Appleworks dies. Long live iWork
ComputerWorld UK reports that AppleWorks has been retired by Apple after 23 years. AppleWorks, aka ClarisWorks né StyleWare provided a complete, low-cost office suite for Macintosh computers all the way into the PowerPC era. I wrote my dissertation in the program and until a couple of years ago I still used it to create our family holiday cards. I was surprised by the news as I had assumed the program had been put to rest years ago, buried along-side Hypercard. Instead, it took the release of Apple Numbers to finally kill the old workhorse. iWork '08 imports AppleWorks documents including spreadsheets, presentations and word processing files.
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ComputerWorld UK reports that AppleWorks has been retired by Apple after 23 years. AppleWorks, aka ClarisWorks né StyleWare provided...
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iWork simply tells you that your AppleWorks database can't be opened. Period. Also, if your previously created spreadsheet is very large, iWorks will also tell you it can't be opened.
October 27 2007 at 1:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe AW Database is the most important part of the suite for me which I still use daily.
Anyone know what happens if you try to open a database .CWK file in iWork?
What's the alternative? FileMaker is complete overkill.
--mco
I used Claris Works for years on my MacIIci in high school. What a great app.
It's cool that it stood the test of time living in the Appleworks witness protection program.
Now I spend 90% of my current computing life in Windows in MS Office (at work), which could learn a few things from Claris Works (like how its not polite to constantly try to reformat a user's document! That's right, I'm looking at you MS Word!)
just love appleworks and am devastated it is being dumped. the only module I don't use is presentation. I bought a copy of iwork and found Pages to be absolute rubbish - a load of hyped templates that did not permit any creativity. it imports only word processing documents and those very badly as it screws up everything. It is unlike apple software being clunky and ugly. The drawing and word processing modules in appleworks allow you to do anything and you are only limited by your imagination. I bought Intaglio but it is a poor substitute for the Drawing Module. The only piece of software that remotely comes near the useability and creativity of Apple Works is Rag Time and that really costs but I may have to save up for it.
August 17 2007 at 8:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyiWork still lacks something that MS office still does not have. A database. I use appleworks for the database program.
Sure there is Filemaker but that costs $1000.00.
Whatever Apple comes up with to replace the database feature in appleworks. They need to add that ability to import and export MS access files. Filemaker can't do it, Appleworks can't do it, Open Office can't do it, MS office for mac can't do it (No data base at all.
I also used AW for my dissertation - actually it was Clarisworks 5. Such a clean SMALL program - a real beauty. (iWorks takes nearly 2 Gigs of RAM! - that is without Numbers) The dissertation had Sanskrit fonts and transliterions plus charts, tables, graphics and lots of footnotes.
I really don't think that adding Numbers completes the picture. AW had Paint and a simple database ( which could have been much better with a little formula help in matches). I don't see a paint option in iWorks - or have I missed something?
I love the simple Draw unit in AW. Has anyone found a program that will import AW Draw documents?
Sad to hear that the new version of iW doesn't import AW at all.
Actually I became disillusioned already with AW 6 when it had no publish/subscribe function, which I used to make collections of my poetry, and did not support all my macros.
But this is not good news for those who fondly remember the days when Claris had not only the best integrated office suite in Clarisworks, but also the best email client in Claris eMailer (later Outlook) and the best PIM in Claris Organizer (later Palm Desktop). And the all ran in less than 1 M as I recall.
Appleworks User Groups www.awug.com will have strategies for all the conversions we'll have to make. Too bad about those templates...
When will Pages ever allow the entering of equations into documents?!? I teach HS math and need to enter equations for worksheets and tests and Appleworks and Word work fine for this....NeoOffice just doesn't work nearly as nice. I haven't found a THING for Pages.
'til then.....still need to use Office sadly.
I bought my first Apple computer in 1979 (yeah, I'm an 'old man') - serial number 3000. Still have the original red users manual, though the machine is long gone. So you know what's coming next -- I too felt just a twang of sorrow in hearing of Appleworks passing. (Don't tell my wife. She thinks I'm enough of a geek already.)
August 16 2007 at 8:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replypoor clarus the dogcow :(
moof.
I use a draw file to design my business cards and my address labels, and I can print several on a page! Will iWork still let me do this?
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