2014.08 News: Out of the Closet

A little warmup for Nostalgia Night. Remember MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint, etc.? They came with the original Macintosh computer in 1984 and were simply Apple products. In 1987, Apple created a software division called Claris, which assumed control of these signature programs as well as the new AppleWorks integrated program, soon rebranded as ClarisWorks. (It eventually reverted to its original name and owner.) In 1988, Claris acquired a database-management program called FileMaker from Nashoba Systems; it too was the beneficiary of substantial upgrading. Thru the 1990s, FileMaker was the only Claris product that managed to hold its own in the face of increasing market domination by Microsoft, and by 1998 Claris had ended support for everything but FileMaker and renamed itself FileMaker Inc.

It was still a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, but that aspect had been soft-pedaled since the release of the Windows-compatible FileMaker Pro 2 in 1992. The company knew that Windows had huge market share that it wanted to tap into, and it didn't want Microsoft snobs shopping elsewhere for no better reason than that FileMaker came from Apple.

That decision was made nearly a quarter century ago, and FileMaker has, ever since, presented itself publicly as just another software company, albeit one with a sterling reputation for quality, reliability, user-friendliness, regular updates, and 99% cross-platform compatibility. You can develop FMP databases on either Macs or Windows computers, and they'll run almost identically on the other platform.

But now, ever so softly, with Apple having been in the top 5 most admired brands in the world for over a decade, the company's coming out of the closet: