Last month, a Microsoft product manager in the Czech Republic indicated (...)
I guess that the Verge failed to notice the rather plain denial posted over their initial story : "the information shared by our Czech subsidiary is not accurate".
So M$ next great idea to make more money is to make you rent their office productivity tools, and if is web base it is probably not much better than google docs.
My biggest complaint about Office for years was it did way too much, it was trying to compete in too many markets so you got this overly complicated mess. Grant it the new version tried to simplify it, but it too is a mess and hard to work with. I hated paying the big $ for M$ products since they cause me to waste more time trying to figures things out. However, renting a web base program that you know if going to be a mess is adding insult to injury.
To day I just use quick off to view document is works well and does not cost too much.
needed to import data from a txt file with comma and space delimited data - Couldn't do it in Numbers (you can , but you have to convert the delimitors to tabs , and then use some macro, copy / paste didn't work for me
Funny, I just imported a CSV file into Numbers and it worked just fine.
I'd say Quickoffice is excellent competition. In fact because Pages can't access Dropbox (I haven't heard if this has been fixed) I would say that Pages is no competition at all for the vast majority of the world who uses Windows with their iPad.
I've heard quickOffice is good, but every time I look at screenshots of it or watch a video of someone using it, I can't see it. It just looks like a mess to me and not a "hot mess" either.
Re: Dropbox, I think because you (obviously) think well of it that it's distorting the world for you. Dropbox is not as popular as you think and outside of the USA it's useless for many purposes. For instance in Canada and most of Europe, using DropBox for any kind of government job or anything in the education field would violate some fairly serious privacy and data protection laws.
Personally, I think it's way over-rated even if you live in the USA and can use it. It seems like every time I see a computer that's crawling like a snail and I have to figure out why, DropBox is turning out to be the culprit lately.
It's very very popular at the moment, but I think this is unjustified, at least partially. I find many users of DropBox actually have no idea what it really is or does. They tell me they are using it "because everyone is now," but often aren't even aware that it's syncing 30GB of documents to the cloud in the background, or that there is even a "cloud" involved. A lot of folks are signing up for the service and putting all their docs in there so they can "share" them with other dropbox users, even though they are only using a single computer themselves. This leads to a general slow-down of their computer, when in fact they don't actually need the service at all and could just as easily email a document the odd time they need to share something.
I'm not talking about the average idiot either, these are people with multiple degrees etc. Product popularity is not equal to product quality, or product efficacy.
Funny, I just imported a CSV file into Numbers and it worked just fine.
I really like Numbers and virtually never use Excel or Neo Office. Occasionally I have to dip in to either in order to get a conversion to work (dates!). But it amazes me that all the work that went into iWorks originally has not been built upon. There should be an annual upgrade cycle. We don't need a million new features but we need improvements and tweaks in order to make the suite a viable alternative to Office. Apple also needs to show that the suite is here for the long haul. And it should be marketed better. I bet you a considerable percentage of Mac users have no idea about iWorks apps.
(I am talking OSX by the way. Never use those apps on IOS)
I probably over-stated that due to my daily frustrations with Pages. My stock answer lately is that Pages is a template based program that gives you absolutely no control over the templates.
There are many aspects of Pages that need work IMO however and a lot of it seems like it's about 80% finished. Generally speaking, aside from the template issue, the fact that the iOS version still lacks many of the features of the OS-X version is a big problem, and the fact that the user doesn't really have much control over document styles is another. The most frustration however, is generated by the fact that (judging by the almost complete lack of upgrades), the people designing the program apparently think that they are "done."
Development on Pages reminds me of the original iChat. One person designed the whole thing and was then moved on to other projects. Minimal "fixes" were then applied by others over a long, long, period wherein no actual development was underway. Pages kind of feels like that to me. It arrived in an almost identical state to what it's in now, but full of bugs. They fix the bugs (slowly), and they added like two slight variations/features over it's entire life and that's it. It's an almost identical product to it's initial release, both on iOS and OS-X.
The people behind it's development, whoever they are, just don't seem serious to me. Pages often comes across as a sort of "place holder" app to me, or a tick box item to sell iPads whereas with very little work it could blow Word out of the water. I guess I just wish the developers would step up and do something with it.
+++ QFT Well said! I agree completely! Do it Apple -- the time is NOW!
I really like Numbers and virtually never use Excel or Neo Office. Occasionally I have to dip in to either in order to get a conversion to work (dates!). But it amazes me that all the work that went into iWorks originally has not been built upon. There should be an annual upgrade cycle. We don't need a million new features but we need improvements and tweaks in order to make the suite a viable alternative to Office. Apple also needs to show that the suite is here for the long haul. And it should be marketed better. I bet you a considerable percentage of Mac users have no idea about iWorks apps.
(I am talking OSX by the way. Never use those apps on IOS)
Numbers has no extension language that I am aware of, no good statistical addins (presumably the two things are related), and so useless for any "professional" use. The layout is nice, but...
Comments
Originally Posted by mausz
That's the OSX version not the iOS one.
Oh, right, right. I definitely agree that both versions should have feature parity.
Document appearance parity shouldn't even be an ISSUE, but it is thanks to Microsoft's inability. That then extends to all other companies' work…
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
No way I am going to 'rent' something from these bozos.
They haven't even issued a basic fix for the pixelated eyesore that passes off for MS Office on the RMBP.
They sure have. In fact, even before their official upgrade, there was an easy "fix". The Bozos are ahead of you, I guess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronny Islam
There is an update for MS Office for rMBP - It looks good.
See my screen capture of MS with rMBP here :
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s237/sh/f39764be-0e0e-40c6-a458-1205ddc3effa/3b94746b0194240a83e34c21d91c0177
Yup. It's a beaut.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/10/3483076/office-for-ipad-ios-android-2013
So M$ next great idea to make more money is to make you rent their office productivity tools, and if is web base it is probably not much better than google docs.
My biggest complaint about Office for years was it did way too much, it was trying to compete in too many markets so you got this overly complicated mess. Grant it the new version tried to simplify it, but it too is a mess and hard to work with. I hated paying the big $ for M$ products since they cause me to waste more time trying to figures things out. However, renting a web base program that you know if going to be a mess is adding insult to injury.
To day I just use quick off to view document is works well and does not cost too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zunx
PowerPoint for iOS: the ultimate presentation tool.
What's wrong with Keynote?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ankleskater
They sure have. In fact, even before their official upgrade, there was an easy "fix". The Bozos are ahead of you, I guess.
Yup. It's a beaut.
Link?
Add: Found it. Thanks. (Hope it works!).
Further add: Wow. It looks good. Thank you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HawkBlade
Have you not seen DocsToGo?
I agree. Use DocsToGo from dataviz.com for basic Word and Excel editing on Macs, iPhones, and iPads. $10
The premium version is $17 that includes PowerPoint editing.
The Mac app can sync between Macs and PCs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronny Islam
needed to import data from a txt file with comma and space delimited data - Couldn't do it in Numbers (you can , but you have to convert the delimitors to tabs , and then use some macro, copy / paste didn't work for me
Funny, I just imported a CSV file into Numbers and it worked just fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cameronj
I'd say Quickoffice is excellent competition. In fact because Pages can't access Dropbox (I haven't heard if this has been fixed) I would say that Pages is no competition at all for the vast majority of the world who uses Windows with their iPad.
I've heard quickOffice is good, but every time I look at screenshots of it or watch a video of someone using it, I can't see it. It just looks like a mess to me and not a "hot mess" either.
Re: Dropbox, I think because you (obviously) think well of it that it's distorting the world for you. Dropbox is not as popular as you think and outside of the USA it's useless for many purposes. For instance in Canada and most of Europe, using DropBox for any kind of government job or anything in the education field would violate some fairly serious privacy and data protection laws.
Personally, I think it's way over-rated even if you live in the USA and can use it. It seems like every time I see a computer that's crawling like a snail and I have to figure out why, DropBox is turning out to be the culprit lately.
It's very very popular at the moment, but I think this is unjustified, at least partially. I find many users of DropBox actually have no idea what it really is or does. They tell me they are using it "because everyone is now," but often aren't even aware that it's syncing 30GB of documents to the cloud in the background, or that there is even a "cloud" involved. A lot of folks are signing up for the service and putting all their docs in there so they can "share" them with other dropbox users, even though they are only using a single computer themselves. This leads to a general slow-down of their computer, when in fact they don't actually need the service at all and could just as easily email a document the odd time they need to share something.
I'm not talking about the average idiot either, these are people with multiple degrees etc. Product popularity is not equal to product quality, or product efficacy.
Originally Posted by Mac_128
Isn't this basically Google Docs, for a fee?
That Ribbon is expensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gslusher
Funny, I just imported a CSV file into Numbers and it worked just fine.
I really like Numbers and virtually never use Excel or Neo Office. Occasionally I have to dip in to either in order to get a conversion to work (dates!). But it amazes me that all the work that went into iWorks originally has not been built upon. There should be an annual upgrade cycle. We don't need a million new features but we need improvements and tweaks in order to make the suite a viable alternative to Office. Apple also needs to show that the suite is here for the long haul. And it should be marketed better. I bet you a considerable percentage of Mac users have no idea about iWorks apps.
(I am talking OSX by the way. Never use those apps on IOS)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
So what's bad about Pages?
I probably over-stated that due to my daily frustrations with Pages. My stock answer lately is that Pages is a template based program that gives you absolutely no control over the templates.
There are many aspects of Pages that need work IMO however and a lot of it seems like it's about 80% finished. Generally speaking, aside from the template issue, the fact that the iOS version still lacks many of the features of the OS-X version is a big problem, and the fact that the user doesn't really have much control over document styles is another. The most frustration however, is generated by the fact that (judging by the almost complete lack of upgrades), the people designing the program apparently think that they are "done."
Development on Pages reminds me of the original iChat. One person designed the whole thing and was then moved on to other projects. Minimal "fixes" were then applied by others over a long, long, period wherein no actual development was underway. Pages kind of feels like that to me. It arrived in an almost identical state to what it's in now, but full of bugs. They fix the bugs (slowly), and they added like two slight variations/features over it's entire life and that's it. It's an almost identical product to it's initial release, both on iOS and OS-X.
The people behind it's development, whoever they are, just don't seem serious to me. Pages often comes across as a sort of "place holder" app to me, or a tick box item to sell iPads whereas with very little work it could blow Word out of the water. I guess I just wish the developers would step up and do something with it.
+++ QFT Well said! I agree completely! Do it Apple -- the time is NOW!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
That Ribbon is expensive.
Must be hand woven by stomping Steve himself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
PowerPoint is absolute trash compared to Keynote. Has been for YEARS. Or maybe the definition of 'ultimate' has changed.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }Plus, there is slideshark
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
PowerPoint is absolute trash compared to Keynote. Has been for YEARS. Or maybe the definition of 'ultimate' has changed.
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
Quote:
Originally Posted by paxman
I really like Numbers and virtually never use Excel or Neo Office. Occasionally I have to dip in to either in order to get a conversion to work (dates!). But it amazes me that all the work that went into iWorks originally has not been built upon. There should be an annual upgrade cycle. We don't need a million new features but we need improvements and tweaks in order to make the suite a viable alternative to Office. Apple also needs to show that the suite is here for the long haul. And it should be marketed better. I bet you a considerable percentage of Mac users have no idea about iWorks apps.
(I am talking OSX by the way. Never use those apps on IOS)
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Numbers has no extension language that I am aware of, no good statistical addins (presumably the two things are related), and so useless for any "professional" use. The layout is nice, but...
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac_128
Isn't this basically Google Docs, for a fee?
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }Google docs is STILL not ready for primetime, after all these years. It can't open complicated Excel docs.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
I bet MS tablets will have the full version.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }MS tablets with intel chips are also known as "laptops", so yes, they will sell you full Office for them.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }