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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1571
'A brief history of ClarisWorks' and other tales
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
January 22nd 2003
A former insider talks about CW, Gobe and AppleWorks
To more than a few people, Bob Hearns is something of a living legend -- he and Scott
Holdaway created ClarisWorks (CW). Of practical import to us today is Hearns' effort
to record his role in the creation of the application and the people who were
instrumental thereupon.
>From the heady days of the "terminator" project, when two men set out to take M$'
>Office, to the abject failure of Apple's OpenDoc ? at time when CW was a US$100
>million a year product ? Bob's A Brief History of ClarisWorks website gives an
>insider's account of how an application many people take for granted (that's how good
>it is and still is) came into being.
Fast forward
Though Hearns has been out-of-the-loop since he left Claris after v4.0 of the namesake
productivity suite shipped -- he's currently working on a graduate degree in
Artificial Intelligence at MIT -- he has kept in touch with his former ClarisWorks'
co-creators and co-workers, and even rejoined the "team" to work on Gobe, which ran on
Be OS -- itself once the object of Apple's acquisitive gaze.
Hearns has confirmed that Gobe coders are indeed working now for Apple. Unfortunately,
he can't offer us any insight on what it is they're doing.
"Apple and Gobe did indeed discuss possibilities at various points in Gobe's history;
however, I am not at liberty to go into details," he states. "Apple did not in the end
acquire Gobe as such, but three of its founders -- Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and
Carl Grice -- did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed."
Fact: Did you know that at one point ClarisWorks was outselling M$ Works?
Hearns does say that whatever this potentially awesome trio is up to, it doesn't
involved the Gobe codebase, which squelches my earlier posit that that app is basis
for the next version of Cupertino's productivity suite. So, if their is an AppleWorks
lurking somewhere in the halls of 1 Infinite Loop it's inspiration isn't erstwhile Be
OS app.
However, I'll speculate that Keynote could very well be a product of the returnee's
labors and that something even more awesome, called AppleWorks 7 or not, is yet to
come. The timing of their arrival at Apple and his Steveness' statement that he's been
using Keynote for a year cinches it for me (well, almost).
What's you take? Will there be an AppleWorks 7 or is yet another "insanely great"
application awaiting our instant acclaim in Cupertino's labs?
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