Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of ProVUE at MacWorld Expo!

[admin]

February 21, 2025 - Forty years ago today the doors opened for the very first MacWorld Expo in the Brooks Hall basement in San Francisco. For most of you this event probably seems like ancient history, somewhere back in the mists of time. But for me this was a very real and exciting event that I participated in as an exhibitor, the start of my amazing journey with the Mac community, a journey that continues on today.

As I recall there were two or three dozen software booths that first year. Some of the software on display included Multiplan (Microsoft), PFS:File, Think Tank, FileVision, Mac Slots, Habadex, Mac Draft, Mac Lion, Music Works, Click Art and of course OverVUE (the direct predecessor to today’s Panorama X). Of course all of these companies have long since disappeared, except for two - Microsoft and ProVUE Development. I’d say that’s a pretty nice club.

I’m quite proud to have kept ProVUE Development in the Macintosh database business every single day from then to now. The RAM based database concepts I started with in 1984 are still the core of the software today, of course much further developed. In fact, if you look at screen shots of the original OverVUE from 1984, and Panorama X from 2025, the family resemblance is unmistakeable. On the left is 68k assembly code using the original Mac ROMs, on the right is Objective-C using AppKit, but the concepts are the same. There are even databases that have been brought forward from the left all the way to the right - in continuous use over four decades!

There have been a lot of ups and downs over the decades, amazing advances from the original 128k Mac in a bag (I still have mine) to the latest M4 Max, but I’ve always believed in the Mac and loved crafting software for it, using the native tools that Apple provides (there’s definitely no Electron in our products!). And I’ve always loved meeting other Mac users, developers and journalists at MacWorld, WWDC and many other events over the decades. What a fantastic community - both the Panorama community and the Mac community in general.

I’m really fortunate to have had the opportunity to develop a single software package over an entire career. In fact, there are even a few customers that have tagged along for the entire four decade ride (thank you so much ). But the really satisfying part is that new users keep discovering and adopting Panorama, some of whom weren’t even born when this software started. To celebrate that, and this 40 year anniversary, I’ve set up a 40% discount code for new users - MACEXPO40. It’s good until the end of February. (If you’re already a Panorama X user, sorry, this discount can’t be used for renewals, but feel free to share this code with friends and coworkers that you think might appreciate Panorama X). If you don’t know about Panorama and you’re curious why this software has had staying power long after so many others have disappeared, please visit https://www.provue.com, check out the demo videos and download the free trial! I hope to welcome you to our journey forward!

Sincerely,

Jim Rea
Founder, ProVUE Development

[RAmeeti]

It has been a fantastic ride and you deserve a standing ovation for your imagination and creativity to have created a product that was so amazing then and still continues today to be tool that I find indispensable. ProVUE belongs in the same class as Craftsman tools. They last forever and are of the highest quality.

I remember the show but unfortunately was not able to buy anything as I already had my shelf full with Multiplan, Habadex, MacDraft, and of course OverVUE. I wasn’t smart enough to have created anything worthy just yet as most of my databases were just to catalog the freeware and shareware that I was collecting, and for printing of labels for the 3.5" disks.

When we first met on Saturday, December 1, 1984, and you demoed OverVUE to my computer user group at my invitation for our 1st Saturday of the month meeting, I had no idea what the future portended for me with ProVUE but it has become the 2nd closest and longest relationship I have had in my life that continues with only my son being ahead of Panorama as he was there with me.

[JamesCook]

It was January 1986 that I got my first copy of OverVUE. I had just purchased a Macintosh Plus, then found out I needed software too. A knowledgeable friend told me I needed a database for what I hoped to do and MacUser magazine had just named the BEST DATA MANAGER: “OverVue 2.0 from ProVue is a deceiving program in that the more you use it, the more you realize it can do . Power, speed and logical menus make this a dream database.”

That was all I needed since I actually knew nothing about computers or software. But then it turned out that OverVUE wouldn’t just do things. It required me to set things up. So, I turned to the manual.

Through that manual I learned to do my first programming of any sort. By the end of the year I had a small software business going, developing business software for photographers. That grew into a substantial business but as the digital age diminished professional photography, custom jobs for businesses became my personal mainstay.

OverVUE, then Panorama, have been my career.

There were several years in which I was a member of the team in the Panorama booth at MacWorld shows in Boston and San Francisco. (Along with Paul, known here as Designer)

I’m very grateful for the work Jim Rea has put into it and for his staying power. He’s also become a valued friend.

And it continues…

[Pete]

I stumbled onto Panorama in the early 1990’s while working as a track coach at Boston U. I set up a database that followed all the athlete’s NCAA requirements, needed to stay eligible. It was fun from day one, learning Panorama. Jim and all the support I received over the years from those of you on the forum was a blessing. Thanks for the adventures and stability that is rare in today’s changing world. Pan continues on and we are all fortunate to Jim for all his work over the years. Thanks, Jim!

[Golfersal]

It may seem hard to believe, but my first database was in a program called Jazz, which Lotus developed in 1984. Jazz was the first Microsoft Office program to combine spreadsheets, word processing, database management, graphics, and communications into one program. The program was expensive, about $600, but it was the only software package that was needed. In the beginning, Jazz was terrific, and I could do everything with it, but the more significant the database, the slower it ran, and I had problems with big databases all the time. So, at the 1987 MacWorld, I found Provue and Panorama and could easily switch my database from Jazz to Panorama. At about the same time, I found Panorama and Microsoft Office, which spelled the end of Jazz. It was too bad because, in the beginning, Jazz was an excellent program, but it never changed, and Office became a big hit.
Congratulations to Jim and many thanks for him giving us 40 years of a great software.

[watts]

I first used Overvue when I worked at Enigma Records as an intern in the mid-80s. I was eventually hired to run radio promotion for sister label Restless Records and continued to use Overvue (and Hypercard, sigh) to keep track my data. (on a Mac SE!) I quit that job in 1987 and moved to Detroit to start a microbrewery, by that time Panorama had arrived and we used it for banking and for sales data. When I came back to California in the 90s I started building the database that I still use today to manage visual effects shots for movies and music videos. I’m not doing as many movies as I used to but I still use Panorama for various tasks, and of course, I still follow along here. I never made a career out of designing software for anyone but myself (and my crew) but I’m pretty sure that Panorama’s power and versatility have always been major contributors to the successes I’ve enjoyed in all my endeavors.

And Jim has become a pretty great friend too! Happy 40th, Provue!

chris watts

[JeffK]

I started working with a non-profit organization in 1985 when they needed a way to track contributions. I contacted Jim Rea to receive my first copy of OverVUE to accomplish the task. Since then, I have created over a hundred different solutions in almost as many industries, always finding a way to accomplish unique requirements. I’ve always said, with Panorama, I can take exactly what you’re doing on paper and put it on the computer as clients couldn’t find off the shelf applications that worked the way they did. From Mom and Pops to Fortune 100 companies, it’s been a great ride creating apps and training in both classroom and one on one situations. I have traveled the country and made a lot of friends through my association with ProVUE, including Jim Rea. Thanks Jim.

[jhdean]

Congratulations, Jim

Thanks for the great software.

Jeff

[NSD]

I was secretly hoping you were going to say that it was still somehow being built in MPW and ResEdit. ProjectBuilder/Xcode drove me away years ago.

[mickeymaces]

Jim

Congratulations on 40 years of ProVue and Panorama. I’ve used it from your beginning at the newspaper I worked for tracking and reporting in my management poition and use Panorama X today for most of my home and small business needs. I also used MultiPlan. I’m not a huge coder but it has always fullfilled my needs.

So again Congratulations on 40 yesrs of development​:tada:

Eddie Scheetz

[sykora]

congratulations - great product - couldn’t live without it

[chrihyne]

Hi James,

Congratulations!

I was a very early user of OverVue. At that time an amazing product and well ahead of competition.

I created many useful databases - I had to bring my Mac to work as the Company switched from Apple II to IBM.

Although now retired, still an occasional Panorama user.

So grateful that you continued to develop the software as apple migrated to different OS

I hope that you have a good succession plan, so that the software continues even after your retirement.

Well done,

Regards

Chris Hyne

[elfgene]

I’ve been a generally happy user of Overvue/Panorama since about 1986, first at work and now at home. At the time, I think it was the only database we could find for Macs. The initial task we bought it for was to computerize our relatively simple, manual addressing and labeling systems. From there it morphed in complexity and moved into many more areas.

Thank you! Thank you, Jim!

[designer]

I was working at Cricket Software in Support. I had a previous career as a programmer working with “Big Iron” and FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/1, Algol, Lisp … But I got tired of a new language every few years that required a whole new syntax to do the same things the language before would do.

When this language “C” came along, I figured it was just a hodge-poge of Lisp/Assembler/Basic and wouldn’t be around any longer than the others. So I moved to “support” and knowing what was going on on the code side, it helped figure out problems on the user side.

I also became the Cricket in-house FileMaker expert and regularly published articles in the FileMaker Report. But I kept running into FileMaker limits. Then an article appeared in MacWeek describing this new database, Panorama. Everything I read about it indicated it eliminated the FileMake limits/issues.

At that time, a Venture Capitalist woo’d Cricket Owner’s daughter, Sabrina, to combine their shares and take over the company. They dropped the Mac software to focus on Cricket Presents for the PC. 30 or more people were laid off that day. We met at a local brewery to commiserate. In a show of class, the Company’s owner, Cricket Amber-Allen - previous owner before the VC took over - showed up briefly and told the establishment she would cover everyone’s bar and meal bill.

With the sudden infusion of “free time”, I called Jim Rea and said I wanted to join ProVUE. I said I knew FileMaker so I could assist FileMaker users convert to Panorama and because Panorama was new, I wasn’t behind that learning curve.

Jim agreed and I drove an old Dodge extended van (without heater) across country in the middle of winter. I can still remember waking up in a parking lot at Huntington Beach with Temps in the 80’s (after driving through snow storms). Within weeks Jim took me to my first Mac World.

The scene I recall there, or it might have been my second MacWorld, is when Guy Kawasaki (ex-Apple evangelist), who was working for database 4th Dimension, tried to walk down the aisle where Jim booth was located. There was such a crowd in front of Jim’s booth, Guy couldn’t get through and and to turn around and go another way. There was plenty of walking room around the 4th Dimension booth.

Then there were the years where every time - and I mean EVERY time - Apple mentioned or listed a database for Mac, they mentioned FileMaker with nary a whisper about Panorama. Every time an article would appear in MacWeek, talking about databases and NOT Panorama, I’d write them a “correction” letter. Sometimes a correction ("Oh yes, there’s also Panorama Database) was in a following issue; usually not.

Panorama was a great prototyping tool. I worked for one outfit that wanted to create a product catalog on a CD (this was cutting age stuff). I could see they were getting lost with their navigation from page to page. So I created representives of their web pages with Panorama’s forms and had the same navigation buttons as the web pages. That way, they could quickly see how they could move from page to page to home and if the buttons ever resulted in leading them to a dead-end where they couldn’t get back. That saved a lot of design time and embarrassment.

So many people have benefited from Panorama. I imagine, if we got together, it would be like the scene at the end of Mr. Holland’s Opus, were the students Richard Dryfus taught over the years come back to honor his career.

[GregNilsen]

I started with OverVUE and my business is totally dependent on Panorama except for MacDraft that I use for my farm maps. My original Pan serial number is 13541.

[admin]

@designer

With the sudden infusion of “free time”, I called Jim Rea and said I wanted to join ProVUE.

I’m not sure if I ever heard some of those details about your time at Cricket.

It’s been a long time, but I think maybe you first sent a letter? In any case, I’m sure there was a phone call involved at some point. But I do remember that I hired you sight unseen, which was quite a leap. I never did that any other time before or since. (Not because that didn’t work out, mind you, it worked out very well in your case.) Of course really it was probably an even bigger leap for you - you moved all the way across the country to work for someone you had never met!

I think there were somewhere around 75-100 people that worked for ProVUE over the years (not all at one time, of course). Paul is the only one that has maintained a connection with this community long after leaving. Too bad he had to move so far away to eastern Oregon, it would be nice to see him again in person now and again.

[Matthew]

From the start, for many years, Panorama has for me been a magnificent combinatioin of simplicity and optional complexity. It is qite a noble achievement. As such it has served me well, and insofar as is possible, has merged itself into being an aspect of “Me,” at least my data-management persona.

[George]

You should be proud Jim.

Congrats!

I’ve been with you since OverVUE.

Most used software for me. It has always made me feel superior and efficient.

By superior I mean confident. An “I can do” attitude.

I remember in my corporate and executive professional era where being Mac centric was a cause for being somewhat lonely, I knew with Panorama I could get the job done in a superior and timely fashion. Without having to beg for assistance.

You should get the Computational Medal of Honor!

[caper]

Congratulations, Jim, on 40 years. Wow! I began with OverVue in 1985. At the time I had no idea that your database software would become my favorite program of all time.

A couple of things I would add to all the wonderful comments here. First, Panorama has been so much fun to use. It has brought great joy to my life. Thank you! I have used Panorama for many things, from compiling track results from triathlons, to prediction runs, to a scoring database (with music) for the card game Tarabish. For the races, calculating such results for everyone by hand took hours. With Panorama, the results for everyone, including age category results— were done in under 3 minutes after the last contestant crossed the finish line. We were able to print everyone’s results and give them printed copies shortly after the race ended. And that was in the late 80’s! Panorama and its capabilities has consistently amazed me.

Although Panorama has been so much fun, there have been times when I’ve been stymied. But you have created such a great discussion forum where users can receive solutions, often within minutes. Not only that, but you yourself are active there. It’s not often users can interact with the guy who wrote the program. How great is that! You’re the best. Thank you!