Berkeley Softworks
| Berkeley Softworks
|
|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1985 |
| resolution | 2003 |
| Seat | 2150 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94704, United States |
| management | Brian Dougherty |
Berkeley Softworks , later GeoWorks, was a well-known software manufacturer for many home computers in the 1980s. Berkeley Softworks became particularly well-known with the GEOS operating system, which is mainly used on 8-bit computers from the US computer manufacturer Commodore International .
In addition to the GEOS operating system, Berkeley Softworks also sold other programs such as GeoWrite , GeoPaint , GeoCalc and GeoFile . The PrintMaster program is also from Berkeley Softworks. In addition, two games from Data East were ported to the C64 . These were Karate Champ and Kung Fu Master .
history
1980 Brian Dougherty gave up a job at IBM to the Intellivision by Mattel to work. After a year he also left Matell to found Imagic with former Mattel employees . Imagic was very successful and fought for market share with Activision , but with the video game crash in the USA (1983–1985), Imagic also went bankrupt.
Brian Dougherty first founded The Softworks in 1983 in order to develop a computer system called Sky Tray with a battery manufacturer .
In 1990 the name was changed to GeoWorks and in the fall of the same year at the COMDEX in Las Vegas, GeoWorks Ensemble 1.0, a GEOS version for IBM PC compatible, was shown to the world public. This PC / GEOS graphical user interface not only won many followers but also some notable awards in the years that followed. It put Microsoft in a tight spot because it saw a threat to Works and Windows 3.1 . GeoWorks stayed strong and was even the leading operating system manufacturer for over two years. But the SDK for GEOS did not come onto the market until 1993 and PC / GEOS remained 16-bit . It was only with the 32-bit Windows 95 operating system that Microsoft was able to regain its dominance in the area of user interfaces.
GeoWorks moved from the desktop to wireless communication and services in this area at the end of the 1990s. This was followed by a short but successful period in which well-known companies such as Novell , Amazon and Hewlett Packard invested. In 2003, however, the company was taken over and liquidated by a Texas investor.
Web links
- History of GEOS Operating System for Commodore Computers on commodore.ca (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ GEOS: The Graphical Environment Operating System on osnews.com (English)
- ↑ Berkeley Softworks on c64-wiki.de
- ↑ The Death of GEOS? on osnews.com (English)
Coordinates: 37 ° 52 ′ 12 ″ N , 122 ° 16 ′ 7 ″ W.