MacWrite
Encyclopedia
MacWrite was a word processor
application
released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG
operation, with multiple fonts
and styles. Together with MacPaint
, it was one of the two original "killer application
s" that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI
in general, and the Mac in particular.
or BASIC
, requiring the users to type in commands to run programs, or even type in the programs themselves. On the Mac, users would instead be expected to stay in the GUI both for launching and running programs.
This presented a problem to Apple
: the Mac was due to be launched in 1983 (originally), but no third-party software would be available for it, nor could users easily write their own. Users would end up with a computer that did nothing. In order to fill this void several members of the Mac team took it upon themselves to write simple applications to fill these roles until third-party developers published more full-fledged software. The result was MacWrite and MacPaint, which shipped free with every Macintosh from 1984 to 1986.
The three-member MacWrite development team was led by Randy Wigginton
, one of Apple's earliest employees, and included Don Breuner and Ed Ruder (both of whom had also worked for Apple in its early years). Wigginton had left Apple in 1981, but was still involved with many members of the Mac team and was coaxed into leading MacWrite development on a semi-official basis. It appears that Steve Jobs
was not convinced of his team's abilities, and secretly started up another project just to be sure; its development was eventually released as WriteNow
.
The first version of MacWrite was actually rather limited, and could handle only a few pages of text before running into performance problems. Nevertheless, it increased user expectations from a word processing program. Similar word processors followed, including the first GUI version of Microsoft Word
and WriteNow, which fixed the limitations while adhering to much the same user interface. MacWrite also established the conventions for a GUI
-based word processor, with such features as a toolbar for selecting paragraph formatting options, font and style menus, and a ruler for tabs, margins, and indents.
The original Mac could print to a dot matrix
printer
called the ImageWriter
, but quality was only adequate. The later LaserWriter
laser printer
allowed dramatically better output, at a price. However, the possibilities of the GUI/MacWrite/LaserWriter combination were obvious, and this in turn spurred the development of desktop publishing
, which sealed the future for the Mac and GUI.
Third-party developers were upset by MacWrite's success which, they felt, made it impossible for their own programs to compete, stifling the market for Mac software. Apple was seriously concerned about this problem and initially unbundled the software with the introduction of the Mac Plus, requiring customers to purchase it for the first time, presumably giving them the option of selecting a competing product instead. However, their notoriety, combined with point-of-sale purchase, led to continued strong sales and Apple eventually let both products languish with no development resources assigned to improving them.
Unfortunately this plan backfired. Users flooded Apple with complaints, demanding newer versions that would keep pace with new features in the Mac, while at the same time developers flooded Apple with complaints about there being any possibility of an upgrade. Apple finally decided the only solution was to spin off the products as a separate company, Claris
.
At first it seemed Claris was as uninterested in developing MacWrite as Apple had been. It did not appear to be concerned about upsetting third-party developers, but instead that the product was free and seemed to have limited commercial potential. Several minor upgrades were released to allow MacWrite to run on newer versions of the Mac OS
, but few other problems were addressed.
.
MacWrite II was the first really new version of the software. By 1989 Word already dominated the Mac with about 60% market share, but the introduction of MacWrite II changed things dramatically; by 1990 Word had dropped to about 45% of the market, and MacWrite about 30%. This seemed to demonstrate that it would be worth developing further, but Claris did not respond quickly with updated versions.
Microsoft, on the other hand, did, and soon introduced Word 4.0. MacWrite's share once again started to erode.
, notably a control bar running down the left side of the screen. The result would be a complete suite of high-end products that all looked and worked the same way, and would be able to read and write each other's formats.
For some reason, development of the Pro series took a long time; one developer claimed it was primarily due to extremely demanding quality assurance
requirements. By the time MacWrite Pro was released in 1992, Word completely dominated the word processor market. There was simply no way for any other product, no matter how good, to make a dent in what had become a de facto standard among Mac users.
While the new user interface was a dramatic improvement over earlier versions, the program continued to lack a number of obvious "high-end" features, and was unable to compete in a checkbox comparison with Word and other Mac products. Performance was also poor. Sales were apparently dismal, and it was one of the first products Claris abandoned in the mid-1990s.
The word-processing module of AppleWorks
is very similar to MacWrite Pro. While it was written entirely from scratch http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php, it retained some of the design limitations of MacWrite Pro. However, later versions of AppleWorks are unable to read older MacWrite Pro files.
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
operation, with multiple fonts
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
and styles. Together with MacPaint
MacPaint
MacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...
, it was one of the two original "killer application
Killer application
A killer application , in the jargon of marketing teams, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system...
s" that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
in general, and the Mac in particular.
Early versions
When the Mac was first being created it was clear that users would interact with it differently from other personal computers. Typical computers of the era booted into DOSDOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
or BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
, requiring the users to type in commands to run programs, or even type in the programs themselves. On the Mac, users would instead be expected to stay in the GUI both for launching and running programs.
This presented a problem to Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
: the Mac was due to be launched in 1983 (originally), but no third-party software would be available for it, nor could users easily write their own. Users would end up with a computer that did nothing. In order to fill this void several members of the Mac team took it upon themselves to write simple applications to fill these roles until third-party developers published more full-fledged software. The result was MacWrite and MacPaint, which shipped free with every Macintosh from 1984 to 1986.
The three-member MacWrite development team was led by Randy Wigginton
Randy Wigginton
Randy Wigginton was one of Apple Computer's first employees , creator of MacWrite, Full Impact, and numerous other Mac applications. He used to work in development at eBay, Quigo, Inc and Move.com. In Nov 2010 he left his position as a "Site Reliability Engineer" at Google Inc., purportedly after...
, one of Apple's earliest employees, and included Don Breuner and Ed Ruder (both of whom had also worked for Apple in its early years). Wigginton had left Apple in 1981, but was still involved with many members of the Mac team and was coaxed into leading MacWrite development on a semi-official basis. It appears that Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
was not convinced of his team's abilities, and secretly started up another project just to be sure; its development was eventually released as WriteNow
WriteNow
WriteNow was one of the two original word processor applications developed for the launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, and was the primary word processor for computers manufactured by NeXT....
.
The first version of MacWrite was actually rather limited, and could handle only a few pages of text before running into performance problems. Nevertheless, it increased user expectations from a word processing program. Similar word processors followed, including the first GUI version of Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
and WriteNow, which fixed the limitations while adhering to much the same user interface. MacWrite also established the conventions for a GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
-based word processor, with such features as a toolbar for selecting paragraph formatting options, font and style menus, and a ruler for tabs, margins, and indents.
The original Mac could print to a dot matrix
Dot matrix
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional array of LED used to represent characters, symbols and images.Typically the dot matrix is used in older computer printers and many digital display devices. In printers, the dots are usually the darkened areas of the paper...
printer
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
called the ImageWriter
ImageWriter
The ImageWriter was a product line of dot matrix printers manufactured by Apple Computer's and designed to be compatible with their entire line of computers...
, but quality was only adequate. The later LaserWriter
LaserWriter
The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...
laser printer
Laser printer
A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
allowed dramatically better output, at a price. However, the possibilities of the GUI/MacWrite/LaserWriter combination were obvious, and this in turn spurred the development of desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
, which sealed the future for the Mac and GUI.
Third-party developers were upset by MacWrite's success which, they felt, made it impossible for their own programs to compete, stifling the market for Mac software. Apple was seriously concerned about this problem and initially unbundled the software with the introduction of the Mac Plus, requiring customers to purchase it for the first time, presumably giving them the option of selecting a competing product instead. However, their notoriety, combined with point-of-sale purchase, led to continued strong sales and Apple eventually let both products languish with no development resources assigned to improving them.
Unfortunately this plan backfired. Users flooded Apple with complaints, demanding newer versions that would keep pace with new features in the Mac, while at the same time developers flooded Apple with complaints about there being any possibility of an upgrade. Apple finally decided the only solution was to spin off the products as a separate company, Claris
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
.
At first it seemed Claris was as uninterested in developing MacWrite as Apple had been. It did not appear to be concerned about upsetting third-party developers, but instead that the product was free and seemed to have limited commercial potential. Several minor upgrades were released to allow MacWrite to run on newer versions of the Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, but few other problems were addressed.
MacWrite II
Things changed in the later 1980s with the introduction of MacWrite II. The main changes for this release were an updated user interface, a number of new "style" capabilities, and the inclusion of Claris' file translator technology, XTNDXTND
XTND was a document import/export system developed by Claris for their products on the Apple Macintosh. Products supporting XTND placed an additional popup menu in the open and save dialogs, allowing users to read and write documents from any supported format...
.
MacWrite II was the first really new version of the software. By 1989 Word already dominated the Mac with about 60% market share, but the introduction of MacWrite II changed things dramatically; by 1990 Word had dropped to about 45% of the market, and MacWrite about 30%. This seemed to demonstrate that it would be worth developing further, but Claris did not respond quickly with updated versions.
Microsoft, on the other hand, did, and soon introduced Word 4.0. MacWrite's share once again started to erode.
MacWrite Pro
In the late 1980s Claris started a massive upgrade series to produce the "Pro" line of products. The main change would be to integrate all of their products with a consistent GUI based on that of FileMakerFileMaker
FileMaker Pro is a cross-platform relational database application from FileMaker Inc., formerly Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. It integrates a database engine with a GUI-based interface, allowing users to modify the database by dragging new elements into layouts, screens, or forms...
, notably a control bar running down the left side of the screen. The result would be a complete suite of high-end products that all looked and worked the same way, and would be able to read and write each other's formats.
For some reason, development of the Pro series took a long time; one developer claimed it was primarily due to extremely demanding quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
requirements. By the time MacWrite Pro was released in 1992, Word completely dominated the word processor market. There was simply no way for any other product, no matter how good, to make a dent in what had become a de facto standard among Mac users.
While the new user interface was a dramatic improvement over earlier versions, the program continued to lack a number of obvious "high-end" features, and was unable to compete in a checkbox comparison with Word and other Mac products. Performance was also poor. Sales were apparently dismal, and it was one of the first products Claris abandoned in the mid-1990s.
The word-processing module of AppleWorks
AppleWorks
AppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer...
is very similar to MacWrite Pro. While it was written entirely from scratch http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php, it retained some of the design limitations of MacWrite Pro. However, later versions of AppleWorks are unable to read older MacWrite Pro files.
Version history
| MacWrite Version | Release Date |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | January 24, 1984 |
| 2.2 | May 1984 |
| 4.5 | April 1985 |
| 4.6 | July 1987 |
| 5.0 | March 1988 |
| II | January 1989 |
| Pro 1.0 | March 1993 |
| Pro 1.5 | 1994 |
External links
- Mac 512: MacWrite
- Word processors (shows a chart indicating MacWrite II's brief but meteoric rise in market share)
- The Vintage Mac Museum: 1-bit Screenshot of MacWrite