Numbers and Error bars
Good God, man, how many times do we have to say it -- this is a "1.0" release of a unified consumer/home -oriented program??? Omitting an advanced data analysis feature that this successful college graduate has never even HEARD OF does not indicate Apple's "continued contempt" for its customers!
I must stress that error bars are not an advanced data analysis feature. They long pre-date computers or even calculators. They are fundemental to any graphic representation of values taken from multiple measurements. Typically, the concept of error bars is introduced at the same time students are taught how to make graphs. Certainly this is prior to admission to college. It is likely you were expose to the concept, but perhaps they were given a different name.
Furthermore, Numbers, unlike Pages or Keynote, is specifically intended to be a spreadsheet and graphing program. It is intended to be used to make graphs. The absence of error bars in this context is analogous to ommitting the capacity to indent paragraphs, or include punctuation in a word processor. Yes, you could write without these features, but would the result be deemed acceptable to anyone reading them?
Your software demands far exceed the typical requirements of the normal people Numbers was intended for.
Who is the program intended for? It was intended for people who a) own a computer and b) are willing to take the trouble, or are obliged professionally, to represent numerical information in graphical form.
The argument that this is a first release, or that is it an inexpensive consumer product so that our expectations should be low, ignores the fact that 1) people have been begging Apple include this feature in Pages and Keynote for YEARS, and those aren't even dedicated graphing programs, 2) it is trival for the software engineers to include this feature - it would cost nothing to include, and 3) error bars are basic and fundemental to the intended purpose of this application.
There is no shame in writing excellent general-purpose software for the masses, despite your stated "contempt" for Apple's iWork team.
I did not state that I have contempt for Apple's iWork team. Indeed I hold them in high regard, which is why this omission is so disappointing.
And I disagree- there is shame. Indeed, so incredible and outlandish was the omission of error bars from the Keynote and Pages graphing functions that many speculated that Apple had an "understanding" with Microsoft not to tread on their territory. Their absence from Numbers is even more remarkable, and reinforces this suspicion. The result is a product that cannot replace MS's software. If this is true, then its creators have deliberately made an otherwise outstanding product a lame duck.
*That* is a shame.
