Both NeXT and Improv brought innovative solutions to their respective computing questions of the day. NeXT made UNIX palatable to those scared of the terminal, debuted Display Postscript on a mega-pixel display, and made development for the system a snap. Improv rethought multi-dimensional data modeling, offered English-like formulas, and made it easy to rearrange data views on a whim.

The bones of both remain to this day. NeXT’s operating system, NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP, morphed into macOS, and by extension iOS. Lotus abandoned Improv fairly quickly, but a quick survey of today’s spreadsheets shows a universal embrace of pivot tables.

↫ Christopher Drum

I had never heard of Lotus Improv, so I learned a lot reading this outstanding article by Drum.