Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,442
12,557
Sadly, there really isn't an "AppleWorks-like" integrated app out there anymore.

iWork is ok for what it does.

If you have old AWorks files that need to be accessed, I highly recommend that you try the free LibreOffice version 5. It will open many AWorks files directly, and does a fairly good job at converting them.
 

Gochugogi

macrumors regular
Oct 27, 2013
223
26
Sandwich Isles
I was a hardcore Claris/Appleworks user and had thousands of docs in that format after the demise of the app. I ended up wasting many days one summer converting to Word docs. The information, paragraph breaks and fonts were retained but most of the formatting, e.g., snaking columns and section breaks, disappeared. I was able to convert the PICT graphics in Preview and illustrator. With all that said, Pages, Numbers, Keynote are a great replacement for ClarisWorks save for the missing MacDraw like component. Affinity Photo and Designer are ten times better than MacDraw/ClarisWorks and priced inexpensively compared to Adobe and the old MacDraw. I remember paying $300 for MacDraw in the late 80s.
 

Jess13

Suspended
Nov 3, 2013
461
2,434
Thank you for posting this, I had forgotten how good the Appleworks icon was.

Appleworks.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Goatllama

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,566
43,547
Closest thing I'm aware of is Apple's own iWork suite, i.e., Pages, Numbers etc.
 

sracer

macrumors G4
Apr 9, 2010
10,309
13,076
where hip is spoken
There is currently nothing like AppleWorks available for OSX. If one needs to work with AppleWorks files, then I highly recommend LibreOffice 5 (free open software office suite).

I was a hardcore Claris/Appleworks user and had thousands of docs in that format after the demise of the app. I ended up wasting many days one summer converting to Word docs. The information, paragraph breaks and fonts were retained but most of the formatting, e.g., snaking columns and section breaks, disappeared. I was able to convert the PICT graphics in Preview and illustrator. With all that said, Pages, Numbers, Keynote are a great replacement for ClarisWorks save for the missing MacDraw like component. Affinity Photo and Designer are ten times better than MacDraw/ClarisWorks and priced inexpensively compared to Adobe and the old MacDraw. I remember paying $300 for MacDraw in the late 80s.
I was a hardcore Claris/Appleworks user as well... but on Windows. When I finally got around to purchasing a Mac I thought about how terrific it would be to run the "native" version... only to discover 6 months later that Apple not only discontinued Appleworks, but removed support for it in OSX.

But I must disagree that iWork is a "great replacement" for ClarisWorks (and especially the newest version of iWork that has even less functionality than iWork '09). Not only are the graphic/vector/bitmap functions of iWork deficient, there is no flat-file database module. Periodically, I'll fire up AppleWorks for Windows in a VM because I need to compare what a document originally looked like when I'm importing/recreating it using LibreOffice or iWork '09. It's a painful reminder of how terrific that software was and how easy it was to do some pretty advanced documents.

I'd pay serious money for a new AppleWorks that was designed/optimized to run on the latest OSX, more than I'd pay for MS Office. But I know that I'm alone in that. :)
 

Partron22

macrumors 68030
Apr 13, 2011
2,655
808
Yes
I'd pay serious money for a new AppleWorks that was designed/optimized to run on the latest OSX, more than I'd pay for MS Office.
I would as well, if I thought for a second that Apple would support the package in the long term. It's annoying to have to do a major archival documents format "upgrade" every ten years, just to keep things vaguely readable on new hardware. Right now, I'm betting that .odt, .odg etc. will have staying power, and not disappear into some insecure cloud-only format.
 

MLinneer

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2013
154
23
Sherman, TX
‘Like’ AppleWorks? One application that does word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, databasing, and presentations? The closest thing to it right now is LibreOffice.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Partron22

oldmacuser77

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 15, 2014
22
0
thanks all. Someone said to buy Easy Draw which I did and sorry for that. It's 375 pages long, printed all. What a waste of ink. Don't buy it unless you've got a collage degree.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.