Metrowerks Extends Leadership in 32-bit Macintosh Development Tools with Release of CodeWarrior 8

The Original Press Release

Metrowerks Extends Leadership in 32-bit Macintosh Development Tools with Release of CodeWarrior 8

SAN FRANCISCO — January 9, 1996 — Metrowerks, Inc. (TSE,ME: MWK), the leading provider of Macintosh development tools, today announced CodeWarrior Gold 8, a new version of its award-winning development environment for the Macintosh.

Version 8 rapidly compiles applications for a variety of operating systems including Macintosh and Windows, and continues Metrowerks' lead in the 32-bit Macintosh development environment.

"In just two years, CodeWarrior has moved into a leading position in the Macintosh application development tools market, and has become the standard for 32-bit development," said Jean Belanger, chairman, Metrowerks. "We estimate that over 80% of all applications that run native on the Power Macintosh, including commercial products such as Lotus Notes and Adobe Photoshop, are built with CodeWarrior. Version 8 further solidifies our position by offering developers faster compilation speeds, and the freedom to develop Mac-hosted applications for Mac, Windows, Windows NT, and other operating systems."

CodeWarrior Gold 8 allows application development with C, C++ and Object Pascal programming languages. An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) allows applications to be written on the Macintosh and compiled for a variety of operating systems, including MC680X0 Macintosh, Power Macintosh, Windows 95, Windows NT, Magic Cap, and Be.

"CodeWarrior is the best application development tool on the market, and offers superior price/performance value," said Sean Flaherty, vice president, engineering, Graphsoft. "For the price of what other vendors charge for a single programming language, I can get several programming languages that support many different platforms, which gives our company a variety of application development options. We're also impressed with the performance of the CodeWarrior product. Our 600,000-line application, MiniCad, runs extremely well, and we estimate that the time we saved using this faster, better-supported tool shortened our one-year product cycle by at least a month."

Macintosh Developers Leverage CodeWarrior to Create 32-bit Apps

CodeWarrior Gold 8 offers a host of features that make it the leading programming tool for the Macintosh. CodeWarrior Gold 8 features an intuitive development environment that makes it easy to port existing Macintosh applications to the Power Macintosh and other operating systems. The CodeWarrior 8 compiler is highly optimized, which speeds development time and allows for faster end-user applications. CodeWarrior Gold 8 has the smallest memory and hard disk requirements for any Macintosh development tool, requiring only 8 megabytes of RAM and 25 megabytes of free hard disk space.

In addition, the product includes an Integrated Class Browser: an intuitive interface that allows the developer to visually display the relationship between C++ classes, and navigate through complex C++ class libraries.

To support X86-based systems efficiently, CodeWarrior Gold 8 is unique in offering developers true cross-platform compiling at the code level, not just at the graphical user interface level. CodeWarrior Gold includes Metrowerks' new Win32 back-end, linker, and WinRC resource compiler which supports the development of Win32-based applications.

Metrowerks' WinRC implements all the resource types supported by Microsoft's RC.EXE, which allows for easy compilation for 32-bit Windows. The CodeWarrior tools for Win32 on X86 platforms include complete header files and libraries for the Win32 API. Metrowerks C/C++ for Win32 supports two-machine debugging of applications running remotely under Windows NT and Windows 95 operating systems from the Mac-host computer.

Under an agreement with Microsoft, Metrowerks is licensing the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) Version 4.0 for distribution on the CodeWarrior Gold 8 CD-ROM, for use with the CodeWarrior IDE. Full MFC source code is included, as well as a project that builds the MFC from the source code.

An Innovative Approach to Software Licensing

Leading the industry, Metrowerks was the first software tools vendor to release its products to customers on a predictable cycle with three releases per year in January, May and September. "Our customers know when to expect a new release, and look forward to new features three times a year," said Belanger. "It's been such a hit with customers that other software suppliers are now following our lead."

CodeWarrior Gold 8 will be available for broad distribution on January 15th. The CodeWarrior Gold package is priced at $ 399, and includes two additional CD-ROM releases in May and September 1996. Metrowerks recently announced that it has licensed Java from Sun Microsystems, and in the May, 1996 release, Metrowerks will provide a suite of Java development tools, code-named Wired, for the Macintosh platform.

International versions of CodeWarrior are available localized for the following languages and character sets: Chinese, French, German, Kanji, Korean, Brazilian-Portuguese and Spanish. CodeWarrior Gold 8 is available from Metrowerks and Metrowerks authorized resellers.