Full Impact

Full Impact was a spreadsheet program for the Apple Macintosh computer released by Ashton-Tate in the late 1980s. Full Impact was known for excellent graphing and visual display, far better than contemporary versions of Microsoft Excel. But this was also its only really compelling feature, and it was unable to find a market niche given the dominance of Excel in the Macintosh marketplace.

History

Full Impact started in a roundabout fashion when early Apple employee and programmer Randy Wigginton decided to write a spreadsheet program. Wigginton had left Apple during the Macintosh development process to start Encore Systems with two friends, Don Breuner and Ed Ruder. They were soon hired by Steve Jobs to develop a word processor for the soon-to-be-released Macintosh, which would become MacWrite. Wigginton wanted to duplicate this success by making a GUI-based spreadsheet that would be easier to use than anything on the market. Unlike a word processor, however, a spreadsheet requires a complex "engine" to quickly solve the many equations that make it up.