aha! InkWriter for Tablets (Promotional Card)

aha! InkWriter for Tablets is a single-card product flyer issued by aha! software corporation in 1995 to promote a Windows tablet edition of its electronic-ink word processor, InkWriter.¹ aha! software, a privately held applications-software company founded in early 1991 and based in Mountain View, California, had announced InkWriter as its first product in June 1993, calling it the first program to let users of pen-based computers edit and search handwritten words as electronic ink without first translating them into computer text.² That initial release ran on Go Corporation's PenPoint operating system, carried a suggested retail price of $249, and was built on aha!'s patent-pending SmartInk technology, which let people edit their own handwriting the same way a word processor edits text.²

On June 10, 1994, aha! released InkWriter for Windows, which it billed as the only word processor for handwriting, at a suggested list price of $199.³ The Windows version paired SmartInk with deferred handwriting recognition, letting users postpone correcting recognized text, and added aha!'s InkFinder technology for searching through a mixture of typed text and electronic ink.³ The InkWriter for Tablets edition promoted on this card carried a suggested retail price of $129.00 and ran on Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher with an attached tablet and pen, 4 MB of RAM and 1 MB of disk space, requiring no separate Windows for Pen Computing installation.¹ The card highlighted handwritten e-mail: users could send handwritten messages directly from InkWriter through Lotus cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail or MCI Mail, while a freely distributable InkWriter Viewer let recipients view, print, fax and forward those messages.¹ It also imported documents from Microsoft Word, WordPerfect and Corel Draw and offered multi-level undo and redo of up to twenty levels.¹

On October 10, 1994, Fujitsu announced it would ship a special version of InkWriter with its Stylistic 500 tablet computer, providing 30-day evaluation copies that customers could upgrade to unlimited use.⁴ aha! also carried InkWriter beyond Windows: in September 1994 it announced a version for Sony's Magic Link and other Magic Cap-based personal communicators, priced at $129 and fully data-compatible with the Windows version,⁵ and on June 1, 1995 it shipped that Magic Cap application through Sony.⁶

On April 8, 1996, Microsoft Corporation announced a definitive agreement to acquire aha! software corporation, pointing to the company's method of manipulating handwriting in its ink form rather than relying on handwriting recognition; financial terms were not disclosed.⁷

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes