History and Acquisition of PowerPoint
– Created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at Forethought, Inc.
– Released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only
– Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for about $14 million three months after its release
– PowerPoint became a component of the Microsoft Office suite in 1989 for Macintosh and 1990 for Windows
– PowerPoint’s market share has been estimated at 95 percent since the late 1990s
Development and Evolution of PowerPoint
– PowerPoint was initially used to produce overhead transparencies and color 35mm slides
– The third version introduced video output of virtual slideshows to digital projectors, replacing physical transparencies and slides
– PowerPoint has undergone a dozen major versions, adding new features and expanding to different platforms
– Versions for iOS, Android, and web access have been developed
– PowerPoint has become a widely used communication tool in various contexts beyond business presentations
Impact and Controversy of PowerPoint
– PowerPoint’s worldwide market share of presentation software has been estimated at 95 percent since the late 1990s
– The widespread use of PowerPoint led to the development of a new form of communication
– There have been debates and suggestions on how PowerPoint should be used less, differently, or better
– PowerPoint has been criticized for its potential to oversimplify complex information
– Despite the controversies, PowerPoint remains a popular and widely used presentation software
Integration into Microsoft Office and Market Presence
– PowerPoint was included in Microsoft Office from the beginning
– PowerPoint 2.0 for Macintosh and Windows were part of Office bundles
– PowerPoint 3.0 was separately specified and developed but included in Office
– PowerPoint 4.0 marked the shift towards integrated development with other Office applications
– PowerPoint revenue exceeded $100 million annually by the last six months of 1992
Different Uses and Platforms of PowerPoint
– PowerPoint can be used to deliver presentations in various ways, including live audience projection, printing as paper documents, and distribution as files for private viewing
– PowerPoint presentations can be packaged for distribution on CD or a network, transmitted as live broadcasts over the web, embedded in web pages or shared on social networks
– PowerPoint can be set up as a self-running unattended display or recorded as video/audio for distribution
– Different ways of using PowerPoint can influence the content of presentations, with slides carrying more substance when they need to convey information without oral explanation
– PowerPoint has been adopted for personal computing and has scaled up the production of presentations in various contexts beyond business
Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for about $14 million three months after it appeared. This was Microsoft's first significant acquisition, and Microsoft set up a new business unit for PowerPoint in Silicon Valley where Forethought had been located.
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 A photo presentation being created and edited in PowerPoint, running on Windows 11 | |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Initial release | May 22, 1990 |
| Stable release | 2209 (16.0.15629.20208)
/ October 11, 2022 |
| Written in | C++ (back-end) |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Available in | 102 languages |
List of languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani (Latin), Bangla (Bangladesh), Bangla (Bengali India), Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian (Latin), Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Konkani, Korean, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian (Macedonia), Malay (Latin), Malayalam, Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Nepali, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Odia, Pashto, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Punjabi (India), Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Cyrillic, Serbia), Serbian (Latin, Serbia), Serbian (Cyrillic, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Sesotho sa Leboa, Setswana, Sindhi (Arabic), Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Tatar (Cyrillic), Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek (Latin), Valencian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Wolof, Yoruba | |
| Type | Presentation program |
| License | Trialware |
| Website | microsoft |
 PowerPoint for Mac (version 16.69.1), running on macOS Ventura (13.2) | |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 20, 1987 |
| Stable release | 16.70 (Build 23021201)
/ February 14, 2023 |
| Written in | C++ (back-end), Objective-C (API/UI) |
| Operating system | macOS 11 or later |
| Available in | 26 languages |
List of languages English, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish | |
| Type | Presentation program |
| License | Proprietary commercial software |
 Powerpoint for Android running on Android 13 | |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft Corporation |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 16.0.16501.20160
/ May 26, 2023 |
| Operating system | Android Pie or later |
| Type | Presentation program |
| License | Proprietary commercial software |
| Website | products |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft Corporation |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2.73
/ May 15, 2023 |
| Operating system | iOS 15 or later IPadOS 15 or later watchOS 8 or later |
| Available in | 33 languages |
List of languages English, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese | |
| Type | Presentation program |
| License | Proprietary commercial software |
| Website | products |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Final release | 16002.12325.20032.0
/ December 10, 2019 |
| Operating system | Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile |
| Type | Presentation program |
| License | Trialware |
| Website | www |
PowerPoint became a component of the Microsoft Office suite, first offered in 1989 for Macintosh and in 1990 for Windows, which bundled several Microsoft apps. Beginning with PowerPoint 4.0 (1994), PowerPoint was integrated into Microsoft Office development, and adopted shared common components and a converged user interface.
PowerPoint's market share was very small at first, prior to introducing a version for Microsoft Windows, but grew rapidly with the growth of Windows and of Office. Since the late 1990s, PowerPoint's worldwide market share of presentation software has been estimated at 95 percent.
PowerPoint was originally designed to provide visuals for group presentations within business organizations, but has come to be very widely used in many other communication situations, both in business and beyond. The much wider use led to the development of the PowerPoint presentation as a new form of communication, with strong reactions including advice that it should be used less, should be used differently, or should be used better.
The first PowerPoint version (Macintosh 1987) was used to produce overhead transparencies, the second (Macintosh 1988, Windows 1990) could also produce color 35 mm slides. The third version (Windows and Macintosh 1992) introduced video output of virtual slideshows to digital projectors, which would over time completely replace physical transparencies and slides. A dozen major versions since then have added many additional features and modes of operation and have made PowerPoint available beyond Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, adding versions for iOS, Android, and web access.
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