Adobe Acrobat (1993) 57 Publishing MacOS Windows Unix

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.

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• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Adobe Dimensions (1992) 4 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

Adobe PageMill (1997) 12 Publishing MacOS

PageMill, from Adobe, is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get web page authoring tool. It was discontinued in February 2000, due to the acquisition and promotion of Adobe GoLive.

• 2.0

AppleWorks (1986) 7 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Communications Database MacOS Mac OS X

AppleWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool. The original product was a text-based product for the Apple II. The Apple Macintosh and Windows versions were forked from ClarisWorks in 1998 by Apple. At the time, Apple was under a lot of pressure to have a direct alternative to Microsoft Office. There were serious concerns that Microsoft might pull Microsoft Office for the Macintosh from development.

• 5.x
• 6.x

Claris Organizer (1995) 1 PIM MacOS

Claris Organizer is an easy to use personal information management (PIM) program for the classic Mac OS. It integrates calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes in to one small lightweight application. It has a variety of flexible print option and can print mailing labels. It competed with the Apple Newton PDA. Claris Organizer was praised for its small size and well thought out interface. It was sold to Palm when Claris was broken up, and was used as the basis for the Palm Desktop for Mac.

• 1.0
• 2.0

ClarisWorks (1991) 19 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.

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• 5.x
• For Kids 1.0

FrameMaker (1990) 7 Publishing Unix MacOS Other Windows

FrameMaker, originally from Frame Technology Corporation and later Adobe, is a professional document system for creating large, complex documents with highly structured layout. It was often accompanied by FrameReader.

• 2.x
• 4.x

FreeHand (1988) 13 Graphics Publishing MacOS

FreeHand is a vector based drawing program used to create illustrations. It is similar to CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Initially it offered more features and flexibility than illustrator. It was created by Altsys, sold through Aldus, then sold to Macromedia, and then finally was assimilated by Adobe. Later versions repositioned itself as a content creation system for the web through Flash. The final version was Freehand MX (version 11) in 2003.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Hayden Ensemble (1985) 1 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Database MacOS

Ensemble, created by Controle X and published by Hayden Software, is an integrated office suite that includes Spreadsheet, Graphing, Word Processing, and Database functionality. It was notable as claiming to be the first integrated suite on the Macintosh, before Lotus Jazz or Microsoft Works as well as its ability to run on both the Mac 512k and the original Mac 128k.

• 1.0

Lotus Jazz (1985) 3 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Communications Database MacOS

Lotus Jazz was a heavily marketed all-in-one integrated office suite that included a word processor, spreadsheet, graphing, database, and communications program. Jazz was targeted as a universal solution for all office workers. Although at release, the program was exclusively for the Apple Macintosh 512k. Despite the marketing effort, it flopped miserably. Although it was from Lotus, the spreadsheet was not related to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft Works.

• 1.x

MacWrite (1984) 22 Word Processor MacOS

MacWrite was one of two applications released with the Apple Macintosh in 1984 - the other being MacPaint. These applications defined the Macintosh, and helped define what users expected from GUI applications.

• 1.0
• 2.20
• 4.x
• 5.0
• II (1989)
• Pro 1.x

Microsoft Creative Writer (1994) 14 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

PageMaker (1987) 71 Publishing Windows MacOS

Aldus PageMaker, later Adobe PageMaker, is a desktop publishing program for Mac and Windows. First released in 1985, PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program for the Macintosh. It was followed over a year later with the release of 1.0 for the IBM PC. The PC version was a notable application as it was one of the few rare applications which would run under Windows 1.x. PC PageMaker 1.0 bundled a runtime version of Windows. This enabled MS-DOS users who had not decided to buy Windows to run PageMaker. Aldus skipped version 2.0 on the PC to bring version number in sync with the 3.0 Mac product.

• 5.0

QuarkXPress (1986) 19 Publishing MacOS

QuarkXPress was THE standard publishing software during the 1990s. However it failed to update its product line to newer technologies in a timely manager, charged insane amounts for updates or additional features that should have been built in to the software, and became very abusive to their customers. Later versions required a parallel port/ADB copy protection dongle. They lost most of their market share to Adobe InDesign.

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• 2.x

Ready Set GO (1986) 6 Publishing MacOS

Ready Set GO, from Manhattan Graphics Corporation, is a desktop publishing program for the Apple Macintosh. It competed against Mac Publisher, Scoop, Quark Xpress, and PageMaker.

• 3
• 4.5
• 6.0

Valdocs (1984) 16 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Communications CPM

Valdocs is an office suite that was bundled with the Epson QX-10 (and later QX-16) Z80 based computer. It was "WYSIWYG" in that it could display different fonts of different sizes in the editor on the screen. It could also embed images in the document, and print the document to a graphics printer.

• 2.00
• Plus
• Plus III

Ventura Publisher (1986) 17 Publishing MacOS

Ventura Publisher, originally from Xerox, is a professional desktop publishing program for the GEM graphical environment and later Windows. It has the distinction of being the first popular publishing program for the IBM PC platform. It competed with Aldus PageMaker, which initially was more popular on the Mac platform. There are also versions for Mac and OS/2.

• 3.x for Macintosh

WordMaster 1 Editor CPM

WordMaster is a low-cost but powerful text editor for CP/M-80. This product pre-dated WordStar, but was only designed as a text editor, not a full blown word processor.

• 1.x

WordStar (1981) 71 Word Processor CPM DOS

WordStar, originally from MicroPro, was a popular word processor during the early 80s. It was ported to a number of CP/M architectures as well as Unix and PC/MS-DOS. It competed directly against many word processors, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word for DOS, and Multimate. By the late 80s most business word processing had moved to WordPerfect. In the early 90s, Microsoft Word for Windows took over.

• 2.x
• 3.00
• 4.0