Editing MacWrite (section)

===Development===
[[File:MacWrite-software-screenshot.png|thumb|right|250px|MacWrite 1.0|alt=Screenshot of MacWrite 1.0]]When the Mac was first being created, it was clear that users would interact with it differently from other personal computers. Typical computers of the era booted into text-only [[disk operating system]] or [[BASIC]] environments, requiring the users to type in commands. Some of these programs may have presented a [[graphical user interface]] of their own, but on the Mac, users would instead be expected to stay in the standard GUI both for launching and running programs. Having an approachable, consistent GUI was an advantage for the Mac platform, but unlike prior personal computers, the Mac was sold with no programming language built-in.

This presented a problem to [[Apple Computer|Apple]]: the Mac was planned to be launched in 1983, with a new user interface [[paradigm]], but no third-party software would be available for it, nor could users easily write their own. Users would end up with a computer that did nothing. In order to fill this void, several members of the Mac team took it upon themselves to write simple applications to fill these roles until third-party developers published more full-fledged software. The result was MacWrite and MacPaint, which shipped free with every Macintosh from 1984 to 1986.

The MacWrite development team was a company called Encore Systems, founded and led by [[Randy Wigginton]], one of Apple's earliest employees, and included Don Breuner and Ed Ruder (co-founders of Encore Systems and also early Apple employees; Gabreal Franklin later joined Encore Systems as President.) Wigginton, who had left Apple in 1981, maintained a relationship with many Apple employees, many of whom were on the Macintosh development team. He agreed to lead the MacWrite development team on a semi-official basis. Before it was released, MacWrite was known as "Macintosh WP" (Word Processor) and "MacAuthor". Allegedly, [[Steve Jobs]] was not convinced of his team's abilities, and secretly commissioned another project just to be sure{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}}; its development was eventually released as [[WriteNow]].<ref name=nextworld3_7>{{cite magazine| magazine=NeXTWorld | volume=3| issue=7| title=Evolutionary Man | url=https://archive.org/details/NeXTWORLDVol.3No.7November1993/page/n11/mode/2up | page=10 | date=7 November 1993|first=Leann |last=Coulter |access-date=2 August 2021}}</ref>