The lack of a quality spreadsheet app is a huge problem for Mac users wanting to be free of Redmond. I still don't get why Nisus or Mellel or some other third party developer doesn't pick up on this.
I mean, it can't be that hard.
I'm no programmer, but a page full of cells with basic functions should be relatively simple.
It would take longer to add all the bells and whistles, but look at how many people have waited for Nisus Writer and Mellel to finally take shape.
Yes, we've come full circle. Actually, once you get to a level comparable to Excel, a spreadsheet program is actually more complex than a word processor. I believe that Mesa is the best contender on OS X right now (since it originates from Next), and that if Mac customers would pick it up, it would develop into something way better than Excel.
The point though is that it's not about replacing a proprietary file format for another. A spreadsheet program would have to use a standard file format to be successfull, and right now the best file format being proposed is the OASIS one. If anyone doesn't like it, they are free to be part of the group that writes the specs for the file format and try to modify or improve it.
That's what I'm talking about! It's time for a 3rd party to make a good quality, affordable office suite for the Mac where Apple can't (because they don't want to piss off Microsoft and loose their office suite). If need be, a few of those companies could decide to merge in order to create that office suite.
I've never understood why people are insistent that every application that competes with Excel, or Word, or PowerPoint have an identical interface where ever possible. It's not like MS is the bastion of UI design.
Take Keynote - even though its design tools are much more powerful than PowerPoint's, all I heard for the first three months was "The drawing tools aren't as good." Well duh, it's not a drawing app - but you can drag in any art from any other app, from the free gimp up to expensive professional suites. Talk about missing the point.
I understand a certain amount of gross familiarity being a comforting thing, but is it really that critical for people to maintain a certain paradigm, when it's pretty obvious on the face of it that that approach has some serious flaws?
I've never understood why people are insistent that every application that competes with Excel, or Word, or PowerPoint have an identical interface where ever possible. It's not like MS is the bastion of UI design.
Isn't this a HUGE factor in the whole Mac-switcher thing too? MS won the desktop wars, they won the productivity wars, they won the browser wars, and that means people want MS-alikes in these areas. People can't learn, or rather they don't think they can memorize another set of commands, so they want what is familiar even if it is ad-hoc. This is why Jobs once said as CEO of NeXT that MS has set back computing 20 years, or something to that effect. It's true in all of these areas. How many people have come here or have you met in the "real" world who take an interest in Macs, only to back out when they realize that they have to do things differently. It doesn't matter if different is sometimes or often better, the fear of having to go through th headaches of when they first learn to do steps on their windows desktop, in their IE browser or in their Office suite is to much to get past. So long as that fear is predominant, we won't see a huge wave of switchers, and we won't see any viable alternatives to Office. MS knew that all along -- the GUI is not a primary factor in people's initial buying decisions, it just has to get people hooked into your way of doing things.
InDesign has a Quark interface setting. It's sort of standard to include the interface of the market leader to encourage switching.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
Word 7 or 95 had a WordPerfect mode too. It was so complete that the whole screen turned blue with white text, just like old-school WP. WP keys were mapped to Word's keys also.
Isn't this a HUGE factor in the whole Mac-switcher thing too? ...
Absolutely. I do know a bunch of people who actually switched to the Mac
and were a bit disappointed about the fact that they apparently all of a sudden lost all their hard gained "knowledge of computing", their hard boiled knowledge of the MF**** way! They all trained to think hard. No pleasure intended. Pressure only. This kills people. Click "OK", stupid!
Actually i simply don't get the fact that apple apparently do not intend
I've never understood why people are insistent that every application that competes with Excel, or Word, or PowerPoint have an identical interface where ever possible. It's not like MS is the bastion of UI design.
Most people put _HUGE_ amounts of effort into learning their software ( usually MS ) and typically feel like they are walking on a tightrope when they are using it. From a historical perspective they are justified in thinking that learning new software will be just as hard, and they don't want to do it again. Based on their previous experience they have no basis for thinking that another program might be easier to learn. Geeks dont really get this, because we relish the use of computers for their own sake, quite a different motivation to users who just want to get things done.
Quote:
Take Keynote - even though its design tools are much more powerful than PowerPoint's, all I heard for the first three months was "The drawing tools aren't as good." Well duh, it's not a drawing app - but you can drag in any art from any other app, from the free gimp up to expensive professional suites. Talk about missing the point.
Powerpoint is an interesting example. Despite the fact that I have knowledgable coworkers, who are aware of and have used software like Visio, the preferred drawing app in my office is powerpoint. I very rarely see PP used to create presentations. I see it used all the time to create drawings and diagrams. The two reasons I see that this happens are:
a) it is the only drawing program available on a lot of computers ( we expect all of our correspondents to have Office, and hence PP, but not Visio ), even those used by the drawers ( it is easy to order a new computer with office installed, but very hard to get money for additional software ).
b) unlike a lot of drawing programs it can create multi paged documents ( omni graffle does to ).
Quote:
I understand a certain amount of gross familiarity being a comforting thing, but is it really that critical for people to maintain a certain paradigm, when it's pretty obvious on the face of it that that approach has some serious flaws?
Ive observed a lot of non-technical users. Many of them have only come to grips with their software ( typically Office ) after _YEARS_ of use. Just the thought of repeating that period of time in a state of ignorance scares the living beejeesus out of them.
Powerpoint is an interesting example. Despite the fact that I have knowledgable coworkers, who are aware of and have used software like Visio, the preferred drawing app in my office is powerpoint.
I can understand why they'd avoid Visio, it's a horrible application. Everything just feels far more difficult than it should be in Visio.
I installed Office Mac for I need Word and Excel (some powerpoint) for much of my school life. I did notice though, that when I was done and looking through applications, I couldn't find the Appleworks stuff. Does Office read the appleworks stuff, or is it hidden somewhere? What is text edit? Is it like the text application in windows where you can save it to multiple things? Can I save html, java,php, ect. through textedit in the meantime of me waiting to get Macromedia Studio MX?
Ive observed a lot of non-technical users. Many of them have only come to grips with their software ( typically Office ) after _YEARS_ of use. Just the thought of repeating that period of time in a state of ignorance scares the living beejeesus out of them.
This mostly-mistaken perception is even bigger with the OS than with the apps, and is probably the biggest barrier for Windows-to-Mac Switchers.
Most people put _HUGE_ amounts of effort into learning their software ( usually MS ) and typically feel like they are walking on a tightrope when they are using it. From a historical perspective they are justified in thinking that learning new software will be just as hard, and they don't want to do it again.
Excellent point - but it's strictly a matter of using crappy software in the first place, and being brainwashed into thinking that's 'just the way it is'. Heck, my father-in-law spent years insisting that that *had* to be the way computers were, because there was no way MS could possibly be the market leader with less than state-of-the-art products, so no one could possibly be better. He's an economics prof, and tends to get a bit ivory tower at times...
I've not only seen people use PowerPoint as a drawing app, I've seen people use it as a page layout app. I was forced at my old job to create oversize posters in PowerPoint and print them to postscript plotters! Insanity, I tell you!
iShawn, I'm not sure I understand what you mean about AppleWorks. Is it not in your Applications folder? Was it pre-installed there to begin with? I might have missed or forgotten something from earlier in the thread.
As far as TextEdit, it is a text editor in a strict sense, not a word processor per se. A text editor can be used to write technical stuff like html, xml and things like that, but it does not have word processor features like headers, footers, endnote/footnote support, a lot of page formatting, etc. In other words, it's about the text itself, not so much about the presentation of it. TextEdit does also serve as a kind of showcase for any text features Apple adds to the OS. These features can be incorporated into third party apps as word processor features, but TextEdit itself, doesn't go that far.
Excellent point - but it's strictly a matter of using crappy software in the first place, and being brainwashed into thinking that's 'just the way it is'.
I guess that this really just falls back to Apple's marketing. The only Apple ad Ive seen lately is for the iPod. I guess you could consider the whole iPod thing a huge, self funding, marketing campaign for Macs ( the halo effect ). Even sounds like it will start to have an effect next year.
Unfortunately Apple is a style orientated company these days, and dont seem to be interested in ads that play the advantages of the Mac. It would be easy to compare a Dell and Mac side by side.
Xmas morning: There are two big boxes under the tree. Everyone wakes up and the family opens their new toys. A Mac and a Dell. They set them up. The iMac is much simpler and is ready to go faster. They plug into broadband. Everyone is having a good time. Then pop ups start appearing on the Dell. The system goes down. Wont boot. The father spends the rest of the day on hold with Dell tech support.
Comments
The lack of a quality spreadsheet app is a huge problem for Mac users wanting to be free of Redmond. I still don't get why Nisus or Mellel or some other third party developer doesn't pick up on this.
I mean, it can't be that hard.
I'm no programmer, but a page full of cells with basic functions should be relatively simple.
It would take longer to add all the bells and whistles, but look at how many people have waited for Nisus Writer and Mellel to finally take shape.
The market is there.
The point though is that it's not about replacing a proprietary file format for another. A spreadsheet program would have to use a standard file format to be successfull, and right now the best file format being proposed is the OASIS one. If anyone doesn't like it, they are free to be part of the group that writes the specs for the file format and try to modify or improve it.
Just downloaded the free evaluation. Toolbar's a bit sparse (and seems unchangable) but otherwise looks fine.
I don't understand why something like this isn't marketed better. Microsoft has a Home Bundle, why don't Mac Developers bundle their own?
A Mac Home Bundle could contain:
Nisus Writer Express (Nisus)
Mesa Spreadsheet (P&L)
iCash personal finance manager (MaxProg)
Keynote theme templates
Any other suggestions?
However, it will take some work to get a toolbar consistent with the Excel counterpart. This should be an option.
Oh yes, and the icons need some work.
Originally posted by Frank777
A Mac Home Bundle could contain:
Nisus Writer Express (Nisus)
Mesa Spreadsheet (P&L)
iCash personal finance manager (MaxProg)
Keynote theme templates
Any other suggestions?
That's what I'm talking about! It's time for a 3rd party to make a good quality, affordable office suite for the Mac where Apple can't (because they don't want to piss off Microsoft and loose their office suite). If need be, a few of those companies could decide to merge in order to create that office suite.
Take Keynote - even though its design tools are much more powerful than PowerPoint's, all I heard for the first three months was "The drawing tools aren't as good." Well duh, it's not a drawing app - but you can drag in any art from any other app, from the free gimp up to expensive professional suites. Talk about missing the point.
I understand a certain amount of gross familiarity being a comforting thing, but is it really that critical for people to maintain a certain paradigm, when it's pretty obvious on the face of it that that approach has some serious flaws?
InDesign has a Quark interface setting. It's sort of standard to include the interface of the market leader to encourage switching.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
Originally posted by Kickaha
I've never understood why people are insistent that every application that competes with Excel, or Word, or PowerPoint have an identical interface where ever possible. It's not like MS is the bastion of UI design.
Isn't this a HUGE factor in the whole Mac-switcher thing too? MS won the desktop wars, they won the productivity wars, they won the browser wars, and that means people want MS-alikes in these areas. People can't learn, or rather they don't think they can memorize another set of commands, so they want what is familiar even if it is ad-hoc. This is why Jobs once said as CEO of NeXT that MS has set back computing 20 years, or something to that effect. It's true in all of these areas. How many people have come here or have you met in the "real" world who take an interest in Macs, only to back out when they realize that they have to do things differently. It doesn't matter if different is sometimes or often better, the fear of having to go through th headaches of when they first learn to do steps on their windows desktop, in their IE browser or in their Office suite is to much to get past. So long as that fear is predominant, we won't see a huge wave of switchers, and we won't see any viable alternatives to Office. MS knew that all along -- the GUI is not a primary factor in people's initial buying decisions, it just has to get people hooked into your way of doing things.
Originally posted by Frank777
I was thinking about the lemmings.
InDesign has a Quark interface setting. It's sort of standard to include the interface of the market leader to encourage switching.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
Word 7 or 95 had a WordPerfect mode too. It was so complete that the whole screen turned blue with white text, just like old-school WP. WP keys were mapped to Word's keys also.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
Isn't this a HUGE factor in the whole Mac-switcher thing too? ...
Absolutely. I do know a bunch of people who actually switched to the Mac
and were a bit disappointed about the fact that they apparently all of a sudden lost all their hard gained "knowledge of computing", their hard boiled knowledge of the MF**** way! They all trained to think hard. No pleasure intended. Pressure only. This kills people. Click "OK", stupid!
Actually i simply don't get the fact that apple apparently do not intend
to promote their superior OS. Why so?
Originally posted by Frank777
Okay, add OmniOutliner 3.0 to my list. That thing is way cool.
ditto.
Originally posted by Kickaha
I've never understood why people are insistent that every application that competes with Excel, or Word, or PowerPoint have an identical interface where ever possible. It's not like MS is the bastion of UI design.
Most people put _HUGE_ amounts of effort into learning their software ( usually MS ) and typically feel like they are walking on a tightrope when they are using it. From a historical perspective they are justified in thinking that learning new software will be just as hard, and they don't want to do it again. Based on their previous experience they have no basis for thinking that another program might be easier to learn. Geeks dont really get this, because we relish the use of computers for their own sake, quite a different motivation to users who just want to get things done.
Take Keynote - even though its design tools are much more powerful than PowerPoint's, all I heard for the first three months was "The drawing tools aren't as good." Well duh, it's not a drawing app - but you can drag in any art from any other app, from the free gimp up to expensive professional suites. Talk about missing the point.
Powerpoint is an interesting example. Despite the fact that I have knowledgable coworkers, who are aware of and have used software like Visio, the preferred drawing app in my office is powerpoint. I very rarely see PP used to create presentations. I see it used all the time to create drawings and diagrams. The two reasons I see that this happens are:
a) it is the only drawing program available on a lot of computers ( we expect all of our correspondents to have Office, and hence PP, but not Visio ), even those used by the drawers ( it is easy to order a new computer with office installed, but very hard to get money for additional software ).
b) unlike a lot of drawing programs it can create multi paged documents ( omni graffle does to ).
I understand a certain amount of gross familiarity being a comforting thing, but is it really that critical for people to maintain a certain paradigm, when it's pretty obvious on the face of it that that approach has some serious flaws?
Ive observed a lot of non-technical users. Many of them have only come to grips with their software ( typically Office ) after _YEARS_ of use. Just the thought of repeating that period of time in a state of ignorance scares the living beejeesus out of them.
Originally posted by mmmpie
Powerpoint is an interesting example. Despite the fact that I have knowledgable coworkers, who are aware of and have used software like Visio, the preferred drawing app in my office is powerpoint.
I can understand why they'd avoid Visio, it's a horrible application. Everything just feels far more difficult than it should be in Visio.
Originally posted by mmmpie
Ive observed a lot of non-technical users. Many of them have only come to grips with their software ( typically Office ) after _YEARS_ of use. Just the thought of repeating that period of time in a state of ignorance scares the living beejeesus out of them.
This mostly-mistaken perception is even bigger with the OS than with the apps, and is probably the biggest barrier for Windows-to-Mac Switchers.
Originally posted by mmmpie
Most people put _HUGE_ amounts of effort into learning their software ( usually MS ) and typically feel like they are walking on a tightrope when they are using it. From a historical perspective they are justified in thinking that learning new software will be just as hard, and they don't want to do it again.
Excellent point - but it's strictly a matter of using crappy software in the first place, and being brainwashed into thinking that's 'just the way it is'. Heck, my father-in-law spent years insisting that that *had* to be the way computers were, because there was no way MS could possibly be the market leader with less than state-of-the-art products, so no one could possibly be better. He's an economics prof, and tends to get a bit ivory tower at times...
iShawn, I'm not sure I understand what you mean about AppleWorks. Is it not in your Applications folder? Was it pre-installed there to begin with? I might have missed or forgotten something from earlier in the thread.
As far as TextEdit, it is a text editor in a strict sense, not a word processor per se. A text editor can be used to write technical stuff like html, xml and things like that, but it does not have word processor features like headers, footers, endnote/footnote support, a lot of page formatting, etc. In other words, it's about the text itself, not so much about the presentation of it. TextEdit does also serve as a kind of showcase for any text features Apple adds to the OS. These features can be incorporated into third party apps as word processor features, but TextEdit itself, doesn't go that far.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Excellent point - but it's strictly a matter of using crappy software in the first place, and being brainwashed into thinking that's 'just the way it is'.
I guess that this really just falls back to Apple's marketing. The only Apple ad Ive seen lately is for the iPod. I guess you could consider the whole iPod thing a huge, self funding, marketing campaign for Macs ( the halo effect ). Even sounds like it will start to have an effect next year.
Unfortunately Apple is a style orientated company these days, and dont seem to be interested in ads that play the advantages of the Mac. It would be easy to compare a Dell and Mac side by side.
Xmas morning: There are two big boxes under the tree. Everyone wakes up and the family opens their new toys. A Mac and a Dell. They set them up. The iMac is much simpler and is ready to go faster. They plug into broadband. Everyone is having a good time. Then pop ups start appearing on the Dell. The system goes down. Wont boot. The father spends the rest of the day on hold with Dell tech support.