I'm probably days away from buying one of the new iMacs (leaning toward the 20" at the moment). I was wondering what program is equivalent to Microsoft's Excel?
If you're a student, see if your school has a license for Office. I was able to get Office 2004 for the Mac for $10. Sure, I use it about once a year, but it's saved my butt a couple of times when clueless folks sent me files that were otherwise unreadable.
Keynote kicks PowerPoint's butt. I like Pages a lot (even though it *is* a bit... odd), and can't stand Word. It is an abomination unto life itself. There is no Excel analogue in iWork however.
I use Office for when there's no other choice, and iWork for, well... work.
I wouldn't pay full price for Office, but at $10 it was worth it as a safety net. See if you can get a similar deal.
I've heard great things about Keynote and Pages. Plus I liked Keynote from playing around with it at the Apple Store. I'll have to talk to my brother and see if he can score a nice EDU deal for Excel since he's still in college.
So as of today, I'm leaning toward iWork + Excel... now I just gotta drop $1499+ for the iMac
There's also Mesa or Mariner Calc available, though neither has seen a lot of market success.
....
Mesa comes from the universe of OpenSTEP developers. Mariner Calc has been on the Mac since forever. If these apps had not been successful, they would have disappeared years ago.
You could run the spreadsheet in NeoOffice. Also, AppleWorks is still available for the education price of $39 which has a spreadsheet component to it.
office 2004 kicks ass. there is openoffice as well for excel type spreadsheet. Office 2004 is very good though I would recommend it. Most powerful office suite out there.
I'll second AppleWorks.... it's everything iWorks SHOULD be !
Granted, it hasn't been updated in 5 years, but in that 5 years, you'd think iWorks could have developed a spreadsheet and a database!
Negative...a brand new iMac shouldn't ever touch 5+ year old code. Running AppleWorks in Rosetta with it's OS 9 interface would be a sad sight. And AppleWorks kinda really sucks (even if we ignore the fact that it's been ported from OS 9 and still carries tons of legacy code.)
I have looked at the applications mentioned and it appears they are capable of analyzing data and producing reports, but I did not see any with ODBC support which, to me, seems like a feature that would be the deciding factor as to whether or not the application is used by a business (i.e. corporations, actuaries).
The extension ".csv" seems to be a fairly general and commonly used file type for database. Do any of the previously mentioned programs (besides Excel) open and save to this format?
The extension ".csv" seems to be a fairly general and commonly used file type for database. Do any of the previously mentioned programs (besides Excel) open and save to this format?
CSV is short for "comma-separated values", which is all it is. It's plain text; a comma (sometimes a tab or a space or some other character) separates columns, and a linebreak separates rows. So, lots and lots of apps can easily handle that.
(FWIW, the "Tables" app previously mentioned exports CSV. I haven't tried importing an existing CSV, however.)
Comments
Keynote kicks PowerPoint's butt. I like Pages a lot (even though it *is* a bit... odd), and can't stand Word. It is an abomination unto life itself. There is no Excel analogue in iWork however.
I use Office for when there's no other choice, and iWork for, well... work.
I wouldn't pay full price for Office, but at $10 it was worth it as a safety net. See if you can get a similar deal.
Most believe that iWork will get a spreadsheet component in January, while the recent released beta of Tables looks promising.
(They picked an odd time to launch though.)
There's also Mesa or Mariner Calc available, though neither has seen a lot of market success.
In terms of productivity software, this has been the year of Project Management on the Mac.
I can easily see next year being the Year of the Spreadsheet.
But for the moment, you may be stuck with Excel.
So as of today, I'm leaning toward iWork + Excel... now I just gotta drop $1499+ for the iMac
....
There's also Mesa or Mariner Calc available, though neither has seen a lot of market success.
....
Mesa comes from the universe of OpenSTEP developers. Mariner Calc has been on the Mac since forever. If these apps had not been successful, they would have disappeared years ago.
Granted, it hasn't been updated in 5 years, but in that 5 years, you'd think iWorks could have developed a spreadsheet and a database!
I just checked the Canadian AppleStore and lo and behold, it's up there for CDN $119.00!!!
Oh come on Apple! The thing hasn't been revved in six years. Drop it to $29. already!
I'm still using AppleWorks spreadsheet myself, but I thought it had been discontinued.
I just checked the Canadian AppleStore and lo and behold, it's up there for CDN $119.00!!!
Oh come on Apple! The thing hasn't been revved in six years. Drop it to $29. already!
I think they should just drop the price all together.
I'll second AppleWorks.... it's everything iWorks SHOULD be !
Granted, it hasn't been updated in 5 years, but in that 5 years, you'd think iWorks could have developed a spreadsheet and a database!
Negative...a brand new iMac shouldn't ever touch 5+ year old code. Running AppleWorks in Rosetta with it's OS 9 interface would be a sad sight. And AppleWorks kinda really sucks (even if we ignore the fact that it's been ported from OS 9 and still carries tons of legacy code.)
Negative...a brand new iMac shouldn't ever touch 5+ year old code. ...
Some of us like to get our work done. Others are more concerned about the age of their application code. We each have our priorities.
Some of us like to get our work done. Others are more concerned about the age of their application code. We each have our priorities.
You're right...I won't waste any more of your time. I'm sure you're drawing something real nice in AppleWorks.
The extension ".csv" seems to be a fairly general and commonly used file type for database. Do any of the previously mentioned programs (besides Excel) open and save to this format?
CSV is short for "comma-separated values", which is all it is. It's plain text; a comma (sometimes a tab or a space or some other character) separates columns, and a linebreak separates rows. So, lots and lots of apps can easily handle that.
(FWIW, the "Tables" app previously mentioned exports CSV. I haven't tried importing an existing CSV, however.)