MacProject was a

project management Project management is the process of supervising the work of a Project team, team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project initiation documentation, project documentation, crea ...

and scheduling business application released along with the first

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

systems in 1984. MacProject was one of the first major business tools for the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

which enabled users to calculate the "critical path" to completion and estimate costs in terms of money and time. If a project deadline was missed or if available resources changed, MacProject recalculated everything automatically. MacProject was written by Debra Willrett at Solosoft, and was published and distributed by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

to promote the original Macintosh personal computer. It was developed from an earlier application written by Debra Willrett for Apple's Lisa computer, LisaProject. This was the first

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) for project management. There were many other project management applications on the market at the time, but LisaProject was the first to simplify the process by allowing the user to interactively draw their project on the computer in the form of a

PERT Pert or PERT may refer to: Ships * - see List of United States Navy ships: P * , a World War II corvette, originally HMS ''Nepeta'' * Pert (sidewheeler), ''Pert'' (sidewheeler), a 19th-century steamboat that operated in British Columbia, Canada ...

chart. Constraints could be entered for each task, and the relationships between tasks would show which ones had to be completed before a task could begin. Given the task constraints and relationships, a "critical path", schedule and budget could be calculated dynamically using heuristic methods. One of the early proponents of MacProject was James Halcomb, a well known expert in the use of the

Critical Path Method The critical path method (CPM), or critical path analysis (CPA), is an algorithm for schedule (project management), scheduling a set of project activities. A critical path is determined by identifying the longest stretch of dependent activiti ...

. Having supervised hand-drawn network diagrams for countless complex projects, Halcomb immediately recognized the promise of the

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

graphical interface and computerized calculation of the critical path. Using a Lisa computer housed in a case designed to fit under an airplane seat, Mr. Halcomb traveled the United States demonstrating this new technology in his CPM courses. In consultation with the software's developers he authored the book ''Planning Big with MacProject'', which introduced a generation of Mac users to

and CPM. In December 1987, an updated version of MacProject, called MacProject II, was introduced as a part of Claris's move to update its suite of Mac office applications. In 1991,

Microsoft Project Microsoft Project is a project management software product, developed and sold by Microsoft. It is designed to assist a project manager in developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyz ...

was ported to the Macintosh from

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and became MacProject's main competitor. However, after the release of version 3.0 of Microsoft Project in 1993, Microsoft terminated support for the Macintosh release. MacProject 1.0 is not Y2K-compliant as it cannot schedule tasks past 1999.

References

TidBits reviews September 1993

External links

{{Apple software 1984 software Classic Mac OS-only software made by Apple Inc. Project management software Discontinued software

See also

References

External links