MacDraw is a discontinued

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display a ...

drawing application released along with the first

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

systems in 1984. MacDraw was one of the first

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

drawing programs that could be used in collaboration with

MacWrite MacWrite is a WYSIWYG word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. Together with MacPaint, it was one of the two original "killer applications" that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI i ...

. It was eventually adapted by

Claris Claris International Inc., formerly FileMaker Inc., is a computer software development company formed as a subsidiary company of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were ...

and, in the early 1990s, MacDraw Pro was released with color support. MacDraw was the vector cousin of

MacPaint MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was nota ...

. In the preface of the third edition of ''

Introduction to Algorithms ''Introduction to Algorithms'' is a book on computer programming by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. The book has been widely used as the textbook for algorithms courses at many universities and is co ...

'', the authors make an emphatic plea for the creation of an OS X-compatible version of MacDraw Pro.

Early versions

MacDraw was based on Apple's earlier program, LisaDraw, which was developed for the

Apple Lisa Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. ...

computer which was released in 1983. LisaDraw and MacDraw were developed by the same person, Mark Cutter. The first version of MacDraw was similar to that of

, featuring both the same tools and patterns. However MacDraw is vector-based, meaning that an object's properties and placement can be changed at any time. MacDraw includes features for printing and also integrates with

via cut-and-paste. MacDraw is more advanced than MacPaint, featuring a grid and the ability to change the drawing dimensions. However MacDraw lacks support for using more than one document at a time and also lacks zooming capabilities. MacDraw is especially useful in drawing

flowcharts A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task. The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of va ...

, diagrams and

technical drawing Technical drawing, drafting or drawing, is the act and Academic discipline, discipline of composing Plan (drawing), drawings that Visual communication, visually communicate how something functions or is constructed. Technical drawing is essent ...

Later incarnations

MacDraw II (1988) was a complete rewrite of the original MacDraw. It was developed at Apple by project leader Gerard Schuten and team members Amy Goldsmith and Marjory Kaptanoglu, and was released by

. MacDraw II introduced color and many other missing features and was also enhanced for the

Macintosh II The Macintosh II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1987 to January 1990. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics. When introduced, a basic sys ...

. MacDraw eventually evolved into

MacDraw Pro MacDraw is a discontinued vector graphics drawing application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacDraw was one of the first WYSIWYG drawing programs that could be used in collaboration with MacWrite. It was eventu ...

(1991) and ultimately ClarisDraw (1993). The final version of ClarisDraw was 1.0v4 (1994). It runs without difficulties on

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

-based Macs under

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

and the Mac OS X

Classic Environment This is a list of macOS built-in apps and system components. Applications App Store The Mac App Store is macOS's digital distribution platform for macOS apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. based on the iOS version, the platform was an ...

(but Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard dropped support for the Classic Environment). Dekorra Optics have a version of their

EazyDraw EazyDraw is a Mac-only vector graphics program from Dekorra Optics. It has all of the usual vector drawing tools, but also includes features not usually combined (e.g., dimension tools, numerical parametric geometry, mathematical function graphing ...

software, EazyDraw Retro, that can open documents produced by the various incarnations of MacDraw, including ClarisDraw. Later versions of Libreoffice support MacDraw files as well, but only if the file type 'Legacy Mac Drawing' is manually selected.

References

Classic Mac OS-only software made by Apple Inc. Classic Mac OS software Discontinued software 1984 software {{mac-software-stub