A Brief History of ClarisWorks

An anonymous user writes, "Bob Hearn, one of the original authors of ClarisWorks, has just updated his own account of the project. It contains lots of interesting lessons for aspiring programmers."

Comments

The Other 'Works'

[MonTemplar]

Way back when, there were several 'Works' packages battling it out in the market. As well as ClarisWorks and Microsoft Works, there was LotusWork and PerfectWorks (from the old WordPerfect company), plus a few others whose names escape me.

Now, there is AppleWorks on the Mac, and Microsoft Works on the PC. All the others are gone.

I got Works 2.0 for Windows to go with my first PC back in 1992, and it did sterling service for me until I upgraded to Windows 95, when I rashly decided to migrate to Office. I've seriously considered going back to MS Works again, simply because it would mean one less piece of software to keep patching! :)

I think it's telling that the core of MS Works hasn't seen that much change in the last couple of versions, a sign that it doesn't have to worry about competition.

Re:The Other 'Works'

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I would say that Microsoft works had lost out to Microsoft Office. It seems that everyone wants office even if they do not need it.

Re:The Other 'Works'

[MonTemplar]

Actually I would say that Microsoft works had lost out to Microsoft Office. It seems that everyone wants office even if they do not need it.

Actually, it's more the case that everyone has heard of Microsoft Office, but hardly anyone has heard of Works. Apart from the odd review when they churn out the latest WorksSuite bundle (same Works, but more and newers additional bit in the box - ironically, not really integrated with one another), I've never seen it advertised anywhere.

Since Apple are no longer obliging, are there any other 'Works'-type packages out there for Windows?

Re:The Other 'Works'

[Anonymous Coward]

"but hardly anyone has heard of Works"

MS Works exists primarily so that OEMs can ship a Microsoft bundle and claim "Thousands of dollars of free software! (that cost us $39)"

Re:The Other 'Works'

[hcdejong]

Actually, it's more the case that everyone has heard of Microsoft Office, but hardly anyone has heard of Works.

That may be the case nowadays, but 'way back then', Works suites were fairly well known.

I think a big factor was that corporate users tended to standardize on Office rather than Works, because some employees needed (or thought they needed) the features not present in the Works suites. Which led to employees wanting to use the same applications at home as they were used to at work.

Re:GobeProductive

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple *MUST* recruit this Guy.

And Apple *MUST* use the Gobe Productive code base. Why? Because they had the chance to do it a second time!!!.... meaning, a chance to avoid the pitfalls in their first attempt when they were young. A chance to refine their approach, a chance to undo their mistakes. This is something that rarely, *If ever* happens!
And whatz more, they are passionate about it.
If anyone can, they can do it for the Mac - deliver a MS-Office Killer, The Killer App, that Mac MUST HAVE!

Go Apple. Grab them!!!

Re:iApps and the future of Office

[Steve Cowan]

iWorks?? That's an interesting name, but unlikely, because in my experience:

• "Works" applications do everything 99% of users need them to, quickly and elegantly, but
• "Office" applications contain hundreds of features users never use, perform slowly, and require the user to make several steps before they can accomplish what can be done with a single command in a "Works" application.

Releasing a "works" application is like dooming it to failure, because they're not marketable any more. Such a product would moer likely be called "iOffice". Seriously... these days nobody uses "works" applications like ClarisWorks / AppleWorks / MS Works et al, because they lack the bells and whistles. As much as I personally love the productivity advantage of having a product like ClarisWorks not constantly hanging dumb dialog boxes in my face, it is simply not marketable these days. In Word I can't even seem to select text in that ends halfway into a word, have a third of my screen real estate taken up with dumb help stuff and another third taken up with pallettes.

I rarely use AppleWorks any more even thouh version 6 came with my iBook, because I have a pirate copy of Office X when I need to do anything advanced while I have TextEdit for doing the simple stuff. AppleWorks is also not as intuitive as ClarisWorks once was, because it seems to want the user to base everything they do on canned templates that never really seem to be what I want to do -- and with its toolbars it becoming more and more Office-like.

Oh well, the web site linked from this article is a nice read, because ClarisWorks was my key productivity app for many years and I have great respect for its developers. CW ran more responsively on my old LC475 (25 MHz 68LC040 with 8 megs of RAM) than Office X on my G4/350 with 768 megs of RAM. Go figger.

Re:GobeProductive

[Anonymous Coward]

It would line up with their technical reasons for choosing KHTML (small, fast, doesn't make the mac look bad)

Re:Interesting story.

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe because they innovate more than other companies. They try different products and approaches, and while they may at times fail, in the end they arrive at a better product.

Re:iApps and the future of Office

[MalleusEBHC]

You are right that this would be a tempting target for MS lawyers though. The question really is how generic the term "office" is. I don't think Windows compares as a term, given that Windows is such a trademark. Office really isn't a trademark in the same way. (As far as I know - I could be wrong)

Given that there is both StarOffice and OpenOffice, I *highly* doubt that M$ could ever attack Apple for releasing iOffice, AppleOffice, or whatever.

Re:iApps and the future of Office

[mattkime]

I really don't think either would happen. First, why would MS be worried about looking like a monopoly? I'm not sure what could be done to them now - but certainly nothing will happen as long as Bush is in the whitehouse.

Only a product running on windows could appear to beat out office.

Re:Awesome Program

[WatertonMan]

The big problem with Appleworks is that the interface is some unholy mixture of Sys9 and OSX. For instance the spreadsheet has "labels" running along the top and left of the window that are nearly unreadable. Further there are many serious bugs such as the oft mentioned kerning problem in its word processor module. It also doesn't open up Word files with much by way of fidelity to the original presentation.

I spent my money thinking I'd get something good but ended up having to splurge the money for Office. Office has a slightly quirky interface - sort of a half XP half OSX. But it is still much more aesthetically pleasing than a quick Carbon port.

Re:Awesome Program

[Englabenny]

This might be one of the reasons we have to wait this long for an update, Apple will have to rewrite the interface to go together with osx, the apple i-suite and keynote and so on.. AW really has to be a great product when it comes out as new; a crappy new version of AW will only show us it's dead.

One more reason AW should come out new & strong now (but not sooner) is that the MS-contract is up...