ClarisWorks
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Appleworks dies. Long live iWork
ComputerWorld UK reports that AppleWorks has been retired by Apple after 23 years. AppleWorks, aka ClarisWorks né StyleWare provided a complete, low-cost office suite for Macintosh computers all the way into the PowerPC era. I wrote my dissertation in the program and until a couple of years ago I still used it to create our family holiday cards. I was surprised by the news as I had assumed the program had been put to rest years ago, buried along-side Hypercard. Instead, it took the release of Apple Numbers to finally kill the old workhorse. iWork '08 imports AppleWorks documents including spreadsheets, presentations and word processing files.
A Brief History of ClarisWorks
Ah, ClarisWorks...the first software I truly admired. One of the developers of ClarisWorks, Bob Hearn, recounts the history of the software as it developed from an independent title into the productivity package that so many of us used on our early Macs.I still admire the way "frames" worked in ClarisWorks/AppleWorks and know of several people who continue to rely on this feature every day to get their work done. The simplicity of being able to move objects (for example, a spreadsheet, a table, or a graphic) around between the different components of ClarisWorks was a model I wish many other programs had.
