I had been permanent at StyleWare for a few months, and we went to AppleFest, a trade show in Boston dedicated to the Apple II. We had found out a few days before we left that we had been acquired by Claris Corporation, but we were not allowed to talk about it.

The show ran Thursday through Sunday. Sunday afternoon about 3:00, I was running the booth. The show closed at 5:00, and was already winding down. The booth next to us had been playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” over and over and over again (evidently, they were a sound editing company, and were hyping the S in GS, which stood for Graphics and Sound).

So I was bored and annoyed and tired. A man in a suit nicer than mine came up to me. He was middle-aged, and cheerful. He had me show my demo.

He then said, “What’s your name?”

I told him. Then he continued,

“I’m Tim Johnson, and I work for WordPerfect.”

An aside: GSWorks, in the About… menu, displayed a dialog box with all of the developers’ names in it. Our president had managed to score a copy of WordPerfect IIGS. There were no developer names in their About Box. He did find the names, however. Programs on the IIGS were divided into segments for reasons that are too arcane for this blog. Our segments had names like “WP” (Word Processor) or “SS” (Spreadsheet), other utilitarian names like “DRIVER”. The developers for WordPerfect had hidden their names with segment names “DAVE”, “JOHN”, and “RAHUL”. Nice company, that.

I looked at him in the eye. “Oh, OK. Aren’t y’all doing a WYSIWYG version of that for the GS?”

“Yes, we are. Would you like to join us and work on it?”

Blink. Wait a minute…

“You are recruiting me for a job? Here on the show floor?”

“Well, frankly, yes!”

I paused. “Where are you located?”

“Provo, Utah”

It was hard to have a poker face. That is not a place I had ever considered living. I still am not interested in living there 30 years later.

“How many on your team?” I asked, while I tried to figure out how to say “No.”

“We have 3 now, but we just lost two, and are hoping to replace them soon. Which is why I am talking to you,” he said, smiling, while putting his hands in his pockets.

“And what is your position?”

“I am Director of Graphical Products,” he said, proudly.

I paused, trying to look thoughtful.

I said, “Well, I am hoping that after the IIGS runs its course, I can work on the Mac. I don’t really enjoy programming for the Apple II. I don’t think I want to move to Provo to work on the Apple IIGS.”

He whipped a card out of his pocket.

“Well, if you change your mind, call me and let me know.”

“OK, and thank you.”

Gotta admit; that took some guts. He must have been scouting for a while, waiting until I was alone in the booth.

Oh, and by 5:00, everybody had returned to the booth. The show closed (they announced it on the PA), and the guy with the stereo turned it up louder! The four of us programmers went over and asked the guy to turn it off. He said no! It’s a party! One of my buddies actually threatened physical violence. The guy thought it was a joke, but we all took as threatening stances as four sun-starved, shaggy, nerdy programmers could possibly take, and he finally backed down and turned the music off. Everybody around us cheered.

I still can’t listen to that song.

StyleWare was your classic startup slog. Way too much work. Very young brilliant programmers. Many soap operas of people in the sphere of StyleWare. Not much sleep; lot’s of junk food. A disastrous beach weekend. Some friendships lost. Some friendships made. This is not a blog about all of that.

What we produced was an integrated package for the Apple IIGS that had a word processor, database, spreadsheet, graphics program, page layout program, and a modem terminal, all integrated together. It used the brand new graphical OS, called GS OS. It was actually a pretty monumental achievement, especially since it was written in assembly language. The team at large had started on this project in July or August 1987. I joined in December. By March, there was (barely) enough functionality to start being able to demo pieces of it. Our boss kept saying, “We’ll be done in 2-3 weeks”, but that went on for months. We did not have vacation time, although two of the fellows took a few days each to get married.

On June 14, we were called into a company meeting, where it was announced that StyleWare, Inc., had been acquired by Claris Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer. It was undetermined at that point what else was going to happen, but the next day, the president and the other two founders had nice new cars.

We were going to AppleFest in Boston, a consumer trade show highlighting the Apple II. We weren’t allowed to tell anybody there about the acquisition, and were cautioned that talking about it on the plane or in restaurants could be a problem, as you never knew who was listening.

I was doing new builds for the show floor every night. I was fixing my own bugs, and having programmers dictate changes over the phone to me at night. Then I would build, test, and make new floppies to copy the software the next morning. Internet sure would have made that easier.

At some point, we found out that the president of StyleWare had received an invite to a party hosted by Apple. We knew he wasn’t going to go. So four of us showed up. The lady at the  door did not want to less us in. But we persisted.

“Hey, we are from StyleWare. You know who that is?”

“Yes”

“So you know we are one big happy family now?”

She sighed look at her feet, and said, “Fine. Here. Go. And don’t tell anybody I let you in.”

First time I ever crashed a party.

About a week after AppleFest was over, I got my job offer from Claris. It was a dramatic raise, but it required moving to Silicon Valley, as Claris was in Mountain View. That was OK with me. Of course, some things don’t change; I took home less from my paycheck after bills and taxes than I did in Houston… Oh, well. I took the job, because, well,  what was my alternative? I could have called the oil company guy for the position in Boulder, but it had been six months. Digital did not return my calls. There was nothing else in Houston. I did not know enough to know that all I had to do was get to San Jose, and I would find a job, but Claris got me there anyway, and that was good.

GSWorks was renamed AppleWorks GS, and we eventually shipped 3 versions, but the Apple II was near the end of its life, so it was not as successful as anybody hoped. Plus, the first version was very buggy and slow, and it never recovered from the ill-will that generated.

I will leave the rest of the story of AppleWorks GS and Claris Works to this article, written by a coworker, classmate, and friend.

I ended up working on FileMaker Pro. It was a great job for many years, and I was lucky to get it.