Filed under: Odds and ends
A Brief History of ClarisWorks
Ah,
ClarisWorks...the first software I truly admired. One of the developers of ClarisWorks, Bob Hearn, recounts the history of the software as it developed from
an independent title into the productivity package that so many of us used on our early Macs.I still admire the way "frames" worked in ClarisWorks/AppleWorks and know of several people who continue to rely on this feature every day to get their work done. The simplicity of being able to move objects (for example, a spreadsheet, a table, or a graphic) around between the different components of ClarisWorks was a model I wish many other programs had.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
unreal mccoy said 2:33PM on 3-06-2006
I too miss the simplicity of frames. I grew up on Claris, and have hated MS Word becuase of it...
Reply
Bryan said 2:48PM on 3-06-2006
ClarisWorks was a wonder. And I wish it was still being actively developed. Pages and Keynote are nice, but ClarisWorks was a real breakthrough in productivity. It's two great features, in my mind:
interactive frames - as previously mentioned....why don't other apps do this???
speed - it ran fast and reliably. Pages is too dang slow and feels bloated on my machine - a 12" PB. Shouldn't happen! ClarisWorks always ran fast, even on older hardware.....
I miss it.
Reply
Devin said 4:26PM on 3-06-2006
now im a college student, but i remember the days of elementary school. we all loved claris works back then.
Reply
Adrian said 5:14PM on 3-06-2006
The article is two years old but still an interesting read. The second last paragraph talks about some ex-claris then-gobe developers joining apple and working on a project they couldn't talk about. Good chances they worked/work on Pages now.
Reply
JT said 7:44PM on 3-06-2006
I still have ClarisWorks on my Mac Classic and it works great.
Reply
fishpatrol said 12:01AM on 3-07-2006
Shoot, in college I was using Clarisworks to dial in to the school's VAX system. Wrote papers, worked on pixel graphics. Works was for suckers, as far as I was concerned.
Reply
Bob Hearn said 10:50AM on 3-07-2006
Thanks everyone! I'm happy people still remember ClarisWorks fondly.
Although, this does make me feel old: "but i remember the days of elementary school. we all loved claris works back then". Doesn't seem so long ago to me I was fresh out of college and writing ClarisWorks.
Reply