Apple Developing Numbers?

Macrumors said:

AppleInsider reports that Apple has requested a standard character mark for "Numbers" and is currently working on a spreadsheet application to possibly supplement the iWork application suite.

Sales of the iWork suite dropped significantly after release, with analysts believeing that the problem (among others) was the lack of a spreadsheet element.

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I always thought the problem was that people thought Pages was targetted at Word... and then were a little dissapointed. It's really great when used for it's intended purpose, but a Word killer, it is not (and is not intended to be).

It would be nice to see an alternative to Excel, but I have my doubts to how well it can be... hate Microsoft all you want, but Excel is pretty good at what it does...

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what would be nice, now that I think about it, is if apple did to Numbers what they did with pages - not targetting excel, but rather targetting the home user, and setting up an easy to use system, with templates that do what the average home user might want from a spreadsheet. I'm comfy using spreadsheets all day long, but if you sit my wife in front of one, she's dumbfounded as to what to do... but if Apple did it up right... it could be a very usefull tool, even for peeps like my wife...

Good... a spreadsheet app would do iWork good.

Throw in a database, too, and we have ourselves an Office killer...

Macrumors said:

with analysts believeing that the problem (among others) was the lack of a spreadsheet element.

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That and the fact that Pages is ****

Bring on the Office killer - just as long as it's all interoperable with MS products.

Good news if it is true--and my sense is that it is, since a spreadsheet is required for many things.

Best,

Bob

mkaake said:

not targetting excel, but rather targetting the home user, and setting up an easy to use system, with templates that do what the average home user might want from a spreadsheet.

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and rename it iWork@Home

With the current name it needs to be an Office killer.

Apple Numbers? What's that, like a mob thing?

I'm all for a re-invented and Office-killing AppleWorks (iWork), but please don't call the spreadsheet Numbers.

I know it goes with the whole "naming the function" convention that iWork has, but it sounds too much like a calculator to me.

mkaake said:

what would be nice, now that I think about it, is if apple did to Numbers what they did with pages - not targetting excel, but rather targetting the home user, and setting up an easy to use system, with templates that do what the average home user might want from a spreadsheet. I'm comfy using spreadsheets all day long, but if you sit my wife in front of one, she's dumbfounded as to what to do... but if Apple did it up right... it could be a very usefull tool, even for peeps like my wife...

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I totally agree w/ u...my parents are the same way. Excel can be an extremely powerful tool...i believe one of my CS teachers told us that the excel language is the most popular programming language...a normal user doesnt need all this functionality, some very simple spreadsheet program w/ built-in templates would do wonders.

NtotheIzoo said:

I totally agree w/ u...my parents are the same way. Excel can be an extremely powerful tool...i believe one of my CS teachers told us that the excel language is the most popular programming language...a normal user doesnt need all this functionality, some very simple spreadsheet program w/ built-in templates would do wonders.

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That's what is great about Excel, 90% of the people who use it don't know or even understand how powerful a program it is, yet easily use it everyday for their tasks.

It certainly sounds like a spreadsheet app (what else could it be?) Now all that's missing from an MSOffice competitor is a decent database program. Although for the average consumer they don't really need that, and businesses could just rely on FileMaker Pro.

Nice news.

Keynote is already excellent, and beats Powerpoint. But of course it always can be improved, and Apple knows how to make things better. Pages on the other hand has some major problems detected for the most of the users, and it's commom sense that it have to be improved a lot to rival with M$Word, but it has, too, it's good points. Adding a Numbers (spreadsheet) to rival Excel will be very interesting to make iWork much more valuable.

If it is true, in the near future (about 2 or 3 years, maybe) i believe that the most of Mac users who works with M$Office regularly will adopt iWorks as standard Office software kit and just think different.

Fábio.

mkaake said:

It would be nice to see an alternative to Excel, but I have my doubts to how well it can be... hate Microsoft all you want, but Excel is pretty good at what it does...
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what would be nice, now that I think about it, is if apple did to Numbers what they did with pages - not targetting excel, but rather targetting the home user, and setting up an easy to use system, with templates that do what the average home user might want from a spreadsheet.

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Yawn. The world needs another spreadsheet about like it needed another word processor. Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE iLife proponent and user, but those applications all came along and gave users something that either wasn't on the market or added killer-app features to what was already available on the market.

Microsoft Word and Excel haven't added a single killer-app feature since the 98 versions of both products. With word processors and spreadsheets, 20 percent of the functionality will take care of 90 percent of what you want to do, i.e., almost none of the new or upgraded features of Word and Excel have achieved killer-app status. (Yes, CERTAIN people can't live without CERTAIN features. I'm talking about the masses. Hold the flames!)

Much as I hate Microsoft, I would rather see Apple embrace Microsoft Office than take it on. If Numbers is a great home-user product and saves to .xls, fantastic, but there's no point taking on a product that's practically a commodity.

When iWork was announced I thought it was a pretty good idea (particularly in terms of its price) but the one thing it was missing, as an office application suite for those that don't need Office 2004, was a spreadsheet. Everyone uses a spreadsheet these days even at home and the lack of one in iWork was the reason why I wasn't as impressed as I should have been. Since I already own Office 2004 I think it is unlikely that I will ever buy a copy of iWork (even with Numbers) but if it was added into the standard application bundle with a new Mac then it would be another great reason to buy Apple. iLife is already regarded as a major selling point for the Mac Mini and iMac, so iWork would really help.

A somewhat related comment... apparently the next version of Office will create XML documents.

If this is true, it may be a bit easier for companies to create better working importers and exporters for your standard slew of MS Office documents.

Pages doesn't fit into what a nicely made Cocoa app from Apple should look like to me. It is not intuitive at all, taking a while for me to do anything with it. Apple needs to clean Pages up before i start to use it.

itcomesinwaves said:

It certainly sounds like a spreadsheet app (what else could it be?) Now all that's missing from an MSOffice competitor is a decent database program. Although for the average consumer they don't really need that, and businesses could just rely on FileMaker Pro.

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It's be a really good idea to just build an Application that rides on top of MySQL. MySQL is a totally decent database program and outperforms by a large margin, anything most home users would ever need. It's certainly on par with FileMaker already - just misses a point+click interface.

If Apple were to do a DB program, I'd hope they wouldn't re-invent the wheel again. I hate it when they do that. (*ahem* Apple Lossless)

I like iWork and use it very often. For a first time package like this the software isn't bad. Pages is nice and Keynote is awesome. It definitely needs some refinement though, since some elements don't seem to be efficient to use. A spreadsheet application would be a welcome along with .Mac integration.

.Mac needs serious work in my opinion. As of right now it seems totally useless, and I kind of regret purchasing it back when it was on sale for the day after Thanksgiving. One major problem is the online disk space, 256mb of online storage is a joke when Google is offering 2GB and greater for free. And the application Backup has never worked properly for me. And when Tiger was released Apple promised exclusive Widgets for .Mac subscribers, it looks like they have finally had to take down the "Coming Soon" banner from the .Mac homepage. Apple needs to do some serious work on and refinement of .Mac if they expect people to continue signing up for it.

edesignuk said:

That and the fact that Pages is ****

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Naw, man. It's a fine alternative to Publisher.

I much prefer Abiword to Pages personaly apple should have addopted abiword

It would also be nice if iWork came with a DB management/creation tool.

A spreadsheet application is a must, and I don't know how they missed on that one. Heck, AppleWorks had word-processing, data base, and spread sheet capability and that was with 64k. -We went to the moon on 64k! Sorry, brain hiccup.- These days those applications are jokes with the power that other programs offer, but they worked.

Wow, what a screw up. If VisiCalc was the first killer app for personal computers, then why would Apple not create a spread sheet program for iWork.

They got it wrong.

"NUMBers" is Apple's trademarked reference to those that have been stunned by the switch to Intel processors.

I would never have considered iWork without a spreadsheet application... So yeah, duh...

I think we can all agree that a spreadsheet app is a crucial element to an office suite. If Apple creates am Pages/spreadsheet/Keynote office suite, I think it would do VERY good against Microsh*t Office.