The Retired SIG meeting in February focused on AppleWorks 6. We met at the Pi Office to discuss the merits of this age-old application from Apple. We wanted to see what the SIG members felt about it and, more importantly, how they use it.
Len, the group’s leader, demonstrated AppleWorks. With its spreadsheet, database, word processing and drawing modules rolled into one, this software makes it easy to create a poster with text, graphics or photos cut and pasted from a Web site or file. A great application that seems to have plenty of life left in it.
But, of the nine members present, almost nobody used it. So, what were they using? What has replaced AppleWorks? And has it been totally replaced yet for the Mac Intel platform? Most of those at the meeting used Microsoft Office, Open Office, or TextEdit. Intel-based Macs don't support AppleWorks directly, although the application can run using Rosetta. (Rosetta is a program that permits applications designed for older Macs, G-5 and earlier, to work on Intel Macs.)
The meeting program then switched gears: attendees were shown a demonstration
of TextEdit. It too is a bundled application like AppleWorks, and
it allows the use of graphics and objects as well as text. This application
has come as a part of Mac OS X since the operating system was first introduced.
One nice feature of TextEdit is that it can open Microsoft Word files,
so now when you get a file from a co-worker, friend or relative written in
MS Word for Windows, you can easily open it.
We closed the meeting by asking for follow-on topics. At the suggestion of the group, the next two meetings will be dedicated to using iPhoto, iDVD and iMovie.