Re: AW5 vs WP 1.1 for 2e

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Hugh Hood wrote:
>   To: Michael J. Mahon
> Fellas,
>
> AppleWorks 5.1 was a _major_ improvement from 3.0. Popularity doesn't equate
> to merit. Just ask Melinda Doolittle. <g>

I don't disagree, but that doesn't alter the fact that only a small
percentage of Appleworks users actually needed or used those
improvements.

I'm glad to hear that they were useful to you--you are clearly an
Appleworks "power user".

What they did do was create a storm of confusion about TimeOut versions
and other third-party enhancements, which had become a mainstay of the
Appleworks user community.  To put hundreds of thousands of users in the
position of having to upgrade--even their RAM for 5.1--was bound to
result in most people not making the switch.  This caused the Appleworks
community to fragment at exactly the time when it needed most to pull
together on a common platform.

There is no doubt that integrating the TimeOut and other tools resulted
in a better, more efficient and more capable implementation, but it also
raised the minimum system requirements and changed the way that some
pretty tricky things worked.

The time to enhance a product is when its user base is growing robustly,
when the market can provide direction for the enhancements so that the
most user benefit is obtained with the least change.

This is a quite general principle of product evolution, and there are
many examples of adhering to it and of breaching it...

> I still run 5.1 every day in my business with several custom macro sets
> doing very specific tasks. Quite simply, I'd say it's the best 8-bit
> software ever written.
>
> AppleWorks 3.0 is still on my hard drive, and every now and then I'll run it
> just for the heck of it. Man, from menu navigation to database capabilities
> to file manipulation to text file processing to ..., it just doesn't hold a
> candle to 5.1. Thank Randy Brandt for that. And, most of the TimeOut
> applications that were used with 3.0 were either built into 5.1 or were
> updated to work with 5.1. I'd never consider 5.1 a 'downgrade'.

Nor would I.

> It's a shame 5.1 was introduced just as everything Apple II was collapsing.
> But, that's the way it goes.

No, that's the way someone decided to do it.  There were choices.

> Programming in UltraMacros is very satisfying and rewarding. You'd be very
> surprised at what can be accomplished. Very.

I love UltraMacros--but then I'm something of a "computer geek".  ;-)

> Will Nelken wrote two fine tutorial books on UltraMacros programming. He's
> asked me to convert both to Adobe Acrobat .pdf format and they are almost
> complete. Whether he releases these books will be up to him, of course. He
> is the author and publisher, and holds the copyrights. Also transferred to
> CD for Will Nelken was the 26-issue TimeOut Central.
>
> I transferred for Joe Kohn (Shareware Solutions II) the entire AppleWorks
> Forum's NAUG on Disk to CD. I don't know if it is yet for sale, but it
> contains a huge amount of info on AppleWorks and UltraMacros.

I have the entire paper collection and many of the disks myself, and I
agree that they were extremely useful.

> Likewise, Ms. Cadieux was a huge proponent of AppleWorks and UltraMacros
> programming. I own and still refer to many of the materials she published
> under the Texas II banner. She cultivated a host of contributors who were
> very talented, including Wally Bradford, Barclay Clemesha and somebody named
> 'Cub'. I never figured out who that guy was, but he was pretty darned good.
> Folks who write their own assembly language routines to interact with
> AppleWorks are a special breed.
>
> I'm not aware as to whether she has transfered her materials to CD and made
> them available for sale. If not, you may be able to purchase them used on
> eBay or other places.

I also have most of the "Texas II" materials, and find them extremely
useful as well.  Bev continued to support Appleworks when almost all
others had ceased--particularly in the "Y2K" transition.

> Frenchman Christian Serreau was an absolute AppleWorks guru. He published
> some technical articles in his AppleWorks Gazette that will blow you away.
> You'd have thought he was one of the programmers of AppleWorks 5.1.
> Strangely, he disappeared in the mid '90s, never to be heard from again. Too
> bad. He seemed like a true believer. The (4) issues of the AppleWorks
> Gazette may still be available from Howard Katz.

I somehow missed these...

> Finally, Mark Munz is currently updating his AppleWorks 5.1 emulator to run
> under OS X. It's called Deja II and his website is
> http://www.dejaIIx.com/blog/
>
> I've been an Apple II guy since the fall of 1979 and have seen a ton of
> Apple II programs in my life. I really don't think Apple II programs get any
> better than AppleWorks 5.1.

Agreed--it was a groundbreaking masterpiece--as amazing in its way as
VisiCalc was.  Many people forget that it was actually developed for the
Apple ///.

> BTW, the old Quality Computers published the manuals for both AppleWorks 4.0
> and the 5.0 update. Converting those to .pdf would be a coup (probably from
> Quark, PageMaker or FrameMaker), as the actual AppleWorks 5.1 program is
> already out 'there'. These two manuals did not, however, contain the docs
> for UltraMacros. 

I hope that happens.

-michael

NadaNet file server for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
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