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A Brief History of ClarisWorks 60

Posted by pudge from the moof dept.
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."
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A Brief History of ClarisWorks More

A Brief History of ClarisWorks

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  • GobeProductive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iosphere ( 14517 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @05:25PM (#5146115)
    That reminds me, whatever happened to Gobe Productive? It doesn't look like you can even order off thier site [gobe.com] anymore.

  • Awesome Program (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheRhino ( 87111 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:11PM (#5146457) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @08:46PM (#5154532)
      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 (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Englabenny ( 625607 )
        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...

  • The Other 'Works' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MonTemplar ( 174120 ) <slashdot@alanralph.fastmail.uk> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:14PM (#5146482) Journal
    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' (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 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' (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MonTemplar ( 174120 ) <slashdot@alanralph.fastmail.uk> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:02PM (#5146773) Journal
        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' (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23, 2003 @11:02PM (#5148218)
          "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)"
          • MS Works exists primarily so that OEMs can ship a Microsoft bundle and claim "Thousands of dollars of free software! (that cost us $39)"

            Let me guess, you bought your PC from Time Computers, right? :) That's what my parents bought, just over three years ago, and there were more than a dozen different applications bundled with it, ranging from the the fairly good (Norton Antivirus) to the downright hokey (3D Garden Design, anyone?) Of course, these 'packages' consisted mainly of a CD plus a few scraps of paper as documentation. Needless to say, my parents have never used most of them, with the exception of Norton Antivirus. Someday, I shall probably clear them all off the PC, just so that their Programs menu is a bit more readable! :)

        • Re:The Other 'Works' (Score:4, Insightful)

          by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@@@xmsnet...nl> on Friday January 24, 2003 @06:14AM (#5149766)

          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.

          • Another big factor was that Microsoft Works documents were not compatible with Office. I used to run into this when I worked at a university help desk. People just heard "Microsoft" and assumed that Works and Office were the same thing until they brought a term paper to school (standardized on MS Office) and couldn't print it on a PC (but you could on a Macintosh with MacLink translators).
      • Well Dell still bundles Works 2002 as a standard option if you want to pay $100 less than the SB edition of Office. Today they also offer the Word Perfect productivity pack with Quatro Pro, Quicken, Britanica.... What is amazing about that is that the OEM price on works can't be much more than $40 so $15 off that is a pretty good deal.

        Anyway I bet if you look at sales works is doing fine. Usage OTOH...
        • I got Works Suite when I got my Dell in 1999, ended up giving it to my parents to replace the Lotus SmartSuite that came with their PC - they didn't like SmartSuite, but felt much more confortable using Works. Make of that what you will.

    • Re:The Other 'Works' (Score:5, Informative)

      by MonaXier ( 563400 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:33PM (#5146985)
      There's also AppleWorks for Windows, currently only available to the education customers.
      • There's also AppleWorks for Windows, currently only available to the education customers.

        Ah, that would explain why the only entry for AppleWorks for Windows i found at amazon.co.uk was marked 'Limited Availability'...
    • Spinakker!

      Eight-In-One Eight-In-One - © 1989 Spinnaker Software Corp.
      While having all of the components of an "office" software suite -- word processor, outliner, database, spreadsheet, graphics, communication -- and more, including a memo pad, address book, world clock (different time zones), calendar, "do list," label maker, ASCII file utilities, command line, disk copy, format commands, and configuration options, this suite does not have the ability to integrate data between apps. Still, it goes far beyond WP/SS/DB/comm suites and has full mouse support. The calendar option does not accept the year 2000 ("00" gives an error) but does accept 19xx and years beyond 2000.

      My Hyundai XT clone came with this thing.

      Now, how about Prodigy from Sears, with those CGA graphics? Don't hog all 4800 Baud!

    • There was also GreatWorks. Apple used to bundle it to the first Performa series.

      I think it sucked. Personally, I bought Claris Works 4.0 second hand and have used it ever since. Runs beautifully with 10.2.3, albeit in Classic mode.

      • ClarisWorks (even v1.0) was miles ahead of the entire competition on the Mac. Heck, it was one of the few applications that deserved the moniker "insanely great". This is one case where the market did choose the superior product.

    • 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.

      BeagleWorks.. became PerfectWorks when *sniff* Beagle Bros. closed. And the original Works was, of course, AppleWorks on the Apple //e.

  • BSWorks :-| (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:33PM (#5146603)
    (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... [openoffice.org] Note that the above was revealed a week ago by J.-L. Gassée [liberation.fr], and also picked up by Mac Rumors [macrumors.com].

    • Re:BSWorks :-| (Score:3, Interesting)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 )
      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.

    • I would be thinking that you're right on the money with that ;) Apple doesn't want it to be known that they're working on an opposing Office suit until they're ready to ship, otherwise MS will stop producing Office X..

  • iApps and the future of Office (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PetWolverine ( 638111 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:35PM (#5146612) Journal
    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.
    • The only time i still use IE is for playing Go on Yahoo--the applet doesn't work quite right in Safari.


      Interesting... because I play Euchre a lot on Yahoo these days, and the applet works perfectly in Safari - the only exception is that the opening window (which lets the user select a "table" comes up at slightly the wrong stize, but it is resize-able, even though no resize widget is drawn on the bottom right.

    • Re:iApps and the future of Office (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Steve Cowan ( 525271 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:09PM (#5147166) Journal
      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.

      • You cite "works" applications as opposed to "office" applications. Are there any other examples of an Office suite other than the one from MS?

        You would likely never see an iOffice for two reasons. Firstly, Apple would like something that doesn't sound like an MS clone and secondly because MS would raise holy hell. They would probably say that it would be like if Apple were to have named Keynote iPowerPoint instead. Granted, Office seems more generic, but just take a look at Lindows.

    • Apple can't make a direct competitor to MS Office that would, for any reason, give MS reason to drop the product.

      Business people have a hard enough time believing that macs are useful. Now try getting them past no MS office for mac.

      ouch.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @04:07PM (#5152967)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 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.
          • 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.

            Actually, the declaration of MS as a monopoly really does limit what they can get away with, because they are vulnerable to suits from third parties as well. MS has settled some of those quietly, I believe. Now the problem here is that the legally recognized monopoly at this point is *not* on office suites, but on PC-compatible operating systems. Getting the monopoly ruling of suites would certainly be doable, but I don't know that withdrawing from a market where you are legally recognized to have a monopoly could possibly be ruled as abusing the monopoly.

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

            Maybe, but you have to remember that Powerbooks in particular are not unknown in even fairly strongly Windows shops, so if a Mac office suite could read and write whatever a Windows PC throws at it, but has some clear advantages, it would at least cause a fair amount of whining to happen.

  • Interesting story. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:20PM (#5147228)
    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.

    • 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.

      • Re:Interesting story. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by 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.
        • 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.

          (I'm assuming that 'they' would be Microsoft in the above statement)

          The 'innovate' part may be open to debate *grin*, but the rest of your statement certainly rings true. Ironically, MS Works and other products such as Small Business Server (we use it here at work) have played their part in that strategy. Works had a cue-card help system and a template system back in the Windows 3.x era, long before Clippy showed up. And Small Business Server 4.5 had a lot of the MMC-based management facilities that would eventually show up in Windows 2000 (not so surprising, since SBS 4.5 came out whilst Windows 2000 was still in beta).

          But then, like you said, some products didn't work out - Image Composer and PhotoDraw spring immediately to mind, as does VizAct (anyone else remember that?)

  • ClarisWorks still the best (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afantee ( 562443 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @09:42AM (#5150106)
    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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) on Saturday January 25, 2003 @02:59AM (#5155637)
      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 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Saturday January 25, 2003 @04:16PM (#5158062)
    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.
  • Mr. Hearn seems to like Safari - if you visit his history of ClarisWorks with Safari you get the Safari logo with text that says "Welcome Safari User"

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