Context MBA

Context MBA was the first integrated software application for personal computers, providing five functions in one program: spreadsheet, database, charting, word processing, and communication software.^[1] It was first released in 1981 by Context Management Systems for the Apple III computer,^[2] but was later ported to the IBM PC platform as well.

Since the program was written in UCSD Pascal, it was easy to port to different platforms, but did so at the expense of performance, which was critical at the time of its release, given the limited amount of memory, processing power, and disk I/O available on a desktop computer. It was soon overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3, a more limited integrated software package, but one written in assembly language, yielding much better performance.

References

1. ^ "Whatever Happened to Context MBA?". Dvorak Uncensored. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?page_id=8250. Retrieved 2007-12-24. 
2. ^ Tracy Robnett Licklider (1989). "Ten Years of Rows and Columns". Byte Magazine. http://www.aresluna.org/attached/computerhistory/articles/spreadsheets/tenyearsofrowsandcolumns. Retrieved 2007-12-24.