AppleWorks/ClarisWorks Dies Quietly

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.

hypercard

[pimpimpim]

Good ridden' Any software with 'Works' in it has proven to be a heap of useless crap

Now bring back hypercard, apple! That was so much fun, I programmed graphical interfaces with it when I was 10!

Re:iWork and no ODF support

[Mr. Underbridge]

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

What do you mean, *pretend*?

It ruled

[hcdejong]

Back in 1993 when I got my first computer (Mac LC II) with ClarisWorks 2.0, my classmates were struggling with PCs running MS-DOS (oh, horror) and WordPerfect 5.1 (a steaming pile of excrement compared to ClarisWorks). Interapplication communication, PC-style, meant printing your shit and then cutting and pasting the hard way, with glue and scissors.
My smugness knew no bounds...

Farewell, old friend!

[jpellino]

This app pulled my chestnuts out of the fire more than a few times - simple, predictable, page accurate, lightweight, did 80% of Office... with a database, no less!

Re:It ruled

[tksh]

You sure about that? I remember using Word 6.0 in Win3.1 back in 1993. It was pretty good, clipboard and all.

Re:Finally.

[zullnero]

Why do people measure the quality of a piece of software by how often it's patched? If a piece of software runs well and does the job, then it's a good piece of software. If a piece of software does not run well and does not succeed in doing the job, then it needs to be patched frequently. If AppleWorks worked well for folks, then why was it dead years ago because no one patched holes that weren't there? As for adding features, you only add features, hopefully, when you seriously NEED to add a feature. Otherwise, it's called BLOAT.

You kill off a piece of software when you want to sell something new and justify paying developers to rewrite the whole thing. Mostly, it's a marketing move in order to move new product by engendering "excitement" in suckers who think that their old functional tool isn't any good anymore.

Re:hypercard

[pimpimpim]

That didn't really deserve to be modded down, did it?

Realize that HyperCard was actually ment as a database and presentation program, and as a drawing program, say Access, Powerpoint, and Paint combined. Maybe you could also add Flash to the list.

The normal idea to use it was that your database of costumers or whatever would be a stack of cards, and there was a simple GUI to make your own GUI to interact with the stack of cards. Already quite nice that this was easy to do, but just imagine that you could also fill the cards with pictures and whatever, and 10 year olds can actually make a simple interactive game out of it! That deserves a lot of respect. Just try to make a game in Access! Actually I tried to make an interactive quiz in powerpoint last year, and it was horrible! I am not a VB expert but know my way around in several languages, and still this thing was a disaster, had a hard time trying to make one item loop (as a timer) and have another item interact with that loop (stop the timer). How come that in the end of the 80s there was a program that was more user-friendly than similar programs now? If you're unknown to Flash and you want to make a simple presentation, you're hit with a huge amount of complex menus. Just click, draw, and create a simple animation is next to impossible.

Hypercard was a revolutionary program. If it would've been cross-platform or web-integrateable it would probably be one of the most important programs used now. I guess its strength was in its limit, but that also meant the end of it for all practical purposes. Reading up on the other reactions here, I think the python-based version somebody suggested would be the most interesting. Free AND cross-platform!