Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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http://thinksecret.com/news/0701iwork.html
They're saying the application is called Lasso and iWork 07 will be released Tuesday during the keynote. I'll wait for reviews on this one, but I may have to pick it up, especially since Excel is the only MS Office component I still use. It's time to play the feature speculation game now. Obviously, it won't be as fully-featured as Excel, but I imagine it'll be more than enough for most people who need to use spreadsheets. I found this quote from the article particularly interesting: Quote:
Here are their reports on the other iLife apps: Pages 3 - sounds interesting, especially the word processing mode and Wikipedia integration Keynote 4 - a little less interesting, but the iPod-friendly themes might be interesting. I wonder if that would be as a static movie or if you'll control the slides on the iPod -- full control would be really interesting. |
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@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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I really think this is the year we'll finally see the spreadsheet app included. With MS Office not going universal until next year at the earliest, people with basic productivity needs (like myself) would really like to dump Office, I think. Apple may finally get its foot in the door of the productivity market with this. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Texas
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This addition will FINALLY prompt me to buy iWork.
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Rocket Surgeon
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
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Interesting. If this is true, it also means that Think Secret are back on form after a disappointing period of failing to predict anything of any use....
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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Right. It also makes me wonder if they wanted to include it last year (as TS predicted) and pushed it back at the last minute because it wasn't up to Apple's standards. If that's the case, I think the spreadsheet app might actually be quite nice.
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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I dunno. With the advent of Parallels and Vista, I might go the Windows office route and skip any potential translation hang-ups, missing features or going with Apple's variant. I'm pretty sure any 1.0 spreadsheet from Apple is not going to have the computational horsepower as the very mature Excel.
...into the light of a dark black night. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Hampshire (the original one)
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I bought the original iWork when it came out, and I have to say that it's the only Apple software that I absolutely hate! I just find it's UI the most un-Apple and unusable interface I've seen. The six million inspectors it uses are mostly to blame. I find it very unintuitive. Also, I hated the lack of Exposé functionality in Keynote when in full screen presentation mode, although maybe that changed in iWork '06.
Bizarrely, one of the most elegant solutions I've seen recently is the new "Ribbon" in Office 2007. I hope the MS Mac unit utilise it in the Mac '07 release. Or alternatively, I hope Apple just rip off the idea and make it even more snazzy! |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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For a lot of people, it's going to come down to whether they need a database application or not. The people that need one will go the Windows Office route to get Access (or iWork + Filemaker). I think Apple's recent success in the market shows that people are more willing than ever to look into change in their computers. With PCs shipping with a new OS anyway, most people buying new computers are starting over, in a way. This has led a lot of people to look into Macs, and I think switchers will start to give iWork 07 a hard look, especially since there's no universal version of Office yet and iWork doesn't require buying a Windows license. |
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Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Hell, a spreadsheet for logging weight training/running workouts would be nice. Sure you can do it in iWork now, but not very quickly.
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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The problem with Excel is that it doesn't really add much anymore, and the statistical functions are worthless as their implementations are flawed, not to mention the completely repetitive random numbers. And the charting functions are godawful ugly and bug-ridden. I cannot count the hours I have spent un-hosing bad formats and mis-plots for smooth presentations. My employer of the time would have saved big labor $$ just by springing for a copy of S-Plus despite the price tag. If you consider unpredictable dementia to be mature, the mature description would be accurate. I have come to use, almost exclusively, the basic arithmetic functions. Generating all my own advanced formula's, because the answers I got from Excel standard functions were always off by a bit from trusted tools numbers. It takes an extra couple minutes when setting up the spreadsheet but at least I can sleep at night. From my point of view, if that's all Excel offers once the Emperor is seen to be naked, just about any spreadsheet that does basic cell manipulation works. I only keep using it because I get it free from my employer. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Find me on Twitter: @StevenMcLintock |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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I think you also need to divorce yourself from Office when you start using iWork. You need to wipe your mind clear of any preconceptions about productivity software. It's an entirely different workflow, but I think it works if you really let yourself dig into it. |
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Enki: I'm obviously not a big spreadsheet geek but your comments are surprising. I would think by now all things computational would be uber-stable in Excel. I mean every business on the face of the planet, including engineering businesses, etc, use Excel. Or at least I thought so. You'd think math would be the very easiest thing to fix, bugs-wise, but I guess not?
Maybe Apple's version will be better. And yah personally I wouldn't use a lot of statistical stuff I would just get Vista office for straight 1:1 compatibility with the rest of planet earth. And there's also that free version of office you can download that mirrors a slightly older Windows version I think. ...into the light of a dark black night. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Did you know that Adobe (or Aldus) used to have a spreadsheet app? Pretty sure that they did. My humongous gripe with Excel is the rigidity of how you must lay out your cells and how the styling of cells is achieved. It takes 400 fiddly shits to get things done. The power beneath is wonderful to have mind you, I want the power AND the glory of fine graphic control.
And a pony. |
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Banging the Bottom End
Join Date: Jun 2004
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Enki:
To get truly random numbers in Excel, you'll have to write code in VBA and use the Randomize function. The generic RAND() function only generates pseudo-random numbers. IIRC, this is also true in Java and on *NIX-based OSs. |
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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There's always the pony... crucial. Like boogers. If we didn't have boogers, that would mean we're all getting sick all the time because we'd have no mucus interceptors inside the battlefield that is our noses. ...into the light of a dark black night. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Now if I need to do something that requires programming, I don't use Excel or a VBA hack, I code it. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Most users are oblivious and just always use the default XL functions, which is fine as long as they don't compare with the exact same numbers to a non-Excel function that isn't oddly implemented. Or I often hear "there's just a little typo in the data somewhere, but we are close enough". Riiiigggghhhht. And we wonder why 75% of all businesses fail in their first year. (Not XL's fault directly, just users ignorance in general). I'm merciless about correctness and cross-checks. Others like myself accept XL for the great tool it is, but acknowledge that once you get too far into provided formula land you give up too much control and verification of the result. The oddball functions have never been updated as far as I can tell despite protests a good number of years ago, that leaves me with little confidence in the rest of the non-trivial ones. |
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
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In any event, I still think this is not going to happen. Why would Apple compete with Microsoft so directly when it wants Microsoft to continue to develop Office for Mac? Hell, Office for Mac is something that Apple never fails to mention in its advertising to "switchers" -- even is mentioned in the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials. I think Apple has to walk a fine line with this stuff -- it needs Microsoft and Adobe to continue to develop for the Mac platform, but also wants to create great apps of its own. Someone hacked my signature. I demand an investigation. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Near Indianapolis
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A lot of people disagree with you. I actually think Office for Mac is kind of a turd. Excel is the only product in the bunch that's worth a damn, IMO. It also doesn't include a database application (yes, I know, iWork doesn't either), and Access is used quite a lot by businesses.
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rams it
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Seattle
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I'm hoping it's fake. You'd think iWork would be unified by '07, to match iLife. In fact, I'm surprised it wasn't unified for '06.
Not that it really matters, but I'm tired of this mess of themes. You had me at asl ....... |
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Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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I think it's better in some ways as far as the interface / palettes, but in general the only thing that matters with office is standardization. Every time I build a big PPT presentation with transition effects and such I get all these stupid "might be incompatible with PPT 97 yadda yadda" warnings in the compatibility checker. It's just useless. As for why Apple would do this, because in my mind what they're releasing is really office lite. It's like the difference between Photoshop CS and Elements. Both are capable tools for many editing functions but one has a far deeper feature set and and more refined interface. Although you could argue MS' interface is a cluster fuck I realize. ...into the light of a dark black night. |
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Senior Member
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^ iWork, to me, seems more like Apple's answer to Microsoft Works.
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Well, iWork sure is targeted to replace AppleWorks, and AppleWorks/ClarisWorks is, historically, the Microsoft Works competitor.
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When looking af this screenshot I thought about Lotus's old Improv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv) spreadsheet app, which appeared intially on NextStep. Apparently Steve Jobs was very enthusiastic about it and gave the folks at Lotus a lot of input and feedback during its development. Mayby some of the ideas from Improv will re-emerge in Number (or what they choose to call it).
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Senior Member
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Banging the Bottom End
Join Date: Jun 2004
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Well, Office 2008 for Windows won't have it either. MS is killing VBA comparability across the line, it's hopelessly broken from a security standpoint and that's the main reason it's being retired. You can just think of Office Mac as ahead of the overall security curve.
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Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Denmark
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Full-featured, universal and free! |
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