For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
And Excel existed for the Mac a couple of years before they came out with the first version for Windows.
I worked for a company back in '90 that bought a bunch of 486-based Windows 3.0 boxes because we were so impressed with Excel 3.0. It was a damned sight better than the old Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS.
Well my original remarks contrasted "work use" vs. other uses, but it seems the metaphor breaks down rather quickly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordjeremias
... again, obviously it is for work... but what i mean is: you insert a picture, add an automatic numbered caption (legend : "Figure 8 - ") to it and there cross-reference it in your text like "Figure 8 shows that..."
now if you go back and insert other picture before "figure 8", and automatic caption it, it updates the text and caption to figure 8 (which will now be Figure 9) . So you don't have to be fishing around to "cross-references" everytime you change somethin in your document order or add something. this for Equations, graphs, bibliography etc etc
Agreed. Pages really lacks serious TOC, index and note features. I still use it for serious writing because I hate Office so much but yes, these kinds of things are still quite lacking in Pages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordjeremias
... well, let me tell you that it would have really helped me out when i found out that pages didn't have one and lost 10 pages of a phd article draft. i saved it once in the beginning, because with Word you do that to get autosave working, and then wrote it all through the night and when i finished and was going to format it, tried to click save but clicked "iwork.com" instead and puff! there it was, a pages crash, no recovery of document and a night of work (inspired one i might say) gone.
it s a main "beef" because it actually helps people, it is a main and basic feature of every single text editor i know, and it should have been implemented since day one! EVEN TEXTEDITOR.APP HAS ONE! it's ridiculous that a so called "professional writing app" doesn't.
Again, in my experience Word auto-save is more of an annoyance than anything else and a lot of the users I see are confused by the ghosted icons. More often than not, when I'm dealing with auto-save trouble-shooting, the client has mistaken an autosave icon for a "real" icon and has thus lost their document without knowing it. Also, more often than not, when we go to recover someone's document for whatever reason, Word simply can't reconstruct the document from the autosave info and everything is lost anyway. (This is all on Mac OS-X of course).
These are just two pin-hole views though I guess and each situation will be different.
The thing I like overall about iWork and Pages versus Office is that for the first time in many many years someone (Apple) has actually re-thought what the program should act like. All the other alternatives to Word and Office are basically just crappy buggy copies of the same UI. They also tend towards giant integrated Office environments and in some cases can't even be used in a separate fashion. Open Office is a horrendously bad design in this regard.
iWork has the advantage (IMO of course), of stripping out all the unnecessary crud and add-ins that Office and Word has. For instance in Word there are two (or three depending on how you define it) different ways of paginating a document and they are each completely incompatible with each other. Not only that, they are deliberately styled so as to appear to be the same thing to the end user. There are layers of crud like this all through the Office product.
For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
Much as Microsoft drive me crazy ( an early Vista release drove me to the Mac ), I completely agree. Excel is one of the most useful pieces of software ever written.
Excel is a generic data-processing tool for the desktop, based around the concept of data held in grids.
Numbers is for displaying spreadsheets.
For individuals that process information to get things done that makes all the difference.
Kinda weird that they talk about the ribbon like it's an UI achievement...
I'd say it was. Initially you have no idea where anything is, but once your used to it, trying to use an old version seems impossible to find anything. Drop downs are just dated these days, could you imagine drop downs on an iPad? How ridiculous would that be.
Much as Microsoft drive me crazy ( an early Vista release drove me to the Mac ), I completely agree. Excel is one of the most useful pieces of software ever written.
Excel is a generic data-processing tool for the desktop, based around the concept of data held in grids.
Numbers is for displaying spreadsheets.
For individuals that process information to get things done that makes all the difference.
Yeah, and I don't know why Numbers had to be so "different" than Excel. Here's one case where Apple should have recognized Excel as perhaps the best software app anywhere and gotten over their "not invented here" issue (assuming they had one). I'm not opposed to Numbers not being a copy of Excel but changing the fundamental way the software works was not the best move, IMHO.
So basically whatever features Apple added *last* year to iWorks and MobileMe, are now going to be in Office *next* year. Wow.
Unless you *have* to for your job, why would anyone use Office on the Mac?
Because the other office programs, including Pages and OpenOffice, don't do nearly enough of what I want them to do.
I know Word is bloated and annoying to use, with lots of inefficiency, but I can do a lot more with it. (I'm talking about Word 2004, as I will never update to a "ribbon" interface). And Numbers is not a very good substitute for Excel. There are some really nice things in Pages and Numbers, but they just aren't enough.
Yeah, and I don't know why Numbers had to be so "different" than Excel. Here's one case where Apple should have recognized Excel as perhaps the best software app anywhere and gotten over their "not invented here" issue (assuming they had one). I'm not opposed to Numbers not being a copy of Excel but changing the fundamental way the software works was not the best move, IMHO.
I'm not so sure. Forget about people like us who just try new software because we 'can'. (read 'geek') From Apple's pov it would be nonsensical to put out an office app that mimicked Excel for a couple of reasons:
People who have grown up with Excel are unlikely to switch anyway. Usability and simplicity is 90% what you are used to.
Apple offers a budget spreadsheet that is excellent for presentations and target a different market than you average excel users (differentiation). They also catch regular spreadsheet users that don't want to spend hundreds of dollars. Those users get accustomed to the way Numbers work and when they try Excel they find Excel to be awkward - just like you may find Numbers. Thus they are likely to stick with Numbers.
I'm not so sure. Forget about people like us who just try new software because we 'can'. (read 'geek') From Apple's pov it would be nonsensical to put out an office app that mimicked Excel for a couple of reasons:
People who have grown up with Excel are unlikely to switch anyway. Usability and simplicity is 90% what you are used to.
Apple offers a budget spreadsheet that is excellent for presentations and target a different market than you average excel users (differentiation). They also catch regular spreadsheet users that don't want to spend hundreds of dollars. Those users get accustomed to the way Numbers work and when they try Excel they find Excel to be awkward - just like you may find Numbers. Thus they are likely to stick with Numbers.
Not to mention just copying existing software doesn't really lead to changes that can actually make software work better for users. It's always a good idea to take a step back from "the standard" and see if there isn't a better way to do things. Whether you think they succeeded or failed, at least they are working on improving the spreadsheet, not just copying someone else.
also, a simple efficient way to know if there is any new mail since the last time i checked
Try this plug-in for Mail. Incoming mail pops up in an overlay that you can size how you wish. The overlay has To, From, Subject, Mailbox and the body of the email displayed. I use it every day and it is very helpful. It's a beta, but I don't have issues with it. MailAppetizer
MailAppetizer does not yet work with Snow Leopard, but you can get a current build if you like taking risks: MailAppetizer for Snow Leopard build
There are tons of other helpers for Apple Mail on this site: Hawkwings
Warning: the Hawkwings website is having problems right now. It was up but very slow a few minutes ago and now is down entirely.
I love pages, and use it all the time, there's improvements to be made, but it's so so so much better than word for what I do at work!
Don't like numbers so I use excel,
I'm currently running the latest beta of office 2011 and the only thing I am loving it outlook, it is so so so much better than apple's mail, it's in a different league!
I bought a new MacBook Pro in April, and decided to wait to buy Office (which I had on my last computer) until 2011 is released, or the last version comes with a free upgrade...
As slow as Entourage was, I must say I DEEPLY miss it. Mac Mail just stinks when dealing with mails formatted with attachments, and has a hell of a time working with the 4 different email accounts. And 3 different apps for Calendar, email and address book just slows everything down.
I tried out iWork, didn't think it was worth paying for after 30 days, and am now trying out OpenOffice, but it is not the solution for me, after about 2 month of using it heavily and having it crash about 15 times when moving formatted text between presentations, emails, Sibelius cover pages and PDF files, none of which it seems to like. Also, every element of OpenOffice which strays from Office X-2008's workspace layout seems unintuitive to me. While Office 2008 is/was SLOW to open, it always performed very fast once up and running - with OpenOffice, it's very fast to open, but converting documents, saving, printing, and mass importing/formatting is SLOW as hell...
I'm just hoping Office 2011 speeds up startup times and maintains 2008's ease of use, feature set, and integration (not just between office apps, but also other apps that use text, like InDesign, Sibelius, my Web Browser, Joomla client, etc.
My company uses an Exchange Server for email. They have stipulated that Mac users should use Entourage. We recently had a PC user leave the company and his replacement uses a Mac. Can you transfer Microsoft Outlook emails to Microsoft Entourage? No, you cannot, not without spending more money.
Will Mac Outlook suffer the same incompatibility?
FYI: I cheat and use Apple Mail because I would rather use my own calendar and address book--and because I can. Not everyone feels they can get away with it and they frequently have to rebuild their Entourage database, something I've never had to do with Mail.
I'm a graphic designer. I have 8000 fonts on my Mac. This is the year 2010. Would someone from the Microsoft Mac Business Unit please explain to me why Mac Office has to spend 10 minutes going through all of my fonts before the app launches. No other Mac app has to do that and it's the same in Office 2011 Beta 5.
For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
Couldn't agree more with this. I use Excel all day at work and I still marvel at how powerful it is. Although I admit the Mac version lags behind in speed and features (namely VBA, or lack thereof), so it's good to see it make a come back in the latest version.
I have not used Office on any of my Macs in over five years. iWork has been all I need. Maybe I'm a unique case, but I'm glad to keep the bloated and ugly MS Office off my Mac. I don't see a single feature in this new release that gets me interested in switching to it.
P.S. I've never understood the fascination with auto save. I hate the feature. Many times I don't want my changes saved right away because I'm planning on doing a Save As. Whenever I work on a large document I make it a practice to save every few minutes. I prefer the control to be in my hands and not the computers.
There aren't any ribbon UIs in Windows Vista. Perhaps you are thinking of Windows 7 (which has a ribbon UI in, for example, MS-Paint) or MS-Office 2007.
There aren't any ribbon UIs in Windows Vista. Perhaps you are thinking of Windows 7 (which has a ribbon UI in, for example, MS-Paint) or MS-Office 2007.
Quintius
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 1
You joined four years ago and this was your first post? Defending Vista's honor? Really?
I haven't used Word in several years - I made the jump to Pages and have been very happy. I'm a lawyer, and it's perfect for text-centric documents. Perhaps Word has some graphic tools which make it a better choice for graphic-heavy documents, but for writing letters and briefs Pages is quite good.
Word is cumbersome for ordinary day-to-day word processing. The multiple, confusing levels of pagination, for example (mentioned above).
Having said that, I'll have a look at Office for Mac 2011. It will need to be compelling, though, for me to justify buying it.
Because the other office programs, including Pages and OpenOffice, don't do nearly enough of what I want them to do.
I know Word is bloated and annoying to use, with lots of inefficiency, but I can do a lot more with it. (I'm talking about Word 2004, as I will never update to a "ribbon" interface). And Numbers is not a very good substitute for Excel. There are some really nice things in Pages and Numbers, but they just aren't enough.
I'm a two year convert to Mac after over 20 years of Windows. I own no more PCs. It's great, love it, use it daily, better in every way. But this fanboy noise knocking everything MS does as crap just because it is MS, is so juvenile. Office is a terrific product and is used by the world of business. Doesn't make iWork bad - just different. Sure wish the fanboys would grow up and get a job. And learn for themselves why one may want to use, and actually like, some MS products.
Comments
For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
And Excel existed for the Mac a couple of years before they came out with the first version for Windows.
I worked for a company back in '90 that bought a bunch of 486-based Windows 3.0 boxes because we were so impressed with Excel 3.0. It was a damned sight better than the old Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS.
That makes me feel older than any promo youtube video of the "kids" on the MacBU team.
as opposed to using office for fun?
Well my original remarks contrasted "work use" vs. other uses, but it seems the metaphor breaks down rather quickly.
... again, obviously it is for work... but what i mean is: you insert a picture, add an automatic numbered caption (legend : "Figure 8 - ") to it and there cross-reference it in your text like "Figure 8 shows that..."
now if you go back and insert other picture before "figure 8", and automatic caption it, it updates the text and caption to figure 8 (which will now be Figure 9) . So you don't have to be fishing around to "cross-references" everytime you change somethin in your document order or add something. this for Equations, graphs, bibliography etc etc
Agreed. Pages really lacks serious TOC, index and note features. I still use it for serious writing because I hate Office so much but yes, these kinds of things are still quite lacking in Pages.
... well, let me tell you that it would have really helped me out when i found out that pages didn't have one and lost 10 pages of a phd article draft. i saved it once in the beginning, because with Word you do that to get autosave working, and then wrote it all through the night and when i finished and was going to format it, tried to click save but clicked "iwork.com" instead and puff! there it was, a pages crash, no recovery of document and a night of work (inspired one i might say) gone.
it s a main "beef" because it actually helps people, it is a main and basic feature of every single text editor i know, and it should have been implemented since day one! EVEN TEXTEDITOR.APP HAS ONE! it's ridiculous that a so called "professional writing app" doesn't.
Again, in my experience Word auto-save is more of an annoyance than anything else and a lot of the users I see are confused by the ghosted icons. More often than not, when I'm dealing with auto-save trouble-shooting, the client has mistaken an autosave icon for a "real" icon and has thus lost their document without knowing it. Also, more often than not, when we go to recover someone's document for whatever reason, Word simply can't reconstruct the document from the autosave info and everything is lost anyway. (This is all on Mac OS-X of course).
These are just two pin-hole views though I guess and each situation will be different.
The thing I like overall about iWork and Pages versus Office is that for the first time in many many years someone (Apple) has actually re-thought what the program should act like. All the other alternatives to Word and Office are basically just crappy buggy copies of the same UI. They also tend towards giant integrated Office environments and in some cases can't even be used in a separate fashion. Open Office is a horrendously bad design in this regard.
iWork has the advantage (IMO of course), of stripping out all the unnecessary crud and add-ins that Office and Word has. For instance in Word there are two (or three depending on how you define it) different ways of paginating a document and they are each completely incompatible with each other. Not only that, they are deliberately styled so as to appear to be the same thing to the end user. There are layers of crud like this all through the Office product.
For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
Much as Microsoft drive me crazy ( an early Vista release drove me to the Mac ), I completely agree. Excel is one of the most useful pieces of software ever written.
Excel is a generic data-processing tool for the desktop, based around the concept of data held in grids.
Numbers is for displaying spreadsheets.
For individuals that process information to get things done that makes all the difference.
Kinda weird that they talk about the ribbon like it's an UI achievement...
I'd say it was. Initially you have no idea where anything is, but once your used to it, trying to use an old version seems impossible to find anything. Drop downs are just dated these days, could you imagine drop downs on an iPad? How ridiculous would that be.
Much as Microsoft drive me crazy ( an early Vista release drove me to the Mac ), I completely agree. Excel is one of the most useful pieces of software ever written.
Excel is a generic data-processing tool for the desktop, based around the concept of data held in grids.
Numbers is for displaying spreadsheets.
For individuals that process information to get things done that makes all the difference.
Yeah, and I don't know why Numbers had to be so "different" than Excel. Here's one case where Apple should have recognized Excel as perhaps the best software app anywhere and gotten over their "not invented here" issue (assuming they had one). I'm not opposed to Numbers not being a copy of Excel but changing the fundamental way the software works was not the best move, IMHO.
So basically whatever features Apple added *last* year to iWorks and MobileMe, are now going to be in Office *next* year. Wow.
Unless you *have* to for your job, why would anyone use Office on the Mac?
Because the other office programs, including Pages and OpenOffice, don't do nearly enough of what I want them to do.
I know Word is bloated and annoying to use, with lots of inefficiency, but I can do a lot more with it. (I'm talking about Word 2004, as I will never update to a "ribbon" interface). And Numbers is not a very good substitute for Excel. There are some really nice things in Pages and Numbers, but they just aren't enough.
Yeah, and I don't know why Numbers had to be so "different" than Excel. Here's one case where Apple should have recognized Excel as perhaps the best software app anywhere and gotten over their "not invented here" issue (assuming they had one). I'm not opposed to Numbers not being a copy of Excel but changing the fundamental way the software works was not the best move, IMHO.
I'm not so sure. Forget about people like us who just try new software because we 'can'. (read 'geek') From Apple's pov it would be nonsensical to put out an office app that mimicked Excel for a couple of reasons:
I'm not so sure. Forget about people like us who just try new software because we 'can'. (read 'geek') From Apple's pov it would be nonsensical to put out an office app that mimicked Excel for a couple of reasons:
Not to mention just copying existing software doesn't really lead to changes that can actually make software work better for users. It's always a good idea to take a step back from "the standard" and see if there isn't a better way to do things. Whether you think they succeeded or failed, at least they are working on improving the spreadsheet, not just copying someone else.
also, a simple efficient way to know if there is any new mail since the last time i checked
Try this plug-in for Mail. Incoming mail pops up in an overlay that you can size how you wish. The overlay has To, From, Subject, Mailbox and the body of the email displayed. I use it every day and it is very helpful. It's a beta, but I don't have issues with it. MailAppetizer
MailAppetizer does not yet work with Snow Leopard, but you can get a current build if you like taking risks: MailAppetizer for Snow Leopard build
There are tons of other helpers for Apple Mail on this site: Hawkwings
Warning: the Hawkwings website is having problems right now. It was up but very slow a few minutes ago and now is down entirely.
So basically whatever features Apple added *last* year to iWorks and MobileMe, are now going to be in Office *next* year. Wow.
Unless you *have* to for your job, why would anyone use Office on the Mac?
Excel. The last program I use in MacOffice.
Don't like numbers so I use excel,
I'm currently running the latest beta of office 2011 and the only thing I am loving it outlook, it is so so so much better than apple's mail, it's in a different league!
As slow as Entourage was, I must say I DEEPLY miss it. Mac Mail just stinks when dealing with mails formatted with attachments, and has a hell of a time working with the 4 different email accounts. And 3 different apps for Calendar, email and address book just slows everything down.
I tried out iWork, didn't think it was worth paying for after 30 days, and am now trying out OpenOffice, but it is not the solution for me, after about 2 month of using it heavily and having it crash about 15 times when moving formatted text between presentations, emails, Sibelius cover pages and PDF files, none of which it seems to like. Also, every element of OpenOffice which strays from Office X-2008's workspace layout seems unintuitive to me. While Office 2008 is/was SLOW to open, it always performed very fast once up and running - with OpenOffice, it's very fast to open, but converting documents, saving, printing, and mass importing/formatting is SLOW as hell...
I'm just hoping Office 2011 speeds up startup times and maintains 2008's ease of use, feature set, and integration (not just between office apps, but also other apps that use text, like InDesign, Sibelius, my Web Browser, Joomla client, etc.
Will Mac Outlook suffer the same incompatibility?
FYI: I cheat and use Apple Mail because I would rather use my own calendar and address book--and because I can. Not everyone feels they can get away with it and they frequently have to rebuild their Entourage database, something I've never had to do with Mail.
For any kind of complex worksheet, it's hard to replace Excel which is one of the best pieces of software in existence for Mac or PC.
Couldn't agree more with this. I use Excel all day at work and I still marvel at how powerful it is. Although I admit the Mac version lags behind in speed and features (namely VBA, or lack thereof), so it's good to see it make a come back in the latest version.
P.S. I've never understood the fascination with auto save. I hate the feature. Many times I don't want my changes saved right away because I'm planning on doing a Save As. Whenever I work on a large document I make it a practice to save every few minutes. I prefer the control to be in my hands and not the computers.
There aren't any ribbon UIs in Windows Vista. Perhaps you are thinking of Windows 7 (which has a ribbon UI in, for example, MS-Paint) or MS-Office 2007.
> "Vista-like Ribbon UI"
There aren't any ribbon UIs in Windows Vista. Perhaps you are thinking of Windows 7 (which has a ribbon UI in, for example, MS-Paint) or MS-Office 2007.
Quintius
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 1
You joined four years ago and this was your first post? Defending Vista's honor? Really?
Word is cumbersome for ordinary day-to-day word processing. The multiple, confusing levels of pagination, for example (mentioned above).
Having said that, I'll have a look at Office for Mac 2011. It will need to be compelling, though, for me to justify buying it.
Because the other office programs, including Pages and OpenOffice, don't do nearly enough of what I want them to do.
I know Word is bloated and annoying to use, with lots of inefficiency, but I can do a lot more with it. (I'm talking about Word 2004, as I will never update to a "ribbon" interface). And Numbers is not a very good substitute for Excel. There are some really nice things in Pages and Numbers, but they just aren't enough.
I'm a two year convert to Mac after over 20 years of Windows. I own no more PCs. It's great, love it, use it daily, better in every way. But this fanboy noise knocking everything MS does as crap just because it is MS, is so juvenile. Office is a terrific product and is used by the world of business. Doesn't make iWork bad - just different. Sure wish the fanboys would grow up and get a job. And learn for themselves why one may want to use, and actually like, some MS products.