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

GobeProductive

[iosphere]

That reminds me, whatever happened to Gobe Productive? It doesn't look like you can even order off thier site anymore.

Re:GobeProductive

[melatonin]

Read the article, he talks about it a bit. They (being former CW engineers) basically went to Apple and are working on something secret.

Awesome Program

[TheRhino]

ClarisWorks/AppleWorks is still my favorite productivity tool. When I work on files I need to share, I'm forced to use Office, but when it's just for me, I use AppleWorks every time. The word processor doesn't have as many bells and whistles as Word, but that's fine, because all I want to do is write. I don't need Clippy offering me all sorts of idiotic advice. I know how to write a letter!

The spreadsheet is not as nice as Excel, but it's adequate for most people's needs. The database is lame, I'll admit. But the drawing tools are awesome. And the whole thing is object-oriented and integrated, just like the article says. Want a text box in your draw document? You have the full power of the word processor. Want a spreadsheet in your word processing document? You have the full spreadsheet right there.

It's a shame that the product seems to be languishing in Version 6. I hope that we see a Version 7 soon. The product still has so much potential.

BSWorks :-|

[Anonymous Coward]

(We wanted the program eventually to be sold as MacWorks, but early versions were called BSWorks, for Bob & Scott.)

B.S.!!!

Of course, the most intriguing part is,

Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed. They won't tell me what they are up to (even off the record!), but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase.

No comment about a certain third possibilty... Note that the above was revealed a week ago by J.-L. Gassée, and also picked up by Mac Rumors.

Re:BSWorks :-|

[WatertonMan]

It almost certainly wouldn't be OpenOffice. However it might involve some of the OpenOffice/StarOffice codebase. Rumors of a Sun - Apple alliance on this matter have been flying around for months. Given some of Apple's recent releases, such as Safari and Keynote, along with the dismall state of Appleworks on OSX, I think this is almost certainly the case.

However if this happens then I'd lay very good odds that it will parallel what happened wiht Safari. Safari isn't Konquerer, but it shares some code with it. In the same way I suspect AppleWorks 7.0 or whatever they call it will share code with OpenOffice or StarOffice but won't be equivalent to it.

iApps and the future of Office

[PetWolverine]

As was pointed out after the recent Macworld and the release of Safari and Keynote, Apple seems to be attacking Microsoft on more and more fronts. If you're looking for a new version of AppleWorks that has the feature set to compete with Office, you may only have to wait. I don't know about Keynote (I don't have much use for presentation software), but if Safari is any indication, such an update would be enough to kill Office for Mac. Hey, Safari is still in beta and already it's good enough to have replaced IE for most purposes on my machine. The only time i still use IE is for playing Go on Yahoo--the applet doesn't work quite right in Safari. Anyway, I'm hoping for a modestly priced (maybe free? I doubt it) Apple-branded competitor to Office X within the next couple of Macworlds. Just idle speculation. Think iWorks.

Re:iApps and the future of Office

[WatertonMan]

[b]You would likely never see an iOffice for two reasons. Firstly, Apple would like something that doesn't sound like an MS clone. . .[/b]

That's actually why they might do it. If they are worried about not having "Office for OSX" if MS drops MS Office then having something OSX Office would allow them to say something very similar.

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)

Re:iApps and the future of Office

[mcwetboy]

According to this piece by John Martellaro, Microsoft might not be able to drop Office for Mac if Apple released a direct competitor: Microsoft would either look like a monopolist crushing a platform to stop competition, or like a company whose product just got its ass handed to it. Martellaro figures Microsoft's only possible response would be to work on a better, cheaper Office -- something they don't necessarily have to do right now.

Man, I was hoping someone would talk about the real AppleWorks -- for me it was version 1 on the IIe and version 3 on the IIgs (AppleWorks GS was a bit buggy at the outset, and printing on an ImageWriter was slow). My whole high school career, such as it was, depended on that app.

Interesting story.

[jericho4.0]

This is going to come of sounding like an Apple evangelist, but ever notice how the stories of Mac software development tend to be much more interesting than the Windows world? Apple folk always seem to be much more idealistic and committed (and naive).

I'm sure the same phenomena exists in the linux world, but it seems to be drowned out in all the linux hype. Maybe 10 years from now we'll be hearing some fascinating tales of trials and tribulations in the OpenSource world.

Re:Interesting story.

[Profane Motherfucker]

Also, ever notice how they're all about software and hardware that never really took off and doesn't exist anymore?

It is indeed more interesting, however.

ClarisWorks still the best

[afantee]

What a enjoyable read.

I first used with ClarisWorks nearly 10 years ago, and was totally amazed by the fact that such a seamless integration of 6 powerful tools (text, draw, paint, spreadsheet, database and communication) had only a tiny size of just over 3MB and MS Word alone was more than 20 MB.

How the world comes to prefer the MS bloatware called Office rather than a gem like ClarisWorks is just beyond me. Now Office X takes up 400 MB on my iBook, still not properly integrated like ClarisWorks, and runs as slow as hell even with a 3 pages documents! Apple, please take this guy back and I will wipe out the MS shit in a hear beat!

Has anyone read the reader comments from his site, it brings tears to my eyes. I am particularly moved by the story that Steve Woz always sited at the back of the classroom and learnt something new when someone was teaching the kids to use ClarisWorks.

Re:ClarisWorks still the best

[MarcQuadra]

I always respected that they kept the UI really smooth and mac-like. Office is a complete eyesore, every new version has three more stupid panels encroaching on your productive space. I still log into my Mac-On-Linux install and crank away with ClarisWorks 4.1 when I don't intend to share my documents. The responsiveness of the apps was also amazing. Piping Claris over an X connection on my MOL box is faster than running OpenOffice or MSOffice2000 locally.

ClarisWorks was pretty cool

[Pope]

When I bought my first Mac, a Quadra 630, I still had my 386/Win 3.1 machine around because it had the printer. I had ClarisWorks 3 on both machines, and could easily swap a floppy back and forth to print or whatever, and my room mates got to use one machine while I used the other.