Apple Makes 'iWork for iCloud' Beta Available to Registered Developers

Tiger8 said:

For the mainstream home user, maybe true.

I work as a CRM / Business Intelligence consultant (Oracle products). You would be surprised how much work is done in Excel. Macros, pivot tables, exports, large data manipulation, formulas, mass substitutions, etc... Enough to say that one of the most requested features is to be able to export data to Excel for further manipulation.

For me personally buying MS Office did not make sense, I use OpenOffice.org, but I see a lot of my clients use many advanced features. That 'Data' menu is evil

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So what you are saying is, the majority of business office users could probably do very well with iWork and there are people with specialities who might need a more complex solution? Like I used JMP (on a Mac!) to analyze consumer survey data because Excel couldn't do what I needed.

BTW- I believe all the things you mentioned are possible in Numbers. Macros would be done through Applescript or Automator.

laurim said:

So what you are saying is, the majority of business office users could probably do very well with iWork and there are people with specialities who might need a more complex solution? Like I used JMP (on a Mac!) to analyze consumer survey data because Excel couldn't do what I needed.

BTW- I believe all the things you mentioned are possible in Numbers. Macros would be done through Applescript or Automator.

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Yea, but that will require some re-learning by business users. I don't like Excel for the record, but I understand its dominance in the Workplace. I have seen it being -overused- as a mini enterprise system, where million dollar decisions are made, and that goes for multiple customers (Pharma, Consumer Goods, field services, etc..). Same goes for Microsoft Access.

Don't underestimate familarity; Excel might not be the most intuitive tool but it is THE MOST familiar tool. It will take a lot to replace it, much more than a lower case i and a flashy presentation

Tiger8 said:

Yea, but that will require some re-learning by business users. I don't like Excel for the record, but I understand its dominance in the Workplace. I have seen it being -overused- as a mini enterprise system, where million dollar decisions are made, and that goes for multiple customers (Pharma, Consumer Goods, field services, etc..). Same goes for Microsoft Access.

Don't underestimate familarity; Excel might not be the most intuitive tool but it is THE MOST familiar tool. It will take a lot to replace it, much more than a lower case i and a flashy presentation

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There's no doubt what you are saying is true and that's why Apple has been unable to make a big dent in businesses so far. It's not that Windows and Office are better. It's just that Windows was much cheaper when the gui was new, got entrenched and then Office came along as the de facto addon to Windows. Not to mention corporate IT that has no interest in learning how to support macs, too. BUT, as individuals have become more knowledgable and comfortable with computers, they have started demanding that they have their personal choice. At least that's what I've been seeing with many of my corporate clients who are demanding a mac for their work computer or at least, have a mac personal computer and switch back and forth, like I did when I had a corporate job.

laurim said:

There's no doubt what you are saying is true and that's why Apple has been unable to make a big dent in businesses so far. It's not that Windows and Office are better. It's just that Windows was much cheaper when the gui was new, got entrenched and then Office came along as the de facto addon to Windows. Not to mention corporate IT that has no interest in learning how to support macs, too. BUT, as individuals have become more knowledgable and comfortable with computers, they have started demanding that they have their personal choice. At least that's what I've been seeing with many of my corporate clients who are demanding a mac for their work computer or at least, have a mac personal computer and switch back and forth, like I did when I had a corporate job.

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That's true. However, to the credit of IT departments (and believe me I am usually pushing them because my applications are a bit demanding), the biggest difference here is that Microsoft provides corporations with what's known as a 'corporate build' of Windows, meaning more backdoors are open for IT and it allows things such as pushing profiles and remote imaging, things which, quite frankly, Apple hasn't even implemented yet. There is an array of Admin tools that Windows provides.

Remember, Windows (and particularily Windows server) won this battle against Unix, Linux, IBM OS2, NEXT, and a long list of other -even better- OSs. They must be doing something right.

More and more organizations are supporting Mac as a secondary system, but still on limited basis. With the exception of design, animation, publishing, and a handfull of speciality companies, OS X is still not there

Tiger8 said:

For the mainstream home user, maybe true.

I work as a CRM / Business Intelligence consultant (Oracle products). You would be surprised how much work is done in Excel. Macros, pivot tables, exports, large data manipulation, formulas, mass substitutions, etc... Enough to say that one of the most requested features is to be able to export data to Excel for further manipulation.

For me personally buying MS Office did not make sense, I use OpenOffice.org, but I see a lot of my clients use many advanced features. That 'Data' menu is evil

Click to expand...

There are definitely some use cases for business that require something like Excel but some of those cases you mention such as formulas, mass substitutions can be easily handled within a report or view in the database source rather than the spreadsheet. Often I have seen business users compensating for the data I gave them because of missed requirements or errors in the requirements rather than telling someone to have it fixed in the source report, view or extract.

Unfortunately, I have sometimes cost people jobs by fixing a bug in the extract because their job was mainly to write and maintain macros and massage the data to compensate for a problem that I was able to fix in a matter of minutes in the code of the source system.

aristotle said:

There are definitely some use cases for business that require something like Excel but some of those cases you mention such as formulas, mass substitutions can be easily handled within a report or view in the database source rather than the spreadsheet. Often I have seen business users compensating for the data I gave them because of missed requirements or errors in the requirements rather than telling someone to have it fixed in the source report, view or extract.

Unfortunately, I have sometimes cost people jobs by fixing a bug in the extract because their job was mainly to write and maintain macros and massage the data to compensate for a problem that I was able to fix in a matter of minutes in the code of the source system.

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You are preaching to the choir my friend. I am a CRM/ BI guy. One of my clients used to perform a process (using Excel!) that took two months to build 50 MB sheets, send them to users, each taking 5 minutes to open and close. I provided a CRM / BI solution that did even a better job in 10 seconds on-the-fly, generated ready-to-print reports, and even built an approval framework around it.

But that said, I see for small / medium needs how an Excel sheet can do wonders. I am surprised how some of business uses are familiar with Excel VBA. I don't believe iWork spreadsheets solutions has any of those capabilities.

x86isslow said:

ETA: iOS 8, 2014

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Pff! Yeah, you're probably right.

TimeSquareDesi said:

Yours Truly,
- PRISM

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Except I thought Uncle Sam was having a harder time cracking iMessages than texts... But then again, What The Hell Do I Know?