Messages

1

2007 / The 'rash' of AppleWorks questions...

« on: August 22, 2007, 07:49:09 AM »

SB,

It could be that when MS and Dell went full force after the edu market, Apple chose to run rather than fight...AW became a casualty. I'm sure that what you described repeated itself in many school districts, but some no doubt fared better than others.

Did Apple let us down? Yes and No. AW was a decent suite for Mac users and education, but most Mac users outside of education needed MS Office to be compatible with the 95% of the rest of the world. Let's not kid ourselves, if MS Office for Mac didn't exist, Apple's market share would be less than Linux and companies like Adobe would have abandoned the Mac market years ago, further killing Mac use in the graphics biz. In 1995 I worked for a large multinational logistics company on a startup. I was the "transportation guy", so lots of spread sheets, memos and reports. They were standardized on Quatro Pro and WordPerfect but guess what...each of our computers had MS Office installed because they were in the process of migrating. Where is Quatro and WordPerfect today? Where is Lotus 1-2-3 for that matter? It wasn't just Apple that was up against the MS juggernaut.

If Apple abandoned the edu market, it wasn't all Apple's fault. I recall Paddy, Krissel (and others) mentioning on numerous occasions about school districts switching to PCs because of cost...and nothing but cost....and you can't get AW for Windows.

2

2007 / uploading cassette tape music?

« on: August 20, 2007, 06:58:28 PM »

I was at my local TigerDirect store today and saw THIS and thought I'd post it. No idea how well it works.

3

2007 / Paintbrush 1.0, Mac version of MS Paint

« on: August 20, 2007, 08:31:30 AM »

LOL, looks promising.

If anyone is looking for a vector graphics app to replace AW drawing programme, try Inkscape it's a free opensource app available for Windows, Linux and OS X (with X11).

For painting there's always GIMP.

4

2007 / The 'rash' of AppleWorks questions...

« on: August 20, 2007, 08:19:10 AM »

QUOTE(sandbox @ Aug 19 2007, 03:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Moving from Appleworks was an expensive and painful learning curve that I wound not want to repeat with any software package that I have so much time and effort into. If I didn't need to exchange documents with other system daily I could have been happy just using AW in isolation, but no software could I purchase to help AW Play Nice with others consistently and dependably, so I, like many others had to leave the comforts of AW, purchase a new Office Suit, and waste our time learning how to the simplest of tasks all over again. As i said earlier, it's not the cost it's the redundancy and wasted time and energy that this failure of Apple has caused. Without a doubt our county used this failure to justify their decision in changing computer systems county wide. Hundreds of thousands of children had learned on Apple AW and now, million upon millions of wasted hours of education lost over Apple's failure to support their product. Why, because there's more money in reinventing the wheel? I'm sure there's a excuse out there somewhere.

They spun-off Claris...then they spun-off FM...then they killed Claris...then they took AW back...then they stopped development...the rest is history.

I do agree about the learning curve, but I don't think it's as extreme as you suggest. AW gives you the basics for all other applications, such as wordprocessing, spereadsheets etc. Apple is very serious about their interface and sets strict guidelines for their developers to follow. Most Mac applications are mostly transparent from a GUI perspective and work similarly. Using opensource apps like Neo Office, is much different because they do not follow Apple's guidelines, but for the most part, the learning curve is with features and not with overall usability.

5

2007 / How to link to a web cam?

« on: August 17, 2007, 07:34:49 AM »

That's a shame, because ActiveX is MS Windows proprietary technology.

Option may be Apple's free opensource Darwin Streaming Server which comes in MacOSX, Linux and Windows versions. Did I mention it's free?

However, even if using Windows technology for the server, it should be possible to make it available on all platforms. The web is supposed to be platform independent...

[MS Word]

6

2007 / The 'rash' of AppleWorks questions...

« on: August 16, 2007, 08:18:40 PM »

IMHO:

MS Word for wordprocessing

MS Excel for number crunching

Keynote for presentations

FileMaker for simple databases

OmniGraffle for charts (Visio replacement)

MS Office for a total solution (without Access or Visio)

Neo-Office if you do not need MS Office.

iWork is only worth the price because of Keynote. Pages is more of a layout app than a true wordprocessor. Neo-Office wordprocessor or AbiWord are both free and MS Word compatible and can make a great replacement for AppleWorks.

As i mentioned in another thread...AppleWorks is dead and has been dead for a while. Time to find an alternative.

7

2007 / Another 'Appleworks' question...

« on: August 15, 2007, 08:11:57 AM »

You're welcome, glad it worked.

8

2007 / Another 'Appleworks' question...

« on: August 14, 2007, 05:04:13 PM »

My answer is based on a couple of assumptions...

You're on OS X
The recepient is on a Mac, using OSX and has AppleWorks.

Try sending the thing as a zip file.

In the Finder, highlight the document, right click or Control+click the file, choose "Create Achive of 'document_name' ".

attach the resulting 'document_name.zip' file.

9

2007 / Startup Chime sounds then shuts down

« on: August 14, 2007, 02:31:40 PM »

ts'all good...keep on strum'n!

[chris]

10

2007 / Startup Chime sounds then shuts down

« on: August 14, 2007, 10:17:24 AM »

Yo chris, I wasn't implying your advice was bad.

PRAM batteries will usually give signs of failing. Sporadic boot issues, strange system dates, etc.

Bill, if you can't zap the PRAM, which you indicated earlier, I'd reset NVRAM through OpenFirmware first.

some good info here:

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/openfirmware.html

Full directions here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642

Have you tried "option" + boot on the secondary or with the DVD/CD boot disk in the drive?

If none of this resolves the issue, I'd look at hardware as the cause.

Why? Because you changed the battery, reinstalled the system, the machine won't boot properly from the secondary HD containing a blessed system or from the DVD/CD.

[bless --info /]

11

2007 / Startup Chime sounds then shuts down

« on: August 14, 2007, 08:12:30 AM »

QUOTE(krissel @ Aug 14 2007, 12:22 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Karl, can you help him with terminal commands to see if that file is actually there? And what would happen if he reblesses his startup volume via Terminal?

He can navigate to /usr using the finder through the GO menu. Then look in the 'standalone' directory.

He could rebless OS X through single user mode.

The PPC boot files and a blessed system must be there because the machine eventually boots, so all this may be pointless.

But at this point the issue could be with open firmware, or it's a hardware issue.

If he want to, he can look at 'man bless' and do a little digging first with some info commands to see what is going on:

bless --info /

MY output from a G5 running 10.4.9:

CODE

G5:~ shortname$ bless --info /
finderinfo[0]:   3048 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]:      0 => No Blessed System File
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]: 3804202 => OS 9 blessed folder is /System Folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:   3048 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0x1E01446380AE9823

Best to try re-blessing /System/Library/CoreServices from single user mode as root with volumes mounted as per instructions.
Never having to do this, I have no first hand experience with this.


Kris --you must boot the machine first in order to be any user. Switching users is irrelevant, it only applies to login.

Note to Chris: I have a 350 G4 sawtooth with the original PRAM battery still running strong after more than 7 years.

[bootx]

12

2007 / Startup Chime sounds then shuts down

« on: August 13, 2007, 09:32:03 PM »

Two things...before you spend any more money.

1] your Mac is PPC

2] your Mac uses Open Firmware

Your QS is looking for boot.efi (intel Mac file which is not for OpenFirmware) in usr/standalone/i386/ when it should be looking for bootx in usr/standalone/PPC/

Try resetting open firmware's NVRAM or  --reset all parameters.

If this doesn't work, the system files may be corrupted and an Archive and Install may be necessary.

13

2007 / iWork adds Numbers & other updates

« on: August 11, 2007, 03:31:06 PM »

If all you need is time billing, there are plenty of stand alone solutions.

Doing a quick and dirty search on VersionTracker, I found Billable. Pretty slick little app that imports clients from your Mac OS AddressBook, has a builtin timer and prints/tracks invoices...all for $25.

There's plenty of more complex solutions out there and even good 'ol FileMaker comes with time-billing templates. I guess it depends on how complex your needs are, the level of automation and integration you require and how much $$$$ you're willing to lay down.

14

2007 / iWork adds Numbers & other updates

« on: August 11, 2007, 08:05:52 AM »

QUOTE(sandbox @ Aug 11 2007, 12:06 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Kps i have Filemaker and a Gig of Appleworks files but as you know they are not compatible. Many folks that have AW databanks have been hoping for an Apple solution since both pieces of software are Apple's. They continue to not make life easy for those who used Appleworks databanks.

I see your problem. My quess is that AppleWorks is no longer in development and pretty much dead,  and since Apple spun-off FileMaker into a subsidiary, neither one is interested in creating a simple method of converting between the two. Perhaps there's a third party solution or a kludge someplace that can at least transfer the data?

QUOTE

I didn't expect it to replace Excel, which I have both mac & pc versions of in Office Suites but.....in the Keynote address Steve made the point that it was compatible, and as you move around the web you will discover that it is not, 95% but maybe 30%, leaving folks with the same impression that I have. It is what it is but it is not compatible .......was my point.

That's the general gist of what I have been seeing on the net. Seems some of the functions and formulas do not transfer well between Excel and Numbers. A complex excel file may end up being minced meat in Numbers..lol.

I've been playing with it this morning and it's sure "slick".

15

2007 / iWork adds Numbers & other updates

« on: August 10, 2007, 09:19:36 PM »

QUOTE(sandbox @ Aug 10 2007, 02:02 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What I see as a nice start lacks the one item that I and many are looking forward too and that is a data-base.

Why wouldn't you just spring for FileMaker?

To be honest, I hope Apple doesn't include a 'dumbed down' version of FM with iWork.

Anyway, I'm downloading the trial 'cause I'm curious about 'Numbers 8', but I don't hold much hope of it ever replacing Excel in any major capacity.