Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2,[1] NeXTSTEP[2] and several other commercial flavors of Unix.
[3] In spite of many positive reviews, including one calling it "clearly the spreadsheet of the future", the market was rapidly entrenching Microsoft Excel.
Wingz was originally written solely for the Macintosh by Innovative Software (publishers of the SmartWare Suite on the PC) based in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas; and was ready for release in late 1988.
Informix wanted to enter the desktop software market with products that could link to their back-end databases, and Wingz seemed like a good fit.
[11][12] HyperScript allowed even new users to write fairly powerful macros, which could include user-interface features such as buttons and dialog boxes.
Microsoft responded to the release of Wingz, and others such as Ashton-Tate's Full Impact and the Mac version of Lotus 1-2-3 that came out about the same time, by starting an extensive upgrade to Excel.
[citation needed] It was only a short period of time before a Wingz 1.1 release fixed many of these issues, but it was long enough that the product was never able to regain its momentum.
Future releases focused on bringing the product to new platforms as their GUI's matured, and adding functionality to HyperScript to allow it to directly interact with databases.
Claris, Apple Computer's onetime software arm, licensed Wingz in the early 1990s after Informix lost interest in the Mac market.
Claris never released a Resolve-MacWrite-Claris Impact bundle, and so were unable to gain a foothold in the high-end market now dominated by Microsoft Office.