Killer Application

VisiCalc on Apple ][ and PageMaker on Macintosh were typical KillerApplications. Mosaic and the WorldWideWeb have been the most famous KillerApplications these days. People had to buy computers to run the KillerApplications on. The origin of the word is :

Lotus 123 was the "KillerApp" for the PC.

It's interesting that you list PageMaker as a KillerApp for the Mac. Certainly it was the "right software in the right place at the right time", but it was only a niche product for the mac at that time.

Also, PageMaker was released at the same time for Windows 1.0, and with almost identical functionality. (But Windows 1.0 didn't support PostScript printers) I can't think of any other serious application that was released under WindowsOne?. (CorelDraw and Excel were released for Windows 2.0, and Word for Windows was released just before Windows 3.0.)

Not that I used PageMaker for Windows 1.0 - it was just too slow. VenturaPublisher? ran under Gem (from DigitalResearch?), was fast, and had style sheets which PageMaker lacked at the time.

At the time, there was no dominance of MS-Windows; there were many competing windowing systems. There was IBM TopView?, and something less graphical from QuarterDeck? (sorry can't remember the name).

Sorry, rambling a bit off topic here.

The next question is: what will be the next KillerApp, and how can I make enough money to retire from it?

See also KillerApp -- and may the BestRefactorer? win.