Microsoft Works (1986) 69 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Works was an all-in-one scaled-down Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Database geared towards the home user. It was released in variants for early DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. Microsoft Works competed against Lotus Jazz, FrameWork, AlphaWorks/LotusWorks, PFS First Choice, and many others.

• 2.x (Win)
• 3.x (Mac)
• 3.x (Win)
• 4.0

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 63 Publishing MacOS Windows

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 1.x
• 2.x

The Print Shop (1984) 14 Publishing Windows MacOS

The Print Shop is a home oriented publisher capable of creating calendars, banners, greeting cards and other printable goods. It started off on the Apple II and Commodore 64 where it became popular for its simplicity and ease of use. From day one, it featured interactive editing, on-screen artwork/layout selection, print previewing, and a library of customizable clipart.

• Deluxe (Win)
• Deluxe 1.x (Mac)
• Deluxe 2.0 (Win)

Lotus SmartSuite (1992) 29 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations PIM Database Windows

IBM/Lotus SmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus software for Windows and OS/2. SmartSuite includes SmartCenter, 1-2-3, Word Pro, Freelance Graphics, Approach, Organizer, and ScreenCam.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 96

StarOffice (1995) 4 Word Processor Windows OS2

StarOffice, initially from Star Division GmbH is an office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, and graphing program. It was later owned by Sun Microsystems and then Oracle, and spawned the open source OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Also see the earlier StarWriter

• Business Pack
• 3.0

Ability (1985) 5 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Communications Database Windows

Originally released in 1984 by the Canadian company Xanaro that went bankrupt, and then by Migent, Ability is an integrated office suite for DOS that includes word processor, spreadsheet, database, telecommunications, business graphing, presentation graphics capabilities, and built in file management. It features good integration between the different components, with the ability to import, share, and dynamically update data between them. It was advertised as a very easy to use and a quick to learn system.

• 1.5 for Windows

Microsoft Office (1991) 374 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 95

WordPerfect (1983) 51 Word Processor Windows MacOS

During the late 1980's, WordPerfect was THE standard word processor for DOS based PCs in big business. Under DOS, it competed mostly against Wordstar. WordPerfect for Windows enjoyed some success in the early Windows environments, but was quickly displaced by Microsoft Word for Windows. Later Windows versions were part of Borland Office/Novell PerfectOffice/Corel Office/Corel WordPerfect Office.

• 5.x (Win)
• 2.x (Mac)
• 6.0 (Win)
• 3.x (Mac)
• 6.1 (Win)

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 9 Graphics Publishing Novelty Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0

THINK C (1988) 4 MacOS

THINK C, originally from THINK Technologies and later Symantec, was a C compiler for the Apple Macintosh. Initially released in 1986 under the name "Lightspeed C", it featured libraries and extensions useful to creating native Macintosh applications. It competed with Macintosh Programmers Workshop.

• 5.x
• 6.x
• C++ 6.x
• C++ 7.x

CorelDraw! (1989) 44 Graphics Publishing Windows

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 18 Publishing Windows

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor/Cuisinart for Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0

Microsoft Publisher (1991) 6 Publishing Windows

Publisher is a desktop publishing tool from Microsoft geared towards ease of use with the home user. Microsoft publisher can be used to created professional looking newsletters, flyers, forms, and more. It includes guides and wizards that walk users through creation of common document types, while still offering powerful flexibility.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 95 (3.0)

ClarisWorks (1991) 6 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Publishing Database Windows MacOS

ClarisWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool from Claris. In 1998, after version 5.0.2, ClairsWorks was purchased by Apple and re-branded under the "AppleWorks" name. It is not related to the Apple II AppleWorks product.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Adobe Streamline (1992) 1 Graphics Publishing Windows

Adobe Streamline is an image conversion and manipulation tool that aids conversion of bit-mapped images in to PostScript line art for use in tools such as Adobe Illustrator.

• 3.0

Adobe Dimensions (1992) 0 Graphics Publishing MacOS

Adobe Dimensions was a low cost 3-d object editing and rendering program. Unlike other 3d rendering programs, Dimensions is specifically geared towards producing illustrations for print. programs, such as Adobe Illustrator or Freehand, and edited to create 3d objects. Then, instead of outputting a pixilated raster image, it outputs in postscript bezier curves, which can then be further processed by other 2d illustration packages.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Microsoft Word (1983) 74 Word Processor MacOS Windows DOS

The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.

• 4.0 (Mac)
• 2.x (Windows)
• 5.x (Mac)
• 6.x
• 95

Micrografx Picture Publisher (1990) 1 Graphics Publishing Windows

Formerly Astral Picture Publisher, Micrografx Picture Publisher is a bitmapped image editor for Windows that offered powerful and feature rich 24-bit color image editing on the Microsoft Windows platform prior to Photoshop for Windows. Picture Publisher was briefly considered the leading image editor on the Microsoft Windows platform until Adobe made Photoshop available for Windows.

• 2.x
• 3.1
• 4.0
• 5.0
• LE

Deneba Canvas (1994) 0 Graphics Publishing Windows

Deneba Canvas is a shape based drawing and illustration program for the PC and mac. Unlike other publishing programs of the time, Canvas combined the ability to use vector graphics and raster images. It could also function as a word processor.

• 3.x

Microsoft Creative Writer (1994) 4 Word Processor Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Creative Writer is a dumbed down Microsoft BOB-like word processor and sign maker targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a drawing program called Microsoft Fine Artist

• 1.x

HiJaak (1991) 0 Graphics Publishing Windows

The original HiJaak program, from Inset Systems, is a powerful screen capture tool and image converter that can perform batch conversion between a large number of formats. The later Windows version are a powerful raster-to-vector graphics conversion and editing tool that can convert between a huge number of bitmap and vector file formats.

• 2.0 (Win)
• 3.0
• 95

Arts and Letters Graphics Editor (1989) 3 Publishing Windows

Arts & Letters, from Computer Support Corporation, is an easy to use line based illustration package. It competed against Corel Draw, and Micrografx Designer. Features include multitasking, rotation, different viewing levels, shading, color, and image combining. The first version was for MS-DOS, and version 2 ran under Windows 2. It later repositioned itself as a sign/banner type program like the Print Shop.

• 3.x
• 5.0

Aslightly LabelPro (1991) 0 Publishing Windows

Aslightly LabelPro is a label printing utility for use in conjunction with Aslightly label products. It supports mail merge, graphics and text, postal bar codes, and includes clipart.

• 1.x (Win)

Labels Unlimited (1994) 2 Publishing Windows

Labels Unlimited is a "professional" easy to use program designed specifically for making labels. It includes templates for VHS video cassettes, audio cassettes, floppy disks, mailing labels, and Avery printer labels. It features a WYSIWYG interface, supports text, graphics, sequences, and much more.

• 1.x (Win)

PerfectWorks (1995) 3 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Database Windows

PerfectWorks is an all-in-one word processing/spreadsheet/database/drawing program originally sold by WordPerfect Corp, and later by Novell.

• 2.x