Major Appleworks Upgrade?

[MacRumors]

ThinkSecret reports (http://thinksecret.com/news/appleworks.html) that Appleworks may be due for a significant upgrade in the next 3-4 months. Details are limited, however... with hints of increased functionality of the presentation and spreadsheet as well as increased Office compatibility.

Previous rumors (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2002/07/20020723142321.shtml) hinted that Apple was considering positioning Appleworks against Microsoft's Office.

[FattyMembrane]

oh how i wish that this update would be a 6.5 one and be free to all owners of appleworks 6.x, but in reality, i know that they'll call it appleworks 7 and charge for it again. but i cant blame them, apple needs money, and it will be awesome to finally have an apple branded competetor to msoffice. i've never needed more than a third of the features of appleworks, but i know many who are scared to leave msoffice, so this should be a big step ahead for apple.

[alex_ant]

AppleWorks is a perfect illustration of simpler = better. Apple could never hope to compete with the functionality or standardization of Office, anyway.

[reyesmac]

Appleworks 6 was a major upgrade from 5, and it looked like Apple was not trying to compete with Office when they made it. If Apple makes Appleworks more like Office now that the 5 year Apple/MS peace treaty has ended, then this will be the true sign that Apple is going after the PC market with a vengance. If they keep it looking like an art project, then they will do so to keep Microsoft happy.

My wish is that the new Appleworks will become as popular as all the iApps. If it is, then MS will have to do something more than put the word Word on the box in order to sell thier product in the Mac market.

[Billicus]

Originally posted by reyesmac
Appleworks 6 was a major upgrade from 5, and it looked like Apple was not trying to compete with Office when they made it. If Apple makes Appleworks more like Office now that the 5 year Apple/MS peace treaty has ended, then this will be the true sign that Apple is going after the PC market with a vengance. If they keep it looking like an art project, then they will do so to keep Microsoft happy.

My wish is that the new Appleworks will become as popular as all the iApps. If it is, then MS will have to do something more than put the word Word on the box in order to sell thier product in the Mac market.

There are other options for the Mac Market. (Open Office) That is part of the reason that Micro$oft has only sold have (350,000) of the copies of Micro$oft Office v.X that it had hoped to sell by this time. They were aiming for 700,000. :rolleyes:

[exbox]

Originally posted by Billicus


There are other options for the Mac Market. (Open Office) That is part of the reason that Micro$oft has only sold have (350,000) of the copies of Micro$oft Office v.X that it had hoped to sell by this time. They were aiming for 700,000. :rolleyes:

Open Office is not yet really an option for the mac market, as it does not yet run under aqua. Reasons for Microsofts low sales of office are that it is too overpriced. Also, I know many users that just use Office 2001 under classic, who do not want to spend more money to upgrade.

[pimentoLoaf]

Oh, goody!! :D :D

Don't really want to put Office on a Mac, even if I get it for half-price with a new system before the 1st of the year...

Bought a version of AppleWorks for my PC years ago -- I think it was v5 -- and it would be nice to get an upgrade for that. MSworks is really a crap program.

[MacBandit]

The only thing I desire in an AppleWorks update is full Office compatibility.

There are shareware programs that display office files better then AppleWorks.

[k-munic]

Apple Works is a Consumer product, not intented fro Pros (who have to use M$Office, the Standard discussion...)

Frisko will present the future of Pro Machines.

Apple Works aka iWorks is for the "happy rest of us" who need a very good typewriter, a layout thingy. We need iData, something to store and handle our Videos, Kiddie Pix, Cooking recipes. For presentations we do need a lil´ upgrade of the iphoto/.mac skills....-

A new Apple Works? Sure, but much faster then 3 4- months...

happy Xmas everyone!

[j763]

OMG... MS Office is not "for pros"... *everyone* at my high school has office (either office xp or office v.X) on their laptops -- it's just a necessity. Every tried handling formula in an AppleWorks Spreadsheet? It has to be *the* worst apple product ever. it's a great illustration of how important MS Office was to the mac and how M$ were easily able to insight fear by threatening apple.


Anyways, the fact is, Apple *can* compete with Microsoft in office suites. However, they'll need to be prepared for M$ to completely pull office -- which they may well do (they'd enjoy hurting apple more than making a meagre profit out of mac development) and explorer (not that anyone would care).

[k-munic]

just because everyone in your highschool has M$O doesn´t mean that the intention of this program is to be used just as a typewriter... M$Word has so much features, nobody does use ALL of them, it´s a damm all-in-one wonder... same with Excel, I do know a lot of people who do use Excel just as a lousy layout program, ´cause they need colorful boxes....
-----------------
btw: if everyone has a copy - how come that the marketshare of this overprized program is that low...? ;-))
-----------------
what i wanted to say is:
Apple had the idea to bundle hardware with - let´s say "needful" things. All iApps are not top-of-the-line: iPhoto is NOT Photoshop, iMovie is NOT FCP/Premiere/Avid, iTunes is not Cubase..........

Question is, is AppleWorks now an iApp? i think so NOT! Lot´s of features missing, people expect in the 21th century from a "Suite"App...-

So, two prossibilities: make it a big iSuite; or break it into usefull pieces.

I expect Number 2: iWord, iData and probably some iPresent in the very near furture (bundle with the next consumer-hardware upgrade whatever this is).

When M$ is leaving our world, Apple will present immidiatly an iSuite thingy, which is of course 1005 compatible with M$...........

greetings to downunder - what time is it????

[Mr. Anderson]

Well, considering MS Office for Mac isn't as feature filled as MS Office for the PC, I'd love to see some sort of competing product that might make things better for all involved. If Apple can pull of full compatibility, that'd be great, but it would be a huge. I'd love to see a better option to powerpoint as well.

D

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Well, considering MS Office for Mac isn't as feature filled as MS Office for the PC, I'd love to see some sort of competing product that might make things better for all involved. If Apple can pull of full compatibility, that'd be great, but it would be a huge. I'd love to see a better option to powerpoint as well.

D

Why would it be huge. There are several shareware programs that will read any Office file and some will even edit. Most of this apps are under 10MB.

[saabmp3]

Unfourtunally, .doc is a standard. I hate MS products and love my mac as MS free as possible but .doc is required where I go to school. Everybody here has Office X, 2000 or XP on thier machines and it is required for most classes. Even if appleworks did support .doc, I prolly would still write my required MS essays and papers in Office just to be safe.
Don't get me wrong, I would use appleworks as much as I could but Office is still a standard.

BEN

PS, I'm not in High School, I'm a student at RIT where lots of stuff it turned in over email and FTP.

[Hawthorne]

Originally posted by k-munic
just because everyone in your highschool has M$O doesn´t mean that the intention of this program is to be used just as a typewriter... M$Word has so much features, nobody does use ALL of them, it´s a damm all-in-one wonder... same with Excel, I do know a lot of people who do use Excel just as a lousy layout program, ´cause they need colorful boxes....
-----------------
what i wanted to say is:
Apple had the idea to bundle hardware with - let´s say "needful" things. All iApps are not top-of-the-line: iPhoto is NOT Photoshop, iMovie is NOT FCP/Premiere/Avid, iTunes is not Cubase..........


You seem to imply that everyone needs all the features of MS Office, yet later state that no one uses them all.
The reason why Apple's "i" applications are so good is they offer what a typical consumer wants, are easy to use, and they're free. An Apple-branded suite of business apps that offers good MS Office compatibility, ease of use, and are free would be another killer app from Apple, and be a logical extension of their "switch" campaign.

[IJ Reilly]

Appleworks does "support" .doc (import and export), but like every other word processor I've ever used, it does so imperfectly. Why? Because Microsoft's file formats are proprietary -- they can be reverse-engineered, but not duplicated. Completely accurate translation of Office files is a pipe-dream, unfortunately. This is why so many of us own MS Office -- not because Office is the "standard," but because Microsoft is a monopoly.

We've paid our monopoly tax to Microsoft as well, but use Appleworks for all of our daily business -- it's just more manageable for most tasks. I hope Apple rewrites it from the ground up as a Cocoa app for the next release. I'd fork over for that, but not for just a couple of new features.

[job]

question...

is appleworks written in carbon or cocoa?

[gregorypierce]

Great! Its going from suck to blow :)

Seriously, unless you have very basic needs, Apple Works is all but useless. There are functions of it that don't even work on OSX - dialog boxes that won't respond to mouse clicks, funky drag and drop anomolies, etc. While I too would love to keep my Mac MSFT free, Office remains one of the only viable solutions for the Mac other than perhaps ThinkFree Office(which costs money strangely enough).

[pimentoLoaf]

There is a product -- MacLink Plus Deluxe (http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html) -- that'll let you convert Windows-based documents to Mac.

[job]

Thinkfree Office is fine...for saving Word .doc files.

I usually type in Appleworks, copy and paste whatever I want to save in Thinkfree Office, and then save it as a .doc file.

I cannot type in Thinkfree...it is too slow..

[blogo]

i liked´ claris works 4 better than appleworks 6

[MacSlut]

AppleWorks should not be upgraded to directly compete with MS Office.

MS Office = people who need to be 100% compatible with MS Office on a daily/hourly basis, people who need advanced features, and people with Macs in a Windows dominated environment.

AppleWorks = people with mostly isolated use of their word processing, spreadsheet, etc...; and where the features of AppleWorks meet their needs.

MS Office = feature rich, maximum overkill, and new versions should expect fairly new hardware.

AppleWorks = lean, efficient, easier to use and as compatible as possible with older equipment.

MS Office = expensive
AppleWorks = cheap or free

MS Office makes money for Microsoft
AppleWorks helps sell Macs and through upgrades and sales makes enough money to pay for R&D.

Given these missions and evaluations, as well as the overwhelming domination in the marketplace, it makes sense only to have AppleWorks be upgraded to keep it within the same bounds and not compete head-to-head with what would be a losing battle.

Apple should find ways to upgrade AppleWorks that give it useful and unique features that make Windows users ask "how did you do that?" and the answer is "Oh, it's really easy with AppleWorks, but you NEED A MAC."

AppleWorks should be like iPhoto, iTunes, etc... wherein iPhoto is no PhotoShop, but to the person who can't afford/learn PhotoShop, iPhoto is like magic....and it can be positioned easily as uniquely Mac in all advertising.

[aaronious]

I'm realy surprised that no one has suggested that this coincides with Apple's registration of the word 'Keynote'. The first thing that popped into my head when I read that news was the possibility of an alternative to PowerPoint. Doesn't that make sense? They've already got a pretty good text editor...beef it up a bit, add a spreadsheet and presentation software and *poof* instant office suite that performs 90% of the functions that the M$ one does, and it comes bundled!

Yowza!

[beatle888]

Originally posted by k-munic
just because everyone in your highschool has M$O doesn´t mean that the intention of this program is to be used just as a typewriter... M$Word has so much features, nobody does use ALL of them, it´s a damm all-in-one wonder... same with Excel, I do know a lot of people who do use Excel just as a lousy layout program, ´cause they need colorful boxes....
-----------------
btw: if everyone has a copy - how come that the marketshare of this overprized program is that low...? ;-))
-----------------
what i wanted to say is:
Apple had the idea to bundle hardware with - let´s say "needful" things. All iApps are not top-of-the-line: iPhoto is NOT Photoshop, iMovie is NOT FCP/Premiere/Avid, iTunes is not Cubase..........

Question is, is AppleWorks now an iApp? i think so NOT! Lot´s of features missing, people expect in the 21th century from a "Suite"App...-

So, two prossibilities: make it a big iSuite; or break it into usefull pieces.

I expect Number 2: iWord, iData and probably some iPresent in the very near furture (bundle with the next consumer-hardware upgrade whatever this is).

When M$ is leaving our world, Apple will present immidiatly an iSuite thingy, which is of course 1005 compatible with M$...........

greetings to downunder - what time is it????

must be late

[IJ Reilly]

Originally posted by hitman
Thinkfree Office is fine...for saving Word .doc files.

I usually type in Appleworks, copy and paste whatever I want to save in Thinkfree Office, and then save it as a .doc file.

That seems like a lot of extra pain for no gain. Why not just Save as... Word document in AppleWorks?

Accuracy isn't very good, but it's no worse then it could be with any other word processor.

[IJ Reilly]

Originally posted by hitman
question...

is appleworks written in carbon or cocoa?

Carbon. It doesn't implement sheets or services or any of the other niceties available to Cocoa applications. If Apple is trying to persuade developers to adopt the Cocoa development environment, why aren't they setting a good example?

FileMaker is Carbon, too.

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by MacSlut
AppleWorks should not be upgraded to directly compete with MS Office.
...
AppleWorks should be like iPhoto, iTunes, etc... wherein iPhoto is no PhotoShop, but to the person who can't afford/learn PhotoShop, iPhoto is like magic....and it can be positioned easily as uniquely Mac in all advertising.

Well, first, AppleWorks is currently available for both Mac and Windows, and only rarely in its history hasn't been. Of course, currently the Windows version is only available through Apple's education store, but it is there.

Second, I could easily see this upgrade, which has been so long in coming, being very significant. It could even make the dramatic step of splitting the product into two: iWork and Apple Office. And what about the possibility that both of these would be based on the Star Office code?

In general, I agree that MS Office compatibility in AppleWorks is fairly pathetic, and pretty much always has been. OpenOffice for OS X isn't even ready if you're using an XWindows implementation, let alone wishing for it to run with Aqua. Although I have many gripes about AppleWorks (bugginess, lack of flexibility, broken features under OS X, etc.), I still prefer it to MS Office (which I keep a copy of 98 around to run under classic when I need it).

Personally, I really hope that this is going to be a major upgrade to position AppleWorks (AppleOffice?) against MS Office with a very comparable (or even better) feature set.

[toranaga]

Trying for MS Office compatibility is, in some ways, fighting yesterday's battle. As the business yutzes like to quote Gretsky, "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it is." As OpenOffice itself and, more importantly, its file formats ('.sdw' and others), become more common, we will want Appleworks to be compatible with them.

To not duplicate effort and continually reinvent the wheel, it is in the interest of all niche and small office application vendors to support a standard. Not to ape the Gorilla, but to choose a standard which they can contribute to and which won't change solely to encourage upgrades when new revenues are desired. Then, if this standard (right now OpenOffice's format is the top contender) has a module that can translate to/from MS Office formats, everyone who is compatible with OpenOffice (from Abiword, to Appleworks, to Okito, to Wordperfect, etc, is my hope), will then be compatible with MS Office 'for free' until that compatibility is no longer necessary.

[job]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly

That seems like a lot of extra pain for no gain. Why not just Save as... Word document in AppleWorks?

My teachers are not able to open the .doc files that I save with Appleworks...

I have no idea why...

[nickgold]

Originally posted by hitman


My teachers are not able to open the .doc files that I save with Appleworks...

I have no idea why...

Try adding .doc to the end of the filename, if you haven't already. I have found that often the Windows versions of Office spaz out when trying to open a file with no extension in the name.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly


Carbon. It doesn't implement sheets or services or any of the other niceties available to Cocoa applications. If Apple is trying to persuade developers to adopt the Cocoa development environment, why aren't they setting a good example?

FileMaker is Carbon, too.

It's simply because of the age of the current versoin of AppleWorks. I'm sure the next release will be fully developed in Cocoa.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
Appleworks does "support" .doc (import and export), but like every other word processor I've ever used, it does so imperfectly. Why? Because Microsoft's file formats are proprietary -- they can be reverse-engineered, but not duplicated. Completely accurate translation of Office files is a pipe-dream, unfortunately. This is why so many of us own MS Office -- not because Office is the "standard," but because Microsoft is a monopoly.

We've paid our monopoly tax to Microsoft as well, but use Appleworks for all of our daily business -- it's just more manageable for most tasks. I hope Apple rewrites it from the ground up as a Cocoa app for the next release. I'd fork over for that, but not for just a couple of new features.


If you're correct about the .doc standard then why are there so many shareware programs that read .doc so perfectly. Also what about OpenOffice or ThinkFree Office. Aren't they based on MS Office code?

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by gregorypierce
Great! Its going from suck to blow :)

Seriously, unless you have very basic needs, Apple Works is all but useless. There are functions of it that don't even work on OSX - dialog boxes that won't respond to mouse clicks, funky drag and drop anomolies, etc. While I too would love to keep my Mac MSFT free, Office remains one of the only viable solutions for the Mac other than perhaps ThinkFree Office(which costs money strangely enough).

What version of OSX are you running? All the drag and drop problems and weird quirks with AppleWorks were fixed with 10.2.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by pimentoLoaf
There is a product -- MacLink Plus Deluxe (http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html) -- that'll let you convert Windows-based documents to Mac.

This is the translation engine that AppleWorks uses and it is to say the least very faulty.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly


That seems like a lot of extra pain for no gain. Why not just Save as... Word document in AppleWorks?

Accuracy isn't very good, but it's no worse then it could be with any other word processor.

Actually your incorrect. ThinkFree Office is very exact and very compatible with MS Office where as AppleWorks is horrible.

I personally don't care about new features for AppleWorks. Just give us compatibility for MS Office. By the way compaitibility was number 1 on the list of changes of the upcoming AppleWorks.

The reason I want it is that schools are dominated by Office and I don't want to have to buy it use it at home just so I can do home work.

[arogge]

Originally posted by toranaga
Trying for MS Office compatibility is, in some ways, fighting yesterday's battle. As the business yutzes like to quote Gretsky, "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it is." As OpenOffice itself and, more importantly, its file formats ('.sdw' and others), become more common, we will want Appleworks to be compatible with them.

I am interested in AppleWorks being able to read the compressed XML file format standard that is used by OpenOffice.org. StarOffice compatibility prior to v.6.0 would be nice, but XML support is more important.

[iapple]

Now,

MS OFFICE V.X IS SLOOOOOOOOOOOW!

I mean really slow. NO question about it.
ANd it's aqua user interface seems sooo FAKE. The sheets are fake! SLOOOW to open tabs, to open options, and dreadfully slow when there are any graphics included in the text. The transparency doesn't print or get saved in pdf files either.



NOw, CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Apple can MAKE a word processor FASTER than Word, and SIMPLER, so that everyone can use it. I see no problem with it being compatible to Office, and it should be. If shareare programs can do it, so can Appleworks.

I just want speed.. Everything about Jaguar is great and fast, except Office v.X, ESPECIALLY Word. Excel is one of the better ones..

P.S. This is on a PB G4 667 with a clean install of Jaguar!

[evilfunkgenius]

Unless Apple wants to destroy it's relationship with Micro$oft, it will continue to produce a sub-standard version of AppleWorks. End of discussion. People like brand names and like it or not, "Word" and "Office" are brand names. A lot of the time, they are a distinct reason why people feel so comfortable switching.

So we can sit around and whine about Apple needing to step up and make a Office replica because we don't want to support M$ but until the political issue is resolved, and unless Apple wants to isolate itself even more from it's powerhouse developers (which just might be the case, as noted by recent developments in Video, Audio and Searching technology purchases/advancements in recent months) then they will dummy-down their offerings and play nice with Micro$oft.

-efg

[MacSlut]

Originally posted by Snowy_River


Well, first, AppleWorks is currently available for both Mac and Windows, and only rarely in its history hasn't been. Of course, currently the Windows version is only available through Apple's education store, but it is there.


I must have missed the part where I said it wasn't available for Windows, or you must be seeing things.

Second, I could easily see this upgrade, which has been so long in coming, being very significant. It could even make the dramatic step of splitting the product into two: iWork and Apple Office. And what about the possibility that both of these would be based on the Star Office code?

The upgrade could be enormous, it could be based on Start Office code, but there's the reality that those of us who have to deal on a constant basis with others using MS Office will continue to use MS Office. Also, with the exception of the 2-3 people who ever purchased AppleWorks for Windows, the overwhelming majority of Windows users would never consider AppleWorks as a replacement for MS Office....even more justifiably so.

In general, I agree that MS Office compatibility in AppleWorks is fairly pathetic, and pretty much always has been.

And always will be. What some people don't get is that in a MS dominated office, compatibility at the document level is a black & white issue. The differences between MS Office Mac and Windows is already enough of a problem for some people. This isn't about making AppleWorks compatible with an open standard like HTML (which would be bad enough already), it's about making it compatible with a proprietary, yet thoroughly established standard.

Although I have many gripes about AppleWorks (bugginess, lack of flexibility, broken features under OS X, etc.), I still prefer it to MS Office (which I keep a copy of 98 around to run under classic when I need it).

I preferred ClarisWorks to MS Office from the beginning, but around the time Office 98 came out, Claris/AppleWorks was becoming bloated, buggy and ugly. When the Claris team jumped shipped over to MS and started evolving Office into more of a Mac-like app, it really showed.

Even without the compatibility issues, I'm not sure Apple or anyone else could produce a better Office for less on both Mac and Windows platforms.

Personally, I really hope that this is going to be a major upgrade to position AppleWorks (AppleOffice?) against MS Office with a very comparable (or even better) feature set.

So what is it that people like so much about AppleWorks? Certainly most people agree that it needs a major upgrade....needs to match MS Office, etc... It just doesn't make sense for Apple to invest so heavily into a product in order to compete with an established product. What's in it for Apple? There's the reality that fighting this battle would not be a success or result in profits. And in the end, it's hard to say that you'd end up with a better product than MS Office.

It makes much more sense for Apple as a SYSTEMS company to continue the mission of AppleWorks as a value-add for the Mac, and not to go into the business of competing with Microsoft for what some consider to be its real flagship if not cashest cow product.

[job]

Originally posted by MacBandit


It's simply because of the age of the current versoin of AppleWorks. I'm sure the next release will be fully developed in Cocoa.

Would a theoretical Cocoa version of Appleworks bring about any major speed increases?

[IJ Reilly]

Originally posted by MacBandit


Actually your incorrect. ThinkFree Office is very exact and very compatible with MS Office where as AppleWorks is horrible.

Ordinary formatting is usually not a problem. Try a Word document with tables and graphics and see how you do opening it with any non-Microsoft application. Try it with forms created in Word.

ThinkFree Office is too slow and buggy for my purposes, I don't like the non-standard interface, and I doubt it could do much better with complex Word documents.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly


Ordinary formatting is usually not a problem. Try a Word document with tables and graphics and see how you do opening it with any non-Microsoft application. Try it with forms created in Word.

ThinkFree Office is too slow and buggy for my purposes, I don't like the non-standard interface, and I doubt it could do much better with complex Word documents.

I don't know about tables but I am referring especially to embeded graphics. AppleWorks doesn't know what to do with them and ThinkFree and several shareware apps do.

[chicagdan]

The one thing that would get me to absolutely abandon MS Office and move to AppleWorks would be if it surpassed PowerPoint. As a professional speechwriter, I'm stuck using piece of crap PP ... and would love to find an alternative product.

What's wrong with PP? Oh ... just about everything. Horrible, ugly internal graphics tools, no way to edit JPEG or other picture format files internally, awful support for movies within presenations, ackward text editing. Too many ways to do things (which is a real pain when multiple people make edits to a presentation and do things different ways.) And, worst of all, the overall style of the product, which encourages people to give robotic bullet-point driven presentations with no flair.

I cannot understand why a company like Adobe or Macromedia hasn't tried to make a superior multi-platform presentation product. I suppose because all office workers have PP on their desktops, they don't want to try to scale the mountain. But it is a truly horrible piece of software and the bane of my existence.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by chicagdan
The one thing that would get me to absolutely abandon MS Office and move to AppleWorks would be if it surpassed PowerPoint. As a professional speechwriter, I'm stuck using piece of crap PP ... and would love to find an alternative product.

What's wrong with PP? Oh ... just about everything. Horrible, ugly internal graphics tools, no way to edit JPEG or other picture format files internally, awful support for movies within presenations, ackward text editing. Too many ways to do things (which is a real pain when multiple people make edits to a presentation and do things different ways.) And, worst of all, the overall style of the product, which encourages people to give robotic bullet-point driven presentations with no flair.

I cannot understand why a company like Adobe or Macromedia hasn't tried to make a superior multi-platform presentation product. I suppose because all office workers have PP on their desktops, they don't want to try to scale the mountain. But it is a truly horrible piece of software and the bane of my existence.


Wow you really don't like PP do you? The bane of your existence!!:) Having choces isn't in itself a bad thing as long as all the results are the same. I'm not saying I have every used PP or that this statement is even about it. It just seemed like you wanted less choices which in my mind is a bad thing. Though keeping it simple is a good choice sometimes.

[chicagdan]

Here's why choice is a bad thing in Power Point. Person A creates 10 charts by manually creating boxes, then creating text with clear background to put inside them.

The charts then get passed to Person B who adds three charts, but this time doesn't draw manual boxes, but instead creates colored text boxes around the text (as it should be done ... but PP doesn't have a manual, so most people don't know this.)

Now Person C gets the charts and has to make edits ... and has to deal with two completely different formats, undoubtedly using different margin settings as well.

Choice is a wonderful thing if only one person is in control of a document from start to finish. But in the real world, we collaborate. And without customization, chaos ensues. PP is pure chaos, and yes, the bane of my existence.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by chicagdan
Here's why choice is a bad thing in Power Point. Person A creates 10 charts by manually creating boxes, then creating text with clear background to put inside them.

The charts then get passed to Person B who adds three charts, but this time doesn't draw manual boxes, but instead creates colored text boxes around the text (as it should be done ... but PP doesn't have a manual, so most people don't know this.)

Now Person C gets the charts and has to make edits ... and has to deal with two completely different formats, undoubtedly using different margin settings as well.

Choice is a wonderful thing if only one person is in control of a document from start to finish. But in the real world, we collaborate. And without customization, chaos ensues. PP is pure chaos, and yes, the bane of my existence.

As I said though if the end result were all the same it would make no difference. If they were all the same then they could all be edited the same and user C would never no that they were created differently.

[chicagdan]

No, the end results is definitely NOT the same, because if person C has to edit documents created in two different formats (and can't tell by looking at them that they were created in two different formats) it basically doubles his work. You have to work in PP every long excruciating day to understand what I'm talking about ... it's really, really stupid to have a program that requires you to edit documents in different ways based on how the document was created.

Take, for example, the complete dumbasses who use the spacebar to create text spacing instead of tabs. You can't tell that it has been done that way ... and it may look fine to the naked eye ... but it's a pain the ass to edit.

All MS products have the same problem. They just load on new feature after new feature, never paying attention to the overall usability of the product. The end result is a contraption similar to that car Homer Simpson designed for his brother. Homer may have gotten his brother fired in Detroit, but he would be welcomed with open arms in Redmond.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by chicagdan
No, the end results is definitely NOT the same, because if person C has to edit documents created in two different formats (and can't tell by looking at them that they were created in two different formats) it basically doubles his work. You have to work in PP every long excruciating day to understand what I'm talking about ... it's really, really stupid to have a program that requires you to edit documents in different ways based on how the document was created.

Take, for example, the complete dumbasses who use the spacebar to create text spacing instead of tabs. You can't tell that it has been done that way ... and it may look fine to the naked eye ... but it's a pain the ass to edit.

All MS products have the same problem. They just load on new feature after new feature, never paying attention to the overall usability of the product. The end result is a contraption similar to that car Homer Simpson designed for his brother. Homer may have gotten his brother fired in Detroit, but he would be welcomed with open arms in Redmond.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that in your example if the end result of the two were to get the exact same results in that they could be edited exactly the same it wouldn't make a difference.

Also at least in Word you can turn on text formatting and it will let you see how the file was created down to the spaces, paragraphs, tabs and everything.

I do see what your problem is but I have not once argued against your point about the problems with PP. I'm just simply saying that choice is a good thing if implemented correctly by the program so that it doesn't matter how you do as long as what you end up with is the exact same thing (in other words threre's only one way to edit it because the end result was the same).

[chicagdan]

I'm not really arguing with you, I'm lashing out against MS and PP in particular.

Yes, if the program was intuitive and treated the end product the same way so it could be edited the same way, it wouldn't matter how it was created. And I agree with you that a Word-like formatting screen would be helpful to PP.

But in the end, it's really just a crummy product that people accept because they have no other option. I'm sure everyone would love Kia automobiles if no other brands were produced (wow, it actually tells you what speed you are driving!) But we are fortunate to live in a world where we can compare the Kia to dozens of other car models that raise our expectations.

I would really like Apple to produce a modular office suite that starts out absolutely free, bundled with the OS. Then you can pay feature-by-feature for things you really need. That would allow the word processor to be customized (plug-in modules, for example, for specialized writing tasks would be great, along the lines of the wonderful Final Draft program for screenwriting.) It would also let you keep out garbage you never use. The modular pieces could be downloaded as needed, pay as you go.

I'd also like the next AppleWorks to have some simple webpage creation software built in. As much as I love Dreamweaver, I'm not prepared to fork over $400 for it and I don't need 70% of its features. Maybe Apple and Macromedia could get together on a Dreamweaver Lite that would give Mac users a low-cost alternative to FrontPage.

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by MacSlut


I must have missed the part where I said it wasn't available for Windows, or you must be seeing things.

Well, you said:


Apple should find ways to upgrade AppleWorks that give it useful and unique features that make Windows users ask "how did you do that?" and the answer is "Oh, it's really easy with AppleWorks, but you NEED A MAC."

Thus implying that AppleWorks is only available on a Mac.

The upgrade could be enormous, it could be based on Start Office code, but there's the reality that those of us who have to deal on a constant basis with others using MS Office will continue to use MS Office. Also, with the exception of the 2-3 people who ever purchased AppleWorks for Windows, the overwhelming majority of Windows users would never consider AppleWorks as a replacement for MS Office....even more justifiably so.

Perhaps, but perhaps not.

Even without the compatibility issues, I'm not sure Apple or anyone else could produce a better Office for less on both Mac and Windows platforms.

I think that there would be a number of people who would strongly disagree with you. Indeed, there are a number of computer companies that have stopped packaging MS Office on their computers, and instead have been packaging Corel's WordPerfect Suite. (And I've known many people that greatly prefer WordPerfect to MS Office.)

So what is it that people like so much about AppleWorks? Certainly most people agree that it needs a major upgrade....needs to match MS Office, etc... It just doesn't make sense for Apple to invest so heavily into a product in order to compete with an established product. What's in it for Apple? There's the reality that fighting this battle would not be a success or result in profits. And in the end, it's hard to say that you'd end up with a better product than MS Office.

It makes much more sense for Apple as a SYSTEMS company to continue the mission of AppleWorks as a value-add for the Mac, and not to go into the business of competing with Microsoft for what some consider to be its real flagship if not cashest cow product.

I think that there is one simple reason why Apple would want an office product to position against MS Office, and that is to loosen MS's choke hold on the Apple system. Currently MS can issue a powerful threat to completely drop support for Office on the Mac system. But if Apple had their own Office software that was "100%" compatible with MS Office, this would take a lot of the power out of that threat.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by chicagdan
I would really like Apple to produce a modular office suite that starts out absolutely free, bundled with the OS. Then you can pay feature-by-feature for things you really need. That would allow the word processor to be customized (plug-in modules, for example, for specialized writing tasks would be great, along the lines of the wonderful Final Draft program for screenwriting.) It would also let you keep out garbage you never use. The modular pieces could be downloaded as needed, pay as you go.

This is a really novel idea that I have never heard presented before. Modular programs would be great for lots of things even System Software. Most people just need a core feature base and if they needed other features you could set it up so they could pay feature by feature or by groups of features. It think this would be wonderful.

[DaveGee]

Originally posted by chicagdan
II would really like Apple to produce a modular office suite that starts out absolutely free, bundled with the OS. Then you can pay feature-by-feature for things you really need. That would allow the word processor to be customized (plug-in modules, for example, for specialized writing tasks would be great, along the lines of the wonderful Final Draft program for screenwriting.) It would also let you keep out garbage you never use. The modular pieces could be downloaded as needed, pay as you go.

Sounds something like OpenDoc... Data is put into containers and modular apps would work with specific containers. Text containers, Graphics container etc etc etc. A single DOC would have been made from a bunch of containers.

A program (applet - module - forgot the real term) would be specificly written to 'process' or 'work with' a specific type of container and usually so a specific task.

Spell checker example - Don't like the XYZ Inc. spell checker just delete it and replace it with the ABC Inc. spell checker etc etc etc. It was a good idea but Apple could never get it off the ground.

Dave

[MacSlut]

Originally posted by Snowy_River


Well, you said:



Thus implying that AppleWorks is only available on a Mac.



That's an incorrect inference. I was saying Apple *should* upgrade AppleWorks such that it gives Windows users envy...as in future tense, not past or present.

"with the exception of the 2-3 people who ever purchased AppleWorks for Windows, the overwhelming majority of Windows users would never consider AppleWorks as a replacement for MS Office"

Perhaps, but perhaps not.

Perhaps Apple should fight only the fights it knows it can win and battle for what benefits the company as a whole. Microsoft already has a fully developed multi-platform widely adopted office suite. This is hugely core to their business, arguably more core to their business than Windows. In the face of any real competition, they could:

1) Drop the price to an extremely low level
2) Bundle with Windows
3) Alter the file formats to prevent compatibility

There would be legal issues to #2 above, but there could be ways around it. The point is that:

Office Suite = not core to Apple's business
Office Suite = central core to MS

This fight is not worth it, nor is it one that Apple could win. It makes only slightly more sense than the whackos who want Apple to create its own browser to compete with Explorer.


I think that there would be a number of people who would strongly disagree with you. Indeed, there are a number of computer companies that have stopped packaging MS Office on their computers, and instead have been packaging Corel's WordPerfect Suite. (And I've known many people that greatly prefer WordPerfect to MS Office.)


Sorry, I should have said a competitive, better, less expensive on both platforms. I left out the word "competitive". Can you name a single office suite that is multi-platform and gets on average better reviews than MS Office, let alone costs less and is a serious competitive threat? There have been numerous attempts by *software* companies over the years, but nobody has come close to being a real threat.

Sure there are computer makes bundling Joe's Office Suite or whatever, but these only fall within the bottom margin of the line that Microsoft draws for pricing which *optimizes* profits. The key word there is "optimizes". Again, Microsoft could drastically reduce the price of Office or Works and still maintain profits on those products. They could even further reduce OEM prices while maintaining profits....just not optimal profits.

Microsoft has all of the power in the marketplace when it comes to office suites, for better or for worse, this is the case. The only chance any competitor has is to position their product outside of the scope of where Microsoft sees optimal profits.

This is why AppleWorks should continue with its original primary mission and not attempt foolishly to compete with Microsoft.


I think that there is one simple reason why Apple would want an office product to position against MS Office, and that is to loosen MS's choke hold on the Apple system. Currently MS can issue a powerful threat to completely drop support for Office on the Mac system. But if Apple had their own Office software that was "100%" compatible with MS Office, this would take a lot of the power out of that threat.

I agree that AppleWorks should be as compatible as possible with Office (for a variety of reasons). But it doesn't make sense to compete directly with Office. It's a bit like saying you want to go to war, because of the threat of a potential war, but you know in the end you can't win unless your enemy just doesn't care enough to fight you.

[chicagdan]

Check out the news.com link ... it notes that the next version of MS Office will save documents not only in .doc, but also in xml. MS is betting that XML is the next standard document type.

Why should this matter? Because MS Office dominance will be over! There will no longer be any reason to own MS Office instead of AppleWorks or OpenOffice or StarOffice ... as long as your software can save in XML, it will be 100% compatible with Office. Ding dong, the witch is dead. Buy whatever office suite you want.

[chicagdan]

Somehow that news.com link I mentioned didn't make it ... here it is again.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962835.html

[MacSlut]

Originally posted by chicagdan
Check out the news.com link ... it notes that the next version of MS Office will save documents not only in .doc, but also in xml. MS is betting that XML is the next standard document type.

Why should this matter? Because MS Office dominance will be over! There will no longer be any reason to own MS Office instead of AppleWorks or OpenOffice or StarOffice ... as long as your software can save in XML, it will be 100% compatible with Office. Ding dong, the witch is dead. Buy whatever office suite you want.

It's funny because a while back I proposed this as part of what MS should do in its settlement (either XML or establish an open standard).

However not coming from a court order, Office XML will probably be only less problematic for non-Office users as say RTF. It's a huge step in the right direction, but just wait and see what MS can do with an open standard...see HTML, Java and JavaScript for some examples.

I believe MS will maintain its proprietary stranglehold on Office docs by having XML be only a secondary file format, and a bastardized one at that. The functional hooks will solely be for allowing 2nd party apps to work with Office and for .Net purposes.

The analogy is very much like RTF. An Office user could send you a RTF document, but instead saves it as Word. You call them up and ask them to resend it as RTF. They do, but you find out they foolishly did some formatting in the wrong way such that it looks like crap as RTF. Sure you can read the text, edit it and send it back, but it won't be long before you give in and buy Office to be purely compatible.

Microsoft isn't stupid, they aren't going to *completely* give away their best defense against competition. If they do, it will be the stupidest thing the company has ever done...and yes, I remember Bob.

[chicagdan]

You make a good point -- the potential problem every time MS embraces an open standard is that it quickly becomes proprietary. But in the case of XML, I think they will have a much harder time moving the goalposts -- a lot of sophisticated enterprise-level programs depend on XML and I can't see IBM, for one, standing still if MS tries to shift the playing field.

As for XML being a secondary file standard, does it really matter? As long as another program can be easily opened up in Office and exported back, it will be sufficiently compatible. The real test will be the adoption rate of Office 11 ... I think the majority of people using Office today are still on Office 98. As long as old copies of Office are still being used in large quantities, .doc will continue to be the word processing standard.

[twen]

I would love to find an AppleWorks update that can compete with MS Excel (not all the way, I don't need the financial functions!). The word processor of AppleWorks is sufficient for me, but as an engineer I need in a spread sheet something more e.g. multiple sheets in a workbook. I sometime work on Excel files that I bring from work. I have an old Office version and have to start up the classic environment.
I don't want to use MS programs like Internet Explorer etc. and in most case I find good alternatives. The office program is the only one without an alternative, at least for the moment. Lets hope that all the rumors materialize early next year.

[aafuss1]

Originally posted by pimentoLoaf
Oh, goody!! :D :D

Don't really want to put Office on a Mac, even if I get it for half-price with a new system before the 1st of the year...

Bought a version of AppleWorks for my PC years ago -- I think it was v5 -- and it would be nice to get an upgrade for that. MSworks is really a crap program.

I have v 4 (it was claris back in that version) from a cover cd. And it would be great to see a Windows version of Apopleworks that is available to all users, not just people involved with the education industry. And sell it world-wide. Well, I used appleworks last year in a copmputing siubject (v 5.0). It should hgave at least some TAX INVOICE spreadsheet templates(so if you run a small business, you wil, have the right klind of invoive).

[pantagruel]

Actually I jus read an article that said Office X has sold very poorly and way under the expectations of Microsoft, so Mac users must be using something if not Office so I think an Appleworks upgrade with all the features of Office would go over very well, but they should stick to just mac software and leave the pc's to microsoft and such.

[kcmac]

We are still using Office. A lot of us have not updated to Office X from 2001 because of it's price and not many new features were introduced. (My employer updated my version.)

It would be nice to see a new version of Appleworks but nothing will ever be completely compatible with Office. ;)

I would also like to see the word processor part look more along the lines of Okito Composer which was just purchased by Nisus.

[MacSlut]

Originally posted by pantagruel
Actually I jus read an article that said Office X has sold very poorly and way under the expectations of Microsoft, so Mac users must be using something if not Office

Office X has sold much less than MS desired, but that's still a lot of Office X as a percentage of overall X users.

The overwhelming majority of Mac users not using Office X are not running OS X. Of those using OS X, but not running Office X, most believe that price is the major inhibiting factor of buying Office X.

This is where Appleworks comes in. It's usually cheap or bundled for free. It works great for Apple in that they can sell their computer systems (reminder: this is the business they're in) a lot easier by having them come with an office suite rather than having customers buy their systems and pay another 25% or so for MS Office.

For most people either Appleworks meets their needs given the price, or MS Office is worth the money.


so I think an Appleworks upgrade with all the features of Office would go over very well, but they should stick to just mac software and leave the pc's to microsoft and such.


Now, I'm not saying there couldn't be huge improvements made to Appleworks, but to invest the money to make it compete with MS Office would be to know you're going to lose money.

Apple should invest no more money in Appleworks than what they can with still keeping the retail price under $100, and give it away to promote Mac sales as needed.

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