I had an Apple ImageWriter II printer as part of this setup. We used AppleWorks in school and it was a surprisingly rich little package with a number of expansion tools made available by third parties. At any rate, Apple’s integrated word processor, database, and spreadsheet suite was the thing to use at this point. (Screenshot courtesy of Paul Ford.)ĪppleWorks on the enhanced Apple IIe (1986) - What an odd move! I sold my Amiga and went back to the Apple II! It was Apple Garamond that made me do it. It was a proper word processor, rather basic, but it helped me get the schoolwork done. Finally I got Textcraft, made by Arktronix (who created the notable but unsuccessful windowed word processor suite, Jane). I had two different printers hanging off of my A1000 (an Epson LX-80 and a color Okimate 20) and for many months my only “word processor” was the extremely basic Notepad bundled with AmigaDOS.
#APPLE WORD PROCESSING SOFTWARE SOFTWARE#
Textcraft on the Amiga 1000 (1986) - To say that software was slow to come for the Amiga after its late 1985 launch is an understatement. I even made some money doing page layout for students with that LC, MacWrite, and my StyleWriter printer. I never even had a printer hooked to that Mac! In the early ’90s I bought a Macintosh LC and used a much later version of MacWrite on that machine during part of college. I never did any real word processing on the Mac, however, because a week after getting it I saw an Amiga 1000 on display at the local computer shop, returned the Mac, and put an order in for the Amiga. I finally got a Macintosh, and it came with MacWrite and MacPaint. MacWrite on a Macintosh 128K (1985) - Now this is where I was trying to be, using MultiScribe on the //c. (Screenshot shows another document I recently found on my 32-year-old Apple Writer II data disk.) As such, I didn’t get much serious work done with this one. Its output to a dot-matrix printer was pretty rough looking, however. I was lusting for a Macintosh at the time and this felt like something of a bridge to that world of bitmap graphics and fancy fonts. MultiScribe on the Apple //c (1985) - After getting a mouse for the //c, I was able run StyleWare’s new MultiScribe WYSIWYG word processor.
(Screenshot shows a document I recently found on my 32-year-old Apple Writer II data disk.) And it had 80 column text! The go-to word processor at that time was Apple Writer II, which was simple but functional - a dream compared to TI Writer! I had an Apple ImageWriter printer for output. (Screenshot shows the first 1/3 of the 80-column sample document I created for this post.)Īpple Writer II on the Apple //c (1984) - My next computer was the Apple //c which I got right after it launched in early 1984. I had a Smith-Corona TP-1 daisywheel printer hanging off of that board’s parallel port and became one of the very first kids in my class to hand work in done on a home computer. The TI could only generate a 40-column display, but TI Writer delivered a virtual 80-column page that could be viewed using a left, middle, and right panning window - a bit cumbersome, indeed. Wanting to start using a word processor for my school reports (6th grade), I made the obvious choice to go with TI Writer, a combination cartridge and disk program that output to a printer tied to the RS-232 interface card (if you had one). TI Writer on the TI-99/4A (1983) - My first computer, the TI-99/4A, was nice for games and educational programs, but wasn’t the ideal word processing platform. (I should underscore the fact that this post is not meant to be a look at the overall evolution of the word processor, but a look back at my own experiences over the years.)
Reading the article, I began to reflect upon the word processors I have used over the past 35 years and it inspired me to write a little about a few of those that stand-out in my mind.
#APPLE WORD PROCESSING SOFTWARE FREE#
A few days ago I was running through twitter when I saw Peter Cohen ( link to a blog post he had written about distraction free writing and the focused simplicity of a 30 year old word processor.