Commodore 64 Software - Applications, Utility, and Business Software

Applications, Utility, and Business Software

While many businesses did not take the Commodore 64 seriously as a business machine, the Commodore 64 was still widely used for many important tasks, including computer graphics creation, desktop publishing, and word processing. Info 64, the first magazine produced with desktop publishing tools, was created on and dedicated to the Commodore platform.

The best known art package was perhaps KoalaPainter, primarily because of its own custom graphics tablet user interface - the KoalaPad. Another popular drawing program for the C64 was Doodle!. A Commodore 64 version of The Print Shop existed, allowing users to generate signs and banners with a printer. "The Newsroom" was a desktop publishing suite. Lightpens and CAD drawing software were also commercially produced, such as the Inkwell Lightpen and related tools.

There were many prepackaged wordprocessors available for the Commodore 64, such as PaperClip and Vizawrite, but a popular DIY program was SpeedScript, which was available as a type-in program from Compute!'s Gazette.

The MultiPlan spreadsheet application from Microsoft was ported to the Commodore 64, where it competed against established packages such as Calc Result. The first Lotus 1-2-3-like integrated software package for the 64 was Viza Software's Vistastar. A complete office suite arrived in the form of British made Mini Office II. In Germany and Scandinavia, many popular application programs were published by German company Data Becker.

Serious Commodore 64 business users, however, were drawn to GEOS. Due to its speed, ease of use, and full suite of office applications and utility software, GEOS provided a work environment similar to that of an early Apple Macintosh. Arguably the best office applications appeared on GEOS because it was graphically advanced and not limited by the Commodore 64's screen area of 40-columns. Being a fully-fledged OS, GEOS brought the arrival of many add-on fonts, accessories, and applications. It also supported most Commodore 64 peripherals and models of third-party printers. KoalaPad and Lightpen users could use GEOS too, which greatly increased the amount of clip art available for the platform. GEOS proved very popular because of low price for the necessary hardware (and of course the capability of the OS). This was due in part to the aggressive pricing of the Commodore 64 as a games machine and home computer (With rebates, the C64 was going for as little as US$100 at the time). This was in comparison to an atypical PC for US$2000 (which required MS-DOS, and another $99 for Windows 1.0) or the venerable Mac 512K Enhanced also $2000.

There were numerous sound editing tools for the Commodore 64. Commodore released music composition software which included a keyboard overlay suited for early model Commodore 64s. Software titles such as the Music Construction Set were available for users to compose music with notes, however the only tools which really pushed the C64's sonic capability to the full were mostly demoscene music tools, or pure assembly language. MIDI expansion cartridges and speech synthesizing hardware was also available for more serious musicians. The Prophet64 cartridge was recently released and features a suite of GUI-style applications for sequencing music, drum and rhythm synthesis, MIDI DIN-sync, and taking advantage of the SID chip in other ways, effectively turning the C64 into a true musical instrument that anyone can use. There was also software which could be used to make the Commodore 64 speak, the best-known being SAM.

The first screen shows the C64's BASIC with a small program. The BASIC interpreter does not only allow the user to write programs, but it is also used as command prompt, so in order to load a program a BASIC command needs to be entered.

• KoalaPainter is an early paint program. It uses two screens. The first displays a menu and the second is the picture that is being worked on. The program is controlled either by a joystick or with a graphics tablet that was also sold by Koala.
• Magic Desk is an application by Commodore that tries to resemble a real type writer. It contains basic editing functions though.
• Multiplan is a text-based spreadsheet application, written by Microsoft.
• Vizawrite is another text-based word processor for the C64, but looks more like the professional word processors of the early 80s.
• GEOS was a graphical user interface, first released in 1987. It was a small revolution at its time, because until then GUIs were only available for the much more powerful 16-bit machines.
• geoPaint is a paint program for GEOS. Beside the small resolution it had all capabilities of other GUI-based drawing programs of its time.
• geoWrite is a word processor for GEOS. It did not only have a GUI, but also supported many different styles and fonts with the WYSIWYG principle, unlike the other word processors on the C64.
• UIFLI (Underlay Interlace Flexible Line Interpreter) is a Graphicsmode on the Commodore 64 invented by DeeKay and Crossbow of Crest in 1995.