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AppleWorks/ClarisWorks Dies Quietly

Posted by kdawson on from the out-to-pasture-or-off-to-the-knackers dept.

Several readers noted that Apple has quietly discontinued AppleWorks, in the week that the company's spreadsheet solution, Numbers, debuted in its iWork suite. The AppleWorks website now directs users to the iWork section of the Apple site. AppleWorks was introduced — before the Macintosh — in 1984 and began its long twilight as abandonware in 1999.

15 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. memories by greywire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ah, yes, memories of appleworks in highschool computer class on apple IIc's...

    --
    -- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
    1. Re:memories by charleste · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First good old Word Perfect 1.0a for Mac was gone (not ported)... and now my Claris/AppleWorks too?! Sigh! Another reason to not upgrade my G5 :-)

    2. Re:memories by sporadic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      AppleWorks (and to a less degree, AppleWorks GS) got me through high school and college (80-mid 90's) as an English Lit/Polysci major. With the Beagle Bros' TimeOut series of add-ons, there was nothing AW couldn't handle! Ah, the good old days! Running it on an Apple IIgs with 8MG, SCSI HD, and ZipGSX accelerator, the 8-bit text based AW flew like a bat out of hell! And being the geek that I was (and still am,) I used to track all my games with the Database :) I still have the IIe and IIgs in my closet, plus a crapload of 5.25 and 3.5 floppies. Maybe I'll take them out this weekend and see if they still work. Pretty sure the machines still work.

      Sporadic

    3. Re:memories by Gilmoure · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I used Word 5.1a the last time I did a term paper, a couple years ago. I love how it launches in 2 seconds on my G5.

      Now there's an idea; gather up a bunch of old but working apps, that are lightning fast on current hardware and bundle them for the mobile market.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
  2. Re:Finally. by nine-times · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, yeah. Appleworks hadn't really seen a significant update in, what, more than 5 years? I was always surprised to learn that it was still being sold.

    I'd see it on the shelf at BestBuy and think, "Really?! Appleworks? Do people still buy that, and if they do, are they really pissed off when they figure out how out-of-date it is?"

  3. iWork and no ODF support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why-o-why? The same reason apple pretend that no-one uses open formats and containers like: FLAC, vorbis and matroska et al?

  4. Pity by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It was brilliant. The only "works" package that didn't suck.
    Its integrated approach, with text processing, spreadsheet, drawing and database modules in a single application program was rather elegant. For quickly throwing together a document that needs all of those, I still haven't seen anything that beats it.

    1. Re:Pity by brownsteve · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Here is a fascinating history of ClarisWorks from one of its original authors. It was quite an accomplishment to pack all that functionality into a megabyte of RAM. Ahh... nostalgia...

  5. Good thing they kept it around. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was just glad that they made an OS X native version. I don't know about other people, but I have a *lot* of old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks documents sitting around, and they are not something that you can easily batch-convert. (Or at least I don't know of a way to easily batch convert them; if anyone knows how to do that, please feel free to let me know.) I probably go in and open up an old Claris WP document every few weeks or so.

    Will the new iWork suite open old Claris/Appleworks documents? It would be nice if they did. I haven't played with the new iWork apps at all (I realized that I don't need a word-processor for most of what I now do, and just use TextMate to butcher ASCII instead).

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    1. Re:Good thing they kept it around. by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It can't be THAT Mac-centric... there's been a Windows version since at least 4.0.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  6. Re:Finally. by Nimey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The last update of Appleworks was so that it doesn't require Classic. It's /that/ neglected.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  7. Re:NeoOffice? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not to mention the Ghost of Jef Raskin haunts you if you use NeoOffice. The interface in AppleWorks feels dated, but at least it used to be good. NeoOffice never was.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  8. Re:pity the foo by Otter · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You might look for a group of recovering Lotus Notes addicts for advice and support through this, uh, difficult time.

    Meanwhile, Lotus Notes 8 is being released tomorrow! If one of the two had to survive, I'd much rather it were AppleWorks.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  9. Seconded, and for the oddest application by Crash+Culligan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've done more than a little with AppleWorks in my time too; in fact, I used it some Tuesday night at gaming.

    AppleWorks has (I've still got an install disk and updater, so neener) a nifty paradigm for documents. A document can hold text or graphics. The spreadsheet can be spread out on a drawing document in small pieces by opening views onto different parts of a spreadsheet. Thus, a document can be spread out across ten or eleven little boxes on a single page.

    I thought that would make AppleWorks hard to give up, and combined with the other parts of it, I may still keep it around for a good long time (Intel processor on my next computer notwithstanding).

    When I got Numbers, of course I could create as many two-and-three-column spreadsheets on the page as I wanted and link them together. A second sheet contained the "hidden" information which the other tables use for lookups. And the creative lookup scheme I was able to assemble made life a little easier.

    So I've got a new character sheet. I'll still look back, but I don't regret the move.

    --
    You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
  10. Re:hypercard by Nitewing98 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hypercard has been (sort of) given a second life as Applescript Studio, since Applescript is basically Hypertalk in the first place. The difference being that now you can write real applications instead of "stacks."

    I mourn the loss of AW. It's been a good friend and true for 20+ years. It deserved a better obituary than what Apple gave it after all those years of service: http://nitewing98.blogspot.com/2007/08/appleworks- dead-at-23.html

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    Nitewing '98

    Everything works...in theory.