More software rivalry Easter Eggs revealed
Image 1 of 9
By Greg Shultz
While battles between software companies usually take place in the marketing arena, some of these battles have been waged in Easter Eggs hidden away in software. In this gallery, I’ll take a look at the Easter Egg battles waged by Borland Quattro Pro against Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3 and the battle waged by Jasc Paint Shop Pro against Adobe Photoshop.
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
Back in the mid 80’s Borland was riding high with a set of successful DOS-based applications, such as Sidekick, Turbo Pascal, and SuperKey, just to mention a few. Guided by their fearless leader, Philippe Kahn, the company grew and of course launched other successful products including the Quattro Pro spreadsheet program.
To set the stage for this Easter Egg, it’s important to know that the folks at Lotus feared competition in a quickly evolving spreadsheet software arena and to protect 1-2-3 decided to scream copyright infringement and sued Borland. As such, Lotus and Borland were enemies. Of course, Microsoft’s business tactics made enemies throughout the software industry, including Borland.
When Borland launched Quattro Pro for Windows, they figured that based on the past successes, they stood as good a chance as either of their competitors to make it big in the spreadsheet field and so Borland developers buried a taunting Easter Egg in Quattro Pro for Windows 1.0.
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
You then type any text you want into a cell. I choose the word Microsoft, just to build up the suspense!
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
You then pull down the Data menu and select the Parse command.
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
When you see the Data Parse dialog box, you click the Create button. You then immediately click the Edit button.
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
When the Edit Parse Line dialog box appears, you hold down the [Shift] key and press the ? (question mark) key three times.
Borland Quattro Pro vs Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3
As soon as you let up the [Shift] key, a menu from the Cafe Borland appears on the screen. As you can see, it lists the lunchtime special as Philippe’s favorite and it is described as Microsoft Liver Pate with Fava Beans on a bed of shredded Lotus flowers.
Evidently, Borland thought Quattro Pro for Windows was going to eat Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3 for lunch.
Jasc Paint Shop Pro vs Adobe Photoshop
The Easter Eggs in this battle were hidden in the About dialog boxes of each application. It all began in Adobe Photoshop 4.0 that contained a normal looking About dialog box.
Jasc Paint Shop Pro vs Adobe Photoshop
However, the licensed version of Paint Shop Pro 7.0 did contain another Easter Egg. To access this one, you have to create a new image that is 1022 by 817 and then place the Antique Marble picture frame on the image. You then use the Eraser tool to erase the white background and reveal this picture of the Jasc team.
Maybe this was intended to be a show of force. However, it was the last Easter Egg to appear in Paint Shop Pro. Version 8 didn’t include any Easter Eggs and Jasc was soon bought by Corel.
