Those who used Apple Works' (or is it Works's? is it a proper name or plural noun? Any grammar nazi out there to advise on correct posessive form?) database component, with all the neat templates for home recipes, CD and book collections, etc., are now without a solution from Apple. They can always go to the Filemaker Pro, but that costs more than entire iWork 08. There IS that EagleData free thing, but it's old, inadequate and rather simple.

Of course, for those with some serious skills, there's always the free MySQL (with CocoaSQL or YourSQL front-end). Can't see a housewife putting together a PHP/MySQL web-site for entering her recipes, though.

In AppleWorks, you choose Insert Clipping from the File menu. You can search the web by clicking "Search Web Content".

When searching, no results returned.

Candidly, I like iWorks better; and I use FileMaker (an older version).

Apple should release FREE AppleWorks to anyone running Mac OS X with the following restrictions:

(1) No support whatever
(2) No new features

With all of Apple's disruptive changes, Apple could use some positive rapport with its loyal Mac customers -- like we felt in the 80s.

It may no longer be available from Apple, but it still works on my MacBook, and if Apple no longer sells it, I can presumably give a copy away for free to any friends who want/need it.

AppleWorks for the Apple II, AppleWorks GS for the Apple IIGS and ClarisWorks /AppleWorks for the Mac were three completely different products. AppleWorks GS was written by a small company in Houston called Styleware and sold to Claris. Two employees of Styleware, Bob Hearn and Scott Holdaway, later left Claris to develop what later became ClarisWorks after the rights were sold to Claris.

I have used Apple Works for a couple of years. It has always translated to MS Office products that I use at work, so I see no need to change. I have not tried iWork08, but I use an earlier version of Keynote which I really like, so if iWork08 is as good as Keynote, I may make the switch. Anything to avoid MS in my personal life.

Appleworks was a great application for teachers. I really took advantage of its database and mail merge features. Numbers and Pages don't mail merge. I'm hanging on to Appleworks for the moment...

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Guest wrote:
Apple should release FREE AppleWorks to anyone running Mac OS X with the following restrictions:

(1) No support whatever
(2) No new features

That makes no sense whatsoever. If you've been using AppleWorks, you already have it and don't need a free copy (it hasn't been upgraded in ages). If you don't have it, now is not a good time to start.

If Apple could try to sell it (but I doubt anyone would buy it), or release the code, for good will (though I'm not saying they *should*).

AppleWorks can still be ordered at the online Apple Store:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?spart=M9057Z%2FA

Do your homework.

"...and if Apple no longer sells it, I can presumably give a copy away for free to any friends who want/need it."

No, it doesn't work that way. Not that I think Apple will come after you, but they could since they still own the code.

For me, the bummer is that iWork doesn't import AppleWorks "drawing" documents, which were actually poorly-named page layout documents--never used it for actual drawing. For years, my resume has existed as an Appleworks "drawing." I also had a customized database for my business. Now I either have to keep both apps or use iWork and buy another database app.

"Numbers and Pages don't mail merge."

There is a tutorial showing mail merge in Pages on the iWork website.

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vasic wrote:
Those who used Apple Works' (or is it Works's? is it a proper name or plural noun? Any grammar nazi out there to advise on correct posessive form?) database component, with all the neat templates for home recipes, CD and book collections, etc., are now without a solution from Apple. They can always go to the Filemaker Pro, but that costs more than entire iWork 08. There IS that EagleData free thing, but it's old, inadequate and rather simple.

Are you saying that the copies of AppleWorks these folks have will now stop working? Horrors!

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Guest wrote:
In AppleWorks, you choose Insert Clipping from the File menu. You can search the web by clicking "Search Web Content".

When searching, no results returned.

Candidly, I like iWorks better; and I use FileMaker (an older version).

The web search occasionally does not work, but it did just a few seconds ago. Try again.

FWIW, the new suite is "iWork," not "iWorks."

Sure you can give it away, just not legally.

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Guest wrote:
It may no longer be available from Apple, but it still works on my MacBook, and if Apple no longer sells it, I can presumably give a copy away for free to any friends who want/need it.

Personally, I am most excited about the rumor Adobe might throw its hat into the Office Suite market. Adobe actually could give Microsoft a real run for its money.

Apple on the other hand, in my view, has long given up on creating and a serious Office Suite designed to rival Office. I think Apple understands that it needs Microsoft to keep building Office for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft insisted that Apple kill development on Appleworks as part of the condition for its continued support of Office for the Mac. Appleworks up until a few years ago was a very good alternative to Office. It was also the only Office Suite to incorporate all the functions into one application, as opposed to separate applications.

iWork's word processing abilities are good for people who do not need a lot of features. I could never abandon Word for it. Keynote is by far the shining star of iWorks.

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Terrin wrote:
It was also the only Office Suite to incorporate all the functions into one application, as opposed to separate applications.

iWork's word processing abilities are good for people who do not need a lot of features. I could never abandon Word for it. Keynote is by far the shining star of iWorks.

What about Microsoft Works? It came with a lot of PCs and was available for the Mac for a while. (I bought it with my first Mac, a PowerBook 100.) There was another program by another company that I can't recall right now.

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gslusher wrote:


What about Microsoft Works? It came with a lot of PCs and was available for the Mac for a while. (I bought it with my first Mac, a PowerBook 100.) There was another program by another company that I can't recall right now.

Are you thinking of BeagleWorks? It was bought by WordPerfect when Beagle Bros closed, but eventually they discontinued it. It had some good and bad modules, the word processor was okay, as were the draw and paint programs, the data base and spreadsheet were not as good as the others.

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Sir Harry Flashman wrote:

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gslusher wrote:


What about Microsoft Works? It came with a lot of PCs and was available for the Mac for a while. (I bought it with my first Mac, a PowerBook 100.) There was another program by another company that I can't recall right now.

Are you thinking of BeagleWorks? It was bought by WordPerfect when Beagle Bros closed, but eventually they discontinued it. It had some good and bad modules, the word processor was okay, as were the draw and paint programs, the data base and spreadsheet were not as good as the others.

That's it. Thanks for the reminder. I had several Beagle Bros applications for the Apple II.

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Anonymous wrote:
AppleWorks can still be ordered at the online Apple Store:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?spart=M9057Z%2FA

Do your homework.

Apple has not made it easy to find. AppleWorks is not shown on the Apple Software page in the online Apple Store, nor will a search of the store find it. If you use the search field in the navigation bar at the top of each page in the Apple site and choose the AppleWorks entry in the popup that displays, you'll go to iWork '08. If you click on "View all search results," you can get to the AppleWorks page. However, do note that the shipping time given is 2-4 weeks. That's not a good sign.

This should not have been unexpected. The last update of any kind to AppleWorks was January, 2004. Apparently, AppleWorks does fine under Rosetta on Intel Macs in Tiger and I've read that it works in Leopard, as well.

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Anonymous wrote:
"...and if Apple no longer sells it, I can presumably give a copy away for free to any friends who want/need it."

No, it doesn't work that way. Not that I think Apple will come after you, but they could since they still own the code.

For me, the bummer is that iWork doesn't import AppleWorks "drawing" documents, which were actually poorly-named page layout documents--never used it for actual drawing. For years, my resume has existed as an Appleworks "drawing." I also had a customized database for my business. Now I either have to keep both apps or use iWork and buy another database app.

That is a problem. However, I'm not aware of any application that ever imported ClarisWorks/AppleWorks drawing documents other than later versions of the same program. As you imply, it's not a real "drawing" application and the page layout options in Pages are much more powerful.

Why not keep both applications? You could get another database program (e.g., iList Data) for future projects and keep the old ones around. iList Data gets very high ratings on VersionTracker.

Edited to add direct URL for iList Data.

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Guest wrote:
It may no longer be available from Apple, but it still works on my MacBook, and if Apple no longer sells it, I can presumably give a copy away for free to any friends who want/need it.

You can give it away, but not legally. It's still copyrighted. If you were to make it available to anyone as a download, you would hear from Apple's legal department in short order.

AW has been dead since 2004 when Apple ceased developing it. It was being sold as legacy software until this month only because iWork was not a completed package.

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Terrin wrote:


Apple on the other hand, in my view, has long given up on creating a serious Office Suite designed to rival Office. I think Apple understands that it needs Microsoft to keep building Office for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft insisted that Apple kill development on Appleworks as part of the condition for its continued support of Office for the Mac. Appleworks up until a few years ago was a very good alternative to Office. It was also the only Office Suite to incorporate all the functions into one application, as opposed to separate applications.

AW and ClarisWorks actually predated MS Office, which Microsoft developed to compete with AW/CW, the most popular office suite for the Mac until MS Office slowly displaced it in the late '90s. This may have happened because Apple had a deal with MS to have the Mac BU continue as an important enterprise developer of software for the Mac--but I also think that Apple never escaped from it's own corporate view of AW as being something targeted at the education and home personal use market. Apple execs always seemed surprised that anyone would seriously consider using AW to run small businesses.

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Terrin wrote:
Personally, I am most excited about the rumor Adobe might throw its hat into the Office Suite market. Adobe actually could give Microsoft a real run for its money.

Apple on the other hand, in my view, has long given up on creating and a serious Office Suite designed to rival Office. I think Apple understands that it needs Microsoft to keep building Office for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft insisted that Apple kill development on Appleworks as part of the condition for its continued support of Office for the Mac. Appleworks up until a few years ago was a very good alternative to Office. It was also the only Office Suite to incorporate all the functions into one application, as opposed to separate applications.

Microsoft DID make putting AW on ice a condition of continuing to develop Office for Mac. That happened after one of the PC makers elected to put ClarisWorks on its machines as pre-installed software instead of Word. It put the frighteners on the PC maker with a threat to cut off supply of Windows, and on Apple with the threat to cut off Office for Mac.

Appleworks is/was brilliant. In particular, v.5. v.6 was better in a number of respects, worse in one respect -- it's handling of mail merge went backwards from being world beating to merely very good; it lost flexibility.

v.6 is very scriptable with AppleScript. The $10 or $20 bunch of scripts sold by T&B (www.tandb.com.au) made it even better.

The total integration is great.

AppleWorks GS was MultiScribe (basically MacWrite for the Apple II.)

Of course there was an Apple II version of AppleWorks that was text-based/menu driven. It's history was /// EZ Pieces for the Apple /// and those apps came from QuickFile and AppleWriter before that. Not sure I recall where the spreadsheet came from...There was one called THE SPREADSHEET, Visicalc, and one from C.A.L.L. Apple. It is really scary, but that is all from my memory, without looking it up.

Whew!

Johnny in Minneapolis

I have run my business on AppleWorks for 21 years, starting on an apple //e with two floppy drives and now on a G5 tower. There is absolutely no other program that will let you mailmerge into a spreadsheet imbedded in a word processing document from a database that has over 100 layouts with graphics, imbedded spreadsheets, etc. This program has kept me on the Mac. When I was ready to migrate from the Apple //e I really wanted a Dos machine because I was familiar with Basic and WPL, having written code to extract data from Multiplan into AppleWriter using the AppleWriter WPL language. Hopefully Apple will add a good Database to iWork and make all the modules work together as seamlessly as AppleWorks did.

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Guest wrote:
Hopefully Apple will add a good Database to iWork and make all the modules work together as seamlessly as AppleWorks did.

Exactly. iWork is not ready to replace AW. It's still missing a database. FileMaker is great but it's overkill for a lot of things.

I'd long since given up hope of Apple ever updating AppleWorks to make it a good OS X app (I think it's the only app I have today that still uses Classic-style text smoothing — UGH!), so this doesn't make much difference in my mind. It's just official now.

I still think it's odd that Apple essentially abandoned AppleWorks years before they had any adequate replacements for it. It seems like Pages and Numbers could easily have easily been part of an AppleWorks 7. Why start from scratch? AppleWorks was great, it just had some rough edges because no care was ever taken to port it to OS X. They just Carbonized the OS 9 version and left it at that.

I haven't used Pages '08, or heard much from people who have. Is it really a good substitute for AppleWorks' word processing now?