For new Appleworks users you might be correct if AppleWorks still had a life. Unfortunately, from what I have read, Appleworks is an "End of Life" product and I get the impression, if Apple has not formally announced it as yet, that development has ceased on the product. In all fairness, given the probable future of AppleWorks, I feel that the Sidekick developer should turn the product into freeware, and offer a refund to all that purchased it after last November. My advise; save your money, and wait till Tiger is released and IWorks matures, or look into Open Office. I see little value for potential new users to throw more money in the an essentially "dead" product.

AppleWorks is not dead. It is still in fact being sold by Apple, and is being bundled with the new Mac minis. Many people are doing productive things with it, that they can't do with a word processor and presentation package (ie iWork), or as easily with the incomplete versions of the OpenOffice/NeoOfficeJ available on the Mac platform.

I seriously doubt Apple will upgrade iWork to match AppleWorks by June this year (ie when Tiger's due). Simply because there's some nice technology like CoreData and CoreImage coming in Tiger doesn't mean Apple have developed complete apps with them and are ready to release them. I'd look for iWork '06 late next year to see anything like that coming from Apple.

Sidekick won't be released as freeware or refunds given. This would suggest that AppleWorks is unusable or that my effort in making Sidekick is meaningless. Obviously I don't agree with that. Nor I imagine would many people who are AppleWorks User Group members, or those who participate in the AppleWorks Discussion on Apple's Support web site.