- published: 03 Dec 2011
- views: 223936
Microsoft PowerPoint is the name of a proprietary commercial software program developed by Microsoft. It was developed by Microsoft and officially launched on May 22, 1990. 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.
Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called "Presenter", developed by Dennis Austin[not in citation given] and Thomas Rudkin[not in citation given] of Forethought, Inc. In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins. In August of the same year, Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($28.6 million in present-day terms), 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.