Silicon Beach Software
San Diego, California | |
Founder | Charlie Jackson and Hallie Jackson[1] |
---|---|
Defunct | 1990 |
Fate | Acquired by Aldus Corporation |
Silicon Beach Software, Inc., was an early American developer of software products for the
History
Silicon Beach's best known "productivity software" product was SuperPaint, a graphics program which combined features of Apple's MacDraw and MacPaint with several innovations of its own. SuperPaint2 and Digital Darkroom were the first programs on the Macintosh to offer a plug-in architecture, allowing outside software developers to extend both programs' capabilities. Silicon Beach coined the term "plug-in".
Silicon Beach was a pioneer in graphic tools for
Another Silicon Beach product was SuperCard which, like SuperPaint, superseded the capabilities of an Apple-branded product (in this case, HyperCard). SuperCard used a superset of the HyperTalk programming language and addressed common complaints about HyperCard by adding native support for color, multiple windows, support for vector images, menus and other features.
Silicon Beach Software produced video games for the Macintosh. The most well known is
Silicon Beach Software is credited with coining the term Silicon Beach to refer to San Diego in the same way that Silicon Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley and San Jose area.[4]
Silicon Beach was acquired by
Other products
- Airborne! (1985) combat game. A demo before the game was released was called Banzai!.
- Enchanted Scepters (1984) Point-and-click adventure game made with the engine that later became World Builder.
- World Builder (1986) graphical adventure game authoring package.
- Apache Strike (1987) 3D helicopter game.
- Beyond Dark Castle (1987) Sequel to Dark Castle.
- Super 3D (1988) 3D modeling application.
- Silicon Press (1986) card and label printing software
- Personal Press (1988) easy to use desktop publishing software, later renamed Adobe Home Publisher
References
- ^ a b c Lavroff, Nicholas (April 1986). "Making Waves on Silicon Beach". Macworld. Vol. 3, no. 4. pp. 116–120.
- ^ "Macromedia - Showcase : History of Flash". Archived from the original on 2006-01-14.
- ^ Moss, Richard (2018-03-22). "The making of Dark Castle : An excerpt from The Secret History of Mac Gaming". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
- ^ "Siliconia - Part 1 A -- Silicon F". TechVenue. 1997. Archived from the original on 2006-02-23.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
External links
- Coverage of MacWorld Boston 1988 including SuperPaint and Digital Darkroom with founder Charlie Jackson from The Computer Chronicles
- Video review of Beyond Dark Castle and Apache Strike with Silicon Beach development V.P. Eric Zocher from The Computer Chronicles
- Silicon Beach Software profile at MobyGames