169:; and was ready for release in late 1988. Informix wanted to enter the desktop software market with products that could link to their back-end databases, and Wingz seemed like a good fit. They purchased the product and released it largely as-is in early 1989. The release was built up by extensive promotion on the part of Informix, including giving away a then-unprecedented array of "convention swag," including high quality Wingz red canvas tradeshow bags. For nearly a year, the buildup was focused around the "Wingz Time Shuttle," an enclosed theatre which traveled MacWorlds in 1988 and 1989. The focal creatives included a video narrated by Leonard Nimoy and automated demos of the product. The video took attendees into "the future of spreadsheet design, past the legacy of failed old products ".
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graphs, and they could only be displayed in a separate view. Unlike the competitors at the time, Wingz also offered 3D graphs. Additionally Wingz made it easy to make the graphs and modify them, allowing you to see your changes in real-time directly in the spreadsheet where the changes were being made. At the time it was an "obvious" feature, but one that no other program had managed to make work correctly.
201:. HyperScript allowed even new users to write fairly powerful macros, which could include user-interface features such as buttons and dialog boxes. HyperScript 1.0 was missing some rather obvious features. For instance it could not open another spreadsheet, although it could refer to one if the user opened that for it.
177:
The most obvious feature, and the easiest to "checkbox review", was the size of the spreadsheets Wingz could process. Excel's maximum size was 256 columns by 16384 rows, while Wingz could handle spreadsheets up to 32768 in both directions. At the time spreadsheets were still being compared primarily
220:
that came out about the same time, by starting an extensive upgrade to Excel. They were soon showing it around claiming it would have all the features of Wingz — in-sheet graphics, large spreadsheets, etc. When it was finally released it was true many of these features were supported, but it
288:
Claris did offer an "Office suite", composed of MacWrite Pro, Claris
Resolve, and MacDraw Pro. Although this suite didn't include a database (e.g., Filemaker Pro) or a dedicated Desktop Presentations application, although MacDraw Pro did provide some such features, they positioned it to compete
240:
Future releases focused on bringing the product to new platforms as their GUI's matured, and adding functionality to HyperScript to allow it to directly interact with databases. Soon it was being marketed primarily as a data access tool, and eventually the name Wingz was dropped and the product
185:
Another clear difference between Wingz and Excel was Wingz' powerful graphing system, once regarded as the most powerful available in any spreadsheet. Wingz' graphing system allowed the resulting graphs to be placed directly in the spreadsheets. At the time Excel offered an anemic variety of 2D
232:
Shortly after Sippl left, Phil White, the new CEO of
Informix, announced that Informix would no longer be competing in the desktop application space. Joe Erickson, the lead developer of the Smart Spreadsheet, Wingz, Formula One VBX, Formula One ActiveX, Formula One for Java and
224:
It was only a short period of time before a Wingz 1.1 release fixed many of these issues, but it was long enough that the product was never able to regain its momentum. It also seemed that
Informix never really understood how to market the product, and it is likely
204:
A less hidden "feature" was that the program shipped with a number of bugs, which tainted the release. It also lacked a number of mathematical functions that Excel handled internally, and had no direct importer/exporter for Excel files.
267:'s onetime software arm, licensed Wingz in the early 1990s after Informix lost interest in the Mac market. They updated it slightly with the addition of the Claris-standard UI (toolbars, color palettes, etc.) and released it as
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on this feature. A less-obvious feature was that Wingz allowed simple in-cell editing, whereas contemporary versions of Excel forced you to use a separate data-entry bar, a feature also found on
234:
229:' played a major part in the problems as well — the purchase of Wingz and Smartware prompted Roger Sippl, one of the founders of Informix, to leave the company.
137:. In spite of many positive reviews, including one calling it "clearly the spreadsheet of the future", the market was rapidly entrenching
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against MS Office. The ClarisImpact program was released much later than ClarisOffice and was never included as part of the suite.
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in 1991. By this time Excel was entrenched, and sales of
Resolve were tiny. Claris never released a Resolve-
141:. Informix eventually gave up on the desktop market and reverted solely to database sales in the mid-1990s.
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245:. After several years of ignoring it further, it was sold off to Investment Intelligence Systems in the
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Wingz was originally written solely for the
Macintosh by Innovative Software (publishers of the
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bundle, and so were unable to gain a foothold in the high-end market now dominated by
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249:. At some unknown point Wingz was bought by a company in San Jose, CA called
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602:"Object-Oriented Spreadsheets as a Custom Software Development Environment"
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which now uses Wingz as a private base for their DataPOWER Semiconductor
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285:. They eventually cancelled development in 1993, ending sales in 1994.
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in June 1989 gave Wingz 1.0 for
Macintosh a 5 mice (out of 5) rating.
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Microsoft responded to the release of Wingz, and others such as
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in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the
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in 1991, but it was far too late to market to have any effect.
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Brian Murphy; G A Bartlett; Jane Klobas; Grant Keady (1990).
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126:
86:
78:
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in
December 1989 gave Wingz 1.1 a 7.8 (out of 10) score.
559:"Wingz Update Adds Features, Overcomes Earlier Problems"
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licensed and sold an extensively cleaned up version as
621:"Wingz for PC Offers Superb Graphics Tools, Scripting"
400:. Vol. 12, no. 22. 28 May 1990. p. 40.
580:"Spreadsheet Statistics for Teaching and Production"
411:
409:
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344:
599:
514:
404:
989:
435:
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440:Benjamin, Louis E Jr; Zilber, Jon (June 1992).
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193:-programming language deliberately modelled on
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426:. Vol. 11, no. 49. pp. S12–S13.
16:Spreadsheet program (late 1980s / early 1990s)
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515:Morganstein, David; Zilber, Jon (June 1989).
499:. Vol. 6, no. 12. pp. 180–186.
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629:. Vol. 12, no. 31. pp. 74–77.
525:. Vol. 5, no. 6. pp. 132–146.
510:
508:
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484:
482:
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463:"Re: FW: WingZ 1989 World Tour - any info?"
418:"Wingz Carries Spreadsheets to New Heights"
323:– industry standard spreadsheet application
311:gave a 6.8 (out of 10) score in July 1990.
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546:. Vol. 8, no. 3. pp. 42–43.
567:. Vol. 11, no. 47. p. S14.
189:A more hidden feature was HyperScript, a
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361:. Vol. 12, no. 26. p. 13.
133:and several other commercial flavors of
557:Miller, Michael J. (20 November 1989).
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450:. Vol. 8, no. 6. p. 32.
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350:
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353:"Windows, OS/2 Wingz Ship in One Box"
536:Benjamin, Louis E. Jr (March 1992).
380:. No. Premier. pp. 59–64.
13:
221:was not considered user-friendly.
14:
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489:Seiter, Charles (December 1989).
467:International Informix User Group
461:Balmer, Glyn (12 February 2008).
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442:"New Dimensions in Spreadsheets"
351:Darrow, Barbara (25 June 1990).
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416:Bensky, Pat (4 December 1989).
372:Webster, Bruce (January 1991).
652:– introduction to spreadsheets
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1:
392:"Wingz for Sun and Next Ship"
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307:As for the Windows version,
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7:
538:"Lotus 1-2-3 for Macintosh"
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237:, left shortly after that.
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52:; 36 years ago
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333:'s spreadsheet application
161:Suite on the PC) based in
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121:, it was later ported to
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24:
235:SpreadsheetGear for .NET
216:and the Mac version of
606:University of Maryland
600:T. C. O'Haver (1992).
167:Johnson County, Kansas
491:"Can Excel be beaten"
473:on 24 September 2015.
327:Numbers (spreadsheet)
998:Spreadsheet software
743:Proprietary freeware
695:Free and open-source
257:software packages.
30:Innovative Software
21:
977:Online spreadsheet
873:IBM Lotus Symphony
619:Walkenbach, John.
26:Original author(s)
19:
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517:"Wingz Weighs In"
243:HyperScript Tools
227:Not Invented Here
123:Microsoft Windows
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47:Initial release
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646:– Linux port
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36:Developer(s)
883:Lotus 1-2-3
853:Full Impact
818:Boeing Calc
790:Quattro Pro
716:LibreOffice
218:Lotus 1-2-3
214:Full Impact
210:Ashton-Tate
180:Lotus 1-2-3
111:spreadsheet
99:Spreadsheet
992:Categories
959:Comparison
831:StarOffice
813:As-Easy-As
808:AppleWorks
721:OpenOffice
338:References
331:Apple Inc.
918:SuperCalc
903:Multiplan
893:Lucid 3-D
846:NeoOffice
785:PlanMaker
626:InfoWorld
564:InfoWorld
423:InfoWorld
397:InfoWorld
378:NeXTWorld
358:InfoWorld
309:InfoWorld
302:InfoWorld
293:Reception
199:HyperTalk
195:HyperCard
159:SmartWare
119:Macintosh
71:Macintosh
1003:Informix
947:Category
928:VisiCalc
863:GNU Oleo
753:(online)
733:Pyspread
728:Gnumeric
496:Macworld
315:See also
275:MacWrite
173:Features
131:NeXTSTEP
115:Informix
83:NeXTSTEP
41:Informix
923:T/Maker
587:Icots 3
543:MacUser
522:MacUser
447:MacUser
298:MacUser
270:Resolve
241:became
165:within
153:History
55: (
878:KCells
767:Retail
261:Claris
163:Lenexa
143:Claris
109:was a
841:Go-oo
827:Calc
707:Calc
650:WingZ
644:WingZ
583:(PDF)
191:macro
107:Wingz
20:Wingz
971:List
913:Siag
135:Unix
127:OS/2
94:Type
87:Unix
79:OS/2
57:1988
50:1988
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329:–
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247:UK
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77:,
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672:t
665:v
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225:'
59:)
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