[X-Newbies] Out of memory message in OS X of all the darndest things!

[Randy B. Singer]

On Jul 6, 2009, at 10:47 PM, J wrote:

> Yes we already established that we can run AW on the Intel.... but  
> I guess they want to sell you something else so they tell you no  
> you can't.

It isn't a conspiracy.  AppleWorks is a discontinued product that  
will not be updated.  It was discontinued *two years ago* and this  
was well covered by the Macintosh media.
http://techlogg.blogspot.com/2007/08/appleworks-discontinued.html
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/rip-appleworks.ars

While AppleWorks does indeed work on the latest Intel-based Macs,  
even under OS X 10.5, it runs in emulation.  That is, it runs thanks  
to Rosetta, which is part of OS X 10.5:
http://www.apple.com/rosetta/
There is no guaranty that Apple will continue to integrate Rosetta  
with OS X forever.
And while AW runs well enough under Leopard, there are a couple of  
known bugs when running AW on an Intel-based Mac.  From the  
AppleWorks Users Group's (now defunct) Web site:

 > AWUG's testing indicates that AppleWorks 6.2.9 runs reliably under  
Mac OS X
 > 10.5 (Leopard)....
 >
 > However, we encountered two problems running AppleWorks under  
Leopard:
 >
 > 1. AppleWorks would "unexpectedly quit" if we accessed the Recent  
Items tab
 > on AppleWorks' Starting Points window. Trashing the Recent Items  
folder only
 > temporarily resolved this problem. Eventually, AppleWorks created  
a new Recent
 > Item that once again causes the crash if we accessed the tab. So  
if you
 > upgrade to Leopard, (a) Delete your Recent Items folder, and (b)  
train
 > yourself to not use that feature in AppleWorks.
 >
 > 2. AppleWorks "lost" our personal spelling dictionary. Once we
 > "re-attached" it, AppleWorks kept the link and the spell checker  
worked fine.
 > ...
 > Warren Williams & Cathleen Merritt
 > AppleWorks Users Group

More importantly, OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will have a major re-write  
and major performance improvements for Intel-only under the skin.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/
Chances are good that OS X 10.6 will break AppleWorks.  So, unless  
you are planning never to purchase a new Macintosh again, now would  
be the ideal time to consider migrating away from AppleWorks and  
translating your legacy documents created in AW to another format.   
Good alternative choices might be:

iWork ($79)
http://www.apple.com/iwork/

NeoOffice (free)
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

If you don't currently use AppleWorks, in my humble opinion it  
wouldn't be wise to start using it now.  It is a dead product.

___________________________________________
Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
___________________________________________