You were surprised that your AppleWorks documents did not open when you didn't have AppleWorks installed? Why should that be surprising?
You can't even open a plain text file if you don't have a text editor application. Why would you expect to be able to open an AppleWorks file without an AppleWorks compatible application?
Really Meelash ..... He did say that he had to install appleworks from a previous OS . Unless I missed his point, he was surprised that his "Appleworks support " was missing from the latest OS offered by Apple, that's all.
Add up the cost? Ummm... iWork is one bundle which includes all of the current apps. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that future production apps won't be included as well, or that they are going to split it apart and start selling them separately.
Well I don't know about that ..They already did do exactly that with Appleworks ..split them apart and started selling them ..... and how many revisions ( at $80 bucks a pop ) does Iwork have to go through to give us back the TOTAL FUNCTIONALITY of what we lost in Appleworks. No doubt that at some future date Iwork will catch up and pass Appleworks ( as it already has in a lot of areas ) but in the meantime Appleworks still had SOME functionality That Iworks still lacks and so far we have had $160 worth of "upgrades".
Add up the cost? Ummm... iWork is one bundle which includes all of the current apps. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that future production apps won't be included as well, or that they are going to split it apart and start selling them separately.
It's been said repeatedly but Keynote the original member of "iWorks" is now version 4 so to have purchased the entire suite to date has cost US$319 and that is still without a database, drawing or paint app in the set.
The point I was making about the uncertainty of going for Apple produced software is amply proved by just looking at my software shelf which is a museum of Apple neglect and abandonment.
In case you hadn't noticed it has also taken Apple 20 months to come up with the very minor upgrades (and some downgrades) to its iLife and iWorks suites. I haven't had a chance to test it but I suspect the annoying bugs and interface flaws in Pages '06 and Keynote 3 are still there.
I too, would love to upgrade to iWork, I've tried it and it's awesome... but i still use the database in Appleworks on a daily basis. (I believe AW was a $79 app.... Filemaker is $299 !)
Of course, Hypercard would have worked for my database needs also
I've used AppleWorks/ClarisWorks since 1988 on my first Mac, a 512Ke and every Mac since. I was also a member of the AppleWorks User Group from 1995 until May 2007. I suspected the end was near because there were no new updates. I was hoping iWork would replace AppeWorks but so far it's not even close. Because this application came installed on every Mac, there has to be millions of unhappy users like me. My biggest concern is all the documents my wife and I have created over the years. She is the secretary/treasurer for her high school class reunion. The database she created has all of her classmate's names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. She created mailing labels, form letters, name tags and various lists including missing and deceased classmates. Her next reunion is in five years. I've used AppleWorks to help me in my work, creating databases, spreadsheets, letters and resumes when I changed employers. I have the last version (with the most recent update) installed on my current Mac. I plan on replacing my current one with the new 20" iMac this month. My Apple dealer said I could transfer AppleWorks over to my new computer. I hope he's correct.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a substitute. I've used MS Office, both PC and Mac versions, where I've worked. (I'm now retired). To replace all the features in AppleWorks with MS software would be costly. Is there anything available for less money?
I've used AppleWorks/ClarisWorks since 1988 on my first Mac, a 512Ke and every Mac since. I was also a member of the AppleWorks User Group from 1995 until May 2007. I suspected the end was near because there were no new updates. I was hoping iWork would replace AppeWorks but so far it's not even close. Because this application came installed on every Mac, there has to be millions of unhappy users like me. My biggest concern is all the documents my wife and I have created over the years. She is the secretary/treasurer for her high school class reunion. The database she created has all of her classmate's names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. She created mailing labels, form letters, name tags and various lists including missing and deceased classmates. Her next reunion is in five years. I've used AppleWorks to help me in my work, creating databases, spreadsheets, letters and resumes when I changed employers. I have the last version (with the most recent update) installed on my current Mac. I plan on replacing my current one with the new 20" iMac this month. My Apple dealer said I could transfer AppleWorks over to my new computer. I hope he's correct.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a substitute. I've used MS Office, both PC and Mac versions, where I've worked. (I'm now retired). To replace all the features in AppleWorks with MS software would be costly. Is there anything available for less money?
AppleWorks DOES work on the brand-new iMacs... I use it on my Intel iMac.
I've also been using the Bento beta... it's a good app, and will slowly replace my use of Appleworks. I would mention, though, that exporting a database to a file (from AppleWorks) and then importing it (to Bento) and getting everything to transfer the way you want is NOT for the "faint-of-heart".
I cannot understand why Apple has not included Bento in iWork.
Then again, I don't understand why they broke with the iWork app-naming convention to call it 'Bento' in the first place.
(a) Because Bento was not ready for release until November, well after the latest version of iWork was released.
(b) Because Bento is just a public preview, and created by the FileMaker Pro team not the iWork team.
I would guess that the future of Bento involves integration with iWork. I haven't tried it but it seems from screenshots that Bento also doesn't follow the same interface as the iWork apps?
I would guess that the future of Bento involves integration with iWork. I haven't tried it but it seems from screenshots that Bento also doesn't follow the same interface as the iWork apps?
It's nothing like iWork IME. It's got more in common with iLife than iWork for an interface.
It's nothing like iWork IME. It's got more in common with iLife than iWork for an interface.
Well it would be nice to either have the integration of AppleWorks or the consistent interface of Cocoa apps.
As there is no integrated suite for OSX you need to cobble one together:
Word Processor: TextEdit, iText Express or Bean - all free and fairly capable
Spreadsheet: MarinerCalc or Numbers - not free and short on some features
Database: Bento - not free
Drawing: ZeusDraw, LineForm, Intaglio or Inkwell - only Inkwell is free and all have issues with functionality and interfaces
Painting: Paintbrush which is free and crashes a lot, anyone recommend another?
Communications: Mail, Addressbook, iChat - all free with OSX
Presentation: Keynote - excellent but not free
None of these integrate all that easily. A notable hole in Apple's Cocoa implementation is that the natural store for a clipart library, iPhoto, won't handle pdf vector graphics.
So to summarise, whilst individual programs might have advantages over AppleWorks, as a sum they are really a major step backwards. Also as a sum they get pretty expensive.
You could add "Pages" to that list... it's a fairly capable Word Processor
I use Pages occasionally but mainly for its DTP abilities. As a WP I think it is slow and clumsy, the others are far quicker and more efficient. And you can't beat their price! Especially Bean which when it adopts some of the extra features of iText Express I'd say it would be a near perfect OSX word processor.
If you were looking at the better end of formatted text and graphics you could consider Swift Publishing which is quite cheap. Even more so since I picked it up in the MacUpdate Christmas bundle.
A little further out on a limb is Papyrus Office 12, I really don't like its interface and the developers are odd and very protective. The demo used to scramble letters as an "incentive" to buy.
RagTime with its ODBC data plug-ins comes closest to the versatility of AppleWorks but is very expensive. There used to be a free Ragtime Solo but I haven't been able to locate that for ages.
If someone wants to reinvent AppleWorks for OSX at its old price point I'd say they have a market waiting for them. AppleWorks works fine in OSX, with a few hiccups, but not being Universal Binary or supported anymore it will eventually fail.
Oh by the way Bento is ONLY for Leopard, not what I would call flexible.
Filemaker and Apple are playing silly games with their users. OSX has become a rat's nest of incompatibilities across often minor version upgrades of OSX. QuickTime and iTunes are far more backwardly compatible on Windows (back to W2K) than on the Mac which requires OSX 10.4.9, a fairly recent version.
I use Pages occasionally but mainly for its DTP abilities. As a WP I think it is slow and clumsy, the others are far quicker and more efficient. And you can't beat their price! Especially Bean which when it adopts some of the extra features of iText Express I'd say it would be a near perfect OSX word processor.
What kind of hardware are you running it on? I found it a little slow on a 1.8 G5 up until 3.0 came out. 2.0 was faster than 1.0 too. On even the cheapest Intel Macbook though it's as quick as you want it.
Apple software tends to be 'of it's era' IME and is built to use today's computers, not those from 5 years ago or sometimes even 3 years ago.
Yes, the others are quicker but they also don't do anywhere near the features of Pages and offer no integration with Numbers or Keynote.
On my boys' iMac 2.1 Ghz Intel machines Pages is brisk, but I am really saying the interface and methods are slow. Few styling keyboard shortcuts and WAY too much clicking and unclicking to get anything done.
One of the worst GUI designs of OSX is the convoluted method of NOT accidentally applying an action to something. In Pages it is extremely difficult to select what you want especially if it is content, frames or under something. Having selected it, it is even worse trying to shake off the selection. You have to find somewhere free of other objects to click away and as most objects do not show their bounds, that is a matter of hit and miss.
This seriously sucks because the same thing happens in Finder, Safari etc.
I use cmd delete to toss stuff in the Trash, and I have been caught on several occasions deleting the wrong item because the selection is so erratic. OSX lurches. Drag and drop frequently miss their marks and the strange acceleration and stopping makes getting to where you want sometimes a major time waster.
Another MAJOR stumbling block is using FontBook as the method of applying fonts, style and size, without being able to key in any of those factors.
OSX and Cocoa have some good features but as a GUI they are a long way short of the smoothness, consistency and productivity of Mac Classic.
It isn't just fond, faded memories talking. I regularly go onto my son's old Blueberry iMac which is brisk, accurate and quick to use with compatible software such as AppleWorks, Quark Xpress and Adobe's creative software.
PS What "Integration" with Keynote and Numbers are you talking about? Drag and drop works for just about anything and there is nothing exclusively specific I can think of in the iWorks apps.
Comments
You were surprised that your AppleWorks documents did not open when you didn't have AppleWorks installed? Why should that be surprising?
You can't even open a plain text file if you don't have a text editor application. Why would you expect to be able to open an AppleWorks file without an AppleWorks compatible application?
Really Meelash ..... He did say that he had to install appleworks from a previous OS . Unless I missed his point, he was surprised that his "Appleworks support " was missing from the latest OS offered by Apple, that's all.
Add up the cost? Ummm... iWork is one bundle which includes all of the current apps. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that future production apps won't be included as well, or that they are going to split it apart and start selling them separately.
Well I don't know about that ..They already did do exactly that with Appleworks ..split them apart and started selling them ..... and how many revisions ( at $80 bucks a pop ) does Iwork have to go through to give us back the TOTAL FUNCTIONALITY of what we lost in Appleworks. No doubt that at some future date Iwork will catch up and pass Appleworks ( as it already has in a lot of areas ) but in the meantime Appleworks still had SOME functionality That Iworks still lacks and so far we have had $160 worth of "upgrades".
Add up the cost? Ummm... iWork is one bundle which includes all of the current apps. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that future production apps won't be included as well, or that they are going to split it apart and start selling them separately.
It's been said repeatedly but Keynote the original member of "iWorks" is now version 4 so to have purchased the entire suite to date has cost US$319 and that is still without a database, drawing or paint app in the set.
The point I was making about the uncertainty of going for Apple produced software is amply proved by just looking at my software shelf which is a museum of Apple neglect and abandonment.
In case you hadn't noticed it has also taken Apple 20 months to come up with the very minor upgrades (and some downgrades) to its iLife and iWorks suites. I haven't had a chance to test it but I suspect the annoying bugs and interface flaws in Pages '06 and Keynote 3 are still there.
Of course, Hypercard would have worked for my database needs also
Does anyone have any suggestions for a substitute. I've used MS Office, both PC and Mac versions, where I've worked. (I'm now retired). To replace all the features in AppleWorks with MS software would be costly. Is there anything available for less money?
I've used AppleWorks/ClarisWorks since 1988 on my first Mac, a 512Ke and every Mac since. I was also a member of the AppleWorks User Group from 1995 until May 2007. I suspected the end was near because there were no new updates. I was hoping iWork would replace AppeWorks but so far it's not even close. Because this application came installed on every Mac, there has to be millions of unhappy users like me. My biggest concern is all the documents my wife and I have created over the years. She is the secretary/treasurer for her high school class reunion. The database she created has all of her classmate's names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. She created mailing labels, form letters, name tags and various lists including missing and deceased classmates. Her next reunion is in five years. I've used AppleWorks to help me in my work, creating databases, spreadsheets, letters and resumes when I changed employers. I have the last version (with the most recent update) installed on my current Mac. I plan on replacing my current one with the new 20" iMac this month. My Apple dealer said I could transfer AppleWorks over to my new computer. I hope he's correct.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a substitute. I've used MS Office, both PC and Mac versions, where I've worked. (I'm now retired). To replace all the features in AppleWorks with MS software would be costly. Is there anything available for less money?
iWork and Bento.
I've also been using the Bento beta... it's a good app, and will slowly replace my use of Appleworks. I would mention, though, that exporting a database to a file (from AppleWorks) and then importing it (to Bento) and getting everything to transfer the way you want is NOT for the "faint-of-heart".
iWork and Bento.
I cannot understand why Apple has not included Bento in iWork.
Then again, I don't understand why they broke with the iWork app-naming convention to call it 'Bento' in the first place.
I cannot understand why Apple has not included Bento in iWork.
Then again, I don't understand why they broke with the iWork app-naming convention to call it 'Bento' in the first place.
(a) Because Bento was not ready for release until November, well after the latest version of iWork was released.
(b) Because Bento is just a public preview, and created by the FileMaker Pro team not the iWork team.
I would guess that the future of Bento involves integration with iWork. I haven't tried it but it seems from screenshots that Bento also doesn't follow the same interface as the iWork apps?
I would guess that the future of Bento involves integration with iWork. I haven't tried it but it seems from screenshots that Bento also doesn't follow the same interface as the iWork apps?
It's nothing like iWork IME. It's got more in common with iLife than iWork for an interface.
It's nothing like iWork IME. It's got more in common with iLife than iWork for an interface.
Well it would be nice to either have the integration of AppleWorks or the consistent interface of Cocoa apps.
As there is no integrated suite for OSX you need to cobble one together:
Word Processor: TextEdit, iText Express or Bean - all free and fairly capable
Spreadsheet: MarinerCalc or Numbers - not free and short on some features
Database: Bento - not free
Drawing: ZeusDraw, LineForm, Intaglio or Inkwell - only Inkwell is free and all have issues with functionality and interfaces
Painting: Paintbrush which is free and crashes a lot, anyone recommend another?
Communications: Mail, Addressbook, iChat - all free with OSX
Presentation: Keynote - excellent but not free
None of these integrate all that easily. A notable hole in Apple's Cocoa implementation is that the natural store for a clipart library, iPhoto, won't handle pdf vector graphics.
So to summarise, whilst individual programs might have advantages over AppleWorks, as a sum they are really a major step backwards. Also as a sum they get pretty expensive.
...Word Processor: TextEdit, iText Express or Bean - ...
You could add "Pages" to that list... it's a fairly capable Word Processor
You could add "Pages" to that list... it's a fairly capable Word Processor
I use Pages occasionally but mainly for its DTP abilities. As a WP I think it is slow and clumsy, the others are far quicker and more efficient. And you can't beat their price! Especially Bean which when it adopts some of the extra features of iText Express I'd say it would be a near perfect OSX word processor.
If you were looking at the better end of formatted text and graphics you could consider Swift Publishing which is quite cheap. Even more so since I picked it up in the MacUpdate Christmas bundle.
A little further out on a limb is Papyrus Office 12, I really don't like its interface and the developers are odd and very protective. The demo used to scramble letters as an "incentive" to buy.
RagTime with its ODBC data plug-ins comes closest to the versatility of AppleWorks but is very expensive. There used to be a free Ragtime Solo but I haven't been able to locate that for ages.
If someone wants to reinvent AppleWorks for OSX at its old price point I'd say they have a market waiting for them. AppleWorks works fine in OSX, with a few hiccups, but not being Universal Binary or supported anymore it will eventually fail.
Oh by the way Bento is ONLY for Leopard, not what I would call flexible.
Filemaker and Apple are playing silly games with their users. OSX has become a rat's nest of incompatibilities across often minor version upgrades of OSX. QuickTime and iTunes are far more backwardly compatible on Windows (back to W2K) than on the Mac which requires OSX 10.4.9, a fairly recent version.
I use Pages occasionally but mainly for its DTP abilities. As a WP I think it is slow and clumsy, the others are far quicker and more efficient. And you can't beat their price! Especially Bean which when it adopts some of the extra features of iText Express I'd say it would be a near perfect OSX word processor.
What kind of hardware are you running it on? I found it a little slow on a 1.8 G5 up until 3.0 came out. 2.0 was faster than 1.0 too. On even the cheapest Intel Macbook though it's as quick as you want it.
Apple software tends to be 'of it's era' IME and is built to use today's computers, not those from 5 years ago or sometimes even 3 years ago.
Yes, the others are quicker but they also don't do anywhere near the features of Pages and offer no integration with Numbers or Keynote.
On my boys' iMac 2.1 Ghz Intel machines Pages is brisk, but I am really saying the interface and methods are slow. Few styling keyboard shortcuts and WAY too much clicking and unclicking to get anything done.
One of the worst GUI designs of OSX is the convoluted method of NOT accidentally applying an action to something. In Pages it is extremely difficult to select what you want especially if it is content, frames or under something. Having selected it, it is even worse trying to shake off the selection. You have to find somewhere free of other objects to click away and as most objects do not show their bounds, that is a matter of hit and miss.
This seriously sucks because the same thing happens in Finder, Safari etc.
I use cmd delete to toss stuff in the Trash, and I have been caught on several occasions deleting the wrong item because the selection is so erratic. OSX lurches. Drag and drop frequently miss their marks and the strange acceleration and stopping makes getting to where you want sometimes a major time waster.
Another MAJOR stumbling block is using FontBook as the method of applying fonts, style and size, without being able to key in any of those factors.
OSX and Cocoa have some good features but as a GUI they are a long way short of the smoothness, consistency and productivity of Mac Classic.
It isn't just fond, faded memories talking. I regularly go onto my son's old Blueberry iMac which is brisk, accurate and quick to use with compatible software such as AppleWorks, Quark Xpress and Adobe's creative software.
PS What "Integration" with Keynote and Numbers are you talking about? Drag and drop works for just about anything and there is nothing exclusively specific I can think of in the iWorks apps.