Microsoft Surface ad fails to Excel at math, according to Apple's Numbers

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  • Reply 41 of 230
    muppetry wrote: »
    bigpapi wrote: »
    Wow. This is worthy of an article? This is shameful. Let MS or Google and Apple fight it out accordingly but this is cheap. Office is better than anything Apple has EVER put out, this no one can argue. They're just using it as feature which is smart. The same way Apple uses their ecosystem to sell iStuff. You guys can't be such fanboys not to appreciate something else other than Apples stuff. The surface is actually very nice, I prefer the iPad of course but I have both. He surface is better at some things but that's life, no device is perfect. I know this is AI but have some balls to appreciate another product. So what if the calculation is off? Would anyone in their right mind use numbers over excel? Never. It was maybe a typo, who knows? It is idiotic to write an article about this. Shameful.

    You need to loosen up a little - he's just poking fun at MS, which is a long-standing and honorable tradition even amongst those of us who use their products all the time.  I would mention that "so what if the calculation is off" is a somewhat ironic comment when made in regard to a spreadsheet advertisement though.

    Ease up on him.

    He probably works for Microsoft. Their Communications division. He's clearly panicked.
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  • Reply 42 of 230
    bigpapi wrote: »
    Wow. This is worthy of an article? This is shameful.

    What's idiotic is that this poster wasted a big paragraph (and everyone's time) on something that is "shameful." Can you spell "dork?"
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  • Reply 43 of 230
    BRILLIANT!!!
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  • Reply 44 of 230
    Hmmm... Doesn't Excel recalculate when you finish editing a cell? And isn't the cell containing $500 highlighted for editing (& might it not have contained $0 prior to editing)? Poor art direction, but nothing wrong with the operation of the spreadsheet. But don't let that spoil your fun!

    This could be true, as the pie chart look like it is based upon a different value. However, why is there nothing in the contents bar???
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  • Reply 45 of 230
    Edward Tufte would not be pleased with that ungodly aweful 3-D pie chart!
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  • Reply 46 of 230
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    Edward Tufte would not be pleased with that ungodly aweful 3-D pie chart!
    Nor Stephen Few. 3D pie charts should not exist as an option for anyone to chose.
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  • Reply 47 of 230
    Windows math. Usually Microsoft likes to inflate their numbers, so they don't come out short.

    Actually, whoever plugged in those numbers obviously didn't hit Enter to get the results of that particular cell to show up in the total. Not much of a big deal worth mentioning. Excel is an awesome spreadsheet application.
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  • Reply 48 of 230
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post





    Nor Stephen Few. 3D pie charts should not exist as an option for anyone to chose.

     Laugh it all you want, Steve Jobs did use 3D pie charts, and they can be artfully made too.

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  • Reply 49 of 230
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Constable Odo View Post



    Windows math. Usually Microsoft likes to inflate their numbers, so they don't come out short.



    Actually, whoever plugged in those numbers obviously didn't hit Enter to get the results of that particular cell to show up in the total. Not much of a big deal worth mentioning. Excel is an awesome spreadsheet application.

     

    That's clearly not true, because the number is displayed in the pie chart.

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  • Reply 50 of 230
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by FloridaFlash View Post



    The Numbers example did a great job of adding the column of numbers, but what's with the chart? It is quite lovely, all 3D and all. However, it has TWO slices labeled "Car" and NO slices labeled "Surf Rentals". Does Numbers have trouble with transposition of the content of a spreadsheet to a chart?

     

    Your sentence should have ended as:   NO slices labeled "Surf Rentals."

    (The period goes inside the quotes).

    Therefore, I must completely dismiss and ignore your posting.

    You know, because you want to ignore this article criticizing Excel, as he mistyped one of the labels.  That makes his point completely moot.

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  • Reply 51 of 230
    esoomesoom Posts: 155member
    Best article of the week, thanks :)
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  • Reply 52 of 230
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member

    Numbers has a shocking bug whereby it won't allow you to reference the same cell twice in a formula.  Absolutely pitiful.  There is a work around but it shouldn't be necessary.

     

    As for Pages, it too has a stupid bug that just shouldn't be there.  It can't differentiate a character with an intrinsic trailing or leading space from the version of the character without, so if you want to search for all instances of  " and replace it " without the preceding space it treats them as the same character, even though they aren't.

     

    These two bugs are so basic I think Microsoft isn't far wrong in their assessment.

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  • Reply 53 of 230

    According to your example it looks like both applications make mistakes.

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  • Reply 54 of 230
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post

     

    Numbers has a shocking bug whereby it won't allow you to reference the same cell twice in a formula.  Absolutely pitiful.  There is a work around but it shouldn't be necessary.

     


     

    Yea, I bump into that one a lot.  Won't let me click on a cell twice while entering a formula.  I have to manually type in the cell reference.  This does seem like something that should have easily been fixed.  I also noticed that in the new version that just came out, the cell reference is a mixture of the the labels for row and column headings, instead of just, say "C2".  I find this a real pain when trying to proofread some cells to find a syntax error in a formula.

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  • Reply 55 of 230
    hahaha to "The only explanation for Excel's big billboard bug blunder is that perhaps Office is stuck writing off most of the cost of the Surface in its calculations, after Microsoft was similarly forced to erase $900,000,000 of its earnings after Surface tablets failed to sell last year." Very funny
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  • Reply 56 of 230
    rogifanrogifan Posts: 10,669member
    zoffdino wrote: »
     Laugh it all you want, Steve Jobs did use 3D pie charts, and they can be artfully made too.
    Yeah well Steve Jobs didn't always get things right.
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  • Reply 57 of 230
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post

     

    Numbers has a shocking bug whereby it won't allow you to reference the same cell twice in a formula.  Absolutely pitiful.  There is a work around but it shouldn't be necessary.

     

    As for Pages, it too has a stupid bug that just shouldn't be there.  It can't differentiate a character with an intrinsic trailing or leading space from the version of the character without, so if you want to search for all instances of  " and replace it " without the preceding space it treats them as the same character, even though they aren't.

     

    These two bugs are so basic I think Microsoft isn't far wrong in their assessment.


     

    Which version of Numbers are you running?  I've never seen that bug.

     

    Just checked the old and new Pages too, and they don't behave as you describe either - they resolve leading and trailing spaces just fine in the search and replace functions.

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  • Reply 58 of 230
    Originally Posted by Rogifan View Post

    Yeah well Steve Jobs didn't always get things right.

     

    And somehow, here, you’re “right”, huh.

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  • Reply 59 of 230

    DED article shows a massive issue with numbers and the errors are present in all versions from "iPhone, a Macintosh, or even the beta version of iWork for iCloud accessible via a web browser".

     

    Here are a list of errors

    1. List Car twice in pie chart

    2. Omits Surf Rentals

    3. Car percentage wrong (yellow slice)

    4. Food percentage wrong (orange slice)

    5. Drive Rentals percentage wrong (red slice)

    6. Car (again. assume to be Surf rentals) percentage wrong  (purple slice)

    7. Total of pie chart is 99%. 

     

    Thanks DED for showing massive issues with numbers and why Office is still king.

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  • Reply 60 of 230
    normmnormm Posts: 653member
    I'm a big fan of DED, but the humor would be enhanced if he hadn't somehow ended up with all of the Numbers graphs he showed being wrong. None of them show seven differently labeled items, as they should.

    Edit: This has now been corrected, but DED should acknowledge that his figures have been corrected. Journalism!
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