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How do you measure best? Based on usage, sales, or fraction of published text created - Wordperfect or Wordstar were way ahead of MacWrite. MacWrite was the b
by jpadkins 2y ago
How do you measure best?
Based on usage, sales, or fraction of published text created - Wordperfect or Wordstar were way ahead of MacWrite.
MacWrite was the best in a niche market of personal newsletters that wanted graphical elements. More professional desktop publishers used Aldus PageMaker.
And big publishing houses didn't use PCs or software, they used offset lithography presses.
- philistine 2y agoIt's like you decided to completely disregard that the successor of MacWrite ended up completely eating all the use cases for making documents outside of the large-scale professional uses. MacWrite begat Microsoft Word 3.01, which is when Word overtook MacWrite on Mac and became truly competitive with WordPerfect on DOS.
- jpadkins 2y agoSo your basis for saying "one of the best word processing products at the time." is that a different company made a different product inspired by it (and WordPerfect)? I don't think that is a persuasive argument. If you said MacWrite was an innovative word processor, I would not have replied. Most innovative is not always the best product at the time.
- runjake 2y agoYou're replying to a commenter here, not the OP. I am the actual OP. If you're concerned by my use of the word "best", please replace that word with "innovative for consumers". If you have an issue with this new wording, then we'll have to agree to disagree. While MacWrite may or may not have been "niche" as you said, it most definitely heavily influenced another "niche" word processor available today: Microsoft Word. Word for Mac (1985) was the first graphical version of Word and it was heavily inspired by MacWrite.
- philistine 2y agoOP to the rescue!
- jpadkins 2y ago100% agreed on "innovative for consumers". carry on :-)
- pjmlp 2y agoExcept if we disregard the tiny market share Apple enjoyed across the globe in those days.