Beagle Bros
| Home > Browse Our Collection > Computing Companies > Beagle Bros |
Beagle Bros was founded in 1980 by Bert Kersey, in San Diego, the primary focus was on the Apple II family of computers. Whereas most software companies focused on professional users and business systems, Kersey founded the company with the intention of capitalizing on the "hobbyist" market. It expanded over the years to include a wide variety of staff members, programmers, and designers: Alan Bird, Jack Cassidy, Mark Simonsen, Rob Renstrom, Randy Brandt, Dan Verkade, Matt Reimer, Mark Munz who developed a wide range of software: Apple Mechanic allowed users to create their own shape tables (an early form of sprites) to create their own games, DOS Boss let users patch the disk operating system, and Beagle Bag had a number of games written in BASIC that people could utilize. Beagle Bros' catalog and print advertisements featured many playful programming tips about the Apple II system, many in the form of short Applesoft BASIC programs that took advantage of undocumented or unexpected behavior. Beagle Bros used woodcut and other 19th century artwork in its printed designs. When the Apple IIgs was released, Beagle Bros was among the first companies to release content for the platform. Both Platinum Paint and BeagleWrite GS are still regarded as being among the high points of commercial Apple IIgs software. Beagle Bros began producing add-ons for the AppleWorks, its first being the MacroWorks keyboard shortcut utility by Randy Brandt. Beagle Bros programmer Alan Bird later devised an API for creating AppleWorks add-ons, which they dubbed TimeOut. TimeOut programmers Alan Bird, Randy Brandt and Rob Renstrom were hired by Claris to develop AppleWorks 3.0, and the TimeOut API itself became a part of AppleWorks with version 4.0. Eventually the TimeOut API was made public and a number of non-Beagle TimeOut applications were released. The company also produced a few small Macintosh and PC utilities. Mark Simonsen ran the company from 1985 until it closed its doors in 1991. In 1991, Mark Simonsen licensed the Beagle Bros Apple II line to Quality Computers. Quality Computers subsequently went through several acquisitions and no longer exists. Multiple Beagle Bros products were released as freeware in the mid-1990s, including most of the company's early utilities and games and are available on the Internet. BeagleWorks, the company's main Macintosh product, was licensed to WordPerfect Corporation in 1992, where it became WordPerfect Works but was discontinued after WordPerfect was acquired by Novell. Many former employees have continued to be involved in the software industry, such as Joe Holt who co-authored iMovie, and Alan Bird who worked on Eudora and the OneClick shortcut utility for Macintosh. Randy Brandt created Online Army Knife, an award-winning Macintosh spell checker, and continued publishing AppleWorks products through his JEM Software spin-off. Mark Munz created Deja ][, which allows AppleWorks to run under Mac OS X. All in all, Beagle Bros published around seventy pieces of software. More information can be found here: http://beagle.applearchives.com/software/ Hardware Products
Software Products
|
People Related to Beagle :
|
