If Apple has chosen to do a headless imac 3 it would be a marketing scoop if they could present a new Appleworks 7 (Perhaps not an integrated package like now, but instead a kind of "iWork" consisting of "Final Word", Keynote, Filemaker, "Spreadsheet") directly aimed at business and education.
Appleworks may seem weak to many (and the way it has languished is no help), but it is more than capable of doing the bulk of what Office is capable of. The fact that it's all mashed into a single app does not diminish it. An updated Appleworks designed to take advantage of what OSX is truly capable of would make it a more than satisfactory solution for many users and certainly less expensive than *any* version of MS Office.
Hell, most people I work with (6000 person company and *everyone had a lisence for Office) use word for memos you could spit out in Textedit. Complex spreadsheets are rather rare as well in most departments. Even Powerpoint presentations created by most don't even push the capabilities that Appleworks can match. Some people will use the more advanced features though and for those people Office is still available.
I am well aware what Office *can* do. It's just that the vast majority of people who use it will *never* scratch very deep into its capabilities. This is where a "works" type application can shine.
On a different note, I honestly wish that the remedy in the MS case was to *force* open formats for applications. Let productivity software compete strictly on merit rather than file formats. That alone would have hurt MS more than anything.
ps - Without a nice version of Appleworks it's like going to the store to buy a knife but the store only carries chainsaws.
When I purchased my ibook a few weeks ago, I figured I could use Apple Works until I was ready to spend the $130 at Amazon for Office 2004 Mac. However, upon opening Apple Works for the first time, I realized that was not going to happen. I needed office.
I must admit if they simply put some time into the appearance of the product, and how it "feels," it might be a more attractive app.
Had I went with the Powerbook, I was going to order Apple Works. That would have been a mistake. Still, Apple Works is less than $40 for educational customers. That is very reasonable.
When I purchased my ibook a few weeks ago, I figured I could use Apple Works until I was ready to spend the $130 at Amazon for Office 2004 Mac. However, upon opening Apple Works for the first time, I realized that was not going to happen. I needed office.
I must admit if they simply put some time into the appearance of the product, and how it "feels," it might be a more attractive app.
Had I went with the Powerbook, I was going to order Apple Works. That would have been a mistake. Still, Apple Works is less than $40 for educational customers. That is very reasonable.
That was my point really. Apple has let it sit relatively untouched for years. An updated version would be orders of magnitude better in terms of usability and appearance.
Do I undrestand you correctly that you think Apple may be waiting to put enough of CI/CV and the speculative CO in 10.3.5 for their own use in Appleworks, but locked out from the rest of the developer community, i.e. frameworks = core system level code? What funsctions would you guess CO to have?
Not quite. The first iteration of the frameworks would be "locked" because it would only have been developed enough to ship AppleWorks. It takes a lot longer to polish a framework up for general use. If Apple ships AppleWorks with a private version of Core Office, they have any number of months to refine, update and debug the framework before they make it generally available, and they have an application they can use to prove the framework. This is exactly what they did with Core Video and Motion.
I would expect "Core Office" to be Core Text (already in process), Core Data (in process), and since Apple already has excellent, high-performance math libraries, that's really it. Really, the more I think about it the more I realize that they're really close.
I believe that the holdup has to do with the fact that the old WP paradigm is too manual, too dated, too complex. I mean, why should you need Quark to make a paragraph look good? It's possible, with OS X's text and layout engines, to have a word processor that's much smarter than the current ones are with respect to leading, kerning, spacing, styles, font handling, etc. But it requires a great deal of under-the-hood work, and it has to be highly polished to be worth the trouble.
(Note that I'm not talking about positioning AppleWorks as a competitor to Quark and InDesign! I'm just saying that there's no reason, given the sophistication and power of modern systems, why your college paper or newsletter or other AppleWorks-appropriate document shouldn't look attractively laid out and professionally typeset without your lifting a finger. Obviously, for midsize to large projects, anything targeted at professional printers, and anything with an involved layout, you'd still want a page layout application.)
I use AppleWorks for all my personal work, but I have 2 gripes:
?what is so hard about dragging the scroll bar dynamically in spreadsheets? I mean, why doesn't the page move interactively with the scroll bar when you drag it? It's not like every piece of modern software has supported this feature since the 90's, right?
?how can it still be that that vertical labels on spreadsheet graphs cannot be displayed properly at 90 deg, instead of the ridiculous crossword style it uses now? Quattro Pro had this in the early 90's, literally before there was a such thing as a Windows graphical interface.
Between that and my typical general needs in an office suite, I really wonder why they even bothered to designate a v.6. I guess being OSX native has something to do with it, but damn, if it isn't just v.5 in OSX, rather than a new version with enhanced features.
I use AppleWorks for all my personal work, but I have 2 gripes:
?what is so hard about dragging the scroll bar dynamically in spreadsheets? I mean, why doesn't the page move interactively with the scroll bar when you drag it? It's not like every piece of modern software has supported this feature since the 90's, right?
It would seem more economical to just include a license for Office with any new computer purchase and trash AppleWorks altogether.
It's just not economical. Microsoft might just about give away Works, but a reasonably complete edition of Office is a $250 option at Dell's online store. That should probably be considered the bare minimum it would cost Apple to bundle Office. Can you imagine the uproar if Apple jacked the price of every CPU by $250? That money would be much better spent developing a better Apple Office Suite.
Amorph-thanks for elaborating. I agree that the state-of-the-art of word processors needs a boost and Apple is just the company to do it. The Core Office stuff sounds interesting.
ibook911-and for those too young to remember MacWrite and MacDraw, these apps were as easy to use and revolutionary as iLife apps are today. I'm in science and one figure we made for my first-ever paper took two of us drawing things out on graph paper for an entire day. It then went to an artist to be copied on rice paper ($600) and then to photography to make 5 x 8 glossies (more $). It all took about two weeks. Then the reviewer wanted the figure changed. A couple of years later I needed to include the figure in my thesis and and I made the thing in cricket graph and MacDraw in about 15 minutes on my Mac IIci and printed it out on my laser printer. That was revoluntionary.
I've used MacDraw and its predessors (Appleworks) for over a decade and its still often the best, easiest and cheapest software for the job. But, if anything, some things have become a little harder in the past years: like Apple dropping EPSF output, which works best for getting graphics into MS word without deterioration. I will continue to complain that MS word doesn't import PDF files well.
A little while back there was a thread around here about the demise of framemaker. I agree that an Apple word processor aimed at the InDesign/Quark light crowd that combines what we see in Keynote with the other features of AppleWorks would be very welcomed.
It would be silly for Apple to ship iMacs with a bunch of content creation and organizational apps (iLife) and then leave out an app for the kind of content most people create.
You know this statement caused me to do a double-take. I have been thinking about this. I've thought about buying Nisus Express. What I found interesting the more I thought of it...I almost never use a word processor! Even at work I rarely use one...and even then only for fairly basic and simple documents that could likely be served by a souped-up TextEdit.
Office X is a good app... and reasonably priced if you qualify for edu discount.
Why should Apple waste resources making a clone of Office ??
It would seem more economical to just include a license for Office with any new computer purchase and trash AppleWorks altogether.
Flame away!
Office X is a relatively good app - but Internet Explorer was relatively good until Safari came aong. Apple could and should create a significantly better Office suite - even if it means taking the OpenOffice codebase as a starting point. Apple have a truly magnificant creative ability when it comes to apps - I'm convinced they could do a great job and be well rewarded in doing so
There is really no need, as some people have said, It would be a waste of development money since MSOffice is already the industry standard and is great on OSX.
There is really no need, as some people have said, It would be a waste of development money since MSOffice is already the industry standard and is great on OSX.
Using that same logic it would seem the whole idea of using Macs is a waste of time.
I won't use MS Office and I do think there is a good market for an updated Appleworks. If what Amorph says is true then the groundwork is being laid and the only development would be wrapping these farmeworks up in a nice tidy interface.
ps - If MS thought that Office was good enough they would not ever feel it necessary to make arbitratry changes to file formats and people would upgrade based on the products merit alone. Interestingly that is not the case.
Safari was good because IMO IE was pretty bad (security issues, no tabs...) I personally think that MSoffice is good for my needs. I find no problems with it. Plus the money spent on a new appleworks would be better spent on oh say new techniques to reduce manufacturing costs on the G3 imac.
Just because every one is used to MS office doesn't mean that it can't be done better. I'm sure for many folks MS Offie is overkill and TextEdit would work just fine, but there are many of us that actually use some of the non-standard functions found in MSOffice. Apple's software offerings have really been first rate in the last few years, but Appleworks just sits there like a fossil.
I really would like to see Apple turn the word processor into a a decent DP tool for those that don't need all the bells and whistles of InDesign and Quark.
Safari was good because IMO IE was pretty bad (security issues, no tabs...) I personally think that MSoffice is good for my needs. I find no problems with it. Plus the money spent on a new appleworks would be better spent on oh say new techniques to reduce manufacturing costs on the G3 imac.
Well you see...I used to think IE was pretty good and MS Office pretty bad. I personnaly think MS Office is the worse piece of code ever.
Comments
If Apple has chosen to do a headless imac 3 it would be a marketing scoop if they could present a new Appleworks 7 (Perhaps not an integrated package like now, but instead a kind of "iWork" consisting of "Final Word", Keynote, Filemaker, "Spreadsheet") directly aimed at business and education.
Drool, drool...
Hell, most people I work with (6000 person company and *everyone had a lisence for Office) use word for memos you could spit out in Textedit. Complex spreadsheets are rather rare as well in most departments. Even Powerpoint presentations created by most don't even push the capabilities that Appleworks can match. Some people will use the more advanced features though and for those people Office is still available.
I am well aware what Office *can* do. It's just that the vast majority of people who use it will *never* scratch very deep into its capabilities. This is where a "works" type application can shine.
On a different note, I honestly wish that the remedy in the MS case was to *force* open formats for applications. Let productivity software compete strictly on merit rather than file formats. That alone would have hurt MS more than anything.
ps - Without a nice version of Appleworks it's like going to the store to buy a knife but the store only carries chainsaws.
I must admit if they simply put some time into the appearance of the product, and how it "feels," it might be a more attractive app.
Had I went with the Powerbook, I was going to order Apple Works. That would have been a mistake. Still, Apple Works is less than $40 for educational customers. That is very reasonable.
Originally posted by ibook911
When I purchased my ibook a few weeks ago, I figured I could use Apple Works until I was ready to spend the $130 at Amazon for Office 2004 Mac. However, upon opening Apple Works for the first time, I realized that was not going to happen. I needed office.
I must admit if they simply put some time into the appearance of the product, and how it "feels," it might be a more attractive app.
Had I went with the Powerbook, I was going to order Apple Works. That would have been a mistake. Still, Apple Works is less than $40 for educational customers. That is very reasonable.
That was my point really. Apple has let it sit relatively untouched for years. An updated version would be orders of magnitude better in terms of usability and appearance.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
Do I undrestand you correctly that you think Apple may be waiting to put enough of CI/CV and the speculative CO in 10.3.5 for their own use in Appleworks, but locked out from the rest of the developer community, i.e. frameworks = core system level code? What funsctions would you guess CO to have?
Not quite. The first iteration of the frameworks would be "locked" because it would only have been developed enough to ship AppleWorks. It takes a lot longer to polish a framework up for general use. If Apple ships AppleWorks with a private version of Core Office, they have any number of months to refine, update and debug the framework before they make it generally available, and they have an application they can use to prove the framework. This is exactly what they did with Core Video and Motion.
I would expect "Core Office" to be Core Text (already in process), Core Data (in process), and since Apple already has excellent, high-performance math libraries, that's really it. Really, the more I think about it the more I realize that they're really close.
I believe that the holdup has to do with the fact that the old WP paradigm is too manual, too dated, too complex. I mean, why should you need Quark to make a paragraph look good? It's possible, with OS X's text and layout engines, to have a word processor that's much smarter than the current ones are with respect to leading, kerning, spacing, styles, font handling, etc. But it requires a great deal of under-the-hood work, and it has to be highly polished to be worth the trouble.
(Note that I'm not talking about positioning AppleWorks as a competitor to Quark and InDesign! I'm just saying that there's no reason, given the sophistication and power of modern systems, why your college paper or newsletter or other AppleWorks-appropriate document shouldn't look attractively laid out and professionally typeset without your lifting a finger. Obviously, for midsize to large projects, anything targeted at professional printers, and anything with an involved layout, you'd still want a page layout application.)
Specifically ibook911, what could Appleworks not do for you? I know the appearance makes it look old, but what functionality cant it do for you?
?what is so hard about dragging the scroll bar dynamically in spreadsheets? I mean, why doesn't the page move interactively with the scroll bar when you drag it? It's not like every piece of modern software has supported this feature since the 90's, right?
?how can it still be that that vertical labels on spreadsheet graphs cannot be displayed properly at 90 deg, instead of the ridiculous crossword style it uses now? Quattro Pro had this in the early 90's, literally before there was a such thing as a Windows graphical interface.
Between that and my typical general needs in an office suite, I really wonder why they even bothered to designate a v.6. I guess being OSX native has something to do with it, but damn, if it isn't just v.5 in OSX, rather than a new version with enhanced features.
Originally posted by Randycat99
I use AppleWorks for all my personal work, but I have 2 gripes:
?what is so hard about dragging the scroll bar dynamically in spreadsheets? I mean, why doesn't the page move interactively with the scroll bar when you drag it? It's not like every piece of modern software has supported this feature since the 90's, right?
3 words...bad carbon port.
Originally posted by KingOfSomewhereHot
It would seem more economical to just include a license for Office with any new computer purchase and trash AppleWorks altogether.
It's just not economical. Microsoft might just about give away Works, but a reasonably complete edition of Office is a $250 option at Dell's online store. That should probably be considered the bare minimum it would cost Apple to bundle Office. Can you imagine the uproar if Apple jacked the price of every CPU by $250? That money would be much better spent developing a better Apple Office Suite.
ibook911-and for those too young to remember MacWrite and MacDraw, these apps were as easy to use and revolutionary as iLife apps are today. I'm in science and one figure we made for my first-ever paper took two of us drawing things out on graph paper for an entire day. It then went to an artist to be copied on rice paper ($600) and then to photography to make 5 x 8 glossies (more $). It all took about two weeks. Then the reviewer wanted the figure changed. A couple of years later I needed to include the figure in my thesis and and I made the thing in cricket graph and MacDraw in about 15 minutes on my Mac IIci and printed it out on my laser printer. That was revoluntionary.
I've used MacDraw and its predessors (Appleworks) for over a decade and its still often the best, easiest and cheapest software for the job. But, if anything, some things have become a little harder in the past years: like Apple dropping EPSF output, which works best for getting graphics into MS word without deterioration. I will continue to complain that MS word doesn't import PDF files well.
A little while back there was a thread around here about the demise of framemaker. I agree that an Apple word processor aimed at the InDesign/Quark light crowd that combines what we see in Keynote with the other features of AppleWorks would be very welcomed.
Originally posted by Frank777
It would be silly for Apple to ship iMacs with a bunch of content creation and organizational apps (iLife) and then leave out an app for the kind of content most people create.
You know this statement caused me to do a double-take. I have been thinking about this. I've thought about buying Nisus Express. What I found interesting the more I thought of it...I almost never use a word processor! Even at work I rarely use one...and even then only for fairly basic and simple documents that could likely be served by a souped-up TextEdit.
Now that's just me. YMMV of course.
Originally posted by KingOfSomewhereHot
Office X is a good app... and reasonably priced if you qualify for edu discount.
Why should Apple waste resources making a clone of Office ??
It would seem more economical to just include a license for Office with any new computer purchase and trash AppleWorks altogether.
Flame away!
Office X is a relatively good app - but Internet Explorer was relatively good until Safari came aong. Apple could and should create a significantly better Office suite - even if it means taking the OpenOffice codebase as a starting point. Apple have a truly magnificant creative ability when it comes to apps - I'm convinced they could do a great job and be well rewarded in doing so
Disagree completely. With that reasoning, no one should ever write an alternate anything, since the market leader has something 'pretty good'.
Apple is slowly putting in place the pieces needed to break the Office hegemony on the Mac... without going head to head with MS. Yet.
Originally posted by scam-fo-dog
There is really no need, as some people have said, It would be a waste of development money since MSOffice is already the industry standard and is great on OSX.
Using that same logic it would seem the whole idea of using Macs is a waste of time.
I won't use MS Office and I do think there is a good market for an updated Appleworks. If what Amorph says is true then the groundwork is being laid and the only development would be wrapping these farmeworks up in a nice tidy interface.
ps - If MS thought that Office was good enough they would not ever feel it necessary to make arbitratry changes to file formats and people would upgrade based on the products merit alone. Interestingly that is not the case.
99% says its an updated version with X screenshots instead of 9 screenshots
I really would like to see Apple turn the word processor into a a decent DP tool for those that don't need all the bells and whistles of InDesign and Quark.
Originally posted by scam-fo-dog
Safari was good because IMO IE was pretty bad (security issues, no tabs...) I personally think that MSoffice is good for my needs. I find no problems with it. Plus the money spent on a new appleworks would be better spent on oh say new techniques to reduce manufacturing costs on the G3 imac.
Well you see...I used to think IE was pretty good and MS Office pretty bad. I personnaly think MS Office is the worse piece of code ever.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/