Metaphor Computer Systems (1982–1994) was an American computer company that created an advanced

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workst ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

gateway, unique graphical office interface, and software applications that "seamlessly integrate" data from both internal and external sources. The Metaphor machine was one of the first commercial workstations to offer a complete hardware/software package and a GUI, including "a wireless mouse and a wireless five-function key pad". Although the company achieved some commercial success, it never achieved the fame of either the

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

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

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

History

David Liddle David Liddle is co-founder of Interval Research Corporation, consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University. While at Xerox PARC he was credited with heading development of the Xerox Star computer system. In 1982 he co-founded Meta ...

and Donald Massaro founded Metaphor in 1982 after leaving

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

. By 1987, the company had an annual revenue of $39.7 million. In 1991, IBM, one of its primary customers, acquired the company outright.

Patriot Partners

Metaphor and IBM created a venture called Patriot Partners in 1990, the same year Metaphor ceased selling its own hardware and instead "market Metaphor's business analysis software for use on" the IBM PS/2. The attempt was to create an organization that could produce a solid business line of object-oriented software. Rather than capitalize the venture, IBM purchased the Metaphor software division in 1991 and operated it as a wholly owned, independent subsidiary, and the hardware and field repair division was spun off into its own company, Sequence Support Services. In May 1992, Sequence Support Services ceased operations. In October 1994, Metaphor ceased operations.

Meta5

In March 2000, IBM licensed the Metaphor IBM Intelligent Decision Server (IDS) technology to Relational Development Systems (RDS), which was renamed Meta5.

Product overview

Hardware

Released in September 1984, the Metaphor workstation had infrared wireless input devices: keyboard, mouse, numeric pad, and five-function keypad. This was the first commercial appearance of a cordless mouse. The input devices docked in the desktop workstation where they were recharged. Objects on the desktop and open applications had a uniform command set that could be controlled by the keypad which had Copy, Move, Delete, Options, and Size. The workstations were

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...

-based, networked with

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

, and contained 1 MB RAM. The industrial design of the workstation was done by Mike Nuttall of Matrix Product Design. It won a gold medal from the IDSA. The workstation itself was engineered by James Yurchenco at David Kelley Design. Both Matrix and David Kelley Design were precursors of

IDEO IDEO () is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, enviro ...

. Two different workstations models were produced. Workstation One had an external electronics enclosure. Workstation Two had integrated electronics. Workstation Three, which included a color screen, was designed through final prototypes, but was never taken into production. In August 1988, the Workstation 2XP was released which adapted a standard PC into a Metaphor workstation using a 68000-based co-processor card with 2 MB RAM, Ethernet adapter, three-button mouse, and 15-inch color monitor. Metaphor released

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors Alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian ( Latin: ''altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In 4-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruse ...

, widely shown in 1979. The Alto was the first computer with a bitmap display, mouse and a

desktop metaphor In computing, the desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact more easily with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the computer monitor as if it is ...

as a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI). Xerox commercialized it as the

Xerox Star The Xerox Star workstation, officially named Xerox 8010 Information System, is the first commercial personal computer to incorporate technologies that have since become standard in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window-based ...

DIS

The Metaphor GUI provided a unique visualization of end-to-end elements in an enterprise. In total, Metaphor branded this as a Data Interpretation System (DIS), which is a class of Decision Support System (DSS) The DIS software was designed to show in one workflow, the access of data from SQL databases, its analysis and then its presentation. This was accomplish by using graphically iconic applications for database gateway, spreadsheet, plot, email, and printing tools all connected by arrows. These were animated when the workflow ran. The workflow collection was called a Capsule.

Capsule

The heart of the Metaphor DIS system was the Capsule. Basically, a capsule was a simplified BATCH program. Because Metaphor applications were built so they communicated with each other, they could be moved into a folder and automated in a "Capsule". (The name was taken from the manned space capsules of the time.) The functionality of the Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Data Retrieval tools were no better than their Microsoft Office counterparts (in fact, they had a smaller sub-set of features than Office). The primary advantage of Metaphor's system was the degree to which applications were linked together. Complex reiterative data-retrieval jobs were able to be created on-the-fly by a user with no programming knowledge. A user could visually drag fields from multiple databases into the Data Retrieval tool (which would generate its own SQL code based on the fields, links and criteria displayed) and send the output directly into a spreadsheet for sorting, calculations, and graphs. The report could then be sent into a pre-formatted Word Processing document, sent to the printer, and even e-mailed to a pre-designated distribution list. The whole process would repeat for each SKU, Region, Price Code, etc. without any human interaction.