Apple's Spreadsheet Application: Lasso

[BenRoethig]

To be honest, I have my doubts about how many contacts Nick & Co have left. It doesn't take that far of a leap to come up with these conclusions without an Apple leak. In fact it takes a lot of common sense. The lack of a full consumer productivity app to replace Appleworks is a disgrace. Windows users are able to get light word processing, spreadsheet, database functions, and presentation functions from MS Works. iWork has more promise, but it's incomplete, costs extra, and with Pages the interface works much better with creative page layout type projects than it does word processing. So, what could be done to fix iWork? You need to make it complete with at least a spreadsheet app with a database being a definite plus. Apple dropped the ball in '06 so it has to come in '07. If it doesn't, someone really needs to be fired because it'll look like they're either clueless or incompetent. As for Pages, the easiest way to keep it as a good light page layout app, but make it a better word processor is to introduce some kind of mode. Click a tab and it transforms to a traditional word processor type interface.

 

[Cameront9]

I recently discovered Pages. I think it's a great app and well worth the money...but not as a Word Processor. I use Pages as a budget version of Adobe InDesign. When I want just straight text, I stick to Word.

Excel, however, is a different matter. The line of work that I'm in has just implemented an Excel solution to help our customers fine prices on items (over 4000 items)....This relies heavily on VBA scripting to work, and I've already had some incapatibilities that if it weren't for me (as the Mac guy) wouldn't have gotten solved and left Mac users behind.

So Numbers/Lasso/Charts/whatever will likely be fairly useless to me withouth VBA. And yes, I'm aware that MS is dropping Mac support of VBA, and yes, it does make me very angry..

 

[NewSc2]

Go look at Pages; Word's been the "standard" for years and Pages can write Word documents. I'm sure if Lasso, Numbers, Charts, etc. will also be able to save in Excel documents. I believe AppleWorks can, and if this is a step up, and since the world has moved a little more, there should be no problem with Excel and Apple's new application.

Sorry, but Excel running on Windows (and to a lesser extend, Macs) is by far the standard, and for good reason. It runs wonderfully, on fast and horrendously slow computers.

I've been using Google Spreadsheets to some degree, and while it's kinda cool with the whole online thing, it's slow, lags, and not as good as Excel. Nobody's going to go to a class to learn Google Spreadsheets, they're going to learn Excel in school.

 

[mahonmeister]

I've been waiting for a reason to stop using MS office but I don't see that happening even with this update. I really want to buy iWork but I feel like I'd have to relearn everything and end up with an inferior program.

I think it is sad how much Apple pushes the fact that Macs can run MS office. It's a slap in the face. Seeing that iWork only has two apps it's understandable they don't mention it in the commercials.

Btw, what was the glitch with Calculator? How do you screw that up?

 

[MrSmith]

What's this going to do to the NeoOffice project, I wonder? Neo exchanges Office file formats already, and it's Aqua so a pretty familiar GUI. For me, that free app is perfect. It'll be a shame if it loses support from the masses.

 

[Analog Kid]

Sounds good. What about Numbers? I pray they don't dumb it down like Pages, please!

If a word processor can even be dumbed down, it's been poorly designed... Pages is my wp of choice now for just about everything. I find Word too noisy-- I have never used more than half the functions in Word (even after putting in a good effort to "learn to use them effectively").


I agree with the crowd that thinks compatibility is important. There's two levels of compatibility though-- functional and superficial. If they can make it functionally compatible with a reasonable subset of Excel functions, then it will be enough for me to use and share files.

There are times though when superficial compatibility is critical-- where it needs to print and format on another machine just the way you wrote it. I run into this problem with Keynote-- I can export something to Powerpoint to use as a starting point for cleanup, but it's rarely presentable straight from export.

Maybe Cellmate?

I like it! Much better than "Charts" or "Numbers"...

 

[OdduWon]

If a word processor can even be dumbed down, it's been poorly designed... Pages is my wp of choice now for just about everything. I find Word too noisy-- I have never used more than half the functions in Word (even after putting in a good effort to "learn to use them effectively").


I agree with the crowd that thinks compatibility is important. There's two levels of compatibility though-- functional and superficial. If they can make it functionally compatible with a reasonable subset of Excel functions, then it will be enough for me to use and share files.

There are times though when superficial compatibility is critical-- where it needs to print and format on another machine just the way you wrote it. I run into this problem with Keynote-- I can export something to Powerpoint to use as a starting point for cleanup, but it's rarely presentable straight from export.

right on ms word gives me a headache. i go from pages to word for phys class and it takes me longer to do it in word. iwork is good but it could be better. numbers will be welcomed addition, now i don't have to use excel

 

[SMM]

Sorry, but Excel running on Windows (and to a lesser extend, Macs) is by far the standard, and for good reason. It runs wonderfully, on fast and horrendously slow computers.

I've been using Google Spreadsheets to some degree, and while it's kinda cool with the whole online thing, it's slow, lags, and not as good as Excel. Nobody's going to go to a class to learn Google Spreadsheets, they're going to learn Excel in school.

Excel sucks, it one of the worst programs for freeing memory back to the OS, it is an incredible resource hog and kills innovation for aspiring to professional applications. Other than that it is OK for a limited work scope.

Pages is a great app. Text only documents even come out looking better than MS Word. I think people don't like it because it isn't an exact clone of Word. It reminds me of people who won't try a Mac because the OS looks different and scares them haha.

Seriously, if you don't like the inspector then right click on the toolbar at the top and customize it. You would be surprised just how much it can be made to look and function just like Word. If you don't want the templates to come up at start then you can turn that off too.

I think that the two big shortcomings that I find with Pages is the lack of a full mail-merge functionality, which will be fixed with the release of "Lasso" or Numbers or Charts or whatever it is and the lack of a built-in thesaurus as I really don't like to copy and paste from the system wide one. The thesaurus issue is supposed to be fixed with the next version of Pages as well.

Sorry for not being clear. I use Pages and I like it very much. It is the NAME that is not ringing my bell.

 

[motulist]

1) Apple will add a spreadsheet program to the iWork suite, what an amazing revelation!

In a similar fashion I would like to announce some other astounding revelations of the same magnitude.

2) In november of this year, there will be an election, and the winner will be a republican or a democrat.

3) In december a horde of men with white beards wearing red and white outfits will start popping up in shopping outlets and all over the media.

4) At the break of dawn tomorrow the sun will rise up into the sky.


You don't have to be nostradamus to guess the prediction in this story's headline, but joking aside, the details are rather interesting.

 

[bigwig]

Why use OpenOffice on a Mac? NeoOffice Aqua is the way to go on a Mac.

As for "Lasso", I assume that isn't the final name; OmniPilot Software, maker of the Lasso programming language (which is supposedly popular on Macs) would probably complain.

 

[EricNau]

Go look at Pages; Word's been the "standard" for years and Pages can write Word documents. I'm sure if Lasso, Numbers, Charts, etc. will also be able to save in Excel documents. I believe AppleWorks can, and if this is a step up, and since the world has moved a little more, there should be no problem with Excel and Apple's new application.

There are still two problems:

1) While Pages and Keynote may be exported to Word and Powerpoint, it is not flawless. When working with word documents and presentations small changes may not matter significantly, but when dealing with numbers, there is ZERO room for error.

2) Pages and Keynote (and it seems the "Lasso") are all targeted at the non-experienced computer user. Unfortunately, for the most part, that is the exact opposite audience who use spreadsheets.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

2) Pages and Keynote (and it seems the "Lasso") are all targeted at the non-experienced computer user. Unfortunately, for the most part, that is the exact opposite audience who use spreadsheets.

I use excel to view my schedule. So do all my friends. I also use it for basic accounting.

 

[Coca-Cola]

Pages three will be great!

Pages two needs some work. However, think how awesome Pages three will be.

 

[MrSmith]

...think how awesome Pages three will be.

(.)(.)

(British in-joke)

 

[jobberwacky]

spreadsheets doing a good job in calculations? huh?

Plus, when it comes to numbers, there is no room for error.
Excel truly is the standard in this case (actually doing a good job).

You trust Excel? (Or for that matter Mesa or Google Spreadsheets?)

Try this:
In a new spreadsheet, give the cell A1 the value of 0.2
In A2 enter the formula '=A1*6-1' (the calculated value will also be 0.2)
Then copy this formula to A3 down to ca A40.

For every cell you should get 0.2 as a result, since 0.2 (the result of the cell above) times 6 minus 1 is 0.2. Right?

Right? Try it in Excel, try it in Mesa, try it in Google Spreadsheets.

And then repeat after me:
"I will never again blindly believe in spreadsheet calculations"

[edit: corrected typo, thanks MrSmith! - repeat after me "I will never again blindly believe jobberwacky postings ;-)]

 

[MrSmith]

0.2*5=1
1-1=0

 

[jobberwacky]

0.2*5=1
1-1=0

Grmpf, that should have been 0.2*6-1
Thanks for the hint and sorry for the typo. The text in my message above is now corrected.

 

[MrSmith]

Wow! NeoOffice loses it at line 20. Even with parentheses like this: '=(A1*6)-1'

 

[twoodcc]

well this sounds good to me. this will give people one more reason to use iwork instead of office. can't wait to get it

 

[jobberwacky]

Wow! NeoOffice loses it at line 20. Even with parentheses like this: '=(A1*6)-1'

Well, it does claim to be MS-Office compatible, doesen't it?

 

[MrSmith]

Can anyone explain why that happens?

Also, out of interest, at what line do the other spreadsheets go nutty?

 

[KiDo]

Name Already In Use?

isnt lasso an excisting server kinda app? i heard about it before my mom used it i think for her website..can they use the same name? Numbers sounds nice, Cellmate, lol, dont think thats gonna happen

 

[jobberwacky]

Can anyone explain why that happens?

Also, out of interest, at what line do the other spreadsheets go nutty?

The short answer is: accumulation of rounding errors.

It's obviously a bit sad that the internal algorithms of spreadsheets can't even get such simple calculations as the ones in the above examples truly right.

But the underlying problem is that they are basically ignorant of the underlying maths. They do not understand that a whole number multiplied by 0.2 can never result in a number with more than one digit after the decimal point.

For reliable number-cracking you need something like Mathematica (this is not meant to be an ad, although I happily confess that I saw this Excel stunt being performed by a guy named Wolfram).

UPDATE: I just checked the spreadsheet functionality of Pages. It's no better than its competitors.

The same thing also happens if you use numbers of the type 'float' in many programming languages.

The above-mentioned example in PHP:

$j=0.2;
for($i=1; $i < 30; $i++) {
$j=6*$j-1;
echo $j, " ";
}

Run it and see the gibberish being spat out.

 

[Analog Kid]

The short answer is: accumulation of rounding errors.

It's obviously a bit sad that the internal algorithms of spreadsheets can't even get such simple calculations as the ones in the above examples truly right.

But the underlying problem is that they are basically ignorant of the underlying maths. They do not understand that a whole number multiplied by 0.2 can never result in a number with more than one digit after the decimal point.

For reliable number-cracking you need something like Mathematica (this is not meant to be an ad, although I happily confess that I saw this Excel stunt being performed by a guy named Wolfram).

UPDATE: I just checked the spreadsheet functionality of Pages. It's no better than its competitors.

The same thing also happens if you use numbers of the type 'float' in many programming languages.

The above-mentioned example in PHP:

$j=0.2;
for($i=1; $i < 30; $i++) {
$j=6*$j-1;
echo $j, " ";
}

Run it and see the gibberish being spat out.

The problem stems from binary representation of decimal numbers. 0.2 can't be represented perfectly in binary. You can add a little intelligence to the formula to avoid the problem. Use:

=ROUND(A1*6,1)-1

and everything works fine. If you think you might change the numbers, you can slacken the constraint with:
=ROUND(A1*6,32)-1
The problem is in the last bit, which isn't visible in the spreadsheet display.

A better mantra would be "I will always think about what it is I'm doing before trusting the computer to think for me".

 

[winmacguy]

iWork updates are always welcome in my book, but I'm not sure "Lasso" will ever be as successful as Pages or Keynote. With programs like Pages or Keynote, you don't need guaranteed interoperability, but with Excel it's different. With Excel, you are less likely to distribute it in printed form or orally in a presentation, rather you would distribute it electronically. Plus, when it comes to numbers, there is no room for error.

Excel truly is the standard in this case (actually doing a good job), and it will be very hard to convince users to switch.

.

Excel is one of the few programmes from Microsoft that I actually like even if it is a bit bloated. It does numbers and it does them well. I am forced to do page layout in word during the day for a large client and I word have to say that it is the worst format to edit.