Hi, new mac user here...i just got a new iMac, and bought iWork and Office 2004 - or at least paid for the license. Anyway, what's Appleworks all about, and does it offer anything that iWork and Office 2004 doesn't? i use Office mostly for spreadsheets and Pages is an amazing program for word documents. Is there anything i'm missing without Appleworks? i heard that iWork replaced Appleworks...but the Apple store still sells it.
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what's the difference between Appleworks, iWork, and Office 2004?
- Thread starter joe50000
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That's quite a broad question you've asked. Have you checked out the propaganda on Apple's site about AppleWorks? It's a bit outdated and I don't think it'd really offer you anything over the top of Office and iWork. 
What he said. Unless you need a simple database application, which neither Office nor iWork have, but AppleWorks does.
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I would skip Appleworks altogether since you have MS Office. Appleworks is out of date and the interface, imo, is ugly.
well, let me ask you this: given that i already have iwork and office 2004, is it worth buying? i just want a solid suite of office software on my mac. I do a lot of pro work on it.
oh yeah and that page is really out of date. The snippet shows it on an iBook G3 and running in an OS9 window!
oh yeah and that page is really out of date. The snippet shows it on an iBook G3 and running in an OS9 window!
iBook, yes. OS 9, no...it's OS X.
But it does tell you something about AppleWorks...it hasn't been updated in ages. As balamw mentioned, unless you need some sort of database program (and AppleWorks' isn't very robust) there's absolutely no need for AppleWorks in addition to Office and/or iWork. It hasn't been significantly updated in six years, and Apple has no intention of doing so.
Yes, there have been several minor updates over the years (the most recent one being to 6.2.9 in 2004), but 6.0 came out in 2000.
Wow...well, I guess iWork replaced Appleworks then? and since Office is available for Macs now...
That is one thing I am really loving about my iMac - the quality first party software that you can't get on a PC. Great stuff.
Just FYI...Office has existed for the Mac for a LONG time. In fact, the core Office programs, Word and Excel, were originally made for the original Macintosh in 1984.
This is not true. Word originated on MS/PC-DOS. The unique thing about Word was that it ran in graphics mode. However, the Macintosh allowed Bill Gates to realize his vision for the app. Word 1.0 was the first full-featured Mac-based word processor. The Windows version came later and was an also-ran behind WordPerfect until Microsoft released Word 6.0.
I still don't think anybody here is clearing this up quite right:
Microsoft Office is a business-minded suite of a word processor (Word), spreadsheet app (Excel) and primitive presentation app (PowerPoint).
Apple iWork is a designed-based suite consisting of a page-layout app (Pages) and a very design-oriented presentation app (Keynote).
Note that I did not call Pages a word processor, nor did I call Word a page-layout app. Word is a very excellent word processor, with some very powerful features not found in Pages that relate to word processing. Pages, on the other hand, lacks some more advanced word processing features of Word, but is way more powerful in terms of page-layout (for example, creating posters).
My take on it:
iWork:
Office:
iWork Score: 14
Office Score: 12
Since Pages is just about as much word processor as anybody ever needs, plus has basic inline spreadsheet abilities that can create very beautiful graphs, and Keynote is generally accepted as 25 million times better than PowerPoint, I usually recommend people get iWork unless they really need the powerful Excel spreadsheet, or something found in Word.
AppleWorks hasn't been updated since like 2001, and even then only to make it OS X compatible, as AppleWorks was immensely popular in schools, so it wasn't really anything new since the Claris Works days. AppleWorks is not something you should consider.
Microsoft Office is a business-minded suite of a word processor (Word), spreadsheet app (Excel) and primitive presentation app (PowerPoint).
Apple iWork is a designed-based suite consisting of a page-layout app (Pages) and a very design-oriented presentation app (Keynote).
Note that I did not call Pages a word processor, nor did I call Word a page-layout app. Word is a very excellent word processor, with some very powerful features not found in Pages that relate to word processing. Pages, on the other hand, lacks some more advanced word processing features of Word, but is way more powerful in terms of page-layout (for example, creating posters).
My take on it:
iWork:
- Solid Page Layout Features + 2
- Solid Word Processing Features + 2
- Solid Presentation Features + 2
- Weak Spreadsheet Features + 1
- Weak Email Features + 1
- Solid iLife Integration + 2
- Both Intel and PowerPC Native + 2
- Cheap + 2
Office:
- Weak Page Layout Features + 1
- Advanced Word Processing Features + 3
- Weak Presentation Features + 1
- Advanced Spreadsheet Features + 3
- Advanced Email Features + 3
- No iLife Integration +0
- Only PowerPC Native + 1
- Ridiculously Expensive + 0
iWork Score: 14
Office Score: 12
Since Pages is just about as much word processor as anybody ever needs, plus has basic inline spreadsheet abilities that can create very beautiful graphs, and Keynote is generally accepted as 25 million times better than PowerPoint, I usually recommend people get iWork unless they really need the powerful Excel spreadsheet, or something found in Word.
AppleWorks hasn't been updated since like 2001, and even then only to make it OS X compatible, as AppleWorks was immensely popular in schools, so it wasn't really anything new since the Claris Works days. AppleWorks is not something you should consider.