I MUST have AW or send new iMac back

I'm afraid you're up against a brick wall. AppleWorks (which has been end-of-lifed for several years) is PPC and thus requires Rosetta: Lion does not support Rosetta, so AW can never be run in it.

A new machine probably won't boot from Snow Leopard, so a separate partition with Snow Leopard on it probably won't work. I don't know whether it's possible to run Snow Leopard inside an emulator.

FileMaker Pro is a good alternative, though it's expensive, has a steep learning curve, and won't import AWQ databases (nothing will) so you have to export them as ASCII, losing layouts and calculation fields in the process (only the results come over) - so a lot of work is entailed in changing to it - I have done this quite successfully. One thing in its favour is that it's pretty well the industry standard, and is cross-platform, so it's not likely to be end-of-lifed in the forseeable future.

This page gives some information about changing to FM Pro:

http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/aw/page6.html

You're correct about Bento: it's a waste of digits for all but the most basic requirements. It's been touted as the replacement for AppleWorks (which it's nothing like) and as a result I don't see any likelihood of Apple ever producing a database module in iWork.

The Macintouch forum has several entries about running Snow Leopard in VirtualBox - they're in among other topics so you'll need to scroll down and look for them, but you might find something useful there.

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/lion/index.html#d24aug2011

Hi Harold,

How much of the software that you loved on your Apple //e did you continue to use on your first Mac?

You're in much the same situation now with AppleWorks, except that you've had about five years notice that the day was coming this time.

You've expressed two mutually exclusive desires: to have the latest, greatest, best processor, and you want your work (ie. the ability to do your work on your familiar software) left alone. Can't be done.

You can run AppleWorks on your new MacBook, but only under an operating system that is running in emulation, which is going to remove any benefits you receive from features of Lion, and is going to slow down your latest and greatest processor with an extra layer of instructions necessary to run the older OS in emulation.

If you absolutely must have AppleWorks, hang on to your older Mac, or check the discussion AppleWorks well and alive in Lion elsewhere in this forum.

As for transferring the AW database module to Lion...it's not going to happen. ClarisWorks was/is a brilliant piece of software, but it's also a tightly integrated piece of software, unlike, say MS Office or iWork, which are both collections of separate applications that show some integration. none of the AppleWorks modules are standalone applications. Revising one module means revising the whole ball of tangled string. Pity, as I'm also running a database file in AppleWorks that I don't relish moving to a different application, but that's the way it is. Sooner or later, we old dogs are going to have to learn some new tricks.

Regards,

Barryt

Roger, yvan has tried using an emulator and it works. See this link Re: AppleWorks well and alive in Lion

If you want to keep up with the latest in hardware, you have to keep up with the latest in Software too... AppleWorks is old... and there are just better things out there so... if you don't want to learn anything new, keep using your old machine until it falls apart.

If you want a good office suite that is free, you should get LibreOffice

There is no SINGLE application that will do what AppleWorks does. End of story.

In addition to Word Processing, I use the Draw, Paint, Database, and Spreadsheet modules of AppleWorks. The only thing I don't use is the Presentation module.

I have an unopened iWork package sitting here (it's been sitting here for several months), and I'll get around to installing it one of these days, primarily for Word Processing, but I've pretty much decided that if I can't use AppleWorks in future versions of the OS, then Snow Leopard is where I stop. I don't want to have to learn multiple new applications to do what I do easily now in AppleWorks.

Ronda Wilson wrote:

There is no SINGLE application that will do what AppleWorks does. End of story.

I'd never realised just how sophisticated Claris/AppleWorks was. This website gives a history written by one of the original development team :

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php

There has never been anything quite like it, and probably never will be now we're all thumb-twiddling, music-playing, social networkers instead of people who used their computer to do real stuff.

Well, I'd be willing to pay a hefty price for a modern true AppleWorks replacement.

I hate being left behind, but that's where I am. I just can't give up AppleWorks.

I guess it all depends on exactly what you do with AW.

I also felt that I had to have it when Apple declared it end of life. But when I heard that Lion was going to drop Rosetta which would mean the end of AW, I started a project to migrate over to other software to replace it.

So far I have actually found the newer software to be better then AW. In fact moving information from my AW databases to Bento proved to be a real blessing. In addition to getting features I was never able to do in AW, I am now able to access the databses from my iPhone.

So for me the migration has proven to be a good thing.

Allan

Ronda Wilson wrote:

There is no SINGLE application that will do what AppleWorks does. End of story.

that is the whole problem. When you put your eggs all in one basket, when that basket breaks, you lose all your eggs.

I much perfer using seprate programs for each task, and not bundle them all up in a single app.

doh1231 wrote:

Ronda Wilson wrote:

There is no SINGLE application that will do what AppleWorks does. End of story.

that is the whole problem. When you put your eggs all in one basket, when that basket breaks, you lose all your eggs.

I much perfer using seprate programs for each task, and not bundle them all up in a single app.

The other way of looking at it is to say that AW is a genius app that bundles a whole suite of integrated applets together,and enables you to mix and match within each type - where else outside a full DTP can you have fully functional text, graphics, bitmap and spreadsheet frames all within a single document?

Not so much of a problem then. Even Office, though its individual apps are much more powerful, doesn't offer the same breadth of function, so well integrated.

I agree with all, we have had enough notice...

Is it an option for you to install VirtualBox ( http://www.virtualbox.org/ ) and run SL Virtually?

Yvan has posted a thread about it. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3225878

I will repeat that the iMac delivered at this time may run under 10.6.8.

If the Original Poster own an external HD, he may use his macbook to install 10.6.8 on it then connect it to the iMac.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 17 septembre 2011 21:52:05

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0

My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>

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