AppleWorks
Does anyone know what is going on with AppleWorks? It seems to me its been a long while since 6.0 came out. Is Apple planning a major revision (6.5 or 7.0) any time soon? It seems with the recent chilling of relations between Microsoft and Apple, it wouldn?t hurt to strengthen AppleWorks and make more similar to Office. Or perhaps two versions, a ?light? version that comes on all Macs, similar to the AppleWorks we have now and then perhaps a $99 upgrade to a ?special edition? of sorts that is for all practical purposes an Office substitute.
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Mac Os Rumors:
Sunday, July 7 11:52 PM ET
We really waited until the last minute....but as promised, here's a quick weekend update.
A lot of people have been writing in, asking about the future of AppleWorks - particularly now that Apple and Microsoft appear to be cooling off their once warm relationship. We're still digging, but what we do know is that Apple has begun to look at AppleWorks as needing to fill two spots in the Digital Lifestyle strategy: those of home and office "workstations".
The typical purpose of a computer in 1990 was to do word processing, perhaps to produce banners, cards, or other documents for home or business purposes. While many other purposes have been added since that time, these functions are key to successfully selling a computer, and although the Digital Lifestyle is all about expanding beyond them to include countless other media, they remain key. Apple will almost certainly introduce a Cocoa-enhanced version of AppleWorks in early 2003 that improves significantly on the existing version...and then in late 2003 or early 2004, we see the splitting of AppleWorks into Apple HomeWorks and Apple OfficeWorks, or something of this nature.
The two-pronged approach will allow Apple to introduce innovative workplace-specific improvements, largely involving collaborative work projects, dramatic Internet-connected features, and a rich template library...all supporting a significantly larger price tag than today's for the productivity suite. A the same time, the HomeWorks version will be extremely cheap if not free, and continue to be the star of eMac/iMac/iBook software bundles.