MacPaint was first advertised in an 18-page brochure in December 1983, following the earlier announcement of the
Macintosh 128K. The Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984, After launch, a
New York Times reviewer noted how MacPaint unfolded numerous graphic possibilities for the personal computer; he went further to say "it is better than anything else of its kind offered on personal computers by a factor of 10." It added many improvements to the software, including the capability to open and use up to nine documents simultaneously. The original MacPaint operated as a single-document application with an immovable window. MacPaint 2.0 eliminated this limitation, introducing a fully functioning document window, which could be sized up to 8 x 10". MacPaint 2.0 was sold for US$125, with a US$25 upgrade available for existing users of MacPaint. Claris stopped selling MacPaint in early 1998 because of diminishing sales. along with the
QuickDraw source code, a library to draw bitmapped graphics, due to the support of Steve Jobs. MacPaint inspired other companies to release similar products for other platforms; within a year a half-dozen
clones existed for the Apple II and IBM PC. Some of these included
Broderbund's
Dazzle Draw for the Apple II, Mouse Systems'
PCPaint for the PC, and
IBM's Color Paint for the
IBM PCjr. An unofficial update by Mac Aspect called MacPaint X was released for Mac OS X as a
donationware beta in 2008. It was intended as a simple drawing program for learning to draw on a computer or for quick sketches on Apple's then current operating systems. == Version history ==