BornAgainMac said:
Filemaker Pro
4D
are both excellent database options for the Mac. And both are crossplatform. Unlike Access which isn't.
And http://www.neooffice.org/ is quite good as an office counterpart on the Mac.
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Apple Developing Numbers?
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Filemaker Pro
4D
are both excellent database options for the Mac. And both are crossplatform. Unlike Access which isn't.
And http://www.neooffice.org/ is quite good as an office counterpart on the Mac.
Loge
macrumors 68030
FFTT said:
How about choice? There used to be commercial alternatives to Word and Excel. Once Office became dominant, innovation pretty much ceased. Computers have got much more capable in the last 10 years, but this has not lead to signficantly enhanced capabilities in these applications.
wrldwzrd89
macrumors G5
Did you know that a Mac OS X-native version of Lotus Notes exists? I think that one's covered already.FFTT said:
Starfury said:
What's the point of that?
You'd end up with a dated suite of applications that look almost identical to Microsoft Office from 5 years ago and have a suite even more bloated than MS's offering running off of Java with a horrible QT interface or they'd have to spend a LOT of effort rewriting it in Cocoa. Apple would be tied up with the O😵rg release schedules which happen once an ice age plus Apple would have to give it away.
No, when the wheel is a stone wheel with a wood axle through it, reinventing the wheel is required. That's what Apple are doing with Keynote and Pages. It's what they've done with Safari, FinalCut, iLife, Motion....
BWhaler
macrumors 68040
I really hope Apple invests heavily in iWork.
While unseating MSOffice in the short term is impossible, over the next 5+ years, I think it will be possible.
Open Office keeps getting better, and at some point it will crush Office since it is free and Office is giving up their proprietary file formats. (Why MS is doing this is beyond me. I bet it is because they have the patents and that is the new lock-in strategy.)
But I, like many pros, was to dump Office. First, it is expensive. Second, it is kludgy, prints aweful, and doesn't let me be as creative as I can be.
Keynote is almost there. Yet, I use it full time. Pages, as many have pointed out, has great potential but falls short in terms of complete functionality, a few UI quirks, and still is too buggy to be trusted in a business environment.
And the missing key is a spreadsheet. This is going to be a tough app to make in-roads on since Excel is the best app Microsoft makes. Plus, Office works well together, linking data, and that is going to be key.
I really hope Apple has high ambitions for iWork. I understand they are probably planning on building it slowly over the years since sales are modest and because there is no point in pissing off Microsoft, but I hope they are taking the long view and plan on building an Office-killer.
No, iWork can't kill Office by itself--that honor will go to OpenOffice. But once OpenOffice has done their damage, there will be a great market for Apple to sell iWork.
As for me, I hope iWork 06 puts the missing features in Keynote (mainly presenter tools, more effects, and bug fixing) and makes Pages a robust word processor. I will be more than happy to use those two apps full time and Excel. Then after a year or two of enhancements on Numbers, I will be Microsoft free, once and for all.
While unseating MSOffice in the short term is impossible, over the next 5+ years, I think it will be possible.
Open Office keeps getting better, and at some point it will crush Office since it is free and Office is giving up their proprietary file formats. (Why MS is doing this is beyond me. I bet it is because they have the patents and that is the new lock-in strategy.)
But I, like many pros, was to dump Office. First, it is expensive. Second, it is kludgy, prints aweful, and doesn't let me be as creative as I can be.
Keynote is almost there. Yet, I use it full time. Pages, as many have pointed out, has great potential but falls short in terms of complete functionality, a few UI quirks, and still is too buggy to be trusted in a business environment.
And the missing key is a spreadsheet. This is going to be a tough app to make in-roads on since Excel is the best app Microsoft makes. Plus, Office works well together, linking data, and that is going to be key.
I really hope Apple has high ambitions for iWork. I understand they are probably planning on building it slowly over the years since sales are modest and because there is no point in pissing off Microsoft, but I hope they are taking the long view and plan on building an Office-killer.
No, iWork can't kill Office by itself--that honor will go to OpenOffice. But once OpenOffice has done their damage, there will be a great market for Apple to sell iWork.
As for me, I hope iWork 06 puts the missing features in Keynote (mainly presenter tools, more effects, and bug fixing) and makes Pages a robust word processor. I will be more than happy to use those two apps full time and Excel. Then after a year or two of enhancements on Numbers, I will be Microsoft free, once and for all.
FFTT
macrumors 68030
Thanks for the input on comparable apps.
The issue of integration between these individual apps would be important
as well as the ability to import legacy data across platforms without too much trouble.
It would also be interesting to see a database and spreadsheet application tied directly to Spotlight allowing the user to keep track of any data they are working with.
You also make a good point that Open Office is free, so anything Apple puts together would have to be highly competitive in pricing against existing Microsoft applications and prove itself extremely helpful in increasing productivity.
The issue of integration between these individual apps would be important
as well as the ability to import legacy data across platforms without too much trouble.
It would also be interesting to see a database and spreadsheet application tied directly to Spotlight allowing the user to keep track of any data they are working with.
You also make a good point that Open Office is free, so anything Apple puts together would have to be highly competitive in pricing against existing Microsoft applications and prove itself extremely helpful in increasing productivity.
Why re-invent the wheel?
Mac users once had an excellent "all round" and free (to computer purchasers) program in Claris Works - quick, efficient and flexible, in the context of the day. When Claris Works was taken over by Apple my immediate thought was "well, that's the end of any development of this program". Previous experience with the many dead-ends of Apple software development made me say this. And I was right. Apart from the minimal updating required to allow it to run on Mac OS X, absolutely no work was done on this at all. Apple Works was stuck in a prehistoric computer time-capsule, yet I still used it every day. Steve Jobs is certainly a visionary, but the problem is he quickly looses interest in older technology, even though this is important for all the usual things that most of us (if not in business) use our computer for.
I bought iLife not for the iWord, but for the Keynote program, as my wife is doing postgraduate studies and needed a presentation program. I think this works very well. But I have hardly used iWord at all. To me it seems an uncomfortable amalgam between a word processor and a page layout program, and it does neither particularly well. For instance, for my wife, it cannot place references at the end of the document, which Apple Works can. iWord is a work in progress and Apple charging money for this is taking the buyer for a ride. You couldn't even remove a page until they updated it. No integration with spreadsheet, drawing, etc. also makes it far less flexible than Apple Works. In addition Apple have missed a golden opportunity to create a combined word processor, page layout and html page creator for the internet. Perhaps they feel that this would compete with their .mac facility, but many people, once they have started on the fascinating world of the internet, would truly value a flexible and intuitive internet page builder, rather than being constrained by pre-built templates.
I am sure that Apple Works would have needed rewriting, but they should have spent all those years where it was completely neglected to do this, and we would then have a program even more useful than the old Apple Works, instead of a flashy new, but only partly developed, single word processor. In the meantime I will continue to use Apple Works as I have always done. For those people who do need all the bells and whistles, use Microsoft Office.
Mac users once had an excellent "all round" and free (to computer purchasers) program in Claris Works - quick, efficient and flexible, in the context of the day. When Claris Works was taken over by Apple my immediate thought was "well, that's the end of any development of this program". Previous experience with the many dead-ends of Apple software development made me say this. And I was right. Apart from the minimal updating required to allow it to run on Mac OS X, absolutely no work was done on this at all. Apple Works was stuck in a prehistoric computer time-capsule, yet I still used it every day. Steve Jobs is certainly a visionary, but the problem is he quickly looses interest in older technology, even though this is important for all the usual things that most of us (if not in business) use our computer for.
I bought iLife not for the iWord, but for the Keynote program, as my wife is doing postgraduate studies and needed a presentation program. I think this works very well. But I have hardly used iWord at all. To me it seems an uncomfortable amalgam between a word processor and a page layout program, and it does neither particularly well. For instance, for my wife, it cannot place references at the end of the document, which Apple Works can. iWord is a work in progress and Apple charging money for this is taking the buyer for a ride. You couldn't even remove a page until they updated it. No integration with spreadsheet, drawing, etc. also makes it far less flexible than Apple Works. In addition Apple have missed a golden opportunity to create a combined word processor, page layout and html page creator for the internet. Perhaps they feel that this would compete with their .mac facility, but many people, once they have started on the fascinating world of the internet, would truly value a flexible and intuitive internet page builder, rather than being constrained by pre-built templates.
I am sure that Apple Works would have needed rewriting, but they should have spent all those years where it was completely neglected to do this, and we would then have a program even more useful than the old Apple Works, instead of a flashy new, but only partly developed, single word processor. In the meantime I will continue to use Apple Works as I have always done. For those people who do need all the bells and whistles, use Microsoft Office.
BWhaler said:
It's because some countries in Europe and I believe in some states in the USA, government has mandated that file formats that are used by government departments must be open so that important public documents are forward compatible and always recoverable even if the software to read them no longer exists.
Imagine if in 2050 someone wants to read a document written in MS Word 97 format. Governments can't guarantee that Word 2050 will read Word97 files. It's taken them years to realise this and years more to convince Microsoft that it's in their interests to open up formats. Partly that's because many governments threaten to move to OpenOffice or StarOffice for their open OASIS doc format.
Microsoft's open format is their own format of course. They weren't about to adopt a format that wasn't their own, even if it was XML based.
Apple aren't any better here though, and no worse either - Pages and Keynote are gzipped XML formats and are also their own format, not OASIS. I don't think Apple have published the schema at all.
btw, for an alternative spreadsheet approach that 'thinks different', see Quantrix - http://www.quantrix.com/
I'd expect Apple to do something like that instead of using the old tired spreadsheet model used since visicalc.
jockmoron said:
And presumably Pages instead of iWord too.
Better check that your Mac is really a Mac too just in case you've been trying to operate a hatstand for the last 6 months. 😀
Platform said:
It's a start, however despite the Mac menu-bar, the application still looks like a PC app...
And it's so slllllllloooooooooow!
It's a start, though. I look forward to it's development and what happens with OO2 with interest...
andiwm2003
macrumors 601
i love that quantrix "spreadsheet" thing. just saw the demo though.
i hope apple comes up with a concept like this.
quantrix is just too expensive for private users ($249 academic) to become widespread.
it is also geared specifically towards the finance sector. that annoys me most at excel because the chart quality usually sucks for more complex scientific things. but the data sorting and autofiltering functions in excel are quite good. a typical microsoft thing: many good features but the overall concept is uninspired.
if apple goes this way for $79 then there is a way around excel (at least for many of us).
andi
i hope apple comes up with a concept like this.
quantrix is just too expensive for private users ($249 academic) to become widespread.
it is also geared specifically towards the finance sector. that annoys me most at excel because the chart quality usually sucks for more complex scientific things. but the data sorting and autofiltering functions in excel are quite good. a typical microsoft thing: many good features but the overall concept is uninspired.
if apple goes this way for $79 then there is a way around excel (at least for many of us).
andi
xy14
macrumors 6502
People who absolutely need Excel should do a simple thing:
Use Limewire in Canada.
Its perfectly legal.
Not that I did this or anything.. 🙄
EDIT: I should not be used as a legal advisor, but I've had the understanding that you are not permitted to upload files on p2p networks in Canada, but you can download.
Use Limewire in Canada.
Its perfectly legal.
Not that I did this or anything.. 🙄
EDIT: I should not be used as a legal advisor, but I've had the understanding that you are not permitted to upload files on p2p networks in Canada, but you can download.
sacear
macrumors 6502
SchemaSoft file conversion in iWork suite?
Thanks, iMeowbot. That's what I was wondering. So SchemaSoft's product was similar to Dataviz's product then (file conversion)? Well, for a long time, Dataviz conversion was a large part of AppleWorks/ClarisWorks. So maybe the SchemaSoft product is something that is coming for the iWork suite.iMeowbot said:
WildCowboy said:
I got it thinking there would be.... but I guess you should never assume.
I use keynotes more than anything... so I would have bought it either way.
iMeowbot
macrumors G3
Yeah, Apple already had most of what a spreadsheet needs built into Cocoa, but all this stuff looks like fun.sacear said:
eXan
macrumors 601
mkaake said:
Personally I like Pages, and use it instead of Word since i got iWork 🙂
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.
Though I don't use spreadsheet apps, it would be interesting to see that "Numbers"
If this spreadsheet application sees the light of day, I'm going to cringe at version 1.0. MS might be monopolistic and all, but their Excel program is really top-notch.