For me at least, WYSIWYG word processing was the killer app on the original Mac. The 8-bit machines and current DOS machines at the time just couldn’t compare, although windows PCs caught up pretty quickly.
There were other graphical desktops like Amiga and Atari ST around that time but nothing on either platforms had the finesse of the early Mac programs (as flawed as they could be).
They really didn't catch up until much later, and much of that had to do with printing. Macs produced decent output out of the box — fonts were a focus, and it showed.
