AppleWorks and Snow Leopard

When Snow Leopard comes out, you’ll have the option of not installing Rosetta, a translator that allows you to run PowerPC programs on your Intel Mac. Doing this won’t save much space by itself, by it could encourage you to update or delete those PowerPC-only programs lurking on your hard drive. TUAW has an article urging you to do just that.

I fired up System Profiler and had a look at which programs are which on the thriftmac iMac — PowerPC, Universal (both) or Intel. There was a surprisingly large number in the PowerPC category, but the vast majority of them could be updated or turfed without much trouble. There were a couple, though, that I really wanted to keep: Cro Mag Rally (a game from Pangea) and AppleWorks. Yes, that’s right — AppleWorks.

It’s not just that I enjoy using the program. I do — it’s fast, easy and covers the basics. The bigger dilemma is what to do with all the hundreds of AppleWorks files that have sprouted over the years. Without Rosetta, AppleWorks won’t run. And without AppleWorks, those AppleWorks files won’t open — at least not easily.

There are two no-Rosetta solutions: one simple but pricey, and the other tedious but free.

Pages — part of Apple’s iWork suite — easily opens an AppleWorks file and keeps all the formatting. But that costs US$79. It’s a good program, but who wants to pay that much just to open some old files?

The free solution is to open the AppleWorks documents — before installing Snow Leopard without Rosetta — and save them as .rtf files. This allows you to open them in NeoOffice or OpenOffice with formatting — including pictures — intact. Bean and TextEdit also open them, but without pictures. Of course, if you have hundreds of AppleWorks documents, it’s going to be a drag to open them all and make the conversions. A good idea would be to delete a bunch you don’t need any more.

When all is said and done, you might want to just install Rosetta and be done with it. This way you can let AppleWorks slide and keep some cool games.

date posted Posted Tuesday, August 18, 2009 in

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  1. And when were you actually planning on updating the files in case you do need them again? Mac OS XV?

    Saving any file in a proprietary format is silly.

    cjc1959au

  2. I guess I could be accused of putting off the inevitable . . .

    Mark

  3. Really, let the dino go. I LOVE AppleWorks… in fact, it was a large part of my professional career (ex-RagTime employee (lost job because of CW), ex-Claris Tech Support, ex-Claris QA, ex-FileMaker SCM (handed off source code to Apple), ex-AppleWorks teacher at local adult school), but it’s time is past. Let the beast rest in peace like Classic mode…

    I’ve completely replaced AW with iWork and haven’t looked back once in over a year. ;)

    Jamie Pruden

  4. It shouldn’t be too hard to write an Automator or Apple script to have these conversions done. In fact, a quick google search found this batch convert script: Batch Convert

    Best of luck!

    GBM

  5. Great idea — thanks for the tip.

    Mark

  6. Thanks for the Batch Convert tip. I have appx 13,000 AppleWorks docs and much as I hate Word and Pages I’ve been thinking about converting them all just so I don’t end up stuck at some point. I still have a few files in AW 3.0 that I just (re)discovered and those I had to translate the hard way—big messy translation since AW6 won’t open them. I also found a few files in MacWrite Pro and MacDraw format in my cleanup for 10.6. I suppose if I lived without them for the last 10 years I probably don’t need them…but you never know. Amazing what you find squirreled away in folders that have migrated from a two-floppy Mac SE though many other Macs the way to a 24” iMac.

    Jim

  7. I have resisted replacing AppleWorks with iWork for several reasons:

    1. I know how to use AppleWorks already

    2. AppleWorks does most of what I need

    3. I like the integration in one app, rather than having to run multiple programs.

    4. iWork still can’t do everything AppleWorks can—you still need Bento for databases, for example.

    5. I resent Apple for killing off AppleWorks just so they can sell iWork (planned obsolescence).

    etc.

    Timothy Arends





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