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WardC

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 17, 2007
2,726
213
Fort Worth, TX
My father is an attorney and does most of his work on AppleWorks 6.2.9 on his iMac 2.16GHz Core2Duo (white iMac). He has thousands of files, some created with AppleWorks 5 on his older iMac G3 under Classic Mac OS 9.2.2.

Since he has these thousands (and I mean maybe over 10,000) client files, etc, in AppleWorks 5 and AppleWorks 6 format, it would really be a burden to upgrade to Lion and not be able to function his law practice anymore or open/edit these AppleWorks files. He keeps all of his hours and logs in AppleWorks.

Lion DOES NOT support AppleWorks AT ALL since it is a PowerPC Application, and Apple never developed an intel port of AppleWorks. The last version of AppleWorks made was 6.2.9 and it was OS X compatible. Apple completely dropped the ball on this by dropping Rosetta support in Lion. I would bet that there are many others out there in the same situation that rely on AppleWorks (and other PowerPC applications) for their business needs and their work.

Be careful and realize that there is no PowerPC support in Lion, so applications like AppleWorks, Quicken, etc that were not ported to intel will not be able to run whatsoever in Lion. Be aware, be prepared, and be smart.
 

TomRadfahrer

macrumors newbie
May 31, 2011
14
0
Sorry for you and your dad, but it was not a good idea to use for todays work an application which is unsupported for 10 years now.

The golden rule is: Whenever an application reaches its end, convert all old files to PDF and stop using this application.

In your case it does not help to avoid upgrading to Lion. You must face the possibility that your old hardware stops working and you need to buy a new hardware. And the new hardware will not run AppleWorks! Don't rely on buying hardware from a museum, they don't sell their old machines.

Do the following: Write an applescript which helps you to convert all files to PDF. Do this as long as you have an old machine capable of running appleworks. Then, use a new software for new documents.
 

Icy1007

macrumors 65816
Feb 26, 2011
1,075
74
Cleveland, OH
My father is an attorney and does most of his work on AppleWorks 6.2.9 on his iMac 2.16GHz Core2Duo (white iMac). He has thousands of files, some created with AppleWorks 5 on his older iMac G3 under Classic Mac OS 9.2.2.

Since he has these thousands (and I mean maybe over 10,000) client files...BLAH BLAH BLAH

Nice double post. Tell you dad to stop using crappy ancient software and get on with your life.

Also, he doesn't have to upgrade to Lion.
 

Inconsequential

macrumors 68000
Sep 12, 2007
1,978
1
I have to agree, the last update to Appleworks was 7 years ago, do you *really* expect software to be supported that long?

Convert your documents to PDF (Automator would do this for you) and then start using iWork or Office 2011.

Look at it the other way, why should we (the people who have updated & have newer hardware) have the developers work on PPC emulation instead of improving the system for todays software which the majority of the people work on?

Time passed. Software gets left behind. Time to move on.

Note: I also have Appleworks documents I can't open, however I will eventually get around to converting them all to PDF using my iBook G4.
 

basher

macrumors 6502a
May 27, 2011
571
136
Glendale, AZ USA
You could run SL and Apple Works in a VM. One of the things that's been relaxed with Lion is the ability to run SL(non-server version) as a VM.
 

Soliber

macrumors regular
Nov 6, 2009
150
0
Be careful and realize that there is no PowerPC support in Lion.
Did we not know this already? For a reasonably long time as well?

This may sound harsh and I do appreciate the predicament of your father, but your father as well as yourself should have had the common sense to start looking out for alternatives from the moment you saw that one of your most vital pieces of software was deprecated.
Have a look into Office 2011, you'll love it :)
 

johnfkitchen

macrumors regular
Sep 7, 2010
210
0
You could run SL and Apple Works in a VM. One of the things that's been relaxed with Lion is the ability to run SL(non-server version) as a VM.

I've been hoping for this!

I have VMware Fusion, can that boot a SL partition under Lion? Any tricks?
 
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