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.

Re:GobeProductive

[burns210]

well, gobe tried to go opensource, but is having trouble doing so. Also, several engineers from gobe have gone to apple.

Re:GobeProductive

[PetWolverine]

Did you read the story? Gobe went belly-up when Be did. A company that makes money by writing software for a particular OS generally does not last long if that OS disappears.

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:GobeProductive

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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'

[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'

[MonaXier]

There's also AppleWorks for Windows, currently only available to the education customers.

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.

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.

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

[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: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:AppleWorks for Windows

[MonTemplar]

Sorry, but the link you provided is for an updater for existing owners of AppleWorks for Windows. My point is that you cannot buy AppleWorks for Windows, as it is no longer available, at least not to Joe Public anyway. Certainly not on Apple's site, it only offers AppleWorks for OS X.

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.

They should obviously call it iOfficeWorks...

[alispguru]

... to annoy everyone equally.

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.