MacroMind was an
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 ...
software company founded in
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
in 1984 by
Marc Canter,
Jamie Fenton and Mark Stephen Pierce. The company's first product was SoundVision, a combined music and graphics editor. Before the release, the graphics editor was removed, and SoundVision became MusicWorks and the animation creativity tool
VideoWorks (which later became
Director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
). Along with other early programs, MusicWorks and VideoWorks were originally published and distributed by Hayden Software.
In 1988 the company moved to
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, and in 1991 MacroMind merged with
Paracomp to become MacroMind–Paracomp, then in 1992 merged with
Authorware Inc., forming
Macromedia
Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...
.
Products
*MusicWorks (1984) - music composer
*
VideoWorks (1985), VideoWorks II (1987) and VideoWorks Interactive - multimedia animation software
*Art Grabber/Body Shop (1985) -
clip art
Clip art (also clipart, clip-art) is a type of graphic art. Pieces are pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively and comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is creat ...
software
*Comic Works/Graphic Works -
object based An object-based language is a programming language that provides a construct to encapsulate state and behavior as an object. A language that also supports inheritance or subtyping is classified as object-oriented. Even though object-oriented seems l ...
paint program
*VideoWorks accelerator - animation compiler for VideoWorks files
*MazeWars+ (1987) - multiplayer network game based on the classic ''
Maze War
''Maze'', also known as ''Maze War'', is a 3D multiplayer first-person shooter maze game originally developed in 1973 and expanded in 1974. The first version was developed by high school students Steve Colley, Greg Thompson, and Howard Palmer fo ...
''
*
Director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
(1987) - new name for VideoWorks II
*Director 2 (1988) - VideoWorks Interactive when released as a commercial product
*Director 2.2 (1989 - Introduction of
Lingo (programming language)
Lingo is a verbose object-oriented programming, object-oriented (OO) scripting language developed by John Thompson (inventor), John H. Thompson for use in Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director). Lingo is used to develop desktop application s ...
, an extensible animation scripting language
*Director 3 (1989), and introduction of
XObjects
*Three-D (1990)
Screenshot of MacroMind 3D
/ref> - 3D modeling and animation software
*MacroModel
* Renderworks (1990) - rendering software for Three-D files
* Fireworks (1990) - post-production software for Renderworks renderings
*Mouse Practice
''Mouse Practice'' was a Game based learning, game-based computer tutorial aimed at teaching new User (computing), users how to operate a computer Mouse (computing), mouse at a time when many were unfamiliar with this feature of a computer.
Mous ...
(1992) – a tutorial on how to use the mouse where the user controls a scuba diver
See also
* Marc Canter - CEO and co-founder of MacroMind
References
External links
Mark Stephen Pierce's resumeComputer chronicles: Desktop Publishing #1 (11/2/1986)
- demo of desktop publishing software including MacroMind Comic Works
Macintosh software companies
Defunct software companies of the United States
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