Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called
PowerPoint, is a
non-free commercial presentation program developed by
Microsoft. It is part of the
Microsoft Office suite, and runs on
Microsoft Windows and
Apple's
Mac OS X operating system. The current versions are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 for Windows and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
[edit] History
Originally designed for the
Macintosh computers, the initial release was called "Presenter", developed by Dennis Austin
[not in citation given] and Thomas Rudkin
[not in citation given] of
Forethought, Inc.[1] In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins.
[2] In August of the same year, Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($27.1 million in present-day terms
[3]), and became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which continued to develop the software further. PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22, 1990, the same day that Microsoft released Windows 3.0.
PowerPoint changed significantly with PowerPoint 97. Prior to PowerPoint 97, presentations were linear, always proceeding from one slide to the next. PowerPoint 97 incorporated the
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language, underlying all macro generation in Office 97, which allowed users to invoke pre-defined transitions and effects in a non-linear movie-like style without having to learn programming
PowerPoint 2000 (and the rest of the Office 2000 suite) introduced a clipboard that could hold multiple objects at once. Another noticeable change was that the Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearances in PowerPoint 97 (as an animated paperclip) had annoyed many users, was changed to be less intrusive.
[4]
See also: Microsoft Office 2000
