Really? What in Excel requires a key command and can't be accomplished using the menus?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Interesting Gizmodo article on the iPad's future
- Thread starter Stirolak26
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Really? What in Excel requires a key command and can't be accomplished using the menus?
Just a matter of preference. Key commands are much quicker to use than navigating drop down menus.
It's a steeper learning curve, but more efficient once you've learned it. And with all computer tasks for those of us that do data cleaning, data analysis etc. are mundane and time consuming so saving every second here and there adds up over long days of work.
A good, but obscure if you're not a researcher/statistician would be stats programs. There are menu driven one's like SPSS that are easy to use as it's all dropdown menus and dialogue boxes (though there is a syntax option behind it all). Those are easy to learn and use. But they are clunkly and slow compared to syntax line programs like Stata or SAS. Those take longer to learn the syntax, but it's much quicker to set up complex mulitvariate models etc. than the tons of clicks and navigation required in SPSS.
Apple's software is more simple, and easier for the average person to use for sure. I agree with you there. But that stuff is just a hindrance to power users who don't mind learning more complicated software that allows things to be done faster once the software is learned. To me that's a big reason why I stick with PC and why it's so dominate in most work fields.
Apple software like iWorks is great for the casual user, or person only using computers to create basic documents, spreadsheets and presentations etc. But for power users doing more complicated work they're too limiting and inflexible. Thus you end up having to use other company software, and if I'm going to do that then I'd rather stick with Windows for a variety of other reasons (some software I use no on Mac, not a fan of Apple's business practices in general etc.).
It's a steeper learning curve, but more efficient once you've learned it. And with all computer tasks for those of us that do data cleaning, data analysis etc. are mundane and time consuming so saving every second here and there adds up over long days of work.
A good, but obscure if you're not a researcher/statistician would be stats programs. There are menu driven one's like SPSS that are easy to use as it's all dropdown menus and dialogue boxes (though there is a syntax option behind it all). Those are easy to learn and use. But they are clunkly and slow compared to syntax line programs like Stata or SAS. Those take longer to learn the syntax, but it's much quicker to set up complex mulitvariate models etc. than the tons of clicks and navigation required in SPSS.
Apple's software is more simple, and easier for the average person to use for sure. I agree with you there. But that stuff is just a hindrance to power users who don't mind learning more complicated software that allows things to be done faster once the software is learned. To me that's a big reason why I stick with PC and why it's so dominate in most work fields.
Apple software like iWorks is great for the casual user, or person only using computers to create basic documents, spreadsheets and presentations etc. But for power users doing more complicated work they're too limiting and inflexible. Thus you end up having to use other company software, and if I'm going to do that then I'd rather stick with Windows for a variety of other reasons (some software I use no on Mac, not a fan of Apple's business practices in general etc.).
When it comes to most productivity applications and iPad the solution most often is a workaround. The question then is - why bother with workarounds when there are proved real solutions?
Us professionals need professional software, office is apples isn't. Excel alone is better than all apple office suite applications combined
Well universities shoule teach students how to use it properly or from the menu first instead of key commands, why do professors not teach everyone the long and standard way so youll always be able to finf the function without having to memorize it in your head forever? What if you take the class and dont use excel for a year and come back then what? Something needs to be done about these teaching methods.
Well I dont know if it is windows to blame or windows based hardware manufacturers but Ive had crashes and ciruses on so many laptops and pcs its crazy. My last one wouldnt start up normally or restart even in safe mode. There was a splash of blue screen that said some hardware component was installed or changed and it would keep looping to a restart. I tried everything snd could not find a fix. Now it doesnt even work at all and money wasted, i hate Windows and windows hardware. Anther pc I had just crashed after I inserted a new cideo card. Anotjer one wouodnt work without a dx updatento playna game back when I knew nothing about pc games. Heck the recent borderlands game was full of glitches and errors windows based.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1421487
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/03/borderlands-glitch-watch-2009-radeon-powered-pc-crashes/
Ive had this issue as well with Stalker, and on macs ive never has to deal with this kind of bullshet:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1409619.html
http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...-pripyat-dynamic-lighting-problem-510905.html
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not even sure your point is with all of your posts... are you arguing that Apple's work productivity software is better than Microsoft's?
No, my point was that Microsoft makes their software too complicated or prone to bugs, fsilure, viruses, etc. Or a combination of both. Nothing Microsoft has made I cna think of is accessible to a 70 yr old person, for example, like Apple's stuff is (esppecially iPad and its apps).
By the way speaking of Gizmodo and Engadget, do you guys think it's harder to get into Engadget or Gizmodo and which is more competitive? Engadget's writing in their posts never really impressed me, but they are super fast to get their info and just beat everyone at live blogging. So not sure who I shouls try applying with. Currently I write for tablets.com but there is a limit to posts per day until the site grows and pay isn't spectacular or really living wage at all, so I am thinking of branching out and writing for someone else as well. I live in Cupertino ane my site is mlata26.wordpress.com that has some other links to my work. Also, what do you guys think of ReadWriteWeb.xom, they have an opening on journalismjobs.com.
By the way speaking of Gizmodo and Engadget, do you guys think it's harder to get into Engadget or Gizmodo and which is more competitive? Engadget's writing in their posts never really impressed me, but they are super fast to get their info and just beat everyone at live blogging. So not sure who I shouls try applying with. Currently I write for tablets.com but there is a limit to posts per day until the site grows and pay isn't spectacular or really living wage at all, so I am thinking of branching out and writing for someone else as well. I live in Cupertino ane my site is mlata26.wordpress.com that has some other links to my work. Also, what do you guys think of ReadWriteWeb.xom, they have an opening on journalismjobs.com.
Last edited:
The point of my post is that the key commands are faster and more efficient.
Why learn the slower and less efficient way? Key commands and syntax are faster and save a lot of time when you're doing a ton of work in statistical analysis packages and other software.
Time is at a premium and efficiency is key in today's world. Drop down menu's and dialog boxes are simpler (thus idiot proof to some extent) but they are inefficient and waste time compared to key commands and syntax.
Thus if you want to be trained to be as efficient as possible and do work as quickly as possible--and thus be most successful in today's world--you want to learn the key commands, syntax etc. and be a power user. Not a point and click sheep.
Apple is great for casual computing and has some of the best software for doing layout/graphic design, video/sound/photo editing etc., but they just lag behind in the business world, research world etc. as all that pointing and clicking etc. just is inefficient when it comes to working with data bases, running statistical analyses etc. Simple tasks like simple text documents, presentations etc. are equal across platform.
Just a matter of what field your in, and whether you care about being as efficient as possible or having software be as simple as possible even if it's less efficient and takes more time to do the same tasks.
Which is my point. Apple is great for computer illiterate folks. But if you're a competent PC users you can do most things faster on a PC, have more control over things and have more software options to fit your needs. I'll take options, flexibility/customizability and efficiency over simplicity any day of the week--especially since I've been using PCs for going on 25 years and thus find them simple personally. Apple can have the 70 year olds, graphic design/video editing etc. markets, the rest of us will stick with our PCs to do our work. Personally, time is at a premium so I'd rather spend a more time learning key commands and syntax once than waste time on less efficient point and clicking through drop down menus and dialogue boxes forever as I don't need the simplicity as I know how to use a computer.
Only point I'll concede is the virus issue, as viruses aren't as prevalent on Apple due to their more controlled environment and having a tiny market share that makes pirates not bother targeting them as much. That's the one point I'm slightly envious of macs on as dealing with viruses and spyware gets old at times.
I would call that creativity software rather than productivity.
Apple is definitely the dominate platform for creative content production--bet it sound editing, video editing, photo editing, layout, graphic design etc. It's a great platform for that stuff and has great software in those areas. And it's dominate in those industries and those departments on universities etc.
Productivity is generally used to refer to business uses. Documents, spreadsheets, book keeping, databases, statistical analysis packages and so on. The PC is dominant in those industries as it just has more and better software options, and these are collaborative industries and the fact that the vast majority of people are on PCs keeps people locked into it even if Apple could put out better software (which they haven't).
Last edited by a moderator:
But you can get most of those applications like microsodt office on macs as well (mac versions). So why dont businesses jsut use macs wth microoft apps on them that have the benefit of both worlds (esp withh bootcamp) and less voruses or spyware. And it isnt just that less hackers target them, they are harder to target and apple patches their os up constantly.
Strange. When I show the iPad to anyone they ask "How much"? and "Where can I buy it"?, not necessarily in this order.
+1...people seem to forget that MS is a very profitable company for a very good reason.
Ok, first of all, MS makes software with features that users scream for. Arguably most folks use about 5-10% of the features but they have to cram them in there or people will bitch. Look at the whole Ipad camera thing. Everyone has been crying for cameras since the Ipad 1 came out. Now we have them, but they basically suck for anything other than video and although they work fine with Facetime there are probably 2 or 3 people using it so who cares? (OK, there are more than 2 or 3 but I'll bet the numbers are incredibly low after the first one or two times trying it out).
Also, I happen to have a 73 year old friend who uses multiple Windows PCs and Galaxy tablet just fine. He won't touch anything Apple because he tried using one once and it was too hard to use! He also likes that with PCs you can find tons of software that is reasonably priced and aren't locked in to a closed, over-priced eco system (which is also why I don't use MACs).
Point is, there's room in the market for more than one way of doing things. On the desktop, MS has won. In the tablet arena, no one can beat the Ipad. Yet.
Last edited by a moderator:
The site redesign is by far the WORST I have ever seen, it's terrible. What sucks is that their parent company owns a bunch of other sites that I use a lot that had the same horrid redesign.
1. Not all software is available on Mac. If they just need Office etc., then it's an option though. I can't make the switch as I'd be in Windows in boot camp most of the time using various specialty statistical software that's windows only.
2. Macs are more expensive. They don't really make any mid-level models and make no low level models. Most businesses don't need powerful computers if they're just using office suites etc., thus Macs aren't an economical option as they'd be forced to pay more for power they don't need vs. just buying cheap low to mid-level Dell PCs etc.
That's why they sell much more in things like graphic design, video editing etc. where those type of businesses do need high end models with a lot of power. Price isn't an object there as they'd need high end PCs anyway and Macs have the software edge in those fields.
Anyway, there's no point in arguing this stuff. You said you hate PCs, and I don't care for Macs or Apple in general. It's just personal preference. I prefer PCs and will always use them. Other's like you prefer Macs, and that's perfectly fine. I couldn't care less what computers othe's use. I have no loyalty to Microsoft--all big corporations suck and only exist to try to get as much of our money as possible. It's just the platform that is used in my field and has the software I need and what I'm used to.
And this is why I have a job
Seriously MS office is buggy as hell. My last job broke down the amount of work the IT staff does by hardware and software failures and....ringing in at 88% of the workload....was Microsoft Outlook.EDIT: Oops 88% of the software workload I should have said.
Outlook is a perfect example of why many businesses (not just consumers) are adopting devices like the iPad.
Microsoft has allowed what should be a fairly straightforward program that does one thing (ie. send and receive e-mail) to morph into this horrible monster. Outlook tries to be a contact manager database, a calendar, a "to do" list, a scheduler. And who knows what else...
And quite frankly, it doesn't do ANY of those "extra" tasks very well. Even on the fastest PC it takes quite a while to boot up, meaning that most users leave it running in the background all day long. Most businesses I know of hate the "address book" part of it - they use a CRM program to handle that sort of data. Meaning that the MIS people spend hours juggling two sets of databases. More annoyingly still, half the data formats Microsoft uses in Outlook aren't totally compatible with open formats like vCard.
Anytime someone says that Apple needs to add this or that "feature" to the iPad - I look at most Microsoft products, and say "this is what uncontrolled feature-creep looks like." No thanks.
Keynote is better than PP in every imaginable context except when having to convert Keynote to PP.
Word and Excel beat their Mac counterparts handily esp after the new 2011 update.
i've seen people use MS Office since the mid 1990's. the rule is that no one uses all the features but everyone as a group uses all the features that are there. the apple way of shipping only limited features may be OK for light users but not corporate users. in the army officers used to do some crazy things with powerpoint. we literally could not go to war without powerpoint.
Which is why it's largely useless in doing presentations as most conference centers, conference hotels, university auditoriums have PCs running Powerpoint.
Keynote is nice software from what I've seen, but just not very functional unless you're only doing presentations in a Mac environment. And I've never once had an experience of getting to a conference room and having a mac hooked up.
The few people that had their presentations on Mac had to disrupt the panel flow by unhooking the pc and hooking their Macbook up to the projector.
Just a good example of why people are stuck in office and on PCs--it's just dominate across the business landscape and using a Mac and Apple software just creates headaches for people who are working in PC dominated field.
I don't necessarily disagree with you. But both of those programs (like Outlook) seem to have become unwieldly.
I think in the early days of PCs, when the market "wasn't that big" (ie. only a few million PCs in use) Microsoft sold programs like Excel and Word as tools that could do almost anything.
So, Excel for instance, got a whole Programming language, complete with dialog boxes, charting capabilities, and the like. It was possible, if you were skilled enough, to make a complete inventory control Application in Excel. Or an accounting system. Or a tool to find an optimized multi-nodal route schedule.
And Word wasn't just a word processor - it became a drawing program, and a page layout program, and (another) mailling list database.
Word and Excel were sold this way because a) Companies didn't want to have to buy all sort of other shrink-wrapped software packages and b) there wasn't that much choice available.
But I'd argue that in today's world - this model makes very little sense at all. That 98% of the Office suites out there are sold to people who NEVER use those sort of features. (If you need to design a Brochure for your company, you use Adobe CS or Quark, etc. And if you need to optimize multi-nodal route schedules - you find out There's an App for That)
In my opinion, the "best" software isn't necessarily that which comes with the most features. Its the software that works best for what I need it for.
Word and Excel (and powerpoint) have become much more user friendly with the 2007 and 2010 revisions IMO. Much better menus, easier to find things with the ribbons at the tops vs the tons of dropdowns in the older versions etc.
Yeah, they have a TON of features as you note. But that doesn't make them unwieldy. All the basic features are very easily accessible, and the additional stuff is easily ignored by those who don't need those features.
It's better to have the most features possible IMO, especially if you're more of a power user and are making documents with tons of tables, figures, diagrams, charts, equations etc. like many in the business or academic world.
You have all the options you need, and can easily ignore the ones you don't need.
I'll agree than Outlook sucks though. My university is switching from Groupwise to Outlook soon and I'm not looking forward to that unless Outlook is better than it was the last time I used it (which to be fair has probably been a decade or so as I've been on groupwise and webmail services for about 10 years now).
This may be a bit of a tangent but I think you're confusing means with ends. If your task is: make the kind of charts you can only make in Excel, then Excel is going to look like the only suitable software. But whose job is 'make Excel charts'? Jobs are more often 'make charts for your boss' or 'convey information to people at a meeting'.
If you look at the history of computing, it hasn't just been software changing and 'improving' to meet people's needs, it's also been people's duties changing because of software. The tasks people will have to do in the future will change alongside and because of software.
Sure. Like I said, I couldn't care less what OS or software packages people use.
I use what works for me, and for me MS Office is great for my document, spreadsheet and presentation needs, and I prefer the windows platform as it's the standard in my fields and I use a lot of small, specialty software that's windows only.
A lot of documents I could for sure make identically in iWorks etc.--but I'll run into problems collaborating with colleagues as they're all on PCs and using MS Office. So a big part of my point is even aside from which software is "better" many of us have our hands forced by having to work with what is the norm in our fields to be able to do collaborative work without conversion issues.
Compatibility is what makes people need to make "Excel charts" or "Word documents" or "Powerpoint presentations"--rather than generically just needing to create charts/documents/presentations. A lot of us (pretty much all of us in the research professor realm) are doing collaborative work and writing papers with multiple authors and need to use the same software, or have to use Powerpoint so it will work/display properly in Powerpoint on the PC in the conference room etc. So I'm on windows and MS Office, and I'm fine with it as I find the platform easy to work with and it has all the software options I need. In short the "means" matter when doing collaborative work as everyone has to be using the same means when working on a paper together etc., otherwise you get headaches from stuff getting screwed up when converting back and forth between different formats.
Others prefer Apple, prefer different office suites etc., and that's fine. I'll always be a PC user and the iPad 2 will most likely be the last Apple gadget I ever buy (aside from maybe another iPod) as personally I'm just not a fan of the ecosystem and their philosophies and find the platform just not ideal to my workflow.
It's just not my cup of tea, and buying an iPad has reinforced that for me. It's great for media consumption, but everytime I try to do much of anything work-related on it I just end up getting annoyed and going back to my PCs.
Others prefer the Apple way of doing thing, and that's fine. It's great to have options out there so people can find what suits their work needs, work style and preferences best.
I use what works for me, and for me MS Office is great for my document, spreadsheet and presentation needs, and I prefer the windows platform as it's the standard in my fields and I use a lot of small, specialty software that's windows only.
A lot of documents I could for sure make identically in iWorks etc.--but I'll run into problems collaborating with colleagues as they're all on PCs and using MS Office. So a big part of my point is even aside from which software is "better" many of us have our hands forced by having to work with what is the norm in our fields to be able to do collaborative work without conversion issues.
Compatibility is what makes people need to make "Excel charts" or "Word documents" or "Powerpoint presentations"--rather than generically just needing to create charts/documents/presentations. A lot of us (pretty much all of us in the research professor realm) are doing collaborative work and writing papers with multiple authors and need to use the same software, or have to use Powerpoint so it will work/display properly in Powerpoint on the PC in the conference room etc. So I'm on windows and MS Office, and I'm fine with it as I find the platform easy to work with and it has all the software options I need. In short the "means" matter when doing collaborative work as everyone has to be using the same means when working on a paper together etc., otherwise you get headaches from stuff getting screwed up when converting back and forth between different formats.
Others prefer Apple, prefer different office suites etc., and that's fine. I'll always be a PC user and the iPad 2 will most likely be the last Apple gadget I ever buy (aside from maybe another iPod) as personally I'm just not a fan of the ecosystem and their philosophies and find the platform just not ideal to my workflow.
It's just not my cup of tea, and buying an iPad has reinforced that for me. It's great for media consumption, but everytime I try to do much of anything work-related on it I just end up getting annoyed and going back to my PCs.
Others prefer the Apple way of doing thing, and that's fine. It's great to have options out there so people can find what suits their work needs, work style and preferences best.
Last edited: