The prominent, three-syllable name that starts with an M is synonymous with the start of personal computing. It has come to dominate several industry categories in both hardware and software. And its legendary chairman is a veritable household word. Given the height of its growing popularity, several Puget Sound companies are today surfing the curl of its gigantic wake. The name? Why, Macintosh, of course!
Three Northwest companies – Seattle’s Omni Group, a maverick startup called Delicious Monster, and Portland’s You Software are all experiencing an Apple Macintosh revival of sorts in the heart of “Microsoft country,” the Pacific Northwest.
In the case of The Omni Group, the resurgence began with OS X, the Unix engine powering today’s Mac operating system. When Omni Group co-founder Ken Case started coding at the UW he was all of 14 years old. Teaming with future partner Will Shipley, a fellow U student, then age 15, the two found their way into an array of scintillating projects on the Next platform including a multi-player role game called Omni.
The Omni Group was born and soon therafter the OmniWeb browser, the first Internet browser to be born and bred in the Puget Sound, if not the West, predating Internet Explorer and even Navigator by several years. Other hot-titles like OmniGraffle, a Visio-like charting program, and OmniOutliner soon followed. Today, the Omni Group ships a variety of best-selling Mac titles from its HQ in U. Village just off the Burke-Gillman trail. Besides Ken, the Case family of wizards includes bother Len and sister Lisa Lowe, one of the original founders of Wizards of the Coast which created “Magic the Gathering.” The current version of OmniWeb lets users create “Workspaces” of related windows, graphic tabs and saved browsing sessions. Too cool!
Partner Will Shipley, who co-managed Omni Group for nearly a decade, is another Northwest original. Shipley’s current company, called Delicious Monster won the Showtime Award at last month’s MacWorld conference in SFO. It’s a one-of-a-kind, life-like database program for collectors of CD’s, books and DVDs that displays these products on wooden library shelves- cover art and all — just as they appear on Amazon.com, which is where the images and data come from. A veritable “Wherehouse in a Box” for Mac movie and music fans.
The Mac faithful will always remember Now Software, the Portland company that produced one of the platform’s first contact managers, datebooks and utility packages. A dozen years later, now on a whole new Unix platform, the founder of Now and Extensis Software is back. He is Craig Barnes and You Software, his latest incarnation, has just debuted a suite of products that puts Mac users back in control of their desktops in bright, new ways. Watch news headlines stream across your menu bar, alternate themes desktops, access iTune’s from any corner of your screen with You Control, or, for Windows Users, cut through email overload and make Outlook work the way you want it to with You Perform.
Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit (MBU) is no longer the only Mac show in town, even if it is the m-ightest! [24×7]
