was feature-rich and mainly target-touch typists who loved its key-based commands and it was also the first WYSIWYG word processor, meaning that the formatting of the document on the computer screen would appear exactly the same as when it was printed out. By 1983, WordStar’s success had made MicroPro International the largest microcomputer software company in the world, with sales that year reaching $70 million. But amidst its immense success trouble began brewing. Seymour Rubenstein the founder of MicroPro and the creator of WordStar got into a dispute with the WorldStar development team and depending on who’s telling the story they either quit or were fired. The departure of the development caused WordStar’s next version to be delayed because of this it began losing ground to other Word Processors which were beginning to surpass WordStar with their features. When the new version of WordStar did ship the original development team had changed a lot of the functions of WordStar compared to its original, they replaced the popular key-based commands with a mnemonic layout much to the destain of its touch typist user base. To add to this the new WordStar was incompatible with the original WordStar meaning documents created in either one of the software couldn’t be opened or edited by the other. it was so different that Micrpro decided to launch it as a separate product called WordStar 2000 while simultaneously also still selling the original Wordsatr both were priced the same at $495, this caused mass confusion among consumers as no one knew which was the right one to buy for their specific use case. One of the word processors that overtook WordStar as it wrestled itself to insolvency was WordPerfect. In 1979, Brigham Young University graduate student Bruce Bastian and computer science professor Alan Ashton created word processing software for a Data General minicomputer system owned by the city of Orem, Utah. The first version of WordPerfect for the IBM PC was released the day after Thanksgiving in 1982. In 1983, the next version of WordPerfect was released for DOS. This was updated to support more print drivers. `They followed up with WordPerfect 4.0 in 1984. ThenWordPerfect 4.2, released in 1986 with each update they added features and improved the interface of the software steadily creating a big user base but they were still behind the market leader WordStar. The first version of Microsoft Word, initially called "Multi-Tool Word," was released in 1983 for Xenix and MS-DOS systems. Unlike many of its competitors, Word was designed to be a WYSIWYG program from the start. This was a revolutionary concept at the time, as most word processors were text-based and did not display formatting in real time. Another innovative feature of Word was its use of a mouse, which was a novelty for most computer users in the early 1980s. To promote this new way of interacting with the software. In 1985 they released Microsoft Word for the Macintosh which was a graphical user interface apart from MacWrite Apple’s own word processor it was the most popular word processor for Macintosh computers. In 1990, Microsoft released the first version of Office, which bundled Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 01:30 The Story Of Electric Pencil & WordStar 06:14 The Rise Of WordPerfect 12:04 The Rise Of Microsoft Office Intro song: Dystopia Machinimasound    • Dystopia (Trailer & Epic Music) [CC-BY]