A Last Look at ApplixWare

Linux.com (Also owned by VA) is taking a look at the once widely popular office suite, ApplixWare. From the article: "Passed to a subsidiary of Applix called VistaSource that later became independent, ApplixWare was repositioned as a combination of a basic office package and a developer's toolkit running from a common main menu. For a while, it was even renamed AnyWare. Now at version 6, ApplixWare is back to its original name, with versions available for AIX, GNU/Linux, and SPARC Solaris, with earlier versions still supported for Windows and FreeBSD. The trial download for GNU/Linux shows ApplixWare's age, but it also shows a trick or two that its newer rivals might learn from."

Welcome back?

[Capt James McCarthy]

I know after deploying Applix some years back, I do miss having it around. I thought it was simple to use and quite nice for the users. The fact that all my users were on Solaris boxes helped though.

Wildly Popular?

[guisar]

When the alternatives were the Motif or Sunview provided text editors and a Framemaker version that cost about the same as a PC, I guess Applixware might have been "wildly popular" in the same way Yugos might be wildly popular among those who had been waiting for three years for their Trabant to be delivered. Applixware sucked then and it sucks now.

What's going on with the timestamps over there?

[karmaflux]

Anyone else notice that Mr. Wittamore's comment is timestamped "By pwittamore (221609) on 2006.04.26 7:45 (#88706)" while the story itself is timestamped "Wednesday April 26, 2006 (08:01 AM GMT)"?

Wittamore apparently posted it fifteen minutes before the story was posted.

Comparing to Openoffice

[mislam]

It is super fast to load and run. I remember buying and running it long time ago in mid 90s. Liked it quite a bit. Then in next couple of years came StarOffice (now OpenOffice). Which was bloated, slow but feature rich. Anyway, it is interesting to see that Applixware is still hanging out there.

Re:Applix

[johnw]

Man, the ApplixWare I used (vintage 1998 or so) made Office 97 look stable.

Weird. I used ApplixWare for years and found it very similar in style to Word 6, with the big difference that it would run for weeks on end.

I only moved because it seemed to have ceased development and OOo's Word filters are *much* better.

John