A quick note on AppleWorks support in Snow Leopard
While AppleWorks brought much needed day-to-day productivity to early versions of OS X, Apple ended support for it in 2007 with the debut of Pages and the iWork suite. Despite this, a number of people still rely on or use AppleWorks, and periodically ask about the support options for AppleWorks and AppleWorks documents in recent versions of the Mac OS.
AppleWork was ported to run in OS X using the "Carbon" API, and when it came to supporting the modern and OS X-native "Cocoa" API, Apple decided to create a new productivity suite. The last version of AppleWorks is version 6.2.9, and requires at least the following computing hardware (from this Apple knowledgebase document):
- An Apple computer with PowerPC processor
- 24 MB of memory (RAM) with Virtual Memory set to at least 25 MB (Classic Mac OS Only)
- Mac OS 8.1 or later
- A CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
- An Internet connection to access additional templates and clip art images
- QuickTime 4 (installed by the installer if not already present)
- CarbonLib (installed by the installer if not already present)
The latest version of AppleWorks can be found at the AppleWorks support page: http://www.apple.com/support/appleworks/
In Intel versions of OS X, AppleWorks has been able to run with the Rosetta translator, but it is not supported, so if any problems crop up, Apple will not provide any software patches to fix them. In Snow Leopard where native PowerPC support has been eliminated, some people have claimed AppleWorks runs fine, but others have found problems when trying to run the program.
For people who rely on AppleWorks and are concerned about being able to access data, Apple has provided a FAQ for iWork that contains answers to many of these concerns, at least for those who choose to use Apple's more modern productivity suite. The FAQ is available here: http://www.apple.com/support/appleworks/faq/
Basically, iWork should open all AppleWorks word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation documents (Drawing, Database, and Painting documents will first need to be converted), though as with any file translation there are bound to be some problems with formatting and character translation. If you use AppleWorks databases, you might try converting them to spreadsheets by showing all records in a layout that will display all fields in the database, then selecting all entries and and copy and paste them into a spreadsheet. From here, you can save the spreadsheet as ASCII or comma-delimited text which can be imported into a variety of newer databases such as FileMaker or Bento.
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That is not correct. iWork will not open AW Drawing or Painting docs either. See the Drawing and Painting section in the Apple FAQ you referenced -- it states that those kinds of documents have to be exported from within AW to a standard format that iWork will recognize.
AW can be used with Intel processors up to 10.5.8 without glitches. I'm reluctant to use Snow Leopard until I know my AW documents open intact under it too.
Anyone try it yet??
For perhaps similar reasons Adobe stopped supporting PageMaker and replaced it with InDesign. No doubt it was more viable to start from scratch with InDesign than to try to modernize the old code base of PageMaker. Such efforts eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. The path for Apple was less smooth and less direct (development of AppleWorks and Pages did not overlap as it did with PageMaker and InDesign), nevertheless the change was probably just as necessary.
As for continuing the AppleWorks model of integrating several apps in one (as Microsoft Works also did), I suspect that was no longer possible, given the demands for new features and capabilities in each component. As it is, Pages pushes the limits trying to be both a word processor and page layout program. Microsoft failed even more miserably in their own transition - in my experience no Office app was ever able to even open a MS Works file, let alone convert it, even though development of Works and Office overlapped for many years.
I think Apple has done fairly well with integration among the apps in its suites, iWork and iLife, providing a more or less universal media browser - which is even open to third party developers if they choose to utilize it, as a few have done. Adobe has developed similar integration, though their media browser, Bridge, necessarily became a standalone app.
Of course there are still some apps that preserve that all-in-one model - OpenOffice and NeoOffice, for example. So it can be done, though some advanced functionality is necessarily sacrificed in the effort. In the meantime, Microsoft has tried to improve Word for page layout - a decidedly mixed success, but perhaps sufficient for the average office worker putting together a company newsletter.
In any event, I think it's nothing short of miraculous that AppleWorks continues to chug along on hardware and in an operating system for which it was never updated or designed.
Now that iWorks has Numbers, the only problem I have with iWorks is the lack of the ability to convert and use Appleworks DR files and a lack of more robust drawing functions.
I use Filemaker of my database work, but I was hoping Apple would buy Bento and fold it into iWorks as the Database module. I would like to see an option to use Bento without all the "help and guidance" though. Bento seems like an ultimate Apple product. It produces a beautiful databases, but it rigidly controls the look and options. Its like Filemaker doesn't trust the users to create good looking databases on their own. I hate to say it, but I think Apple distrusts the style sense of the user too.
If it were possible to convert my AppleWorks DB files, then I might use something other than AppleWorks.
When I was teaching, I used Microsoft Works for everything because the school system was no longer supporting AppleWorks. All 'official' documents were on MSW. Now that I have a new Intel Mac, those older MSW files cannot be used. This is the main drawback to 'progress' - what worked in the past has to be re-done for the future. What a waste of time!
I disagree that iWork can be considered a 'complete productivity suite' since it does not contain a database capability. That has to be bought at an additional cost.
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by JPSaltzman
September 24, 2009 10:23 PM PDT
- From what I've read, the only way to port AppleWorks databases into the modern world is through Bento 2.x (for better or for worse), a program from Filemaker (once an Apple subsidiary). It's only $49, but it does specifically state in their FAQs that it can translate AppleWorks DBs -- which, despite Apple's claims, iWork cannot (database to database). Dear Apple: A spreadsheet is not the same as a database.
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