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Major Appleworks Upgrade?

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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ThinkSecret reports 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 hinted that Apple was considering positioning Appleworks against Microsoft's Office.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2002/10/15/major-appleworks-upgrade/
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.
 
Don't position it against Office!

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

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.
 
Re: WILL THEY OR WONT THEY

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.
Click to expand...

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:
 
Re: Re: WILL THEY OR WONT THEY

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:
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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!
 
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).
 
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????
 
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
 
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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..........
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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).
 
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..
 
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.
 
Doesn;t anyone see the 'Keynote' connection?

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!
 
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????
Click to expand...

must be late
 
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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