Apple Developing Numbers?

[alexhooren]

iWork Express - for the home user

iWork Studio - for the pro

pages is more of a publisher competitor, if they want to compete they need a word like program.

 

[bryanc]

I bought Keynote when it first came out, and it was immediately better than PowerPoint. However, the competition woke up some of the engineers at Microsoft and PowerPoint improved.

I was about to buy a copy of Office 2004 to get the updated PowerPoint when iWork came out, including Keynote 2.0. While still missing some of the nice features of PowerPoint, Keynote 2 is superior in many ways, and I like it a lot better, so I didn't buy Office 2004, I bought iWork instead. Pages 1.0 is an interesting looking application, but I still use Word.

What I'm hoping to see is iWork 2006: Keynote 3.0, Pages 2.0 and Numbers 1.0. Where Keynote fulfills it's destiny as the ultimate presentation software, Pages matures into a really usable app, and Numbers makes it's debut as a spreadsheet app designed with the user in mind.

That will put the heat on Microsoft to start fixing some of the more egregious bugs and user-hostile design paradigms in Office. So Apple will have a great Office-alternative (removing the one remaining threat Microsoft can hold over them), and Microsoft will be motivated to improve Office (after almost a decade of stagnation).

The big winners are obviously the users, who will have better software to choose from.

 

[Applespider]

A simple spreadsheet would be a great idea - and I'll tell you one of the idiot-proof features to put in it.

Allow people to sort or filter by colour. I don't know how many times I speak to people at work who have carefully gone through a sheet of 1000 rows and highlighted things in different colours to help them work through it - and then realise that it was a fairly pointless exercise since they now can't see them by colour...

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

Bring on Numbers!

I would also like Cells, iDraw, and iPaint to be included.

 

[chromos]

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.

I'm sure that Apple wouldn't use MySQL but rather SQLite, since it's already built into Tiger and is the basis for CoreData's SQL functionality.

 

[BarryBrown]

Stand up, Improv?

I wish they would ressurect Lotus Improv. It was a spreadsheet/database application that shipped with the NeXT. It was, in my opinion, ahead of its time because everyone wanted a spreadsheet that looked like Excel. Perhaps now it's time to bring it back?

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

http://infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Michael_O_malley/web/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html

 

[roadapple]

A simple spreadsheet would be a great idea - and I'll tell you one of the idiot-proof features to put in it.

Allow people to sort or filter by colour. I don't know how many times I speak to people at work who have carefully gone through a sheet of 1000 rows and highlighted things in different colours to help them work through it - and then realise that it was a fairly pointless exercise since they now can't see them by colour...

or completely remove this, apple end the poorly highlighted excel sheet that is unreadable with a b/w printer

 

[Nicky G]

Pages may work differently than Word, sure... But you know, it works perfectly well for the tasks that I think 95% of all Word users are using that application for. The "everything in one" palette is a little tough to get used to, but it's not bad.

Once numbers comes out, Apple is going to have a very decent office suite that will work well for a huge number of users.

 

[Rantipole]

Those of you who are saying spreadsheets are a simple commodity: Have you ever used the piece of crap known as Appleworks Spreadsheet?

If Apple's making a new spreadsheet, it just has to be on par with say, Borland QuattroPro circa 1994, and I'll be happy.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

If I remember correctly, Apple built a database engine into Tiger (both client and server)...could this be utilized for iWork's database component, perhaps?

I, too, would appreciate a spreadsheet application in iWork.

 

[Laurent]

Pages sucks... I am all for the "look, we have templates!" but it's way too oriented in that way, and it turns out that all looks the same after a while...

 

[jadam]

It would be pretty cool if they based it on gnumeric, I really like that program =)

 

[goof_ball]

The one danger is that once Apple release an office suite, I bet Microsoft will quite development on Microsoft Office. Apple's product will likely slaughter Office, kinda like what all their other software does to competing sw. I could care less about Microsoft, but this does add the danger of future compatibility issues, and stupid PC users saying "duhh, I can't buy that because I need Word"

 

[bit density]

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

If you wanted to make something that was *going* to be an excel killer, is to create an application that let you easily create visual information from tabular information, in profeesional and creative fashions. For placement into things like Pages and Keynote.

Excel's graphing capabilities have remained stagnent for the past 4 versions, and it wasn't that good to beging with.

Imagine Garage Band for numbers.

Then you find a way to merge Filemaker and Numbers to get to the ultimate solutions...

 

[gerbilbox]

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.

That's funny, I found learning Pages a lot easier than learning Word.

Granted there are many odds and ends, and Pages can be significantly cleaned up and improved on the UI front, but I found things in Pages a lot more accessible than in Word.

 

[iminimac]

it would be good to have a spread sheet
there are still some improvments to make to pages: its good but not perfect but i do like the templates. i use it about the same amount as word but i have to say when im doing a maths essay using diagrams and more stuff i would use word

i would like to see a database (ibase or idata maybe) and a paint (idraw or ipaint) and more little things like that to improve document production

 

[kherdin]

Speaking of reinventing the wheel, you do realise Filemaker is a subsidary of Apple?

Of course, Excel is not a database app (well not really, anyways), Access is. Why are you talking about Apple making a database app?

 

[Fotek2001]

In my experience Pages seems to be the biggest hit among switchers and newbie Mac users. My parents, who recently bought their first Mac in ten years, were instantly hooked and now never use Word. Another friend of mine, who bought my old iMac, was also amazed at how easy it was to write letters in Pages compared to using Word which "auto-corrected his formatting to death".

It strikes me that the majority of people complaining about Pages are really those who are already comfortably using Word and are simply looking for a product that isn't made by Microsoft.

For the vast majority of users, and I count myself among these, Pages does the basics really well. I almost only use Word to write letters and invoices and I can now do this easily in Pages. Add in the ability to flow text around images and export to high quality PDFs and it's all looking pretty good.

I imagine that Apple's approach to spreadhseets would be similar and perhaps combine the benefits of a spreadsheet with the power of SQLite to create a novel new hybrid application.

Aside from this, the only two things I'd really like to see added to iWork at this time are better HTML export in Pages and some type of wizard in Keynote to expose some of its useful but hidden features.

[Edited for grammar]

 

[Object-X]

Numbered Cells

I like Cells, but Numbers is cool I guess. Add more Exchange aware Mail, Contact, and Calendar apps and there you go. Apple should buy Snerdware.

I look forward to the day that Apple really goes after the corporate market.

 

[SorcerersAppren]

Improv was great!

I wish they would ressurect Lotus Improv. It was a spreadsheet/database application that shipped with the NeXT. It was, in my opinion, ahead of its time because everyone wanted a spreadsheet that looked like Excel. Perhaps now it's time to bring it back?

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

http://infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Michael_O_malley/web/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html

Bring back Improv. Amazing product for NeXt all written in Cocoa.

 

[eva01]

hmmm and i never use spreadsheets, oh well, as long as pages and keynote get updated

 

[stevep]

Originally posted by BarryBrown

I wish they would ressurect Lotus Improv

I second that - it was one of the first pieces of software I bought and I ran it on Windows 3.11. It came on 3 floppies (those were the days).
It was really intuitive, and allowed you to sort data in an amazing number of ways. Looking back, it had a similar feel to a lot of current Apple apps. Unfortunately it had to compete with Lotus 123 as well as Excel, in what was, even then, a fairly well-established market.
But if Steve Jobs wants to borrow my 3 discs and the manual for research purposes I still have them............

 

[swissmann]

I think iWork has a ways to go before it will replace my copy of MS Office. Things that they need to do:
Include a spreadsheet program
Bundle Filemaker
Improve overall ability in all the Apps to be as complete as Office
Produce/Read files that are fully interchangeable with Office

It would also be nice if:
They kept the price low
Made iChat compatible MSN Messenger (and others).
Bundle the whole thing - iChat, Mail, iCal, Pages, Keynote, Spreadsheet, Filemaker into one App (while keeping current freebies free)

The biggest thing is the completeness of what iWork has to offer in terms of Apps and ability of those Apps.

The future is promising though.

 

[iminimac]

it would be good to have a spread sheet
there are still some improvments to make to pages: its good but not perfect but i do like the templates. i use it about the same amount as word but i have to say when im doing a maths essay using diagrams and more stuff i would use word

i would like to see a database (ibase or idata maybe) and a paint (idraw or ipaint) and more little things like that to improve document production

 

[GulGnu]

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 Microshit Office.

I think the point of the iWork suite is mostly to provide a disaster plan should Microsoft turn hostile and cancel Office. A desperate plan to be sure, but still a relatively cheap form of disaster insurance.