[rubaiyat]

AppleWorks has finally had sentence passed on it after being neglected for many years.

As per usual, Apple has deep sixed a good product, without actually replacing it, leaving those who depend upon it to struggle to find a replacement.

Those who use it will be denigrated, then marginalised, before finally being cast aside.

To anticipate the usual Greek Chorus, iLife and iWorks do not replace this all in one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Drawing, Paint, Presentation and Database package. OSX now lacks the equivalent of MsWorks or the basic drawing, paint applications etc that Windows users turn to to get their work done.

[Big Mac]

AppleWorks has been dead for a long time. With Numbers, it looks like iWork can serve as a decent replacement. I know AppleWorks has more components, but the code base was very old and apparently not worth updating. This is the way Apple has chosen to replace AppleWorks.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Those who use it will be denigrated, then marginalised, before finally being cast aside.]

You forgot flogged, humiliated, and crucified.

There are plenty of freeware painting/drawing products that are as good as Appleworks. Database, I don't know.

[MacosNerd]

indeed, sorry to see it whither on the vine, but its "death" was inevitable once apple decided not to update it.

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

You forgot flogged, humiliated, and crucified.

There are plenty of freeware painting/drawing products that are as good as Appleworks. Database, I don't know.

None as compact, simple and interchangeable.

Name the Paint and Drawing programs you can recommend. There are none that I have tried that fill AppleWorks' shoes. In fact these 2 requirements are oddly AWOL on the OS that is supposed to be THE home for graphics.

Keep in mind that a collection of apps to replace what AW did, adds up to a lot more than AW ever cost, and they lack AW's consistency.

[mindwaves]

I miss AppleWorks/ClarisWorks. I used ClarisWorks 4 a lot in school and AppleWorks 5 wasn't too bad, but v6.0 was uhhh (at least in OS X, OS 9 wasn't too bad).....

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Name the Paint and Drawing programs you can recommend.

Well, I don't know what your exact requirements are, but I guess I should mention GIMPshop and Inkscape, though they both require X11. Seashore and Pixen are ok, but still pretty rough around the edges. I don't do much drawing myself, but when I do, I use Photoshop Elements.

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Keep in mind that a collection of apps to replace what AW did, adds up to a lot more than AW ever cost, and they lack AW's consistency.

Didn't Appleworks sell for $129? And iWork is $79?

[rickey939]

Awesome!

[CIA]

First off, "AppleWorks is Dead" is a poor way to phrase this. Anyone who still uses it know's that the program has essentially been dead for about 10 years. Seriously, when was the last actual update? But on that note.....
I don't need the latest and greatest, but I often buy the latest and greatest. AppleWorks was an exception to this.
I've used it since the 90's. It serves my word processing and basic spreadsheet needs perfectly. I've used it so long I know the interface like the back of my hand. I have pages, I have office. I rarely need to use them, because for 99% of what I do, AppleWorks still works fine. Honestly if all I ever did was write and do basic accounting, I would be fine on a LCIII and AppleWorks.
New office type apps come and go all the time, but AppleWorks, simple as it may be, still works fine for a large chuck of the users out there. Sometimes the latest and greatest isn't needed.
Heck, my grandfather used MacWrite from 1985 till his death in 2002.

Anyway, this "death" won't change anything, (see above), but it's nice to finally hear from Apple what we already knew. I'll still use AppleWorks for the forseeable future tho.

[Douglashh]

I'm told AppleWorks with work with Leopard under Rosetta so I'll move it over when I upgrade to a new Mac Mini when Leopard comes out in October. I've used AW since it was ClarisWorks and really found it met all my needs quite well. Thank god I downloaded and saved the AW 6.2.9 update when it came out. I'm going to miss AW someday. I'll stop using it when they 'pry it out of my cold dead Mac'.

[Big Mac]

For the record, I still use AppleWorks for some things.

[Cadaver]

'Bout time AppleWorks was put down. It died 5 years ago, it just didn't know it yet.

[CharlesS]

I'm surprised they actually still had it at the Apple Store until now, frankly. The thing's been a zombie for years.

iWork may lack the drawing module, but overall it seems to be a much better suite than AppleWorks was. Did AppleWorks even have an inline spell checker? (I can't try it to find out because the thing's crashing every time I try to type anything in the Word Processing module.)

[PurpleGiant]

No, no inline spell check that I recall.

I loved AW at the time, but honestly, iWork is a better app. The Paint module is hardly something to actually miss - it was borderline useless for anything serious. If Pixelmator lives up to it's promise it should be a good Mac painting app at a much lower price than Photoshop.

[Big Mac]

The database module was useful for light tasks, however; the integration between the apps was laudable.

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Well, I don't know what your exact requirements are, but I guess I should mention GIMPshop and Inkscape, though they both require X11. Seashore and Pixen are ok, but still pretty rough around the edges. I don't do much drawing myself, but when I do, I use Photoshop Elements.

Are we now so used to getting second best in OSX that clumsy, unintuitive, bloated software that requires an alien user environment is seen as a solution?

Didn't Appleworks sell for $129? And iWork is $79?

iWorks is well short of being a replacement for AppleWorks and it has cost US$79 for every upgrade, which I make out has now cost over twice what Appleworks cost.

btw I shall be posting an installable copy of AppleWorks via BitTorrent and shall keep it up for those who need real solutions not empty excuses.

Despite the fact that it does so much more, it will be a fraction of the download of iWorks.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Are we now so used to getting second best in OSX that clumsy, unintuitive, bloated software that requires an alien user environment is seen as a solution?

I don't use iWork, but why is it unintuitive?
BTW for simple drawings I use OmniGraffle; you can use it for free if you have less than 20 elements on your page.

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

iWorks is well short of being a replacement for AppleWorks and it has cost US$79 for every upgrade, which I make out has now cost over twice what Appleworks cost.

That's a strange reasoning, Apple Works hasn't been updated in what, seven years (no, the small point update to make it run on OS X doesn't really count). iWork on the other hand is updated, but nobody forces you to update from one version to the next. But even if you have paid 3x$79, it's still not `over twice as much'.

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

btw I shall be posting an installable copy of AppleWorks via BitTorrent and shall keep it up for those who need real solutions not empty excuses.

<official MacNN statement>Unless you can show me that Apple allows for this, do not post links to pirated software. It might get you banned. </official MacNN statement>

[JKT]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

I don't use iWork, but why is it unintuitive?

It is neither clumsy, bloated or unintuitive (quite the opposite, in fact - it is one of the very few suites of office apps that isn't). However, what it isn't is simplistic (which has its place as well) like AW.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Are we now so used to getting second best in OSX that clumsy, unintuitive, bloated software that requires an alien user environment is seen as a solution?

said the guy promoting AppleWorks...

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by JKT 

It is neither clumsy, bloated or unintuitive (quite the opposite, in fact - it is one of the very few suites of office apps that isn't). However, what it isn't is simplistic (which has its place as well) like AW.

I disagree on that one... on other Office apps (MS Office, Open Office, Apple Works) everything was exactly where I thought it would be.

on iWork, I find myself hunting, and checking help and google way too often.

[pcryan5]

Sort of sad this but life moves on. As long as Apple continues to support PRODOS and Sticky Bear Bop I'm good.

[brokenjago]

Name the Paint and Drawing programs you can recommend. There are none that I have tried that fill AppleWorks' shoes. In fact these 2 requirements are oddly AWOL on the OS that is supposed to be THE home for graphics.

Paintbrush

Paintbrush 0.8 - Mac OS X - VersionTracker

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by mpancha 

I disagree on that one... on other Office apps (MS Office, Open Office, Apple Works) everything was exactly where I thought it would be.

on iWork, I find myself hunting, and checking help and google way too often.

Hear, Hear!

How can the "New" Apple make selection and changing things on screen so obtuse and difficult?

Prime Doh! is in Preview how you have to select an area then zoom to it, instead of what everyone else does which is do the 2 together with one tool. If you zoom with nothing selected it zooms to the maximum and won't respond to attempts to set the scaling, fastest way out is to quit the file and start over.

In Pages you are constantly clicking away (into areas you hope don't contain another object) to unselect, something that pervades iLife & OSX like an old rotting fish. Trying to grab an object to edit it is a never ending hit and miss and if it is buried under something else forget it. What is this? The 1980s? We haven't learnt how to do this in the last 20 years?

The styles look wonderful until you try and edit them and Apple makes that an exercise in total frustration buried 3 layers deep. The same goes with their templates.

Like I said, there are some aspects of the Cocoa apps that I like and some that just drive me crazy because there is no good reason for such smug stubborn non-productive stupidity.

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

said the guy promoting AppleWorks...

It works, in OSX without X11, which is more than can be said for the previous list.

I think the smug denigration of an able suite such as Appleworks comes from people who don't actually use its features and are only too happy to fatuously recommend "solutions" they've never tried to find out how really bad they are.

But Apple's done that for years, then attacked anybody who unkindly pointed out the Emperor really hasn't got his daks on, and his wedding tackle is nothing like what he claimed it to be.

[TETENAL]

Photoshop Elements does not require X11.

The drawing and painting modules in AppleWorks were complete crap. Elements is about a million years ahead of the painting module in AppleWorks and even the drawing features of each of the iWork applications produces drawings that are vastly superior to anything you could ever do in AppleWorks. In fact each iWork application is better than the respective AppleWorks module.

Remains the database. If you use that, then there might be no cheap replacement available. At least I don't know any.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

It works, in OSX without X11, which is more than can be said for the previous list.

Seashore, Pixen, and Photoshop Elements all run in X11?

AppleWorks may technically be a native app, but it is such a horrible OS X port that it sure doesn't feel like a Mac OS X application.

I think the smug denigration of an able suite such as Appleworks comes from people who don't actually use its features and are only too happy to fatuously recommend "solutions" they've never tried to find out how really bad they are.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... I hardly think that not including a drawing program makes a productivity suite "really bad" in the same way that, I dunno, reproducibly crashing every time you type anything with a Unicode keyboard layout selected or not saving documents when you hit Command-S do.

I also think that you can't really say about a word processor with bugs like that that it is "able" or even that "it works." There's no reason to promote AppleWorks over modern equivalents other than nostalgia for the early 90s. I certainly wouldn't recommend that AppleWorks be used for anything given the problems mentioned above.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

The styles look wonderful until you try and edit them and Apple makes that an exercise in total frustration buried 3 layers deep.

You have got to be kidding me. The interface for styles is one of the best implementations out there for a WP app. Second best is OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice and a very distant last is Word (I don't include AW as I haven't used it in about 4 years so I can't even remember if it had support for styles, never mind its interface for them).

If I were to sit down two competent people with no foreknowledge of any previous word processor, presentation or spreadsheet application - one with iWork, the other with MS Office or Appleworks or OpenOffice.org - I know which person my money would be on to knock out a truly professional looking brochure, presentation of their holiday photos and a chart of their monthly in and outgoings in less than a couple of hours.

[Moonray]

Is there a way to download the entire Appleworks online clip library? It can’t be more than a very few MB and I might miss it someday if it disappeared.

-

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Seashore, Pixen, and Photoshop Elements all run in X11?

No but the others you mention do. These I'd put down as half baked betas and expensive overkill for simple tasks.

AppleWorks may technically be a native app, but it is such a horrible OS X port that it sure doesn't feel like a Mac OS X application.

Only because Apple deliberately let it rot, yet despite that it still works!

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... I hardly think that not including a drawing program makes a productivity suite "really bad"

Hardly the sole reason I said so, but don't let me stop you pretending that it is.

...in the same way that, I dunno, reproducibly crashing every time you type anything with a Unicode keyboard layout selected or not saving documents when you hit Command-S do.

I am in OSX 10.4.10 and still use AppleWorks (not exclusively) without any of the problems you mention. Is this some bug in Rosetta on Intel Macs perhaps? If so why blame AppleWorks and not Apple for fixing the problem.

I also think that you can't really say about a word processor with bugs like that that it is "able" or even that "it works." There's no reason to promote AppleWorks over modern equivalents other than nostalgia for the early 90s. I certainly wouldn't recommend that AppleWorks be used for anything given the problems mentioned above.

I am not promoting AppleWorks over modern equivalents because Apple has no modern equivalents, but has blithely ignored that and taken away what was still usable.

Ofcourse it would have been better that Apple had got off it's smarmy fat arse and actually provided real solutions but then that's not going to happen. Because they always know best, or at least say they do, or more accurately You always say they do.

You are like a lot of PC IT I've met whose solution for bad decisions is "if it can't do the job. don't do the job!"

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by Moonray 

Is there a way to download the entire Appleworks online clip library? It can’t be more than a very few MB and I might miss it someday if it disappeared.

-

They are not very good quality and when I tried converting them into modern pdfs by devious means they got worse.

But the point remains, I guess, that at least it had some clip art.

The iWorks suite does not and is not helped by its linkage with the iPhoto library which won't open nor store pdfs, despite pdfs being THE standard graphics format in OSX.

Yet another of THOSE "always right" decisions by Apple.

Let me get this very clear even for some of the posters here who have trouble following the bouncing ball. I am NOT promoting AppleWorks itself, I am asking that Apple actually fully replace it in OSX, not with poor excuses nor brush offs that "Real" Mac users don't do that any more. And not take forever to get around to minor upgrades that still don't address most of the problems with their iLife software.

It seems like a lot of "Real" Mac users don't do many things anymore, because Apple has taken them away or made them so unworkable that they have given up.

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

...even if you have paid 3x$79, it's still not `over twice as much'.

Keynote is now version 4.

4 x $79 = $316

[TETENAL]

The first version of Keynote was better already than the AppleWorks presentation module. Who forced you to update to each and every release afterwards?

Most of AppleWorks has been replaced with something vastly superior:

AppleWorks word processor -> Pages word processor
AppleWorks spreadsheet -> Numbers
AppleWorks presentation -> Keynote
AppleWorks drawing -> any of the above can create better drawings than AppleWorks
AppleWorks painting -> was complete crap to the point of being useless
AppleWorks database -> no replacement

And what's new:

Pages page layout mode -> no equivalent in AppleWorks

That makes one module missing that was in AppleWorks and one new that wasn't there before. What's new now in iWorks is so much better than AppleWorks that it doesn't even compare. It was time for Apple to stop selling AppleWorks since it was nothing more than an embarrassment.

[Amorya]

To defend AppleWorks slightly, its Drawing module was the equivalent of Pages' Page Layout view. Equally, AppleWorks' drawing tools are (in my opinion) better than the ones in iWork, although the iWork ones are good enough for most purposes.

Having said that, I love iWork. With version 08 it's a wonderful suite and is both easy to use and powerful. Keynote has no rival, and Pages and Numbers are both more enjoyable to use than any of the competition.

Amorya

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

No but the others you mention do. These I'd put down as half baked betas

Said the guy promoting AppleWorks.

Only because Apple deliberately let it rot, yet despite that it still works!

You forgot the quote marks around the word "works."

I am in OSX 10.4.10 and still use AppleWorks (not exclusively) without any of the problems you mention. Is this some bug in Rosetta on Intel Macs perhaps? If so why blame AppleWorks and not Apple for fixing the problem.

I am able to reproduce both of the bugs on my iMac G5, which is not Intel. I doubt there are many people out there that use AppleWorks on an Intel Mac, since it wasn't bundled with Intel Macs AFAIK, and who in their right mind would actually pay money for AW?

You can reproduce these bugs, too, if you try:

1. Have your default keyboard layout set to U.S. Extended instead of just U.S. Type something into AppleWorks. It will immediately crash.

2. The saving bug can be reproduced by opening a file with AppleWorks and renaming the file in the Finder while it's open (Note that this is not the only way to cause this to happen, just the easiest). Then, make a change to the document in AW, and save. AW will give the impression that the save went successfully, and indeed if you close the document you won't get the "Save changes before closing?" screen. But when you re-open the document, you will find that, like, half your paper is gone. And you'll be like, hnggh? It will have devoured your paper, which was a really good paper. And you'll have to write it again, but really fast, so it won't be as good. It will be kind of... a bummer.

Those two bugs alone make AppleWorks unusable. I won't even get into its horrible ugly interface and its paucity of useful features.

[MacosNerd]

wow rubaiyat you seem a tad bitter over this. Perhaps a little blinded too.

While AW was great back in the day, apple has not upgraded/or improved it. iWorks on the other hand has many more features and a consistent OSX interface. I'm generally pleased with iworks, enough for me to dump M$ office. While it may not be you're cup of tea, you're really in no mans land trying to defend AW's superiority over iWorks - it aint going to happen.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

Keynote is now version 4.

4 x $79 = $316

Eeeeh, strange way to count: there have been only three versions of iWork, not four. We're talking about a productivity suite and not a stand-alone presentation program.

[iREZ]

hows bout you stop complaining about how crappy the new interface is and learn it so that you can see its not so bad. i had appleworks on my comp and hardly ever used it without forcing myself to maybe surprise myself into enjoying it, which i never did. pages, keynote and numbers > anything appleworks in my opinion

[Brien]

Eh, not surprised. It really hasn't been substantially updated since Clarisworks... 4?

[Moonray]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

The first version of Keynote was better already than the AppleWorks presentation module. Who forced you to update to each and every release afterwards?

Apple did by selling the next version packaged with Pages and then with Pages and Numbers. There were no bugfixes for older versions after new ones were released and Apple charged the full price for every “update” so you were forced to pay for bugfixes. Apple policy. Name any other software with a full price version support lifetime of say 15 months average.

-

[rubaiyat]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

You can reproduce these bugs, too, if you try:

1. Have your default keyboard layout set to U.S. Extended instead of just U.S. Type something into AppleWorks. It will immediately crash.

2. The saving bug can be reproduced by opening a file with AppleWorks and renaming the file in the Finder while it's open (Note that this is not the only way to cause this to happen, just the easiest). Then, make a change to the document in AW, and save. AW will give the impression that the save went successfully, and indeed if you close the document you won't get the "Save changes before closing?" screen. But when you re-open the document, you will find that, like, half your paper is gone. And you'll be like, hnggh? It will have devoured your paper, which was a really good paper. And you'll have to write it again, but really fast, so it won't be as good. It will be kind of... a bummer.

Those two bugs alone make AppleWorks unusable. I won't even get into its horrible ugly interface and its paucity of useful features.

CharlesS You seem to have to work really hard to get your bugs in AppleWorks, I would suggest you do neither of the 2 odd things you mention. That would solve the problem.

On the other hand I can unintentially lose entire pages along with their contents in Pages just by backspacing over a page break.

A rather incomplete list of bugs and flaws in Pages.

MacosNerd I am not surprised by your (this is how it is spelt) obtuseness, as it is standard in forums for posters to not actually read the post they are commenting on.

I am not claiming AppleWorks is superior to iWorks (nor vice versa), I am merely pointing out that Apple has removed an application that has useful features that are not replaced in any of their currently supplied programs. Further that this application is relied upon by a number of its customers, in the absence of any new solutions, to get their work done.

It is hardly a defence to say that AppleWorks is no longer being updated or supported by Apple, when that is the original complaint. It was a good program that is no longer as good as it was because of Apple's policy to ruin it.

Taking it away has taken away a reason to own a Mac. For all it's faults it provided an all in one cheap Office solution. Microsoft still provides that so, points off Apple.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

CharlesS You seem to have to work really hard to get your bugs in AppleWorks, I would suggest you do neither of the 2 odd things you mention. That would solve the problem.

You mean not type in it or try to save documents? Kind of negates the utility of a word processor, no?

And I don't think I had to "work really hard" to find bugs in AppleWorks, considering that the only "work" I had to do was to Google around to figure out why I haven't been able to get AppleWorks to launch without crashing since it came bundled with my iMac two years ago.

And I found out about the saving bug by reading posts from people who've been bitten by that over the years. As I said before, renaming a file while it's open isn't the only way to reproduce that bug, it's only the easiest one. According to the link I provided before, it can also be triggered by having a document open too long, which is exactly when you don't want to be bit by a saving bug. Imagine you've been working on a paper for two weeks or so, and you've left the document open on your computer the whole time because you didn't want to have to keep closing and re-opening it. You've been saving diligently, so you think your work is on the hard disk, and then, Software Update shows a Mac OS X security update that requires a reboot. So you apply it, reboot the computer, then launch your document... and find out that there is no longer any record of the work you've been doing for the last two weeks other than your name and the title of the paper. That's a really serious, deal-killing bug, I'm sorry.

I could run a laundry-list of other problems with AppleWorks, but frankly, it would take too long, I'd have to actually use and look at the ugly beast that is AppleWorks in order to do it, and it would be a waste of time since its problems are fairly obvious, plus the two I mentioned above are already deal-killers. AppleWorks is a relic that was once a great app, back in the day when System 7.1 was current. Now, it's an embarrassment, and I'm frankly surprised it stuck around for as long as it did.

[rubaiyat]

You keep repeating yourself, but you really have gone out of your way to cause the problems.

I can open it without problem and leave it open as long as any of my other programs.

I am not silly enough to move the original file or rename it whilst it is open, but if that amuses you, go for it.

I look after my wife, my children, my car and my home. If I did not I'd expect them to be in poor state long before 9 years. Appleworks is amazing in that it has survived that long depite the deliberate neglect. It is amazingly capable. I have even done Chinese DTPing in it for a client when nothing else would work.

Apple should can it when it has FULLY replaced its functionality and not before. Seems common sense to me.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by rubaiyat 

You keep repeating yourself, but you really have gone out of your way to cause the problems.
...
Apple should can it when it has FULLY replaced its functionality and not before. Seems common sense to me.

Why do you insist on a full replacement? First of all, nobody uses 100 % of the features of a certain app and second of all, Apple and others do have apps that can fully replace AppleWorks. There are tons of features that iWork has that AppleWorks didn't.

Even if you insist that one app has to replace it all, I suggest you have a look at RagTime and Papyrus. If RagTime doesn't ring a bell, they were Apple Developer #3
Both are rock-solid applications with a very long history.

[rubaiyat]

You jest re RagTime and Papyrus!

Ignoring the cost [729,00 € & 99,00 €], and the lack of the simplicity that AppleWorks offered, they are no match. Papyrus, besides being dead ugly, has some of the most agressively anti-user stance I have seen in a long time. They make Quark look friendly.

Ignoring all the other problems of iWorks, it has no database and the tables are desultory, compared with AppleWorks' spreadsheet embedded in text. There still is no clip-art, library supporting snippets nor vector graphics nor painting.

You don't need to have to use all the app's features to find that there were some you relied on and after 9 years you are not just back to square 1, but out the door. Same as with HyperCard.

Blame the users. "You want to do what? Why don't you just do as little, and as badly, as everyone else?"

In other words the standard PC IT response.

[JKT]

FWIW, Ragtime is free for personal use.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by JKT 

FWIW, Ragtime is free for personal use.

No, it's not.

[rubaiyat]

It is?

My German may be rusty but I can read enough of the site and I can't find the free version you are referring to.

If you are referring to RagTime Connect Basic, it limits you to 3 layout pages per document. I presume this is the equivalent of a demo mode.

[OreoCookie]

The previous version was free for personal use.

[JKT]

I was basing my comment on the past two versions I had downloaded which were entirely free for personal use - if that has changed recently, then mea culpa.

[rubaiyat]

Correct me if I am wrong but it also doesn't seem to be universal.