Beagle Bros
Encyclopedia
Beagle Bros was a software company that specialized in creating personal computing products that were both useful and whimsical. Their primary focus was on the Apple II
family of computers.
As a result, much of the Beagle Bros product line consists of software that put the creative power in the hands of the user or expanded popular products of other companies. Apple Mechanic allowed users to create their own shape table
s (an early form of sprites) to create their own games, DOS Boss let users patch the disk operating system, and Beagle Bag had a number of simple but fun games written in BASIC that budding programmers could also list out and learn from. In the early days, every Beagle Bros order also included a "Peeks, Pokes, & Pointers" chart, a wall poster that budding Apple hackers could use as a reference for the memory locations that did useful things on the Apple II. The company also later released a Big Tip Book containing many programming tips for Apple hobbyists and also published a Tip Disk. The company took great pride in not copy-protecting their software.
When the Apple IIgs
was released, Beagle Bros was among the first companies to release high-quality packages that took full advantage of that computer's capabilities. Both Platinum Paint and BeagleWrite GS (acquired and repackaged) are still regarded as being among the high points of commercial IIgs software.
Beagle Bros reached a new audience when they began producing add-ons for the AppleWorks
integrated package. Their first AppleWorks add-on, released in 1986, was the MacroWorks keyboard shortcut utility by Randy Brandt. Beagle Bros programmer Alan Bird later devised an API for creating AppleWorks add-ons, which they dubbed TimeOut. The company produced an extensive and ever-expanding line of TimeOut products. TimeOut programmers Alan Bird, Randy Brandt and Rob Renstrom were tapped by Claris
to develop AppleWorks 3.0, and the TimeOut API itself became a part of AppleWorks with version 4.0 (created by Randy Brandt and Dan Verkade; released by Quality Computers). Eventually the TimeOut API was made public and a number of non-Beagle TimeOut applications were released.
The end of an age came in 1991 when then-owner Mark Simonsen licensed the Beagle Bros Apple II line to Quality Computers. Quality Computers subsequently went through several acquisitions and no longer exists. However, many Beagle Bros "classics" were released as freeware in the mid-1990s, including most of the company's early utilities and games. Today, their programs are available on the Internet.
BeagleWorks, the company's main Macintosh product, was licensed to WordPerfect Corporation in 1992, where it became WordPerfect Works. This product was later discontinued after WordPerfect was acquired by Novell
. The company also produced a few small Macintosh and PC utilities.
Many former "Beaglers" have continued to be involved in the software industry; for example, Joe Holt is one of the authors of iMovie
, and Alan Bird has worked on Eudora
and was the author of the OneClick shortcut utility for Macintosh. Randy Brandt created Online Army Knife, an award-winning Macintosh spell checker, and continued publishing AppleWorks products through his JEM Software spin-off. Mark Munz created Deja ][, which allows AppleWorks to run under Mac OS X. The company's founder, Bert Kersey, started a model train company after selling Beagle Bros, featuring much of the same humor, but is now retired and living in Fallbrook, California
with his wife Sharon and a backyard full of barn owl
s.
art in their print material. While many computer and software companies in the 1980s aimed for flashy, high-tech logos and advertising, Beagle Bros cultivated a nostalgic, down-home feel in keeping with their intended mission of creating software that was welcoming to inexperienced computer owners.
Humor permeated Beagle Bros products, even extending to the warning label printed on their 5.25" disk
jackets. Unlike most disk care labels, which warned that magnet
s, water, and high temperatures could damage disks, Beagle Bros' warning icons admonished users not to use their disks as kites, fold them into paper plane
s, set fire to them, or feed them to alligator
s.
Another delight was the "two-liner" computer program
s that peppered Beagle Bros advertising and mailers. Each new Beagle Bros communication contained one or more Applesoft BASIC
programs tucked away in speech balloons or whitespace. The two-liners were always nigh-impenetrable, yet extremely clever, little programs that showcased unusual tricks or capabilities of the Apple II. At first these were written by Kersey himself; later, users began submitting their own. Eventually, almost every Beagle Bros release came with a selection of these "miniprograms" either on disk or in the box inserts.
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
family of computers.
History
Beagle Bros (the lack of a period at the end is intentional; according to the company, "there wasn't room") was founded in 1980 by Bert Kersey and expanded over the years to include a wide variety of staff members, programmers, and designers. Whereas most software companies focused on professional users and business systems, Kersey founded the company with the intention of supporting the "hobbyist" users who had sprung up when affordable personal computers were made available to the general public.As a result, much of the Beagle Bros product line consists of software that put the creative power in the hands of the user or expanded popular products of other companies. Apple Mechanic allowed users to create their own shape table
Shape table
Shape tables were a powerful yet little-used feature of the early Apple II ROMs, allowing for simple graphic manipulation on Apple II series computers, using the "hi-res" graphics mode...
s (an early form of sprites) to create their own games, DOS Boss let users patch the disk operating system, and Beagle Bag had a number of simple but fun games written in BASIC that budding programmers could also list out and learn from. In the early days, every Beagle Bros order also included a "Peeks, Pokes, & Pointers" chart, a wall poster that budding Apple hackers could use as a reference for the memory locations that did useful things on the Apple II. The company also later released a Big Tip Book containing many programming tips for Apple hobbyists and also published a Tip Disk. The company took great pride in not copy-protecting their software.
When the Apple IIgs
Apple IIGS
The Apple , the fifth and most powerful model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The "GS" in the name stands for Graphics and Sound, referring to its enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, both of which greatly surpassed previous models of the line...
was released, Beagle Bros was among the first companies to release high-quality packages that took full advantage of that computer's capabilities. Both Platinum Paint and BeagleWrite GS (acquired and repackaged) are still regarded as being among the high points of commercial IIgs software.
Beagle Bros reached a new audience when they began producing add-ons for the AppleWorks
AppleWorks
AppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer...
integrated package. Their first AppleWorks add-on, released in 1986, was the MacroWorks keyboard shortcut utility by Randy Brandt. Beagle Bros programmer Alan Bird later devised an API for creating AppleWorks add-ons, which they dubbed TimeOut. The company produced an extensive and ever-expanding line of TimeOut products. TimeOut programmers Alan Bird, Randy Brandt and Rob Renstrom were tapped by Claris
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
to develop AppleWorks 3.0, and the TimeOut API itself became a part of AppleWorks with version 4.0 (created by Randy Brandt and Dan Verkade; released by Quality Computers). Eventually the TimeOut API was made public and a number of non-Beagle TimeOut applications were released.
The end of an age came in 1991 when then-owner Mark Simonsen licensed the Beagle Bros Apple II line to Quality Computers. Quality Computers subsequently went through several acquisitions and no longer exists. However, many Beagle Bros "classics" were released as freeware in the mid-1990s, including most of the company's early utilities and games. Today, their programs are available on the Internet.
BeagleWorks, the company's main Macintosh product, was licensed to WordPerfect Corporation in 1992, where it became WordPerfect Works. This product was later discontinued after WordPerfect was acquired by Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
. The company also produced a few small Macintosh and PC utilities.
Many former "Beaglers" have continued to be involved in the software industry; for example, Joe Holt is one of the authors of iMovie
IMovie
iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2 users to edit their own home movies. It was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled consumer Apple...
, and Alan Bird has worked on Eudora
Eudora (e-mail client)
Eudora is an e-mail client used on the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supports several palmtop computing platforms, including Newton and the Palm OS....
and was the author of the OneClick shortcut utility for Macintosh. Randy Brandt created Online Army Knife, an award-winning Macintosh spell checker, and continued publishing AppleWorks products through his JEM Software spin-off. Mark Munz created Deja ][, which allows AppleWorks to run under Mac OS X. The company's founder, Bert Kersey, started a model train company after selling Beagle Bros, featuring much of the same humor, but is now retired and living in Fallbrook, California
Fallbrook, California
Fallbrook is an unincorporated community in northern San Diego County, California. The Fallbrook census-designated place population was 30,534 at the 2010 census, up from 29,100 at the 2000 census....
with his wife Sharon and a backyard full of barn owl
Barn Owl
The Barn Owl is the most widely distributed species of owl, and one of the most widespread of all birds. It is also referred to as Common Barn Owl, to distinguish it from other species in the barn-owl family Tytonidae. These form one of two main lineages of living owls, the other being the typical...
s.
Style
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Beagle Bros was their use of vintage woodcutWoodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
art in their print material. While many computer and software companies in the 1980s aimed for flashy, high-tech logos and advertising, Beagle Bros cultivated a nostalgic, down-home feel in keeping with their intended mission of creating software that was welcoming to inexperienced computer owners.
Humor permeated Beagle Bros products, even extending to the warning label printed on their 5.25" disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
jackets. Unlike most disk care labels, which warned that magnet
Magnet
A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets.A permanent magnet is an object...
s, water, and high temperatures could damage disks, Beagle Bros' warning icons admonished users not to use their disks as kites, fold them into paper plane
Paper plane
A paper plane, paper aeroplane , paper airplane , paper glider, paper dart or dart is a toy aircraft, usually a glider made out of paper or paperboard; the practice of constructing paper planes is sometimes referred to as aerogami , after origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.-History:The...
s, set fire to them, or feed them to alligator
Alligator
An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
s.
Another delight was the "two-liner" computer program
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...
s that peppered Beagle Bros advertising and mailers. Each new Beagle Bros communication contained one or more Applesoft BASIC
Applesoft BASIC
Applesoft BASIC was a dialect of Microsoft BASIC supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It superseded Integer BASIC and was the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It was also referred to as FP because of the command used to invoke it instead...
programs tucked away in speech balloons or whitespace. The two-liners were always nigh-impenetrable, yet extremely clever, little programs that showcased unusual tricks or capabilities of the Apple II. At first these were written by Kersey himself; later, users began submitting their own. Eventually, almost every Beagle Bros release came with a selection of these "miniprograms" either on disk or in the box inserts.
Software
| Title | Author(s) | Published | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Printer | Lo-res graphics and titling program | ||
| Alpha Plot | Bert Kersey and Jack Cassidy | 1980 | Hi-res graphics program |
| Apple Mechanic/Shape Mechanic | Bert Kersey | 1982 | Hi-res shape/font editor; multiple other utilities |
| Apple Mechanic Typefaces | Bert Kersey | Twenty-six fonts for use with Apple Mechanic | |
| AppleWorks 3.0 Companion AppleWorks AppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer... |
Patches for various AppleWorks 3.0 modules | ||
| Bag of Tricks | Don Worth and Pieter Lechner | Examine, edit, reformat and repair disk data (published by Quality Software) | |
| Beagle Bag Beagle Bag Beagle Bag is a collection of computer games for the Apple II family of computers published in 1982 by Beagle Bros Software. In common with their other titles, the Beagle Bag software was released in unlocked and unprotected form, and is now in the public domain.-Games:Beagle Bag, collectively... |
Bert Kersey and the Beagle Bros staff | A collection of games including Buzzword!, Elevators, Hang Person, Magic Pack, Oink!, Pick-A-Pair, Quick-Draw!, Slippery Digits, Sub Search, TextTrain, Triple Digits and Wowzo, plus the Beagle Menu utility | |
| Beagle BASIC | Mark Simonsen | 1983 | An expanded version of AppleSoft BASIC Applesoft BASIC Applesoft BASIC was a dialect of Microsoft BASIC supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It superseded Integer BASIC and was the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It was also referred to as FP because of the command used to invoke it instead... with various new commands |
| The Beagle Compiler | Alan Bird | 1986 | AppleSoft BASIC program compiler |
| BeagleDraw | Robert A. Hearn and Jeff G. Erickson | 1989 | Apple IIGS graphic application, formerly TopDraw |
| Beagle Graphics | Mark Simonsen | Graphics editor in 16-color double hi-res | |
| Beagle Screens | Full-screen captionable clip art | ||
| BeagleWorks | Later renamed WordPerfect Works, then PerfectWorks | ||
| BeagleWrite, BeagleWrite GS | ProDOS ProDOS ProDOS was the name of two similar operating systems for the Apple II series of personal computers. The original ProDOS, renamed ProDOS 8 in version 1.2, was the last official operating system usable by all Apple II series computers, and was distributed from 1983 to 1993... -based GUI word processor, acquired from Styleware where it had been named MultiScribe |
||
| BeagleWrite Desk Accessories | Adds a clock, calendar and calculator | ||
| BeagleWrite Picture Manager | Allows import of Print Shop The Print Shop The Print Shop is a basic desktop publishing software package developed in the early 1980s by Brøderbund. It was unique in that it provided libraries of clip-art and templates through a simple interface to build signs, posters and banners with household dot-matrix printers... (8-bit) and Newsroom images |
||
| Big U | Randy Brandt | ProDOS utilities including CRT.WRITER, FILE.MOVER and KEYCAT.80 | |
| D Code | Alan Bird | AppleSoft program optimizer and debugger | |
| DiskQuik | Harry Bruce and Gene Hite | Creates a virtual disk in RAM | |
| DOS Boss | Bert Kersey and Jack Cassidy | DOS 3.3 enhancer and command editor | |
| Double-Take | Mark Simonsen | Various small utilities including two-way text scrolling | |
| Extra K | Alan Bird and Mark Simonsen | An extended memory utility allowing AppleSoft to use a second 64K bank of memory in an upgraded IIe or IIc | |
| FatCat | Alan Bird | Disk library cataloguer | |
| Flash | Joe Holt | 1989 | Tool to copy files over AppleTalk AppleTalk AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, but is now unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009 in favor of TCP/IP networking... , integrated into the Finder. Beagle's first Macintosh program |
| Flex Type | Mark Simonsen | Variable-width hi-res text utility | |
| Font Mechanic | Thirty fonts for use with Shape Mechanic | ||
| Frame-Up | Tom Weishaar | Apple presentation program | |
| GPLE | Neil Konzen | Global Program Line Editor for AppleSoft BASIC programs. Originally published by Synergistic Software Synergistic Software Northwest Synergistic Software is a contract software developer and a former video game developer. Founded in 1978 under the name Synergistic Software, the company published some of the earliest available games and applications for the Apple II family of computers... . |
|
| GS Font Editor | Font editor for AppleWorks | ||
| I.O. Silver I.O. Silver I.O. Silver is a game for the Apple II family of personal computers, created in 1984 by Brad Wilhelmsen and published by Beagle Bros Software.... |
Brad Wilhelmsen | Popular strategy/action game | |
| Macroworks | Randy Brandt | Enhancement for AppleWorks 1.3 | |
| Master Find | Master Mind Mastermind (board game) Mastermind or Master Mind is a code-breaking game for two players. The modern game with pegs was invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert, but the game resembles an earlier pencil and paper game called bulls and cows that may date back a century or... -style game |
||
| Minipix | Fred & Sara Crone | A three-disk series of clipart collections | |
| Platinum Paint | Matt Reimer | Apple IIGS paint program | |
| Point-to-Point | Gary Little | Telecommunications program | |
| Power Print | Rob Renstrom | Dot matrix printer Dot matrix printer A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter... utility |
|
| Pro-Byter | Disk editor and ProDOS utilities | ||
| Program Writer | Alan Bird | AppleSoft program editor | |
| ProntoDOS | Tom Weishaar | Accelerated version of DOS 3.3 with other additional features | |
| Resource Disk | Sample file disk for SuperFonts Activity Guide | ||
| Shape Mechanic | Shape animation and screen fonts | ||
| Silicon Salad | Bert Kersey and Mark Simonsen | Various tips, tricks and utilities from Beagle Bros Tip Books 5, 6 and 7 | |
| Super Macroworks | Randy Brandt | AppleWorks 2.0 enhancement | |
| TimeOut series | Various accessories and utilities for AppleWorks AppleWorks AppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer... : DeskTools, DeskTools II, FileMaster, Graph, MacroEase, MacroTools, Paint, PowerPack, QuickSpell, ReportWriter, SideSpread, SpreadTools, SuperFonts, TeleComm, Thesaurus and UltraMacros |
||
| Tip Disk#1 | Bert Kersey | One hundred tips from the Beagle Bros Tip Books | |
| Triple-Dump | Mark Simonsen and Rob Renstrom | "Print anything" utility for dot matrix printers | |
| Utility City | Bert Kersey | 1982 | Twenty-one separate Apple utilities |
| Zoom Graphix | Sends hi-res images to any graphics-compatible printer |
Quotes
"Our programs are FUN to use. Our instructions are CLEAR and complete."- — The Beagle Bros "Statement of Quality"
External links
- The Beagle Bros Online Museum
- The Beagle Brothers Software repository
- Backyard Barn Owls — Beagle Bros' founder's current Web site about barn owls (includes contact link)