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VisiCorp's VisiOn was a short-lived but influential graphical user interface-based operating environment program for IBM PC compatible personal computers running early versions of MS-DOS. Although Visi On was never popular (as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day), it was a notable influence on the later development of Microsoft Windows.
History
Background
In the spring of 1981, Personal Software was cash-flush from the ever-increasing sales of VisiCalc, and the corporate directors sat down and planned out their future directions. Ed Esber introduced the concept of a "family" of products that could be sold together, but from a technical perspective none of their products were similar in anything but name. For instance, to use VisiPlot with VisiCalc data, the numbers to be plotted had to be exported in a "raw" format and then re-imported.Dan Fylstra led a technical discussion on what sorts of actions the user would need to be able to accomplish in order for their products to be truly integrated. They decided that there were three key concepts. One was universal data exchange, which would be supported by a set of common data structures used in all of their programs. Another was a common interface so users would not have to re-learn the UI as they moved from one program to another. Finally, Fylstra was concerned that the time needed to move from one program to another was too long to be useful – a user needing to quickly look something up in VisiDex would have to save and exit VisiCalc, look up the information, and then quit that and re-launch VisiCalc again. This process had to be made simpler.
VisiOn is created
In July 1981 Xerox announced the Xerox Star workstation, and by that point it was a well known "secret" that Apple Computer was working on a low-cost version that would later be known as the Lisa. Personal Software's president, Terry Opdendyk, knew of a two-man team in Texas that was working on a simplified GUI, and arranged for Scott Warren and Dennis Abbe to visit Personal Software's headquarters in Sunnyvale. They demonstrated a version of Smalltalk running on the TRS-80, a seriously underpowered machine, and the Personal Software people were extremely impressed.A contract was soon signed, and work on "Quasar" started almost immediately. The name was later changed to VisiOn, a play on "vision" that retained their "Visi" naming. A port to the ill-fated Apple III was completed in November, and after that, development work shifted to a DEC VAX which had cross-compilers for a number of machines. In early 1982 Personal Software changed their name to VisiCorp, and was betting much of the future success of the company on VisiOn.
VisiOn had many features of the modern GUI, even a few that did not become common until years later. It was fully mouse-driven, used a bit-mapped display for both text and graphics, included on-line help, and allowed the user to open a number of programs at once, each in its own window. VisiOn did not, however, include a graphical file manager. VisiOn also demanded a hard drive in order to implement its virtual memory system used for "fast switching", and at the time hard drives were a fairly rare piece of equipment.
COMDEX demo
Tom Powers, VisiCorp's new VP of marketing, pushed for the system to be demonstrated at the fall COMDEX show in 1982. Others in the company were worried that the product was not ready for shipping, and that showing it so early would leave potential customers and distributers upset if it wasn't ready soon after. Another concern was that VisiWord was being released at the same show, and there was some worry that it might be lost in the shuffle. Powers nevertheless got his way, claiming that IBM pre-announced products in order to drum up industry "buzz" and create a receptive market for when the product actually shipped.The demonstrations at COMDEX were a huge success. Many viewers had to be told it was not simply a movie they were watching, and Bill Gates speculated that the PC was in fact simply a terminal for a "real" machine like a VAX. The press rushed to write about the product in glowing terms, and it became one of the most talked-about products in the industry. However this very success led to a number of very serious problems.
For one, everyone seeing the product demanded to know the release date, forcing VisiCorp into announcing a summer '83 release. But even at this early date, developers within the company were well aware there was no way to release by that time. By early 1983 it appeared that fourth-quarter release would be the earliest that could be hoped for, and by that point the industry was already declaring it to be vapourware (although the term was not widely used at the time).
Corporate civil war
While VisiOn development continued, VisiCorp as an entity was in the process of self-destruction. Terry Opdendyk, the president hand-picked by the early venture capital investors, had an extremely autocratic management style that led to the departure of many key executives. From late 1981 to the eventual release of VisiOn, most of the product management of the company left, notably Mitch Kapor in charge of VisiCalc development, Ed Esber, Roy Folk, VisiOn's product marketing manager, among others. The press referred to this as "corporate civil war".It was Mitch Kapor's departure that was most devastating to the company, however. Kapor, developer of VisiPlot and VisiTrend, had been pressing for the development of a greatly improved spreadsheet, but Opdendyk was uninterested. This was during a time when VisiCorp and VisiCalc's developers were at an impass, and VisiCalc was growing increasingly outdated. When Kapor decided to leave the other executives pressed for a clause forbidding Kapor to work on an "integrated spreadsheet", but Opdendyk couldn't be bothered, exclaiming Kapor is a spaghetti programmer, denegrating his abilities.
Kapor would go on to release Lotus 1-2-3, which became a major competitor to VisiCalc in 1983. By the end of the year, sales had been cut in half. Combined with the exodus of major portions of the senior executive staff and the ongoing battle with VisiCalc's developers, VisiCorp was soon in serious financial difficulty. All hopes for the company were placed on VisiOn.
Release
VisiOn was released in December 1983, by some measure only a few months late. The basic operating system, known as VisiOn Applications Manager, sold for $495, and a required mouse for $295. Three applications were also released, the VisiOn Calc spreadsheet for $395, VisiOn Graph for $250 and the VisiOn Word word processor for $375. The cost for a complete package was thus $1765.However, the major cost in installing VisiOn was the machine needed to run it. VisiOn demanded at lease 2.2 MB of hard drive space, meaning that the smallest common drive available was a 5 MB unit. Combined with the controller, this drove the cost of a complete VisiOn install to about $7500.
The press continued to laud the product, going so far as to claim it represented the end of operating systems, whatever that was supposed to mean. The end-users were less impressed, however, not only due to the high cost of the required hardware, but also the general slowness of the system. In market where computers were generally used for only one or two tasks, the whole r'aison de etre for VisiOn was seriously diluted.
Only a month later, Apple Computer released the Macintosh with much fanfare. Although the Mac was seriously lacking software, notably a spreadsheet, it was faster, cheaper, included a graphical file manager (the Finder), and simply looked much better. Although it didn't compete directly with VisiOn, which was really a "PC product", it nevertheless demonstrated that a GUI could indeed be fast and easy to use, both of which VisiOn failed to deliver.
Adding to the release's problems was Bill Gates, who took a page from VisiCorp's book and announced that their own product, Microsoft Windows, would be available in May 1984. This muddied the waters significantly, notably when he further claimed it would have a similar feature set, didn't require a hard disk, and cost only $250. Ironically, Windows was released with an even longer delay than VisiOn, only shipping in late 1985, and was lacking the features that forced VisiOn to demand a hard drive.
Sales of VisiOn were apparently very slow. In February 1985, VisiCorp responded by lowering the price of the basic OS to $99, knowing that anyone purchasing it would also need to buy the applications. These were bunded, all three for $990. This improved the situation somewhat, but sales were still far below projections, and it was certaining not helping the company stave off the problems due to Lotus 1-2-3.
The one-two punch of declining VisiCalc sales and low revenues from VisiOn were never addressed. The company soon entered a death-spiral, and merged in November with Paladin Software, taking their name. Basically nothing was heard from them again.
Technical information
VisiOn worked on IBM PCs that used an Intel 8086 CPU. Visi On required 512 kibibytes of RAM a minimum 5 megabyte hard drive. The software ran in CGA 640x200 monochrome graphics mode. It could work with multiple applications at the same time. It had built-in documentation and help files. Unsurprisingly, it required Mouse Systems-compatible mice; Microsoft-compatible PC mice, which over the time became the standard, did not exist.
VisiOn was likely targeted toward very expensive PC workstations. VisiOn was written in a subset of C, so it was probably expected that a third-party might port the software to Unix, but that never occurred. In 1984, VisiCorp's assets were sold off to Control Data Corporation. Visi On was likely too ahead of its time, especially on the commodity PC platform. Worse still, in 1983, was Visi On's inability to run a large variety of applications and regular DOS programs.
See also
External link
DOS on IBM PC compatibles | Graphical user interface | User interface | System software
"Visi On"