Tribute to Dead AppleWorks
6:18 pm, August 16th, 2007, Pete Mortensen
Friends, Mac-Heads, Clarismen, lend me your ears; I come to bury AppleWorks, not to praise him; the spreadsheets that men do live after them, the oft-interminable crashes shake down to the bones. So let it be with iWork.
Surprising few who were paying attention, Apple officially killed of its former office suite, AppleWorks, with the introduction of Numbers, a spreadsheet program that completes the new iWork trifecta. The writing’s been on the wall for a long time. iWork was introduced in 2005, and I don’t think AppleWorks has been updated at all since mid-2002. Essentially, they got to Carbon OS X compliance and went no further.
Though it never served as a solid suite for OS X, I do have some affection for AppleWorks, which I first came to know as Clarisworks in about 1993 on my dad’s PowerBook 140. I’m not sure I can count the number of short stories and novels I started and abandoned in that little program, not to mention the dreadful book covers I mocked up in those days.
ClarisWorks was great in the mid-1990s, because it didn’t try to do too much. It was a solid little program that would let you do what you wanted to without trying to make you do things you didn’t. Claris never developed a talking paper clip assistant, for example. The spreadsheet program couldn’t make web pages, and the presentation mode was modest in the extreme.
There’s a lesson there, I’m quite sure. Software has never been more bloated, and Apple itself is as guilty as anyone. Aesthetics are lovely, sure, but when are we going to go about creating programs that strictly make us more functional again? We’ve been at about the same place for years. What’s the next level?
R.I.P. AppleWorks. You served well, and you went as far as you could go and no further. Godspeed.
Posted by Pete Mortensen in Software | Comment on this article
If you enjoyed this article:
Subscribe via RSS or email, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter
It had to the best Outline function, neither matched by MS Office nor by Pages!
Jens
Jens, on August 16th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I’m just mad that a non-trial office suit is no longer standard on Macs. Hasn’t been since the intel switch, it’s not a good thing!
Trev, on August 16th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Bummer, I really liked AppleWorks, when I got my first iBook a few years ago it was awesome that AppleWorks was on there for free, reminded me of learning about computers in ClarisWorks years ago!
RIP
Steve, on August 16th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
But if you have the AppleWork discs somewhere, it still works on the Intel Macs. Haven’t tested in 10.5 but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work there as well – it doesn’t obviously need to make OS X framework requests all the time ..
Before iWork 08, the excel part was the annoyance. Even though I could have used MS Office with the site license, I hated it for being bloated, a MS product, and for leaving zombie processes in my system. So OpenOffice, NeoOffce, and still AppleWorks .. slow, clumsy, and not OS X like for the fist two, and not that Excel compatible for the third one. But at least it worked, and it was fast, and not too bloated with unneeded functions.
I would love to see a really basic version of some office suite made purely for OS X. Something a bit more options than TextEdit has, and the basic Excel functions, a very basic presentation thing … the existing OpenOffice based suites will not become any smaler (like any software out there), and .. when the application and updates size are bloating, Damn Small Linux impresses me, for it having everything in 50 MB, from VNC to terminal, 2 browsers, email, reader, text editors .. that in 50 MB in graphics that isn’t the worst is impressive compared to the gui candy application update download sizes. I could guess iWork updates won’t be small either, just like the last Aperture update was 150 MB … or mighty mouse software was of the same size as well.. maybe if the software were optimized and kept small, the hard drives didn’t get so full so fast so people would update the hardware less often?
a., on August 16th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Farewell fare AppleWorks. Never did the world deserve one so elegant as thee…
*sob*
Church of Apple, on August 17th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Ahh Appleworks your startup time on my 500mhz Mac was blazing fast and you got the job done. While you couldn’t compare to Office 2001 in features, you made up for it in relative simplicity. We will miss you.
Zott, on August 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
It’s not dead yet! Even though Apple isn’t updating it, I still use it on my Mac.
Cypy, on August 17th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I liked that suit although i didnt use it much. I still have it on my computer.
its in a way stupid that older programs run in a better way than new programs…I thought we were advancing.
Am sure there is a word processing programing that runs just as good somewhere….we just have to search…nisus?
King, on August 17th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
I used to use the draw program to mock up city layouts for game publishing. I’d do all the buildings in AppleWorks because the draw tool worked really well for sketching ‘em out, then dump it all into Photoshop to jazz it up. Illustrator was way too cumbersome for the way I’d draw the streets/blgds. Appleworks worked because it was simple.
Brant, on August 18th, 2007 at 5:12 am
HI- Please let me say this:
I aggree with Brant~
Thank you for all the hard work you’ve done for me over the years, Appleworks.
I’m a Longtime RPGer (roleplaying gamer)- I use pen, paper, pencil, ruler, dice, and hang out with actual people- I don’t do online gaming stuff. So I enjoy going to the gaming table, and wowing my fellow gamers with awesome cityscapes, maps, dungeon layouts, even portraits of characters etc, that I made in Appleworks. It all makes something already fun even better, and more lifelike
However- I don’t have an OS X disk anymore, and I was going to go to Apple to purchase a new copy, when they pulled the literal rug right out from under my feet.
Appleworks- I will mis thee, rest in peace
Mac Jedi, on August 18th, 2007 at 8:06 am
I still use Appleworks every day like I did Clarisworks in the nineties. There is no successor of the Sketch and Draw function yet and Adobe Illustrator is far too heavy for the small sketches and drawings that I have to make all day. You may open a sketch from Appleworks in Pages, but it will show as one image only. It would be logic if Apple completed iWorks with a Sketch-like program. Has anyone heard of such intention?
Tom de Meijer, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Tom de Meijer, on September 21st, 2007 at 7:11 am