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Intel Macs spells death of Appleworks

jholzner

jholzner

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 24, 2002
1,386
23
Champaign, IL
The new Intel iMac doesn't come with Appleworks. I assume this means it will not become a Universal Binary and be killed once all macs are Intel. This also means that once all macs are intel NO macs will come with a word processor. You will have to buy iWord or Office if you want to do word processing unles you use TextEdit, which is not a very good word processor in my opinion. I think that Apple should inclue iWork (or at least Pages) free on new macs the way they do iLife. Just my 2 cents.

Edit: I gues one could use an open source WP but most switchers and consumers aren't going to want to or know how to do so.
 
I figured iWorks replaced Appleworks. If you don't want to pay for that, you could always grab a copy of OpenOffice.

Why would anyone not want to look around for an office suite? Consumers include Windows users and they have to find one. At least if you run something like OpenOffice, it is the same on Windows and Mac.
 
belvdr said:
I figured iWorks replaced Appleworks. If you don't want to pay for that, you could always grab a copy of OpenOffice.

Why would anyone not want to look around for an office suite? Consumers include Windows users and they have to find one. At least if you run something like OpenOffice, it is the same on Windows and Mac.
Click to expand...

I don't give too much credit to the common consumer. They aren't very computer savy and most people I know don't even know that openoffice exists. I guess I think something as basic as a word processor should come standard. I mean, more people are going to use that than GarageBand or even iWeb for that matter. Macs are more expensive than PCs and I know that if you do a point to point comparison they aren't really but I can see someone saying..."well I'm spending 1300 buck on this iMac and it doesn't come with a word processor and the 399 dell does"
 
I think iWorks is the work in progress that is going to replace Appleworks eventually.

I still prefer the name Appleworks to iWork though. Placing 'i' before everything is good in some ways but is kind of bland at the same time.
 
AppleWorks has been running by default for quite a while. Had it not worked with Tiger, it might have not been included in the bundle on current PPC machines. Currently, I believe that you can buy it as an education purchase but not as a retail purchase.

It would be nice if the various modules were separate and able to be used along with iWork. Of course, the thing is probably the most unlikely to be converted because of its roots in yesterday.
 
Of course Appleworks wasn't going to be universal. It was killed a year ago.

Windows on ships with Wordpad which is about the equivalent of Textedit and I don't here much fuss on that side of the fence.
 
I think jholzner is right. The iMac should ship with a word processor. Having everything "just work" when you get a consumer-level Mac is part of what makes the experience a good one. You get music software, photo software, movie software, a text editor, etc., and there oughta be a word processor too. Raise the system price a few dollars if necessary, but bundle it in.

More sophisticated Mac users (including me) might prefer to get iMacs in barebones form, with no word processor, and buy whatever software they like, or pick up shareware/freeware/open source products as they see fit. But I'm speaking from an Apple Marketing point of view, not from what would benefit me personally.
 
I do think iWork, or at least Pages, should be included with new iMac/Mini/iBook models. It really fits the out-of-the-box experience those products strive for.

However, TextEdit is darned close to being a full-fledged word processor in Tiger. Tab stops, styles, justification, outlining...Hebrew/Arabic-style right-to-left ordering....it's enough to write a letter or memo, at least.

What's more...iWork needs a spreadsheet. Badly.
 
I always thought iWorks being different from iLife was kind of strange. Apple has quite the tendency to being symmetrical. They may start including it with new Macs if they come to another developmental roadblock (like the final PBG4 revision), in order to cushion prices.
 
i have a client list for my wife in Appleworks. It has 600 clients. If I buy iwork would it transfer over? Im on a PPC

Thanks Rob
 
Yes, you can open any Appleworks document using iWork. You may have to manually select Pages to open it the first time (for some reason my computer wanted to try opening one with Numbers). Then you can just save that as a normal Pages document.
 
Cboss said:
Yes, you can open any Appleworks document using iWork. You may have to manually select Pages to open it the first time (for some reason my computer wanted to try opening one with Numbers). Then you can just save that as a normal Pages document.
Click to expand...

No, you can't open just any AppleWorks document using iWork. Pages will open AppleWorks 6 word processing documents only, Numbers will open AppleWorks 6 spreadsheet documents only and Keynote will open AppleWorks 6 presentations only. None of the iWork apps can open another type of AppleWorks 6 document nor can they open any AppleWorks 5 or ClarisWorks documents.
 
Does anyone know if iwork 09 can open old AppleWorks docs? By old I mean prior to AppleWorks 6 and claris works and such. I think I even have some old macwrite files.
 
mikejtl said:
Does anyone know if iwork 09 can open old AppleWorks docs? By old I mean prior to AppleWorks 6 and claris works and such. I think I even have some old macwrite files.
Click to expand...

The cheapest and probably easiest thing to do would be to go on eBay, but an iMac G3 (oldest slowest one) for like 20 bucks or whatever they are now a days, convert the files using Appleworks on that, and upload them to your other Mac.
 
mikejtl said:
Does anyone know if iwork 09 can open old AppleWorks docs? By old I mean prior to AppleWorks 6 and claris works and such. I think I even have some old macwrite files.
Click to expand...

I have ClarisWorks on my LC 575 and would test this for you, but I have no way to get the files onto any of my modern computers.

It doesn't have a CD-R drive, and I don't have an external floppy drive to read any burnt floppies.

By this, I determine that your files aren't really that necessary. :p
 
portent said:
I do think iWork, or at least Pages, should be included with new iMac/Mini/iBook models. It really fits the out-of-the-box experience those products strive for.

However, TextEdit is darned close to being a full-fledged word processor in Tiger. Tab stops, styles, justification, outlining...Hebrew/Arabic-style right-to-left ordering....it's enough to write a letter or memo, at least.

What's more...iWork needs a spreadsheet. Badly.
Click to expand...

I agree with like, all of this..

I wish iWorks would come up to par with Works for Mac too- I typeset occassionally and Works is good enough to produce publisher ready PDFs.. iWorks seems to be lagging a lot..
 
jholzner said:
I don't give too much credit to the common consumer. They aren't very computer savy and most people I know don't even know that openoffice exists. I guess I think something as basic as a word processor should come standard. I mean, more people are going to use that than GarageBand or even iWeb for that matter. Macs are more expensive than PCs and I know that if you do a point to point comparison they aren't really but I can see someone saying..."well I'm spending 1300 buck on this iMac and it doesn't come with a word processor and the 399 dell does"
Click to expand...

If you can afford a 1300 mac, springing more for a program that you need shouldn't matter. If you'd rather not, use OpenOffice.
 
I keep AppleWorks 6 on my Intel Mac just to download the occasional web clippings in .eps format. They are so much nicer that the boring clip art in Microsoft Office. That's one (very) little thing I will miss from AppleWorks whenever the day comes that I cannot run it on a Mac.
 
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