Wingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, NeXTSTEP and several other commercial flavors of Unix. In spite of many positive reviews, including one calling it "clearly the spreadsheet of the future", the market was rapidly entrenching Microsoft Excel. Informix eventually gave up on the desktop market and reverted solely to database sales in the mid-1990s. Claris licensed and sold an extensively cleaned up version as Claris Resolve in 1991, 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 [like Excel]".

Features

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 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 Lotus 1-2-3 for Macintosh.

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 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.

A more hidden feature was HyperScript, a macro-programming language deliberately modelled on HyperCard's HyperTalk. HyperScript allowed even new users to write fairly powerful macros, which could include user-interface features such as buttons and dialog boxes. By this time Excel was entrenched, and sales of Resolve were tiny. Claris never released a Resolve-MacWrite-Claris Impact bundle, and so were unable to gain a foothold in the high-end market now dominated by Microsoft Office. They eventually cancelled development in 1993, ending sales in 1994.

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 against MS Office. The ClarisImpact program was released much later than ClarisOffice and was never included as part of the suite.

Reception

MacUser in June 1989 gave Wingz 1.0 for Macintosh a 5 mice (out of 5) rating.

See also

  • Microsoft Excel – industry standard spreadsheet application
  • Numbers (spreadsheet) – Apple Inc.'s spreadsheet application

References

  • WingZ – Linux port
  • WingZ – introduction to spreadsheets