This factor played a role in the company's ultimate demise in 1996, as Windows was shipping on most desktop computers.
SPC was established in 1980 by three former Hewlett-Packard employees, Fred Gibbons, Janelle Bedke, and John Page, with an eye to producing packaged software for personal computers like the Apple II.
[1] The first application to be launched was the "Personal Filing System" (PFS), a simple database program for Apple II computers.
By early 1984, InfoWorld estimated that SPC was the world's ninth-largest microcomputer-software company, with $14 million in 1983 sales.
[4] Lighter-weight versions of the core "pfs:" word processing, database, spreadsheet and data communications programs were released as a single, integrated suite called pfs:First Choice for DOS, intended to directly compete with, but be more economical than, Microsoft Works for DOS.
In response to business users' requests for a far more powerful, yet still economical word processor that really could compete with the likes of the better-known and more-popular DOS word processors like WordPerfect (and even, by then, Microsoft Word for DOS, SPC released an enhanced version of pfs:Write called pfs:Professional Write, a much higher-powered word processor which was eventually joined by companion products pfs:Professional File (a more powerful database, to better compete with dBase), and pfs:Professional Plan (a more powerful spreadsheet, to better compete with Lotus 1-2-3).
The power of Harvard Graphics product made it extremely popular with DOS PC users, helping to drive SPC's sales revenues to $150 million by 1990.
[6] It was valuable to users because it brought to the normally-text-only, non-graphical DOS environment a rich and powerful on-screen graphical presentation tool.
[8] In 1996 SPC was purchased by, and became a subsidiary of, Allegro New Media, Inc., a New Jersey–based multimedia publisher of interactive CD-ROM software applications, including 25 titles in five product lines, the most notable of which were its Entrepreneur Guides, Berlitz Executive Travel Guides, Learn To Do Series and Business Reference Series.