AppleWorks

AppleWorks was an integrated office suite containing a word processor, database, and spreadsheet. It was developed by Rupert Lissner for Apple Computer, originally for the Apple II and launched in 1984. Many enhancements for AppleWorks were created, the most popular being the TimeOut series from Beagle Bros which extended the life of the Apple II version of AppleWorks. Appleworks was later reworked for the Macintosh platform. AppleWorksGS was developed for the Apple IIGS using the graphical desktop interface instead of the text-based filecard interface of the Apple II. AppleWorksGS was slow and buggy; a planned version 2.0 never materialized. Beagle Bros created a BeagleWorks program that was eventually sold to the Apple subsidiary Claris. ClarisWorks for Macintosh (1991), and Windows (1993) became a popular program and saw rapid development. Those applications do not share any code with the 8-bit Apple II original. Apple absorbed Claris and the name ClarisWorks was changed to AppleWorks. It was bundled with all consumer-level Macintoshes sold by Apple until its discontinuation. As of 2007, AppleWorks had not been updated in several years and was unable to run on the Intel processors shipping in new Macs. On August 15, 2007, Apple announced AppleWorks had reached end-of-life status, and would no longer be sold. Apple instead promoted its recently launched iWork suite as a replacement, which contains word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications with capabilities similar to AppleWorks, but is not directly compatible with AppleWorks file formats.