size/function correlation

Question

size/function correlation

Hi, a question here for those with some programming experience. In investigating intel-native alternatives I'm struck by how this little 25Mb AW seems to punch so much higher than it's weight class. iWork 09 600+Mb, Neo Office 450Mb. Why the bloat in these other programs with in some ways less function and ease of use?

Dave

Message was edited by: Dave Robertson2

MacPro 2.66QCX 4x2G X25-M 4xWDC; 17" MBP, Mac OS X (10.6.1), XPSp3

Posted on Oct 13, 2009 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

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KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Oct 13, 2009 12:03 PM in response to Dave Robertson2

All the bells and whixtles available in iWork products eat a lot of bytes.
Don't forget tha Numbers offers more than twice the number of AppleWoks functions?

When AppleWorks was designed,a huge part of the developping tmme was dedicated o the hunt of useless bytes.

Today, machines with 4 Gbytes of am aren't rare so, developper don't take really re of the used Ram.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 13 octobre 2009 21:03:36

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Answer 2

Barry

Level 9

59,861 points

Oct 13, 2009 12:55 PM in response to Dave Robertson2

ClarisWorks 1.0 (the first version of what later became AppleWorks) was developed in the early '90s and released in 1991. One of the main design considerations was to fit an integrated productivity suite into the amount of RAM and onto the size of storage devices available at the time. To increase speed, documents were loaded fully into RAM, and all changes took place in RAM, with the HD accessed only when opening or saving.

The new portable introduced that year was the PowerBook 100, which came with a whopping 4MB of RAM (expandable to 8MB) and a 20MB hard drive (40 or 80MB also available). The new base desktop model was the Classic II, with 2MB of RAM (max 10MB) and a 40MB HD (optional 80MB).

Given the restrictions, CW/AW was/is an amazing piece of software.

Regards,
Barry

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Answer 3

Oct 13, 2009 3:15 PM in response to Barry

Good points. Regarding Numbers the more surprising thing I think is what it can't do, which is why the transition from AW isn't at all straight forward and is so frustrating.

Dave

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Answer 4

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Oct 14, 2009 9:03 AM in response to Dave Robertson2

As I try to be optimistic, I look, mainly at new features, and don't complplaint against dropped ones.

iWork was not announced as a clone of Appleworks. It' s just a product whose target customers aresimilar (not necessarely identical).

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Answer 5

Oct 14, 2009 9:20 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Glad to hear about your optimism Yvan despite your reference to the dropped feature in your byline. With AW and it's predecessors' various options for customized data entry and calcs I've been able to avoid anything to do with ugly spreadsheets for the past 30 years. To its credit Numbers makes the spreadsheet experience more palatable, I'll just suck it up and get used to it. 😉 Cheers, Dave

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Answer 6

Oct 14, 2009 11:56 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Also I think a lot has to do with lack of familiarity, I am coming around by the way 😉 The apple offerings are still I think way better than Neo Office, I've been mucking around with that and while I can see some of it's potential as an AW replacement and more I just can't get my head into it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Dave

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Answer 7

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Oct 16, 2009 11:40 AM in response to Dave Robertson2

I can't speak for others.
Switching from Appleworks WP an SS to Pages and Numbers was done in a single week.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 16 octobre 2009 20:40:08

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Answer 8

Peggy

Level 8

41,601 points

Oct 16, 2009 11:47 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

My needs are fairly simple & it took me less than a week to use iWork '05 for 95%+ of what I used AppleWorks for. I still have databases in AppleWorks, but rarely need them.

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Answer 9

Oct 16, 2009 12:24 PM in response to Peggy

Yes I'm finding it is easy now that I accept I can live without my fancy schmancy data entry forms. Trying to find a way to build those again from scratch with simple tools was killing me. I sat down last night and whipped up a couple spreadsheet equivalents in Numbers and I think they'll work fine and setting up merge documents in Pages couldn't be easier.

Dave

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Answer 10

Peggy

Level 8

41,601 points

Oct 16, 2009 4:39 PM in response to Dave Robertson2

Most of my databases are very simple, just lists really. Those I copied & pasted into Numbers documents as that method retained any text formatting. Still some need a real database. Since I keep an iMac G5 around to run Tiger & Classic, I'll have a Mac I can definitely run AppleWorks on.

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Answer 11

Oct 18, 2009 12:21 PM in response to Peggy

My db needs in AW are minimal now since realizing some time ago we weren't going to see addressbook and ical integration, things we expect now as we sync across networks and devices. That would've been sweet but I suppose unrealistic in an $80 piece of software. It's great though having rosetta to still have this run flawlessly as it is, without any performance hits that I can see.

Dave

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