Rae Technology was a software company founded as a spin-off from

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

in 1992. Rae Technology was best known for its

Personal Information Manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information mana ...

Rae Assist and for being the predecessor of NetObjects After transferring new developed technology for web site design to NetObjects in 1995, Rae Technology had no further public recognition.

Roots in Apple Computer

The roots of Rae Technology reach back to the 80s at

. Samir Arora, a software engineer from India, was involved in early research in navigation applications and so-called

hypermedia Hypermedia, an extension of hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term ''multimedia'', which may include non-interactive linear ...

. Years before the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

took off and

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

emerged, developers and executives at Apple had the idea that fast and flexible access to linked data would be crucial to future computing. The famous " Knowledge Navigator" video from 1987 gives an impression of the visions at Apple labs in this time. Samir Arora worked in the office of

John Sculley John Sculley III (born April 6, 1939) is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) ...

at the time and was involved in creating the video. Samir Arora had been part of the original 4th Dimension engineering team at Apple and ran the applications tools group responsible for 4D and

Hypercard HyperCard is a application software, software application and software development kit, development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard com ...

. To manage mobile and online data access and navigation, a group of software developers, including Dave Dell'Aquila, Sal Arora, Raj Narayan and Jeet Kaul, and led by Samir Arora, created an application framework called SOLO (Structure of Linked Objects). In technical terms, SOLO was a proprietary programming language to develop sets of

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

s (APIs).Gore, Andrew, Rae architecture goes Solo, MacWeek, May 31, 1993.

Rae Technology and Rae Assist

With new applications based on SOLO on the rise, Samir Arora started Rae Technology as a spin-off from Apple. Headquarters were located on the Apple campus and the board consisted of high-ranked Apple executives. The company was run by Samir Arora as chief executive officer and President, David Kleinberg as Vice President Sales and Marketing, Dave Dell'Aquila as Vice President Products, and Dianna Mullins as Vice President Operations. In 1993, Rae Technology introduced its Rae Assist, one of the first

s (PIMs). Rae Assist would let the user organize and access personal contacts, dates, company profiles, scheduling, and linking these entries.Tessler, Franklin N., Rae Assist 1.0.2, Macworld, January 1, 1994. Between 1993 and 1995 Rae Assist was published in three versions for the Mac, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0.

Professional services

Beyond producing software, Rae Technology worked on corporate database projects for Chevron and

Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with a significant global presence. The company operates in 35 countries and serves over 70 million customers worldwide. It is a systemically important fi ...

. An online banking project at Wells Fargo gave the Rae team insight in how the Web could work for companies in the future world of Internet and browsers. The SOLO architecture seemed to be perfectly suited and to be flexible enough to address the need of building something yet new:

web sites A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, ...

. The filing of fundamental patents for web site design was in preparation.

From Rae to NetObjects

There are no publicly available balance sheets from Rae Technology but the highly competitive and rather small PIM market should not have generated a lot of income. A full license of that program was sold for $199, upgrades for $29. With patents for web site design software pending, the efforts and technology for this new kind of software were transferred {{cite web, url=http://edgar.secdatabase.com/2221/104746999015447/filing-main.htm , title=NETOBJECTS INC, Form S-1/A, Filing Date Apr 19, 1999, Patent Transfer and License Agreement , publisher=secdatabase.com , accessdate =May 14, 2018 to a new company. NetObjects was founded in 1995 and Rae Technology was its first investor with $1.5 million. The new company had the same core team that led Rae: Samir Arora, his brother Sal Arora, and David Kleinberg. Clement Mok from Studio Archetype, who had already been involved with the Wells Fargo project, was added as a designer. At the conclusion of the transaction, Rae Technology became a

Venture Capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

LLC A limited liability company (LLC) is the United States-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

but ceased to attract any further public attention though it exists as a company until today.

References

Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1992 Software companies disestablished in 1995