Apple 'Charts' Spreadsheet Application?

[TMay]

math/algebra/trig/financial/statistical functionality

Beyond these functions, what exactly am I going to get that from Excel that will make it a must have? Appleworks has all of these functionalities from Claris Resolve, which was Informix Wingz, at the time superior to Excel (poorly marketed). Perhaps I don't know what I'm missing, plus I have Filemaker 7 if I need a database.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix_Wingz

I actually had a copy of Wingz at one time, but development wasn't continued for any length of time.

Charts, if it is called such, will suffice for me and I still am MS free on my mac software.

 

[steve_hill4]

I think it's possible for the consumer computers (like Appleworks used to be). The "Mac Pro" and MacBook Pro will have it only as an add-on.

I think this will be the case too, but only if iWork development stops short of Office. If it was a Mac equivalent, full Office, it would tick off MS big time and bye bye to Office for Mac development.

Most new Mac owners tend to look at Office, look at iWork and, even though not wanting to spend anything extra, they choose iWork over Office if not wanting to do much, or on a budget and choose Office if they have cash to burn and believe they really need Office for writing letters, (when textedit would probably do).

Either way, iWork and/or Office for Mac needs to get more features and applications similar/identical to Office for Windows.

 

[EricNau]

I think this "consumer-oriented" spreadsheet app could have some potential if Apple executes correctly. Excel is powerful, (my favorite app in the Office suite), yet overkill for many users. Heck, most users don't even know it's overkill for them because they are not even aware of the power of Excel!

Which is exactly why Excel is great for everyone. For those who need powerful and complex features, Excel has them, but for those who don't, those features don't get in the way.

So, perhaps Apple will do with Charts what they did with Pages - instead of giving the consumer a "bare" word processing app, they give you templates to work with. Perhaps in Charts, instead of plain-old spreadsheets, Apple will provide templates to address the average consumer's uses for spreadsheets and assist them in creating what it is that they require. Spreadsheet templates to help track monthly bill payments, templates for your kids' sports teams or fantasy football office pools, who knows... I know one thing with Excel, is that it takes a bit of work to maker a slick looking spreadsheet where you don't see the gridlines, the fonts are different, images are embedded, etc. - in other words, it doesn;t really look like a spreadsheet even though it is. Perhaps Apple will make this type of formatting easier with Charts.

Regardless, nice to see Apple fleshing out the iWork suite some more - I hope this does indeed happen as the rumor states.

I do like the idea of templates. I just think Apple needs to stop making things "consumer-oriented" and start going after the entire market. It is possible to create a powerful and complex spreadsheet program, while still keeping it simple for the average user.

 

[Eraserhead]

Apple's entry has better graphing functionality than Excel.

It already does for basic graphs, the default colours are nicer than Excel and you can resize the chart without the text labels all expanding ridiculously (unless you put the chart in it's own sheet in Excel), it also seems to support the chart types, the only problem is that you cannot do lines of best fit (like excel) with Pages which is very useful especially for scientific graphs, you also cannot do error boxes.

 

[steve_hill4]

Let me guess what's next: a database component (Filemaker Lite?). I suppose the drawing component and painting component from Appleworks will show up in iLife at some point. Uuh ... yawn.

Let's hope so, although I believe Apple have stated in the past that it's not something they want to do anymore. Photo oriented applications are what Apple want to provide and more consumers are after.

Not ideal, especially for those Mac owners not in the know, but if you want drawing and painting, install X11 and download GimpShop until Apple re-release these elements or in case they never do.

 

[Demoman]

You leave a few things out of your price comparison: MS $200 & iWork $79. Many users can qualify for a $120-130 education version of Office. Even without that, Office only has an upgrade every 3-5 years. And with Office being more mature, many or most can skip an upgrade or two. iWork is years from being mature. For that reason most need to purchase each upgrade as they come out. That comes to $79/year. That would average at least $240 for a 3 year upgrade cycle. Or $320 to $400 for the 4-5 year cycle.

The above is without even comparing what one gets with MS Office or with Apple iWork. 4 mature programs compared to 2 infant programs. To me it seems that iWork looses again. I fell for the iWork 2005 trap, but did not fall for it in 2006. To me that is because Apple charges too much for too little.

The next revision of office will have a file format change to XML. This would be a great time for Apple to give iWork some real value by making Pages a real word processor & adding a real business level spreadsheet called something like Numbers/Charts Pro. But Apple has to mean it & stay the long term course. The time is here for Apple. So far there has been no indication that Apple will have a full featured word processor or even a mild mannered spreadsheet program.

Bill the TaxMan

"Many users can qualify for a $120-130 education version of Office."

In my company zero qualify. Average home user, I doubt if the number is as high as 25%. For businesses and government, I would be surprised if it was above 5%.

"iWork is years from being mature. For that reason most need to purchase each upgrade as they come out. That comes to $79/year. That would average at least $240 for a 3 year upgrade cycle. Or $320 to $400 for the 4-5 year cycle."

Come on Bill, this is purely speculation with little historical data to support it. And if you think Excel is such a great product, think again. It does pretty well and most users are able to accomplish what they want. But, it is a resource Pig. I just had to upgrade 80 users from Office 2000 to Office 2003, just because Excel could not even open a large spreadsheet that came with our new estimating system. Then I had to upgrade the workstations for about half of them because Excel ran so poorly. After a few months of use, Excel 2003 is bogging down trying to deal with the larger pivot tables. Eventually, it even shutdown. The app says we have exceeded the program resources and we should consider a database solution. For now, we are having to purge data weekly and we hasten to replace Excel with a VB app. No, Excel is far from a mature, perfect product.

 

[amac4me]

Most home users don't need all the advanced features in Microsoft Excel. The ability to easily create spreadsheets for the home user would be a welcome addition to iWork.

Bring it on

 

[joeops57]

Excel is one of the only things that MS has gotten right over the years. Hopefully, Charts will be just as good if not better.

~Joe

 

[DaveTheRave]

Most of the things that I do in my second quarter of Excel & Word training at schoold must be done with the Windows version. This is either because the Mac version either does not have that feature at all or the feature is so weak that it is not there for any but the simplist use.

As a potential switcher, I'd like to hear what features are missing from the Mac versions. Are you referring to VBA? I thought I knew most of Excel until I recently started dabbling with VBA to make my life so much easier at work by automating actions that I previously thought were not possible. Ie adding an "If-then" type logic into a macro, etc.

This iWorks suite reminds me of MS Works, which came free on a Windows machine I bought about 10 years ago. It sounds like Apple realizes that Microsoft still rules the professional Office Suite segment of the market. What Apple is doing is trying to fill in the gap in the market for people who can't justify the expense of MS Office to do light word processing and number crunching. Just like MS Works, which had a watered-down spreadsheet program and word processor. Perfect for the soccer mom, etc. Nothing wrong with this, Apple is trying to offer a product for a market segment that had previously had no options for a simple spreadsheet program.

 

[bob_hearn]

I have been in Micros since 1982. My first IBM PC had a single 180K single density floppy and a whopping 64K of RAM. Over these 24 years, I have only worked for two companies and have done the vast majority of the purchasing. I know what I am talking about.

Perhaps that would explain our differing perspectives; I come at it from a developer's viewpoint. (Oh, and I remember those newfangled PCs, with all that memory. )

I do not remember exactly what year MS bundled Word and Excel and called it a Suite, probably 1990-1991.

That sounds about right. But Word and Excel were already dominant at this point, at least on the Mac side. As was, on the lower end, Microsoft Works. Of the three, in 1989, only MS Works looked vulnerable, so that is what my partner and I targeted when we sat down to write ClarisWorks. It's the era leading up to this I'm talking about, when Microsoft became dominant via its dirty tricks. Of course, it later became more dominant, with yet more dirty tricks; the later ones are the ones the Justice dept. decided to be ineffectual about.

But when they did, almost all of my vendors and their competitors were offering the office suite free with their computers. I remember having a minor revolt with many of my users. They used Lotus 123, DBase IV, R:Rbase, Samba, Wordperfect, AmiPro, Quattro Pro, etc.

OK, I stand corrected. My recollection was that by this point MS Works was being given away, the idea being to incent users to upgrade to Word & Excel. But as I said, I was never a Windows user, so I could easily be wrong about those details.

MS is a local company for me. I have many friends who still work there, but many retired in their early 40's.

I have some former friends who work there...

One of MS's legal types wanted to have a 10-15 question TEST after the required reading of the software agreement. Unless the user passed the test, they could not install the software.

I'm not a bit surprised.

 

[Demoman]

That sounds about right. But Word and Excel were already dominant at this point, at least on the Mac side. As was, on the lower end, Microsoft Works. Of the three, in 1989, only MS Works looked vulnerable, so that is what my partner and I targeted when we sat down to write ClarisWorks. It's the era leading up to this I'm talking about, when Microsoft became dominant via its dirty tricks. Of course, it later became more dominant, with yet more dirty tricks; the later ones are the ones the Justice dept. decided to be ineffectual about.

Bob,

Word and Excel did not gain dominance until Windows 3.1 was firmly established. That would be about 1992-1993. In fact, I was just tossing some old Byte, PC Magazine, etc. stuff. I was browsing it nostalgically as I tossed. In a late 90's PCM, I read a short article about how Word should be considered as good, or better, than most of the other WP's out there. In ~ the same time period, Byte was still rating Quattro Pro as the best choice for spreadsheets, with Lotus 123 in second. It was not easy for MS to gain a solid foothold where these solid legacy applications lived. Surprisingly, it was business that was slow to adopt MS. They had a fortune invested in the MS competitors. But, the economics eventually won out.

 

[Eraserhead]

In my company zero qualify. Average home user, I doubt if the number is as high as 25%. For businesses and government, I would be surprised if it was above 5%.

As the requirement is to have a school age child or be a teacher, or someone doing a course with an academic qualification (i.e. a college class/at University) this covers a vast number of people.

Eligibility for student licence Students: Full or part-time student aged five or over enrolled on a course that will deliver an academic qualification publicly recognised by the Department for Education & Skills (DfES) or the Irish Department of Education (DOE)

 

[Demoman]

A Microsoft rep recently informed me that they are only offering Office for Mac for another 5 years for now because Apple are working on their own version. Firstly, they will need to make it as good as Office in terms of features and compatibility with office must be spot on and secondly at the current rate Apple are working, this looks unlikely. It will surely take more than 5 years to get to Office level. If we lost Office for Mac, it would be a blow for people requiring certain functions that iWork and OpenOffice.org don't have yet.

iWork does need to also add databasing, perhaps they could call that numbers or records. Then we can have a true successor to Appleworks or even Office.

In the business world, basic functionality is usually all that is required. Sure, there are exceptions. For example, a CPA firm would probably demand full features in their spreadsheet. Those who spend their day doing heavy word processing would want the same for their needs. I am not sure I agree with you about an Access compatible product. When I got to my present company, we had Access apps everywhere. We now have 3 left and all are scheduled for replacement. Everything now is SQL Server, VB and Crystal. I have never used Filemaker, so I have no feel for its' suitability in the home, or in business.

What I would really like to see is RealBasic and MySQL (or equivalents) get a solid enterprise 4GL development environment for Apple, something that is as feature rich as VB and Sql Server. That would be huge.

 

[bob_hearn]

Word and Excel did not gain dominance until Windows 3.1 was firmly established. That would be about 1992-1993.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you there, at least on the Mac side. In 1989, Word, Excel, and Works were consistently the top three best-selling Mac programs. But again, I confess ignorance as to the Windows world at the time.

 

[mutantteenager]

Odd 'home' computers

I would say NO! Apple has just made a nice presentation program & a simple word processor & called it iWork.

Am I the only person who thinks it odd that Apple are the only company who seem to make a home computer without a word processor bundled? (Any Apple apologists who think textedit is word, need to take a look at notepad!)

iWork should be bundled with new machines. It seems very poor to expect people to buy iWork when MS Works is bundled with most home computers. People aren't going to switch to iWork if the only exposure they get is the 30 day trial.

Before the tirade, I use keynote, but I don't think Apple can compete with Excel. It's like trying to make a replacement for Photoshop.

 

[wmmk]

It might yet be, but I wouldn't recommend it so far. I've been playing with it and it's still a little buggy, although they will probably work the kinks out.

Exactly. Google spreadsheet doesn't even support safari! Even when using it in FF, I'm not a huge fan of the interface. There's just something sepcial about a genuine cocoa OS X app. It just looks and feels perfect.

 

[Demoman]

Well, I'll have to disagree with you there, at least on the Mac side. In 1989, Word, Excel, and Works were consistently the top three best-selling Mac programs. But again, I confess ignorance as to the Windows world at the time.

Yes, but the Windows side was what ~ 95% of the total market?

 

[Macnoviz]

I guess lots of people think they need Excell, but they only use a few percent of its capacity. I think that for most consumers, students, etc. Excell is really overkill. I think that the tables in Pages can do almost anything they need, presenting lots of numbers in an orderly fashion and doing basic automatic calculations. But I do agree a nice, simple spreadsheet program wouldn't hurt, even if it is used rarely. It would give people the feeling that iWork can completely replace Office for a lot of users. The only problem might be the new "standards" Microsoft is putting in Word, and who knows what else, like .docx files. It will be a lot harder convincing people to leave Office, if they can't be garanteed full compatability

 

[heisetax]

What Life really is

Sweet so by iWork 2009 we should actually have something worth using. This releasing a new app each year to force an upgrade is a PITA. Hurry up Microsoft and release the UB version of Office v.X so I can remove iWork from my machines.

Finally someone else that sees iWork to be more expensive & limited that MS Office.

Bill the TaxMan

 

[heisetax]

Chart?

absolutely Microsoft did not "invent" the spreadsheet by any means.

also, "Numbers" already made its appearance in iWork '06. the Numbers pane is part of the Inspector for a Table in Keynote and Pages. it's where you setup the math and formula editor for the table.

Won't that make you think then that Chart may then just be a chart like feature in Keynote &/or Pages?

Bill the TaxMan

 

[Loge]

Finally someone else that sees iWork to be more expensive & limited that MS Office.

Bill the TaxMan

If you think that $79 is greater than $399 then you need some help.

 

[beige matchbox]

as long as it has the function of the old claris/apple works spreadsheet app it'll do for me

I've had a play with Excel (and the rest of office) and it offers me nothing thats worth the money, so iWork with spreadsheet would be great

 

[B. Hunter]

Quote:
Originally posted by Ericnau

If Apple is not developing this to compete with Excel, "Charts" isn't going to be good enough. Who would use Charts if there was a better option? ...That would be stupid.

If this is the case, Apple shouldn't bother at all.

When pages 05 showed up, some people said "why develop Pages if it will not compete with Word? For me it's not a matter of competing products. I use Pages for many papers and projects. It's easier for me to use this than Word and even Publisher put together.

 

[heisetax]

Wingz

Beyond these functions, what exactly am I going to get that from Excel that will make it a must have? Appleworks has all of these functionalities from Claris Resolve, which was Informix Wingz, at the time superior to Excel (poorly marketed). Perhaps I don't know what I'm missing, plus I have Filemaker 7 if I need a database.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix_Wingz

I actually had a copy of Wingz at one time, but development wasn't continued for any length of time.

Charts, if it is called such, will suffice for me and I still am MS free on my mac software.

Wingz was a 32k X 32k matrix. At that time Excel was on a 16k X 256 matrix. Excel has only grown to a 64k X 256 matrix. At times it would be interesting to have over 256 columns.

Bill the TaxMan

 

[heisetax]

Consumer or Business?

Which is exactly why Excel is great for everyone. For those who need powerful and complex features, Excel has them, but for those who don't, those features don't get in the way.


I do like the idea of templates. I just think Apple needs to stop making things "consumer-oriented" and start going after the entire market. It is possible to create a powerful and complex spreadsheet program, while still keeping it simple for the average user.

This Consumer/Business agrument is what Steve Jobs used as the reason he was cancelling the Mac Clone market. Apple wanted the Clone Makers to build low-end Consumer Macs while Apple made the high-end Business Macs. What has become reality is that Apple excels in the making of theConsumer Mac & iPod like items. But even though they may make attempts at the Business level Mac like the great Quad Core G5, they only make yearly upgrades as small as they may be. This means that they fail the Business market by lagging the market all of the time. We need some sort of Mac Clone to take care of the Business Mac User. It seems that if the Chart or iChart if made is just a Consumer level program they will continue this Consumer first, last & in-between reputation they have made for themselves. Maybe this is why they suffer in the business community, they're just Consumer oriented & not Business oriented.

Bill the TaxMan