FutureWave Software, Inc
was a software development company based in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. The company was co-founded by
Charlie Jackson and
Jonathan Gay on January 22, 1993.
VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from
Silicon Beach Software
Silicon Beach Software, Inc., was an early American developer of software products for the Macintosh personal computer. It was founded in San Diego, California in 1984 by Charlie Jackson and his wife Hallie. Jackson later co-founded FutureWave So ...
, then
Aldus Corporation.
MACROMEDIA FLASH BACK
Digital Archaeology[PC Graphics & Video, Volume 6, Issues 1-6](_blank)
Advanstar Communications, 1997[Personal Computer Magazine](_blank)
PC Communications Corporation, 1995
The company's first product was SmartSketch, a drawing program for the PenPoint OS and EO tablet computer. When pen computing did not take off, SmartSketch was ported to the Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
and Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
platforms.
As the Internet became more popular, FutureWave realized the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might challenge Macromedia Shockwave
In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...
technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and Windows. By that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, artist Adam Grofcsik, and PR specialist Ralph Mittman.
In December 1996, FutureWave was acquired by Macromedia, who renamed the animation editor Macromedia Flash Macromedia Flash may refer to:
*Adobe Animate, a multimedia authoring and computer animation program formerly known as ''Macromedia Flash''
*Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform ...
.
References
{{US-software-company-stub
Defunct software companies of the United States
Adobe Flash
Adobe Inc.
Software companies established in 1993
Software companies disestablished in 1996
1996 mergers and acquisitions
Companies based in San Diego