Twenty years. First released in Spring 1994, Accordance Bible Software is proudly celebrating twenty years of helping people around the world get the most out of their Bible study.
In the fast-moving, ever-changing world of software development, twenty years is an eternity. Consider for a moment how many of the applications you commonly use have been around for twenty years. With the exception of industry standard word processors and spreadsheets, you probably can’t think of many. When Accordance was first released, Aldus PageMaker was the standard desktop publishing app, HyperCard was a hugely popular development environment, and few people had even heard of the World Wide Web. In the twenty years since then, countless programs have come and gone, many riding a wave of popularity before ending up dashed against the rocks of technological change. Through it all, Accordance has steadily grown in capability, breadth of available modules, and popularity.
One reason few applications last this long is that they fail to adapt to changes in technology. In its lifetime, Accordance has successfully transitioned from 68K to PowerPC to Intel processors, and from the classic Mac OS to Mac OS X to iOS to Windows. We’ve even gone from black-and-white displays to color displays to Retina displays! Today, Accordance is the only cross-platform Bible program which utilizes a single codebase and runs natively on both Mac and Windows—a remarkable technological achievement.
In spite of all of these technological transitions, Accordance has never let under-the-hood changes slow our development of new features to enhance your Bible study. Since that initial release twenty years ago, Accordance has released nine major upgrades and countless minor updates. We just released version 10.4, which adds support for Retina displays and a host of Windows improvements, as well as enhancements to user notes, Strong’s number searching, dictionary lookups, and more. And that’s what we call a “minor” update!
Join us in celebrating this twenty-year milestone by visiting our 20-Year Anniversary page. There you’ll find links to my recent Throwback Thursday series of blog posts, be able to watch video testimonials by other Accordance users, and find out about two major (and time-sensitive) celebratory sales. Be sure to check back often so you don’t miss anything.
After twenty years, we’re more excited than ever about where we’re headed. So take a moment to celebrate the past with us, then watch this space for news about what’s in store for the future.