[jamesl]

Hi

Sorry if this has been asked recently. I was wondering if anybody knew anything about when a newer version of Appleworks will be launched.

If so, what are the expected new features?

[ManOfSteal]

That's been rumored forever as far as I know...maybe MWSF '05!

[Millennium]

There have been rumors of a new AppleWorks at "the next MacWorld" for years now. Thus far we've been disappointed every time.

[Rev-O]

Hey! The biannual 'New Appleworks' thread! Not that I can be that critical, 'cus I always read the threads as they pop up.

Sure would be nice.

[the_glassman]

Just give in and buy office or try NeoOffice-J cause I think at this point Appleworks is dead and buried. The rumors have gone on for years, when's the last time they actually updated the damn thing?

[jamesl]

Maybe apple will simply launch some individual products like they did with Keynote?

[Krypton]

There's a Tiger TextEdit thread in the OS X forum somewhere where you can see that TextEdit will support tables, headers&footers and page numbering by next year.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Yup! TextEdit... the next Office-killer.

[bergy]

You'all should take a look at ..

Open Office

www.openoffice.org

[mitchell_pgh]

I've said this for a long time, but Apple should simply take the Safari approach to AppleWorks.

1) Kill/Open Source AppleWorks (say that it will no longer be developed)
2) Launch an Apple version of OpenOffice (with compatibility for AppleWorks)

Apple should be pushing for open standards in Office applications.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Krypton:
There's a Tiger TextEdit thread in the OS X forum somewhere where you can see that TextEdit will support tables, headers&footers and page numbering by next year.

If you want good Word support, Abiword for Mac OS X has all that already. But neither that program nor TextEdit � even in Tiger � is much of a substitute for Excel.

[TimmyDee51]

I think why this thread keeps popping up, especially in the face of NeoOffice-J and OpenOffice, is that AppleWorks was/is simple yet powerful. The open-source alternatives are powerful but far from the kind of simple that AppleWorks treated us with in the past. I, too, hope that Apple will release an update to AppleWorks. That app never tried to do more than it should have but did what it could well.

[jamesl]

I think that text edit tiger will be a fantastic application, and I dont really have a problem with Appleworks word processor either.

However, what would be good would be for apple to launch a powerful spreadsheet application, as appleworks spreadsheet simply cannot cut it.

The rest of appleworks is fine in my opinion, even the database open for students and schools to use.

[Luca Rescigno]

I figure anyone who NEEDS a speadsheet should be able to afford to buy Excel. As long as Tiger's version of TextEdit can:

Choose between single and double spacing a document
Support headers and footers
Create bulletted lists
Adjust margins
Read .doc files
Write to MS Word compatible format - right now, you can open a TextEdit-created RTF file in Word, but it doesn't show up the same in Word as it does in TextEdit.

A word processor is a basic thing that every computer needs. It's almost as important as a web browser (perhaps more important even). Hopefully Apple will begin to provide one.

[jamesl]

Not as simple as that though when it comes to spreadsheets. My school cannot afford to buy any updates or additional licesnes for excel, simply because it costs way too much for either excel on its own or the office bundle.

However, more advanced spreadsheet features are required to complete several elements of the spreadsheet part of the course.

So I do feel that they should launch a better package as a replacement for the appleworks spreadsheet really.

[Luca Rescigno]

Yeah, that's true. A simple, affordable spreadsheet similar to the one in AppleWorks (but of course updated and modernized) would be good. I just don't think it's a necessary part of the OS. A word processor, on the other hand, is.

And of course there's always Mariner Write and Calc. And OOo. But OOo is probably not the best solution for a school.

[madmacgames]

I don't foresee a new appleworks... not for awhile. Steve and Apple are really pushing Office 2004 (MS is pushing it too of coarse, but Apple is pushing it hard as well). I don't see why they would push it so hard if a newer version of Appleworks was just around the corner. This would only serve to upset customers.

If you're a student, and think even the student edition price is too much, there is a reason it comes with 3 licenses. Get in with a couple buddies of yours and you can pick it up for about $40 each.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
A simple, affordable spreadsheet similar to the one in AppleWorks (but of course updated and modernized) would be good. I just don't think it's a necessary part of the OS. A word processor, on the other hand, is.

I don't see how advanced word-processing features (beyond those found in TextEdit) are any more a "necessary part of the OS" than a spreadsheet application.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
I don't see how advanced word-processing features (beyond those found in TextEdit) are any more a "necessary part of the OS" than a spreadsheet application.

exactly. It all depends on how you use the computer.

People at investment banks and the like tend to create excel files or powerpoint files

People at law firms tend to create word files

In either circumstance, the respective program(s) seem integral to the computer experience, but they aren't necessarily.

---------------

New Point:

As much as Word has a history of super-bloat, and not being as good as it's competitors (i.e. WordPerfect), Excel has, AFAIK, always been considered the best spreadsheet program out there. Have there ever really been any real excel competitors?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
I don't see how advanced word-processing features (beyond those found in TextEdit) are any more a "necessary part of the OS" than a spreadsheet application.

I don't even see how what TextEdit provides is strictly necessary, per se. Many people get by fine without them. The scary part is, many people even get by without Web browsers.

These things are nice to have, of course. But necessary? Not by any means.

[Group51]

I wish Omni Group would do a spreadsheet.

I think the worry for Word Processing is that the Mac is being left behind with Office 2003, which supports XML. Certainly where I work we're have already switched to XML in Word, and Macs are out in the cold. I mean there is nothing on the Mac, that I can see that can do it.

[mikerally]

Hi I don't know if you guys have been following AppleInsider as closely as I have, but sometime in August this year I think, they reported that Apple was rumored to be writing a brand new version of AppleWorks from scratch in Cocoa (we all know that the current version is basically a quick and dirty Carbon port).

I was up at Apple Expo Paris in August/September (when the iMac G5 was launched) and I approached a developer at the Apple stand who was demonstrating a number if different developer tools in Panther, including XCode and etc - he was also showcasing the built-in X11 using OpenOffice.

We got talking about Carbon and Cocoa and he was basically telling me how Apple doesn't write any new Apps in Carbon anymore (it's all done in Cocoa, e.g. Keynote, the iApps etc) - and I happened to mention in passing the rumor about Apple writing Appleworks from scratch in Cocoa and that seemed to catch him off guard - he obviously wasn't allowed to talk about it or confirm it for me but I could pretty much tell that he was hinting that it was true.

[cpac]

Originally posted by mikerally:
he obviously wasn't allowed to talk about it or confirm it for me but I could pretty much tell that he was hinting that it was true.

See - the things is:

OF COURSE Apple's been working on an Office Suite. Might be from scratch, might be from open-source (ala Safari), but just as concern about the viability of IE on the Mac prompted them to build Safari, concern about the viability of MS Office on the Mac probably prompted them to start building their own replacement *long ago.*

So why haven't we seen/heard anything about it?

Well, for one, OS X couldn't have gotten off the ground if MS Office weren't available for it. MS keeps developing Office because they turn a profit selling it. Were Apple to introduce it's own Office app before now, besides merely pissing MS off, it would cut into their profits, perhaps significantly enough to justify killing off Mac Development altogether. No more MS Office for Mac OS X, kills the platform very quickly for many users.

Now then - why would Apple develop their own version at all? Well - what if MS never did quite write Office for the Mac? Or announced tomorrow that even though it's profitable, it's not profitable enough, and so they're discontinuing development of Office? Apple might be doomed at that point, but their best hope would be in having an Office-replacement ready to go. Hell - they might even work out a deal with MS whereby they get access to the closed MS file formats in exchange for Apple not filing an anti-trust lawsuit. But if Apple didn't have an Office replacement ready to go, they'd *really* be SOL.

So my bet is that they have something along the lines of a cocoa/open source office suite of apps being continually developed/updated, but that at least for a while, we wont see much of them at all.*

*-the one exception so far has been Keynote - which can been explained by Steve's hubris alone - he probably doesn't have to do much work in excel or word, but he's doing and watching presentations all the damn time. He'd hate watching powerpoint all day long when he knew how much better Keynote could be (and how good he'd look using it for his Stevenotes).

[J-23]

Check this website:
AppleWorks History

Quote from the article (about original ClarisWorks developers who later founded BeOS-only Gobe software company with a very good office package):
"Apple did not in the end acquire Gobe as such, but three of its founders, Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed. They won't tell me what they are up to (even off the record!), but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase."

It was sometime at the end of 2002 or beginning 2003. So since that time those AppleWorks guys have been working on something secretly.
J-23

[MacGorilla]

If Adobe would bring Framemaker to OSX, my life would easier. Its over kill to use for a word processor only but I love it.

[pastusza]

I am 100% confident that Apple has an office suite ready to go at the drop of a dime, and they're not releasing it because of MS Office 2004. They need to have something all ready to go in case MS decides to discontinue Office for Mac (which really is just a matter of time).

I am however, quite surprised that some build of it did not leak from Apple yet. Then again, almost every beta leak has come from beta software made available to ADC members.

Andy

[madmaxmedia]

Apple did not in the end acquire Gobe as such, but three of its founders, Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed.

Gobe is still around (although maybe it got sold), you can go to www.gobe.com. It also got a good review at ArsTechnica-

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q2/gobe/gobe-1.html

When I first heard this news about Apple hiring these guys, I was hoping they'd do a new AppleWorks along these lines. Who knows what they're working on though- maybe a next-gen productivity app that will be even a step beyond Gobe...

[KevinPrice]

Little anecdote: I just purchased and received an iMac G5 for my father in law. I was going through it this past weekend, partitioning the hard drive, adding apps and utilities I know he will use, etc...i.e., getting it ready for his use, when I noticed Appleworks was NOT included in the Applications folder.

I really didn't think much about it beyond considering copying my copy to his hard drive. Then I asked myself, "When is the last time I even considered using Appleworks, anyway?"...so I decided not to copy it over to his machine.

The point is this: Has Apple stopped including Appleworks on new computers? Is Apple 'out-of-business' with Appleworks? Given that they haven't updated it forever, I wouldn't be surprised. It was a nice little app...but I never used it. I wouldn't doubt it if Apple concluded the same.

[driven]

Originally posted by KevinPrice:
Little anecdote: I just purchased and received an iMac G5 for my father in law. I was going through it this past weekend, partitioning the hard drive, adding apps and utilities I know he will use, etc...i.e., getting it ready for his use, when I noticed Appleworks was NOT included in the Applications folder.

I really didn't think much about it beyond considering copying my copy to his hard drive. Then I asked myself, "When is the last time I even considered using Appleworks, anyway?"...so I decided not to copy it over to his machine.

The point is this: Has Apple stopped including Appleworks on new computers? Is Apple 'out-of-business' with Appleworks? Given that they haven't updated it forever, I wouldn't be surprised. It was a nice little app...but I never used it. I wouldn't doubt it if Apple concluded the same.

I *think* Apple still includes it on the consumer lines (iMac, eMac, iBook) but not on the pro lines (G5, Powerbok). I know it didn't come on my G5. (I still had a copy I purchased for my G4 cube though ... and I have the previous iteration of Office. I suppose at some point I'll take a look at Open Office.

BTW: Even the financial software is different. The iMac & iBook come with Quicken while the G5 and PB come with QuickBooks.
(Can you use QuickBooks for personal accounts????) <-- Haven't even fired it up.

[l_c]

I know this is off-topic but above, people were talking about AbiWord, Mariner, etc. and they omitted Nisus Writer Express (which is worth a mention) Larry.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by cpac:
Well, for one, OS X couldn't have gotten off the ground if MS Office weren't available for it. MS keeps developing Office because they turn a profit selling it. Were Apple to introduce it's own Office app before now, besides merely pissing MS off, it would cut into their profits, perhaps significantly enough to justify killing off Mac Development altogether. No more MS Office for Mac OS X, kills the platform very quickly for many users.

Yes - when Microsoft was under anti-trust pressure and gave Apple $100 million to help keep Apple afloat and make Microsoft look less evil, I'm quite sure it was understood between Gates and Jobs that the office suite market would be left to MS Office and that Apple would let AppleWorks flounder. They couldn't be too obvious about it, so AW still lives, but it hasn't seen a serious upgrade since that time even though Apple has upgraded and/or introduced a dozen other apps. As you suggest, it benefits Apple as well as MS because it keeps MS working on the Mac platform and allows people to switch and/or work cross-platform.

[Gamoe]

jamesl, we all hope that Apple will actually remember AppleWorks some day and get it up to date with all the other software. I don't have any need of its other functions, but I still use AppleWorks for all my word processing. So, I'm always hoping for an update or a totally new, AppleWorks format compatible word processor, with no luck so far. And I've been using AppleWorks quite a bit lately as it's the end of the semester now and I've a barrage of reports and essays to write.

[ohm^n]

Originally posted by cpac:
exactly. It all depends on how you use the computer.

People at investment banks and the like tend to create excel files or powerpoint files

People at law firms tend to create word files

In either circumstance, the respective program(s) seem integral to the computer experience, but they aren't necessarily.

---------------

New Point:

As much as Word has a history of super-bloat, and not being as good as it's competitors (i.e. WordPerfect), Excel has, AFAIK, always been considered the best spreadsheet program out there. Have there ever really been any real excel competitors?

I thought at one point Excel was the underdog, and that they emulated another app. Maybe lotus notes. The way I remember it, they even put in some of the bugs in the other app just because people were used to working w/ them like that. Anyway this page doesn't mention it but it's interesting:
http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html

Engineers use spread sheets a lot too.

[TimmyDee51]

I believe it was Lotus. The Omni guys had a little thing about that on their website for a while that said people actually cheered at the demos for the product. Let's see that happen with an Office app. Usually I'm cursing the hell out of Excel.

[jamesl]

All I am saying is that Microwoft office is way too expensive for a school with a large network to be able to afford toi purchase it for.

Likewise for studfents, it would be nice to have something a little better included with the emacs and ibooks.

James

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by jamesl:
All I am saying is that Microwoft office is way too expensive for a school with a large network to be able to afford toi purchase it for.

What are you talking about? Most schools have Microsoft Office all over the place. Heck, many CS departments these days use Visual Studio, which is way more overpriced than Office.

[driven]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
What are you talking about? Most schools have Microsoft Office all over the place. Heck, many CS departments these days use Visual Studio, which is way more overpriced than Office.

These days? I remember using Visual Studio 1.5 back when we were learning to code Windows 3.11 in my undergrad.
(Ooops .... dating myself again)

Microsoft does donate alot of software to schools though, or at least *deeply* discounts it to far below what those outside of academia can purchase the same software for.

[threestain]

But still, back to the point in hand... a new appleworks would be fantastic. Merely so that the new generation of Apple buyers (many of whom have been brought across by the ipod) have something nice and fuzzily apple to write with. Plus what does doc files do that rtf can't?

[driven]

Originally posted by threestain:
what does doc files do that rtf can't?

History of changes
MUCH smaller file sizes (esp. when images are included)
among other things ....

(I was actually surprised with how many usenet and internet postings there are on the comparisions of rtf and word file formats ...)

[kirkrr]

Originally posted by zigzag:
Yes - when Microsoft was under anti-trust pressure and gave Apple $100 million to help keep Apple afloat and make Microsoft look less evil, I'm quite sure it was understood between Gates and Jobs that the office suite market would be left to MS Office and that Apple would let AppleWorks flounder. They couldn't be too obvious about it, so AW still lives, but it hasn't seen a serious upgrade since that time even though Apple has upgraded and/or introduced a dozen other apps. As you suggest, it benefits Apple as well as MS because it keeps MS working on the Mac platform and allows people to switch and/or work cross-platform.

Development stopped 2000 on Appleworks - it appears to be a 5 year hiatus based on M$ investment in Apple. That timeframe is up, and MWSF'05 will introduce iWork'05, the Appleworks replacement (according to the rumor mill). At the very least, it will include Keynote 2 and a word processor; the spreadsheet has not shown up in the rumor mill.

The expectation is that it will be bundled with the new sub-$500 headless iMac, as well as available for purchase, price TBD.

[Simon]

Originally posted by kirkrr:
Development stopped 2000 on Appleworks - it appears to be a 5 year hiatus based on M$ investment in Apple. That timeframe is up, and MWSF'05 will introduce iWork'05, the Appleworks replacement (according to the rumor mill). At the very least, it will include Keynote 2 and a word processor; the spreadsheet has not shown up in the rumor mill.

The expectation is that it will be bundled with the new sub-$500 headless iMac, as well as available for purchase, price TBD.

Here's the TS page with the article on iWork.

[rnwjr]

So now that I ordered a Mac Mini and use Excel daily for a personal finance spread sheet what do all you Mac experts recommend...

I believe the Mini comes with AppleWorks 6 (Hope it is 6.2)

So...
AppleWorks, Office 2004 for Mac, or Openoffice???

Thanks in advance... And look forward to you comments...

-Bob

[Simon]

Originally posted by rnwjr:
So now that I ordered a Mac Mini and use Excel daily for a personal finance spread sheet what do all you Mac experts recommend...

I believe the Mini comes with AppleWorks 6 (Hope it is 6.2)

So...
AppleWorks, Office 2004 for Mac, or Openoffice???

If you use Excel because you have to (feature set, compatibility, etc.) it's either buy Excel or download OO. The former is more expensive, the latter might not be quite as comfortable (needs X11, has ugly Win-like UI, etc.).

If you don't have to use Excel, you might try the AW spreadsheet module. If you're doing simple stuff, it will be fine.

Just take whatever you need and spend as much as you have to. I don't use Office and I sure as hell dislike MS and BG, but this is not a topic to be religious about. Just get your work done.

[Tsilou B.]

Don't use OpenOffice for Mac. Use NeoOffice instead. It's almost the same application with all the same features, but much better optimized for Mac OS X. You don't need X11 or something to run it.

Download it from http://www.neooffice.org/

[threestain]

I second the option of neoOffice

[the_glassman]

Yep, NeoOffice is awesome!

[ism]

Can I fourth it?

Well good when you need that Office compatibility