Claris

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Claris

Type	Subsidiary of Apple Computer (now FileMaker Inc.)
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California
Key people	Bill Campbell, CEO and President; Yogen Dalal, VP R&D; John Zeisler, VP Marketing; Bruce Chizen, VP Sales; Donna Dubinsky, VP International; Randy Komisar, VP, Corporate Counsel; Dan McCammon, CFO
Industry	Computer software
Products	Claris Em@iler, ClarisWorks, ClarisDraw, Claris Resolve, Claris Impact, FileMaker, MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject
Employees	300
Slogan	Simply, powerful software
Website	www.claris.com (Wayback Machine archive)

Claris was a computer software company formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) in 1987. They were given the code and rights to several programs that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's software and hardware divisions. Over the next few years the company would be variously pushed and pulled in different directions, before eventually divesting themselves of all of their products but one, and reforming as FileMaker Inc.

1 History
2 Products
3 The end of Claris
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

During the early days of the Macintosh computer, Apple shipped the machines with two basic programs, MacWrite and MacPaint, so that users would have a working machine "out of the box." However, this resulted in complaints from third party developers, who felt that these programs were good enough for so many users that there was little reason to buy something better. Apple decided to allow the programs to "wither," so that the third party developers would have a market to sell into.

Unfortunately the developers didn't seem to hold up their end of the bargain, and it was some time before truly capable replacements came along. In the meantime users complained about the lack of upgrades, while the third party developers continued to complain about any possibility of an upgrade.

Eventually Apple decided the only solution was to spin off the products to a third party of their own creation, forming Claris in 1987. Claris was also given the rights to several lesser-known Apple products such as MacProject, MacDraw and MacWorks. A new corporate headquarters was eventually built in Santa Clara, about six miles from the main Apple campus.

At first Claris seemed to have the same problems as Apple with the products. Upgrades were trivial, limited to simply making the program continue to run on newer versions of the Macintosh operating system. Things changed dramatically in 1988 when Claris purchased Nashoba Systems to gain access to their product, FileMaker. After a number of upgrades it was re-introduced into the market as FileMaker II, and was a huge success.

Claris' headquarters nicknamed 'The Wedge' used in early 1990s

In 1990, Apple decided that the now-successful Claris should remain a wholly owned subsidiary, as opposed to eventually being spun off. This was unexpected by many of the managers, who were expecting an initial public offering and a big payoff. The company president soon left, and over the next year most of the other executives followed suit.

That same year Claris also purchased an integrated application written by two former Claris employees. After rebranding in a style similar to FileMaker, MacDraw and MacWrite, it was released in 1991 as ClarisWorks, and became another huge success for the company. After a lengthy series of ups and downs, this product was eventually taken back by Apple in 1998 and rebranded as AppleWorks.

[edit] Products

In the later 1980s Claris began a major upgrade effort, re-writing all of their products to use a more modern and common user interface based on FileMaker. The result was the "Pro" series, MacPaint Pro, MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro and FileMaker Pro. In order to provide a complete office suite they also purchased the rights to the Informix WingZ spreadsheet on the Mac, re-branding it as Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation program Claris Impact.

The series was released piecemeal over a period of about two years, during which period Microsoft was able to dominate the market with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. While the Claris packages were arguably much more "approachable" than the Microsoft applications, the Claris software applications lacked some features of the now mature Microsoft suite, leaving them lacking in "checkbox features." Their value was further eroded by aggressive bundling deals from Microsoft that could allow Word, Excel and PowerPoint to be purchased for a cost not much higher than MacWrite alone, a bundle that Claris did not match. Claris did offer ClarisWorks, an all-in-one package, and while the price was right it was very limited and could not compete in the business market. Microsoft also released a Works package.

Microsoft's domination of the Macintosh office suite software marketplace would be replicated five years later when (following the release of Windows 95), Microsoft Office crushed its two main rivals in Windows software: the WordPerfect/Quattro Pro suite and the Lotus SmartSuite.

In the late 1980s, Apple upper management decided that all Apple software should be released through Claris, forcing them to take on HyperCard and the distribution of the Mac OS itself. This proved to be a disaster, the OS was soon returned to Apple, and HyperCard was almost destroyed in the process.

In 1994, Claris published Amazing Animation, software aimed at children and young teenagers, allowing them to produce their own short animated films.

In 1995 Claris purchased and released Claris Homepage, which enjoyed popularity as one of the few truly GUI-based WYSIWYG HTML editors of the time.

Other products added to the line included Claris Em@iler, Claris OfficeMail, and Claris Organizer. These products were part of a new effort to diversify Claris and no longer chase the "office" market, which by this point was considered a lost cause.

[edit] The end of Claris

By the mid-'90s it appeared to most observers that Apple was in serious danger of disappearing. The main ClarisWorks development team left Claris, disillusioned with the product and the market, and founded Gobe Software, who produced a Claris-like office suite for the then-new BeOS.

Facing declining sales, Claris management decided that FileMaker was the only product worth keeping, and put all of the rest of the products on indefinite hold. By 1998 the transition was complete and the company renamed itself as FileMaker Inc. Their only other major product, ClarisWorks, was taken back by Apple to become AppleWorks. The company kept FileMaker and Claris HomePage 3.0. The latter was discontinued in 2001 and FileMaker is the only product left today (as of 2007).