“AppleWorks’ last breath was masked by last week’s iMac, iLife and iWork announcements – Apple has discontinued the product,” Jonny Evans reports for Macworld UK.
“Apple told resellers of the demise of AppleWorks last week, announcing that the software had reached “End of Life” status. It will no longer be sold,” Evans reports.
“The AppleWorks website (www.apple.com/appleworks/) now directs users to the iWork section of Apple’s website,” Evans reports.
Full article here.
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Actually, AppleWorks has been as good as dead since Apple made the decision not to update it to use OS X’s vastly superior type rendering engine. I still use AppleWorks on rare occassion to clean up raw text, which it does much a much better job of than TextEdit. But otherwise, AppleWorks text simply looks too ugly to bear. The latest version of Pages looks like it might finally be capable of taking AppleWorks’ place for those who just want a basic word processor with modern features. One can hope.
Cool, I see a new Mac tv ad is on it’s way…
THIS time PC GUY gets NUMBERED…
cos MAC GUY is doing book keepin now in iWorks.
i think so I am
RIP AppleWorks. What a great name for a suite of apps! Too bad Apple has wasted the name. They should have done an iMovie-style rewrite of AppleWorks and kept the name IMO, rather than calling it “iWork” (which, BTW used to be the name of an app I used to time jobs and make invoices on my G3 PowerMac before Apple bought the rights to the name; but I digress…)
And @Tommy Boy, I agree with your points.
Now if you loved and used ClarisWorks/AppleWorks as much as I did with my students, and are interested in its history, there is an absolutely excellent site with its story:
Here
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/clarisworks.php
I have saved a copy for my personal archives. Thanks go to Bob Hearn for writing it and sharing it with us.
@alansky
“I still use AppleWorks on rare occassion to clean up raw text, which it does much a much better job of than TextEdit.”
Try out TextWrangler – it’s free and a little sibling to BBEdit.
Freelancelot the reason you’re seeing jaggies in EPSs placed in Word is that you’re just looking at the low-res preview. When you print to a PostScript printer you’ll see the hi-res vector art, when you print to a crappy non-PostScript printer (de riguere in the Windows world) you see just the jaggy low-res art. Problem is that Word still can’t place a PDF or native AI file,
If AppleWorks is now dead, than iWork 08 should be included (pre-installed) on new Macs. Not the demo, but a full working version.
I’ve been looking for a replacement to the AppleWorks Drawing program for years. I love that objects you draw remain distinct, even if you drop them on top of one another — you can still fiddle with them individually later. I’ve read that OmniGraffle is a possible replacement. I admit to cringing at the $80 price tag. Does anybody have any other suggestions as to Draw replacements?
@Rob (iWork 08 should be included (pre-installed) on new Macs)
ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! If Apple wants to get Keynote, at least, widely used as an alternative to Powerpoint, then they are going to have to “give it away” for a while. Same with Numbers.
And putting TextEdit as the only WP software on new Macs is not a good way to impress Switchers. TextEdit is just SimpleText for OS X; I prefer to chew on tin foil scraps than use TextEdit for anything serious.
Apple should include the iWork suite as standard, as they do with iLife.
Does anyone know why Apple owns FileMaker, but it seems to be the redheaded stepchild in the attic? It’s not called “Apple FileMaker”, and it isn’t even part of iWork. What gives? Why is this potential Access killer treated by Apple like it doesn’t exist?
If you go to FileMaker’s website, you’ll see the disclaimer at the bottom, “FileMaker Inc., is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple, Inc.” So what gives? Take some ownership, Apple, and realize the potential of what you’ve got sitting on that dusty shelf.
About AppleWorks: I thought that was discontinued in the ’90s.
The only thing wrong with this news is that it took Apple too long to replace Appleworks. The fact that it was so poor at opening MS Word/Powerpoint/Excel docs has been a switcher-killer at a time when Apple really needed it to be great in this area. For most it was just too cost prohibitive to have to shell out the extra cash for MS Office Mac. I have had to promise to switchers that it would be replaced soon; something they have hounded me about since. The iWorks suite should have been out at least 2 years earlier. Hopefully Apple’s new rise will result in more available cash for faster development.
Agree with everyone here that the MacDraw/ClarisDraw/AppleWorks drawing engine remains by and large unmatched.
There are more powerful tools like Illustrator or TurboCAD, but they tend to be more specialized and have a much steeper learning curve. Making simple line drawings (i.e. for a tech manual) with these is kind of like poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick.
MacDraw was always a joy to use. It got the job done quickly and easily, but with plenty of flexibility.
Sigh. Talking about this makes me want to get out HyperCard and play with the train set stack.
>choke< I still miss MacWrite.
Mac User 47, your “Good riddance!” comment shows the depth of your ignorance of the Appleworks suite. The large Appleworks Users Group regularly published tricks and shortcuts for handling all sorts of unexpected things in AW and showed the extent of its capabilities. AW let users have a complete suite of everything, including presentation and database applications, so they could be as productive as they wanted. Reading the vast majority of comments here shows the respect for the suite held by most. I think we all know it’s time to move on and saw the handwriting with the release of iWork. But AW had few detractors among those who knew and used its full capabilities. iWork is on the way to a great replacement, but has yet to catch up.
I think I can best sum up my response to you, Mac User 47, by suggesting that you crawl in your own scum out of the way of those who understand respect and who were here long before you drooled your way out of 3rd grade.
I have used AppleWorks from since the early days when it was called ClarisWorks (there were a number of competing Mac office suites at the time – Microsoft Works, GreatWorks, BeagleWorks and ClarisWorks). My (small) Mac-only company still uses it quite extensively, mainly the database and spreadsheet modules, although we also use the word processing, drawing and paint features from time to time. Only those of us who have worked with it can appreciate its simple flexibility where each module could be embedded in another in the simplest of ways.
We all could have sensed that it was on the way out when iWork came along (its iWork people, not iWorks) and now that Apple has added Numbers, my company plans to move to a combination of iWork and FileMaker Pro to replace the venerable AppleWorks.
The king is dead. Long live the king!
I love(d) AppleWorks! I have not yet moved to iWork, but I suppose the time has come, but just in case, I will hang on to AppleWorks (you never know when it might be useful).
btw – Great comment, Hg Wells. I too was a bit perplexed by mac user 47’s comment.
I loved Clairs and then AppleWorks. I still use it, today, but will be upgrading to iWorks soon. Of course, old Clairs is still on my old Performa 6400 and Appleworks will run for years on my 8600 running OS 9.1, both of which I use for legacy applications and old Games (like Descent).
I’m with George. I too miss MacWrite. Such a simple and easy to use program.
Ah, the days when the entire operating system (OS 6), MacWrite, MacPaint, and several documents were all on the same 400k floppy disc. The computer lab at the university had around 20 MacPlus and MacSE computers all hooked up to 2 LaserWriters. And everyone had to sign up for a 1-hour block of time to use the Macs. <sniff>
I just got iWorks ’08 and am trying to force myself to use it instead of AppleWorks, but the main reason I hang on to AW is that no one else has ever had checkboxes that you can actually check! Pages just has graphic checkboxes. Ick.
At least Pages (and the others) now have the format bar back where it belongs, although it’s very ugly.
Tommy Boy,
You’re right about the EPS file and going to a postscript printer as of course that is always preferable. And I’m already aware that it’s just a preview for the EPS files. However, ALL other graphics are rasterized in Word when brought in from an external source file.
I run into this scenario with clients sometimes, though:
I work from home – no postscript printer available. I have a very good affordable Epson photo inkjet that suits my needs. Sometimes the client needs me to prepare a special version of their letterhead in Word so that they can print a few at their office on a laser or inkjet printer as needed and make address changes, mail merge, etc. Note: If the job is only to be printed at a commercial printer, I stick to Ai. Ms Word will actually allow placement of PDF and Ai files, but rasterizes them. It’s within the app- not in regards to the output. Totally different thing there. I can’t send them a proof with a missing/crappy EPS proxy image – no matter how well it may print. I have not tested printing a Word file with an embedded EPS, but have read about mixed results in this full discussion:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040525092359958&query=word%2C+vector
In Pages, I drag & drop. Done. Full Ai & pdf files are no problem. My only workaround for Word now is to enlarge the pdf/ai file to 300% inside Illustrator and then drop into Word. This way it keeps the same file size, but will be large enough (clean for output) when printed/zoomed in Word to 500%. It’s still cheesy, but works. Pages is a Godsend for word processor graphics, but when opened in Word, the same problem exists at the customers end unless I enlarge the vector file first.
I am perplexed as to what to do with all my appleworks data bases, drawings, and paintings and the documents that combined all of them in WP. I’m wondering if I buy the new 2008 with Itel chips and the new Ilife crap if i can install appleworks 6 onto it from my old software backup disc. I don’t need no stinking update. Just want to do what i do when i want to do it.
rockmyrtle,
Yes, you can use AppleWorks on the new Intel Macs. You will have to transfer (copy) the application (AppleWorks.app) and the folder from your documents folder (AppleWorks User Data) to the new computer (either using the migration tool or you can copy it directly).
You will not be able to “Install” AppleWorks from either the CD-Rom or a stand alone installer. Again, you will have to copy it directly from your old computer. It will work just fine then (including all of your docs, spreadsheets, databases, drawings, etc…).
Hope this helps!!
I made business cards from Appleworks in the drawing program. I am unable to open them in iWorks. How can I transfers these graphics and logos so that I can continue to use them without Appleworks?
@ Dolores Kriley
Open the cards in AppleWorks. For each graphic stretch it as large as is reasonable holding the shift key to keep in proportion. Copy it to the clipboard. Paste into Pages. Resize to normal.
If you don’t make it large first only a lo-res image will be copied across. Nothing can open AppleWorks Draw documents that I know of, not even iWork.