aegisdesign is dead on. Random number generators almost always, in my experience, return [0.0-1.0]. What more did you want to know??
Gosh I don't know? Maybe it would be useful, in some situations, TO KNOW WHAT STATISTICAL DISTRIBUTION THEY ARE PULLING THE NUMBERS FROM!!!!!!!!! Uniform? Poisson? Normal? Gaussian (ha ha)? My Ass?
As far as locking cells. There are companies that have lost millions because someone didn't lock a cell in Excel. There are people that have actually been killed because someone did not lock a cell in Excel. Locking cell is that important.
Apple is off to a bad start. We have an Excel clone where all the stuff that's good about Excel is not there and all the stuff that sucks about Excel is there.
Negativity! What a way to start my morning on a holiday! (Today is a big holiday in Japan)
A bad start was originally creating iWork with no spreadsheet of any kind (iCouldn'tWork); that has been fixed.
Numbers '08 is a Version 1.0, but a very welcome and major one at that. Sure, it has some growing to do, but it IS now available, and so some users, but not all, have a new option. It would be an amazing feat of design for the first release of a product to be perfect.
Anyone using Numbers should provide Apple with feedback so that the app can be improved and then more people can be happy with it.
BTW: Numbers is so radically different from Excel that it cannot be called a clone. I actually think of it more as a further extension of an element of Pages.
Does Pages have language support? I mean I am studying French and it's really useful to have not only a French spell-checker but also grammer checker, it helps a lot when you're writing in a foreign language! Word has pretty good language support so can someone tell me if you can do the same in Pages???
PS I tried downloading the trial but I keep getting "codec overun" messages...It's sh*tting me to no end.
Apple is off to a bad start. We have an Excel clone where all the stuff that's good about Excel is not there and all the stuff that sucks about Excel is there.
Clone? *looks around* What app are you using, because it's not Numbers...
If you wanted an Excel *copy*... just go buy Excel. Really. I think Numbers is a great new direction to take in usability, but again... it's a 1.0. If what you need or want is Excel (which I think is a pretty horrid app), then it's out there for you.
For my money, the biggest 'sucks' feature of Excel is the UI. Thank god that Numbers didn't clone *that*. The rest is simply ensuring that particular features are added. But if you screw up the general UI approach, you're pretty much screwed no matter how many features you throw at it.
aegisdesign is dead on. Random number generators almost always, in my experience, return [0.0-1.0]. What more did you want to know??
I was going to ask you if you were actually submitting feedback for all of these complaints, or just complaining...
From my perspective, Excel has had 20 years of development. Number has had... 1? 1.5? Maybe 2? The fact that Numbers is, already, heads and shoulders above Excel in the usability dept means I can forgive it for a few odd missing features. (Except lack of AppleScript. That's just... wrong.) I think the strangest bug you found (and it is a bug, IMO) is the super/sub-script issue in Chart Titles. That text field should be editable like any other. I'm also sending feedback on that one, after I confirmed it myself.
As for lockable fields, copy and paste the table over to Pages. It loses much of its editability for formulas, etc, but not data. (You can copy and paste it back to Numbers and get *back* the full functionality - very cool under the covers programming design.) See if that removes editing for formulas, etc.
Wow! That is sweet! So, you're telling me in Pages the formulas in the table will remain working and update as you change the data?
Or just that they remain in the table albeit un-functioning until you copy back to Numbers?
But it's the same bad fscking graphs that Excel has. AHHHHHHH!!!! KILL ME NOW!
Do an x-y plot and ponder why on earth you would include the horizontal grid line and not the vertical OR why you wouldn't get rid of both? They only reason can be because Apple copied Excel.
I know a lot of you guys are graphics artist but I'm a data artist. I live for data analysis. Numbers is barely an amature level of data analysis.
I looked at the "science" example. Style over substance. They are even double counting in the BS histogram they setup. A stupid picture of plans growing? I'm sure the height of the plan in the graphic has no correlation to the averages in the tables.
Wow! That is sweet! So, you're telling me in Pages the formulas in the table will remain working and update as you change the data?
Yup.
Apple did a brilliant trick under the hood - the tables in Pages and the Intelligent Tables in Numbers are the *same thing*. Just the UI into them is different.
Clone? *looks around* What app are you using, because it's not Numbers...
If you wanted an Excel *copy*... just go buy Excel. Really. I think Numbers is a great new direction to take in usability, but again... it's a 1.0. If what you need or want is Excel (which I think is a pretty horrid app), then it's out there for you.
For my money, the biggest 'sucks' feature of Excel is the UI. Thank god that Numbers didn't clone *that*. The rest is simply ensuring that particular features are added. But if you screw up the general UI approach, you're pretty much screwed no matter how many features you throw at it.
Exactly! And it is always wise to start out with no extra features beyond the very basics and ensure that the basic UI "works" without all the distractions that fancy features offer users. If you think about this is how Keynote began as well and that is now a remarkable app now that is has matured a bit (*sniff* makes me so proud! ). Powerpoint can't even come close.
In fact, Apple seems to have followed this philosophy not only with their applications but also with the OS (remember 10.0?), the iPod, and now is doing the same thing with the iPhone. In the short term, it means not everyone can immediately switch to new products no matter how enticing they may be, but in the long term, it ensures that after 3 or 4 generations you have a product that the competition cannot even compare with.
I'd like to be able to do reports using Pages, but I heard it only word counts the entire document, not selections...amongst other things has the range of options been improved in the new version?
And (off topic), will iLife 2008 come with the Leopard or will I have to buy it separately?
Just to confirm, counting selections has been added to Pages 08. It's under the Edit menu in writing tools.
Apple did a brilliant trick under the hood - the tables in Pages and the Intelligent Tables in Numbers are the *same thing*. Just the UI into them is different.
Office does the same thing. Nothing "brilliant" there.
Office does the same thing. Nothing "brilliant" there.
Since *when*?
Make a table in Word, copy and paste it into Excel. Does it become a first-class spreadsheet? Or is it a table sitting on top of the spreadsheet grid as an object? Can you refer to cells within it from formulas?
I'm not talking about embedding a spreadsheet from Excel into Word with OLE.
Not a table. You can add tables or spreadsheets in Word. They two are not the same.
Having said that the spreadsheet created in Word are buggy. But I'm also using Office 2000. Our IT department has no plans to update.
I'm talking about the windows version mind you.
Right. And what I'm saying is that the spreadsheets (Intelligent Tables is what they call them, for a reason) in Numbers, and the Tables in Pages are *exactly the same code* under the hood. They unified them. You can move a table from Pages to Numbers, and it automagically becomes a spreadsheet element. You can move a spreadsheet from Numbers to Pages, and it becomes a table, in that it acts like (and you can act on it as) a table, but invisibly retains all the elements of the spreadsheet you imbued it with in Numbers. Edit a number, formula cells update. It's still a spreadsheet. Copy it back to Numbers, and you can edit those formulas again.
Word and Excel do not have that unification of tables and spreadsheets, as you point out, and they are distinct data structures with two completely different implementations. Apple has, correctly, unified them into a single element that can be worked on in different ways. This is an application of the Model-View-Controller software design pattern, which is pervasive throughout MacOS X. That *is* brilliant, because no one else producing an office suite has bothered to put that much thought into it.
I know a lot of you guys are graphics artist but I'm a data artist. I live for data analysis. Numbers is barely an amature level of data analysis.
So that is what you do. And now you expect version 1.0 of a consumer spreadsheet app to cater to your needs
Sorry, but I find your expectations of this app to be a bit, well, funny
I for one really like numbers and yes, I also work with large datasets with lots of calculations and the need to create publication grade graphs from data with dimensions up to 1000000 x 20, but it never once occurred to me that numbers might be the app for that. Yesterday I used numbers to create a financial overview for myself and today I'll be happily using igor pro and origin to create graphs...
So can Numbers beat Excel's limit of 65,536 rows? I work in Science and have often needed more than that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dutch pear
So that is what you do. And now you expect version 1.0 of a consumer spreadsheet app to cater to your needs
Sorry, but I find your expectations of this app to be a bit, well, funny
I for one really like numbers and yes, I also work with large datasets with lots of calculations and the need to create publication grade graphs from data with dimensions up to 1000000 x 20, but it never once occurred to me that numbers might be the app for that. Yesterday I used numbers to create a financial overview for myself and today I'll be happily using igor pro and origin to create graphs...
So can Numbers beat Excel's limit of 65,536 rows? I work in Science and have often needed more than that.
I just tried it, and numbers can't import more than 65533 rows. It gives a warning and truncates larger files. But to be honest I wasn't expecting it to either because it obviously is not meant for needs like these....
I work in (neuro) science as well and can recommend igor pro for working with files like these. It does have a bit of a learning curve but produces great graphs and is very well suited for automating your analysis/graphing needs. I also work with origin, which is a bit more spreadsheet-oriented but windows only and has a 'not-so-intuitive' UI.
Numbers puts Excel to shame. How is it that Apple can produce an amazing spreadsheet app on the first release and MS has garbage on its 20th release?
Sure Excel is still more powerful. It's almost a programming language in some way. It's got macros (aka trojan/virus back door). But that's it's only redeeming quality...and hardly anyone uses this stuff.
That isn't true, entire companies and industries run their businesses on Excel, I have seen a nations weekly lotto results worked out in Excel (I kid you not), worked for insurance companies who's premiums are calculated in Excel macros, seen various business sales pipelines, cash-flow projections, project issue and risk registers and even business to business electronic messaging all using Excel.
It is by far the best part of MS Office and well regarded.
I haven't looked at Numbers yet, its probably good (I like Pages so far), but its not going to kill Excel, not in a millennium of Sundays - and to pick on Excel like that, is a bit out there....
It is by far the best part of MS Office and well regarded.
Widely used, I'll grant you. Well regarded???!!! I have not met anyone who does not complain about Excel usability, no matter how much they enjoy its feature-set.
Comments
aegisdesign is dead on. Random number generators almost always, in my experience, return [0.0-1.0]. What more did you want to know??
Gosh I don't know? Maybe it would be useful, in some situations, TO KNOW WHAT STATISTICAL DISTRIBUTION THEY ARE PULLING THE NUMBERS FROM!!!!!!!!! Uniform? Poisson? Normal? Gaussian (ha ha)? My Ass?
As far as locking cells. There are companies that have lost millions because someone didn't lock a cell in Excel. There are people that have actually been killed because someone did not lock a cell in Excel. Locking cell is that important.
Apple is off to a bad start. We have an Excel clone where all the stuff that's good about Excel is not there and all the stuff that sucks about Excel is there.
A bad start was originally creating iWork with no spreadsheet of any kind (iCouldn'tWork); that has been fixed.
Numbers '08 is a Version 1.0, but a very welcome and major one at that. Sure, it has some growing to do, but it IS now available, and so some users, but not all, have a new option. It would be an amazing feat of design for the first release of a product to be perfect.
Anyone using Numbers should provide Apple with feedback so that the app can be improved and then more people can be happy with it.
BTW: Numbers is so radically different from Excel that it cannot be called a clone. I actually think of it more as a further extension of an element of Pages.
PS I tried downloading the trial but I keep getting "codec overun" messages...It's sh*tting me to no end.
Apple is off to a bad start. We have an Excel clone where all the stuff that's good about Excel is not there and all the stuff that sucks about Excel is there.
Clone? *looks around* What app are you using, because it's not Numbers...
If you wanted an Excel *copy*... just go buy Excel. Really. I think Numbers is a great new direction to take in usability, but again... it's a 1.0. If what you need or want is Excel (which I think is a pretty horrid app), then it's out there for you.
For my money, the biggest 'sucks' feature of Excel is the UI. Thank god that Numbers didn't clone *that*. The rest is simply ensuring that particular features are added. But if you screw up the general UI approach, you're pretty much screwed no matter how many features you throw at it.
aegisdesign is dead on. Random number generators almost always, in my experience, return [0.0-1.0]. What more did you want to know??
I was going to ask you if you were actually submitting feedback for all of these complaints, or just complaining...
From my perspective, Excel has had 20 years of development. Number has had... 1? 1.5? Maybe 2? The fact that Numbers is, already, heads and shoulders above Excel in the usability dept means I can forgive it for a few odd missing features. (Except lack of AppleScript. That's just... wrong.) I think the strangest bug you found (and it is a bug, IMO) is the super/sub-script issue in Chart Titles. That text field should be editable like any other. I'm also sending feedback on that one, after I confirmed it myself.
As for lockable fields, copy and paste the table over to Pages. It loses much of its editability for formulas, etc, but not data. (You can copy and paste it back to Numbers and get *back* the full functionality - very cool under the covers programming design.) See if that removes editing for formulas, etc.
Wow! That is sweet! So, you're telling me in Pages the formulas in the table will remain working and update as you change the data?
Or just that they remain in the table albeit un-functioning until you copy back to Numbers?
I've got to go try this now!
Do an x-y plot and ponder why on earth you would include the horizontal grid line and not the vertical OR why you wouldn't get rid of both? They only reason can be because Apple copied Excel.
I know a lot of you guys are graphics artist but I'm a data artist. I live for data analysis. Numbers is barely an amature level of data analysis.
I looked at the "science" example. Style over substance. They are even double counting in the BS histogram they setup. A stupid picture of plans growing? I'm sure the height of the plan in the graphic has no correlation to the averages in the tables.
At least they didn't use a pie chart.
Wow! That is sweet! So, you're telling me in Pages the formulas in the table will remain working and update as you change the data?
Yup.
Apple did a brilliant trick under the hood - the tables in Pages and the Intelligent Tables in Numbers are the *same thing*. Just the UI into them is different.
Clone? *looks around* What app are you using, because it's not Numbers...
If you wanted an Excel *copy*... just go buy Excel. Really. I think Numbers is a great new direction to take in usability, but again... it's a 1.0. If what you need or want is Excel (which I think is a pretty horrid app), then it's out there for you.
For my money, the biggest 'sucks' feature of Excel is the UI. Thank god that Numbers didn't clone *that*. The rest is simply ensuring that particular features are added. But if you screw up the general UI approach, you're pretty much screwed no matter how many features you throw at it.
Exactly! And it is always wise to start out with no extra features beyond the very basics and ensure that the basic UI "works" without all the distractions that fancy features offer users. If you think about this is how Keynote began as well and that is now a remarkable app now that is has matured a bit (*sniff* makes me so proud!
In fact, Apple seems to have followed this philosophy not only with their applications but also with the OS (remember 10.0?), the iPod, and now is doing the same thing with the iPhone. In the short term, it means not everyone can immediately switch to new products no matter how enticing they may be, but in the long term, it ensures that after 3 or 4 generations you have a product that the competition cannot even compare with.
Will I need to buy MS Office 2008 or not?
I'd like to be able to do reports using Pages, but I heard it only word counts the entire document, not selections...amongst other things has the range of options been improved in the new version?
And (off topic), will iLife 2008 come with the Leopard or will I have to buy it separately?
Just to confirm, counting selections has been added to Pages 08. It's under the Edit menu in writing tools.
Yup.
Apple did a brilliant trick under the hood - the tables in Pages and the Intelligent Tables in Numbers are the *same thing*. Just the UI into them is different.
Office does the same thing. Nothing "brilliant" there.
Office does the same thing. Nothing "brilliant" there.
Since *when*?
Make a table in Word, copy and paste it into Excel. Does it become a first-class spreadsheet? Or is it a table sitting on top of the spreadsheet grid as an object? Can you refer to cells within it from formulas?
I'm not talking about embedding a spreadsheet from Excel into Word with OLE.
Having said that the spreadsheet created in Word are buggy. But I'm also using Office 2000. Our IT department has no plans to update.
I'm talking about the windows version mind you.
Not a table. You can add tables or spreadsheets in Word. They two are not the same.
Having said that the spreadsheet created in Word are buggy. But I'm also using Office 2000. Our IT department has no plans to update.
I'm talking about the windows version mind you.
Right. And what I'm saying is that the spreadsheets (Intelligent Tables is what they call them, for a reason) in Numbers, and the Tables in Pages are *exactly the same code* under the hood. They unified them. You can move a table from Pages to Numbers, and it automagically becomes a spreadsheet element. You can move a spreadsheet from Numbers to Pages, and it becomes a table, in that it acts like (and you can act on it as) a table, but invisibly retains all the elements of the spreadsheet you imbued it with in Numbers. Edit a number, formula cells update. It's still a spreadsheet. Copy it back to Numbers, and you can edit those formulas again.
Word and Excel do not have that unification of tables and spreadsheets, as you point out, and they are distinct data structures with two completely different implementations. Apple has, correctly, unified them into a single element that can be worked on in different ways. This is an application of the Model-View-Controller software design pattern, which is pervasive throughout MacOS X. That *is* brilliant, because no one else producing an office suite has bothered to put that much thought into it.
I know a lot of you guys are graphics artist but I'm a data artist. I live for data analysis. Numbers is barely an amature level of data analysis.
So that is what you do. And now you expect version 1.0 of a consumer spreadsheet app to cater to your needs
Sorry, but I find your expectations of this app to be a bit, well, funny
I for one really like numbers and yes, I also work with large datasets with lots of calculations and the need to create publication grade graphs from data with dimensions up to 1000000 x 20, but it never once occurred to me that numbers might be the app for that. Yesterday I used numbers to create a financial overview for myself and today I'll be happily using igor pro and origin to create graphs...
So that is what you do. And now you expect version 1.0 of a consumer spreadsheet app to cater to your needs
Sorry, but I find your expectations of this app to be a bit, well, funny
I for one really like numbers and yes, I also work with large datasets with lots of calculations and the need to create publication grade graphs from data with dimensions up to 1000000 x 20, but it never once occurred to me that numbers might be the app for that. Yesterday I used numbers to create a financial overview for myself and today I'll be happily using igor pro and origin to create graphs...
So can Numbers beat Excel's limit of 65,536 rows? I work in Science and have often needed more than that.
I just tried it, and numbers can't import more than 65533 rows. It gives a warning and truncates larger files. But to be honest I wasn't expecting it to either because it obviously is not meant for needs like these....
I work in (neuro) science as well and can recommend igor pro for working with files like these. It does have a bit of a learning curve but produces great graphs and is very well suited for automating your analysis/graphing needs. I also work with origin, which is a bit more spreadsheet-oriented but windows only and has a 'not-so-intuitive' UI.
Numbers puts Excel to shame. How is it that Apple can produce an amazing spreadsheet app on the first release and MS has garbage on its 20th release?
Sure Excel is still more powerful. It's almost a programming language in some way. It's got macros (aka trojan/virus back door). But that's it's only redeeming quality...and hardly anyone uses this stuff.
That isn't true, entire companies and industries run their businesses on Excel, I have seen a nations weekly lotto results worked out in Excel (I kid you not), worked for insurance companies who's premiums are calculated in Excel macros, seen various business sales pipelines, cash-flow projections, project issue and risk registers and even business to business electronic messaging all using Excel.
It is by far the best part of MS Office and well regarded.
I haven't looked at Numbers yet, its probably good (I like Pages so far), but its not going to kill Excel, not in a millennium of Sundays - and to pick on Excel like that, is a bit out there....
It is by far the best part of MS Office and well regarded.
Widely used, I'll grant you. Well regarded???!!! I have not met anyone who does not complain about Excel usability, no matter how much they enjoy its feature-set.