Appleworks demise?

[Trevor Osbourn]

I gather that Appleworks is on the way out Why?it is brilliant and as far as I can see, the suggested successor - iWorks - provides less facilities and is meant for dimbos. What do I do with my Appleworks databases, for example?

[Barry]

I gather that Appleworks is on the way out Why?it is brilliant and as far as I can see, the suggested successor - iWorks - provides less facilities and is meant for dimbos. What do I do with my Appleworks databases, for example?

Keep using them?

Apple has declared EOL for AppleWorks, meaning Apple will no longer sell the application, nor will they support it. That's not very different from the situation for the past couple of years.

User to User support is still available here, at Apple's Discussions site, and in a number of other forums, and likely will continue to be available as long as there's a demand.

It doesn't mean the application will suddenly stop working. Continue to use it for as long as it fits your needs. Make sure, against the day that your copy becomes corrupted, that you have made a backup of the AppleWorks 6 folder and its contents, and continue to back up your data files regularly.

For db files especialy, backup with copies of the files themselves as well as with a copy of the data exported to a text file.

As for iWork (no 's') having fewer 'facilities' and being "meant for dimbos," that's a moot point which, as a non-user (so far), I'm not prepared to argue. Certainly Keynote goes far beyond the presentation capabilities of AppleWorks. Pages has won adoption of a number of people who continue to use AppleWorks, but now do almost all their word processing and page layout in Pages. The bumpf on Numbers makes it look pretty good, although I'd like to see a full function list before making any comment.

For people (like me) comfortable with AppleWorks, it's difficult to see "different" (which the iWork applications are), and not read that as "not as good" (which doesn't appear to be totally the case).

The lack of a database function in the iWork package keeps me from dropping AppleWorks in favour of iWork, and has me looking for a replacement with the simplicity and power of AW's db module.

There seem to be a number of applications or suites available with full relational db capabilities, but going relational incurs a rather hefty learning curve—one that I don't know I'm ready to attempt.

Regards,
Barry

[Trevor Osbourn]

I gather that Appleworks is on the way out Why?it is brilliant and as far as I can see, the suggested successor - iWorks - provides less facilities and is meant for dimbos. What do I do with my Appleworks databases, for example?

Keep using them?

Apple has declared EOL for AppleWorks, meaning Apple will no longer sell the application, nor will they support it. That's not very different from thesituation for the past couple of years.

User to User support is still available here, at Apple's Discussions site, and in a number of other forums, and likely will continue to be available as long as there's a demand.

It doesn't mean the application will suddenly stop working. Continue to use it for as long as it fits your needs. Make sure, against the day that your copy becomes corrupted, that you have made a backup of the AppleWorks 6 folder and its contents, and continue to back up your data files regularly.

For db files especialy, backup with copies of the files themselves as well as with a copy of the data exported to a text file.

As for iWork (no 's') having fewer 'facilities' and being "meant for dimbos," that's a moot point which, as a non-user (so far), I'm not prepared to argue. Certainly Keynote goes far beyond the presentation capabilities of AppleWorks. Pages has won adoption of a number of people who continue to use AppleWorks, but now do almost all their word processing and page layout in Pages. The bumpf on Numbers makes it look pretty good, although I'd like to see a full function list before making any comment.

For people (like me) comfortable with AppleWorks, it's difficult to see "different" (which the iWork applications are), and not read that as "not as good" (which doesn't appear to be totally the case).

The lack of a database function in the iWork package keeps me from dropping AppleWorks in favour of iWork, and has me looking for a replacement with the simplicity and power of AW's db module.

There seem to be a number of applications or suites available with full relational db capabilities, but going relational incurs a rather hefty learning curve—one that I don't know I'm ready to attempt.

Regards,
Barry

Barry, thanks. This is my first exchange on awug and I found it most helpful. Since I wrote first a trial version is now available from Apple UK and I will have a go at it as soon as I get time. I have so far looked briefly at some of the tutorial bits and, on that evidence, can't see that iWork is an improvement. No DB, obviously, and it looks as though the draw and paint capabilities have gone. The "dimbo" reference was intended to point to the fact that the emphasis has moved much more to prepared templates - and I don't find this sort of thing at all useful. A great feature of AW is that I can draw, paint, WP and spread sheet - and then bung the lot together. Will I still be able to do all this with the iWork? "improvement"?
Like many people I do not like change, especially when I think what I have got works very well and does not need fixing at all!
Trevor

[fredemigh]

I too am sticking with AW6 until iWork can provide a equally versatile and easy-to-use database module. There are a few advantages to iWork, e.g. in-cell editing in Numbers, but the few advantages don't outweigh the disadvantages. AW6 provides the only good flat-file DB in the Mac world - better than Filemaker's flat-file approach, and a lot cheaper. Yes, I do back up my AW6 app folder against the day when my operational AW6 gets corrupted. Also I second the idea of backing up AW6 DB files and their tabbed-text exports.