MacWrite
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Apple Computer, Claris |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1984 |
| Stable release |
Pro 1.5 / 1994
|
| Development status | Discontinued |
| Operating system |
Classic Mac OS (System 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 System 6 System 7) |
| Type | Word Processor |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
MacWrite was a WYSIWYG word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. Together with MacPaint, it was one of the two original "killer applications" that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI in general, and the Mac in particular.
MacWrite was spun off to Claris, who released a major update in 1989 as MacWrite II. A further series of improvements produced 1993's MacWrite Pro, but further improvements were few and far between. By the mid-1990s, MacWrite was no longer a serious contender in the word processing market, and development ended around 1995.
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 text-only DOS or BASIC command line environments, requiring the users to type in commands to run programs. Some of these programs may have presented a graphical user interface of their own, but on the Mac, users would instead be expected to stay in the standard GUI both for launching and running programs. Having an approachable, consistent GUI was an advantage for the Mac platform, but unlike prior personal computers, the Mac was sold with no programming language built-in.
This presented a problem to Apple: the Mac was due to be launched in 1983 (originally), with a new user interface paradigm, 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 MacWrite development team was a company called Encore Systems, founded and led by Randy Wigginton, one of Apple's earliest employees, and included Don Breuner and Ed Ruder (co-founders of Encore Systems and also early Apple employees; Gabreal Franklin later joined Encore Systems as President.) Wigginton, who had left Apple in 1981, maintained a relationship with many Apple employees, many of whom were on the Macintosh development team. He agreed to lead the MacWrite development team on a semi-official basis. Before it was released, MacWrite was known as "Macintosh WP" (Word Processor) and "MacAuthor". Allegedly, 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.
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