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iWork '07 with Spreadsheet (Screenshot)
- Thread starter DavidLeblond
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MS Office is not that much advanced as everyone is trying to suggest here. I tried to do a simple (!) automatic grading in Excel and wanted it to produce automated and personalized results in Word.
At least in the Mac version I had several problems:
1) Merging features have been _very_ chrash prone. I had to do replacement texts for many different grades and I was lucky that it did work at last. (After about 30 hangs/crashes)
2) Merging is very unintuitive and ugly. Replacement texts for fields are nearly unusable, espacially if you want to change different fields (e.g. their order).
3) Excel's documentation is way to complex and uneasy to understand. I made a mistake in the first row and put the names of the students in the first column. Should have put it in the first row, as merging is only possible with data from the header (limitation!). As I already had entered much data, I didn't want to start all over again. I simply wanted to make the first row the first column and vice versa. No way to do that automatically. I had to use the very cryptic MTRANS command to do that. I don't know how but it eventually worked. But I won't put my energy in such a crappy piece of software anymore. (And that was only a simple sheet of grades that were calculated from points and then merged in a Word document!)
To conclude my rant: I wish Apple would not try to produce an Excel clone, but rather put their efforts on a Lotus Improv clone with a refined Cocoa Interface. The screenshot does suggest it being more like improv, as I don't see any numbered lines or alphabetized columns. I keep my fingers crossed for Improv on steroids (and much easier to use for the end user).
At least in the Mac version I had several problems:
1) Merging features have been _very_ chrash prone. I had to do replacement texts for many different grades and I was lucky that it did work at last. (After about 30 hangs/crashes)
2) Merging is very unintuitive and ugly. Replacement texts for fields are nearly unusable, espacially if you want to change different fields (e.g. their order).
3) Excel's documentation is way to complex and uneasy to understand. I made a mistake in the first row and put the names of the students in the first column. Should have put it in the first row, as merging is only possible with data from the header (limitation!). As I already had entered much data, I didn't want to start all over again. I simply wanted to make the first row the first column and vice versa. No way to do that automatically. I had to use the very cryptic MTRANS command to do that. I don't know how but it eventually worked. But I won't put my energy in such a crappy piece of software anymore. (And that was only a simple sheet of grades that were calculated from points and then merged in a Word document!)
To conclude my rant: I wish Apple would not try to produce an Excel clone, but rather put their efforts on a Lotus Improv clone with a refined Cocoa Interface. The screenshot does suggest it being more like improv, as I don't see any numbered lines or alphabetized columns. I keep my fingers crossed for Improv on steroids (and much easier to use for the end user).
Windows may be "dumbing-down" for you, but overall OS X is even simpler out of the box. All the things you just described that you do in Windows the first time you use it is crazy. Shouldn't a UI be made in such a way that you wouldn't need to change that much when you first use it? I go through the same thing in Windows, but when I switched to OS X, all I had to do was customize my Dock and that was it.
You shouldn't have to do this much to make the OS "usable".
Yep. These posts about iWork and MS Office are just nuts. It is not positioned by Apple to MS Office. It is positioned to MS Works or Appleworks.
That said; some of what iWork does, some people consider as good or good enough to the respective MS Office app. That's fine and that's their opinion (and in some cases I'd agree).
It does not change how Apple positions and develops iWork though.
Easy question
Maybe because the codebase goes back to Mac OS 6 or 7 and to use all the best parts of Mac OS X, it would have to be rewritten in Cocoa. Which means they would have to start from scratch.
Which is what they did.
AppleWorks is, and has been, on life support for a long time.
Let it die with dignity.
I have never understood why Apple discontinued any upgrading of Appleworks/Clarisworks and I've never seen any one give any explanation for why Apple ceased upgrading Appleworks and is letting it "die on the vine". Anyone have any explanation for Apple's behavior?
Maybe because the codebase goes back to Mac OS 6 or 7 and to use all the best parts of Mac OS X, it would have to be rewritten in Cocoa. Which means they would have to start from scratch.
Which is what they did.
AppleWorks is, and has been, on life support for a long time.
Let it die with dignity.
paste special, check transpose
excel is powerful, u just need to know how to use it.
and powerful programs always need to be studied a little bit. like photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, and of course, excel.
You're kidding - right? MS won't do something to hurt a competitor that costs them money? Their history is FULL of such actions.
Here's another screenshot of what we can (hopefully) expect:
wow, whats that? window maker?
Exactly. For me at least Windows makes all the wrong assumptions about what I want to do. The inability to work with me extends beyond the OS into the applications as well.
Frustrating.
It's a good thing that AppleWorks is dead now. It never felt like a Mac app for me. Even in OS 9 or earlier. I'm thankful they have written a replacement in Cocoa.
Who needs Excel when there is Google Spreadsheets? ok, maybe for the more advanced functions, but the former is fine for basics
I don't know what my problem was, but that didn't resolve it. I ended up using MTRANS. Ever tried that one?
People get the idea from trying to use Pages. If I type at my normal speed, which is only maybe 50-60 wpm, it just locks up. IMHO, the only way you could be using it and not be going bonkers is if you're a hunt-and-peck typist.
Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but I would submit that at the time ClarisWorks was written, during the OS 6/7 transition days, the interface was as quintessential Mac as it could get. Everything was designed to be as consistent as possible with MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint, etc. And to avoid the Microsoft interface clutter that is being argued about so much in this thread. We won quite a few awards for interface design. In those days the idea was "simple things -- easy, complicated things -- possible". I think we did quite well. These days the balance at Apple has tended to swing towards, if there's not a simple, clean way of adding a feature, then don't have that feature.
Now, by the time ClarisWorks came to be renamed AppleWorks, that's a whole 'nother story. It was indeed dated by then.
Bob Hearn
Yes it is. You just have to know how to unleash its power. This is at least the case with Excel.
Don't you mean "the latter"?
I used it for the first time in 1998. It was obviously already AppleWorks back then. I can't judge earlier versions, but then it felt like it Apple wasn't investing much in it anymore.
I like it
I like it. Not sure why there are so many negitive criticisms of it, especially since no one has tried it yet. Office for Mac is extremely dated and Microsoft hasn't updated or improved it in years. So, I welcome Apple's offering. I think if you really "need" the more advanced features of Office you are better off running the Windows version under Parallels and Coherance.
I don't think most Office users ever use half of what these applications can do. Apple really has the right idea. They sell a suite of software that does what most people need and it's priced reasonably. For everyone else who needs advanced features Microsoft Office is there and they can pay $$$ for it. Best of both worlds really.
I apprecite Apple not screwing us; unlike Microsoft, who forces you to buy and expensive and more advanced suite of software than you need because they can.
I like it. Not sure why there are so many negitive criticisms of it, especially since no one has tried it yet. Office for Mac is extremely dated and Microsoft hasn't updated or improved it in years. So, I welcome Apple's offering. I think if you really "need" the more advanced features of Office you are better off running the Windows version under Parallels and Coherance.
I don't think most Office users ever use half of what these applications can do. Apple really has the right idea. They sell a suite of software that does what most people need and it's priced reasonably. For everyone else who needs advanced features Microsoft Office is there and they can pay $$$ for it. Best of both worlds really.
I apprecite Apple not screwing us; unlike Microsoft, who forces you to buy and expensive and more advanced suite of software than you need because they can.