Re: AW5 vs WP 1.1 for 2e

appleworks51@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Agreed, Bev--but by this time, many AW users had already shipped their
disks back and forth to their Beagle Buddies a few times for transitions
from earlier versions, and were tired of figuring out what was current
and what needed updating. �Just another layer of nuisance characteristic
of any slightly incompatible upgrade...


AppleWorks 4 and 5 users did not need to mail in original disks.
There's a TimeOut updater right on the /Extras disk which updates the
TO. files on your disk. It actually copied the new version to your
TimeOut directory, letting the new program replace the old. In fact,
if you were just a little bit dishonest, you could rename one of your
TimeOut accessories (such as a help screen) to a program you did not
own, run TO Updater, and bam, you'd get the real program.

I knew that the procedure had changed after 3.0, but I didn't know
that it was as simple as running an updater--and I read a lot of AW-
related stuff at the time. Maybe I was just part of the "5% that never
get the word". ;-)

As a Beagle Buddy in Houston, Texas, I never felt that updating
TimeOut was an inconvenience. Every update and bug fix was a positive
thing, and every new version was an event. It was hugely popular, and
to this day I am grateful for the friendships and for the things I
learned in that club atmosphere.

I agree that it was a great program--quite personal and far beyond the
usual support policies of the day.

I had about eight TimeOut add-ons, and so I tried to keep up with
the updates. Updates are always a mixed blessing--you want to have
the expanded capabillities and fixes, but have to endure the
inconvenience of change. And all too often, the new capabilities
are "nice to have" but not really necessary to what you are doing--for
example, you may already have "standardized" workarounds.

A much more practical reason for not updating from AW3 was backward
incompatibility of AppleWorks 4/5 with the AppleWorks 3.0 version of
your files. Once you saved your data base under AW 4/5, you had 60
categories instead of 30, and there was no going back. Spreadsheets
were incompatible only if you used one of the new features. Even I ran
parallel versions of my data bases for months, but once I gave in and
went solely to AW4/5, I was very, very happy and there was no going
back for me (sort of like broadband vs dial-up today).

I was one of those who never updated for my main-line activities, and
backward-compatibility was one of the issues for me, too. It seemed to
me that unless almost everyone upgraded, that the exchange of AW
"templates" would be very dicey.

As it turns out, in the circles I frequented, almost all AW files were
version 3.0 files.

Bottom line, the "cost" of AW upgrades past 3.0 was to fragment
what had been a relatively unified Appleworks "platform" into two or
three platforms with uncertain interchangeability for most users.
The "benefit" was additional capabilities for relatively few "power
users" who had reached the limits of 3.0 enhanced by TimeOut.

-michael

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

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
.