It isn't Office so it sucks. Some people just have to bitch about something to feel good about themselves.
No, it sucks because it sucks. Keynote is top-notch in Mac and decent on iOS.
But Pages is a toy on iOS. It's simply not useful in an enterprise environment, and that's without even getting into the compatibility problems, where it is unable to maintain format of even simple MS Office documents. Apple simply has not dedicated resources to Pages, and especially to Pages in iOS. It's a policy that marks their lack of interest for the enterprise.
If iWork was good enough, Microsoft's main selling point for the Surface would vanish. MS will sell millions of these to businesses who would use the iPad if they could open their documents correctly on it. That's why Office is included. They know this is their one advantage. Apple has been negligent.
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.
I don't agree with you.
I live in Portugal and I'm studying mechanical engineering at the best Portuguese university. All students organize all sorts of materials/exams/etc. and share it through Dropbox. It works great.
It works very well to save all of your documents, like i do (since unlike iCloud, dropbox saves the files on the computer too), your photos (it even has similar features like uploading your photos from your phone, etc)...
It truly is the best cloud solution for regular users. It also helps everyone seeing the iPad as a true alternative to PCs since we have dropbox there too. If for some reason i'm not with my mac, I still can access all my files on any computer/tablet.
System wise, dropbox is a resource hog when syncing. I guess it's up to users to understand that "start on login" any program/app is a bad idea. When I need to sync something, I turn dropbox on, otherwise i close it.
Great app, great storage bonus for colleges/universities... It's the best cloud solution for most people.
It does look very good. And it makes me wonder why Apple doesn't market this even more. All the pundits who described RP on Macs as pointless have obviously not used one. One of the clearest way to see the improvement is to open up the same website in FireFox and Safari, side by side. It is, to me, a holy shit experience.
The average consumer is smart enough to not pay MSFT a monthly "subscription" fee. The average corporate IT department needing to stay in compliance with MSFT licensing rules for mobile device software products has no choice.
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.
Really? That would come as a surprise to many people in the education field in Canada and Europe. Can you please point me to the source of this gem of information so that I can enlighten my friends and colleagues accordingly before they are arrested?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
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.
Every time? Funny that we have 200 machines running DropBox on Windows and another 25 running it on Macs here in my vicinity (education field by the way, and constant sharing with government types) and nary a crawler. You just have all the bad luck, don't you? Or perhaps you take a bit of creative license in making your point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pedromartins
Great app, great storage bonus for colleges/universities... It's the best cloud solution for most people.
Great app indeed. But the best? Can you describe your comparison metrics and process? Which alternatives did you try? For how long?
If iWork was good enough, Microsoft's main selling point for the Surface would vanish. MS will sell millions of these to businesses who would use the iPad if they could open their documents correctly on it. That's why Office is included. They know this is their one advantage. Apple has been negligent.
Disagree. IWork could be equivalent or superior to Office and it would be hard pushed to become the standard bearer on either MacOS or iOS. Just ask the WorkPerfect. Anything is possible but legacy is a powerful marketing tool.
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
You mean 70% of the world.
More like 50%. Windows market share may be 70% but not all of them have Powerpoint installed. Same with Mac/iOS machines. Although some have Keynote installed certainly not all. I have found Keynote somewhat compatible with PowerPoint so long as you don't use any of the cool features that make Keynote so much better than PowerPoint. In my experience if you add animation in Keynote, it usually, if not always breaks, in Powerpoint. If you do just a straight slide show it can export to PowerPoint reasonably well but is not dependable enough for exchanging shows with your Windows associates on a professional level, in my opinion.
Great app indeed. But the best? Can you describe your comparison metrics and process? Which alternatives did you try? For how long?
It's multiple platform, they gave to every user from our university 25 gigs + previous storage (free.. Dropbox space race challenge), stable, fast, ease of use, widespread, etc.
Tried Google drive, box and skydrive. Both use more resources even on idle mode, are less widespread, with box you do not have a free app and storage on your computer, etc.
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
If you keep your animations and transitions down to a minimum, and use compatible fonts, you can export your KN file as PPT. Shows up pretty well at the other end.
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...
Really? That would come as a surprise to many people in the education field in Canada and Europe. Can you please point me to the source of this gem of information so that I can enlighten my friends and colleagues accordingly before they are arrested?...
Any place with decent information and privacy laws (Canada, Europe) typically has the requirement (and I know in Canada that this is specifically the case), to protect the information given to them by others. Once a student gives you personal information, you are legally responsible for what happens to it.
In a classroom setting for example, the teacher is bound by federal law to maintain the security of any student information imparted to them. If any of the students personal information is revealed or exposed, the teacher is directly at fault and can actually be sent to jail if that should occur although I am fairly certain that hasn't happened yet.
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States. Because the teacher can no longer be certain that the students data is secure when using US based online services, it is specifically and universally prohibited from using them.
I am surprised that your teacher friends are not aware of this. It's Federal law and has been for many years now.
Facebook, Google+, iCloud, DropBox and pretty much any other storage service that has it's servers located in the USA are completely forbidden in a classroom environment in Canada.
A lot of these services are looking into building servers in other countries and in finding some way to keep the data separate from the US data for this reason. A lot more people could use them that way since the Patriot act is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon and the US probably won't have data protection and privacy laws of it's own for decades yet as they are way out of the loop on freedom of information etc.
Any place with decent information and privacy laws (Canada, Europe) typically has the requirement (and I know in Canada that this is specifically the case), to protect the information given to them by others. Once a student gives you personal information, you are legally responsible for what happens to it.
In a classroom setting for example, the teacher is bound by federal law to maintain the security of any student information imparted to them. If any of the students personal information is revealed or exposed, the teacher is directly at fault and can actually be sent to jail if that should occur although I am fairly certain that hasn't happened yet.
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States. Because the teacher can no longer be certain that the students data is secure when using US based online services, it is specifically and universally prohibited from using them.
I am surprised that your teacher friends are not aware of this. It's Federal law and has been for many years now.
Facebook, Google+, iCloud, DropBox and pretty much any other storage service that has it's servers located in the USA are completely forbidden in a classroom environment in Canada.
A lot of these services are looking into building servers in other countries and in finding some way to keep the data separate from the US data for this reason. A lot more people could use them that way since the Patriot act is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon and the US probably won't have data protection and privacy laws of it's own for decades yet as they are way out of the loop on freedom of information etc.
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States.
Several governments around the world also share an equal distrust of Canada's RIM requiring them to install servers in their respective countries and hand over the encryption keys as well.
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.
Actually the use of almost any cloud-based provider for handling personal information in a commercial context will violate EU law. (I use the word "almost" mainly because I haven't analysed ALL offerings, but all that I do know about are way off from being compliant with German law). Purely personal use (by a private person for personal use only) is mostly exempted.
Pages is workable, has the basic tools, but anything beyond basic use , IE - I wanted to create labels using a list of names from a spreadsheet (folder labels with names from a data base) , couldn't do it in pages. Had to use word.
Numbers on Mac is also very limited - 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) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3879328?start=0&tstart=0
So that forced me to get Office for the Mac, and imported data w. no problems. I understand they want to keep it simple, so they don't include all the bells and whistles , but sometimes to get real work done you need these tools. This probably works for 80% of the people, 80% of the time. But when you hit that case when you can't do what you need, you are screwed.
I'd like to see what spreadsheet software the finance / engineers in apple use, im pretty sure it's not numbers.
<span style="line-height:1.231;"> </span>
So Numbers isn't any good because you couldn't import comma separated values (csv) files.
Wow.
You know csv files have a very loose definition and conversion depends on the language setting of the OS and tool that does the conversion.
It's probably just luck that the MS tools had the right configuration.
Anyway, you will find that if you change the commas to semicolons (in your case, because other language settings of the OS have the comma as a default) it works perfectly well on iOS and the Mac.
I created and edited several large spreadsheets on my iPad and used csv files as input.
I found out that e-mail with a csv text file attachment shows the spreadsheet in preview if you tap on it and you can open it directly in Numbers if you like.
Numbers is excellent in representing data and I am certain that you didn't need to buy MS Office.
The big issue with regard to privacy is not really the patriot act. Many countries have similar capabilities under existing laws ... usually where "national interest" or "security of the state" is called into play. The much more serious problem is simply that "law enforcement" agencies are showing an increasing tendency to confiscate IT systems and servers and to access these in various ways, including wiretapping and trojans to pursue their interests. Continuous and incremental stretching the limits of "what we can get away with" is not just an issue in the US.
Speaking as a european data privacy professional I can assure you that its NOT the case that there is a lack of privacy legislation in the US. There IS a lack of federal legislation, but most US states have state laws. In the health (HIPAA and HiTech, and the Banking sector) sectors the US regulations are both more stringent and much more drastically enforced than in the EU.
Comments
Originally Posted by zunx
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
You mean 70% of the world.
Do that in the IOS version. As that is the one relevant to a discussion of Office for iOS
Which would render the Surface even more pointless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lkrupp
It isn't Office so it sucks. Some people just have to bitch about something to feel good about themselves.
No, it sucks because it sucks. Keynote is top-notch in Mac and decent on iOS.
But Pages is a toy on iOS. It's simply not useful in an enterprise environment, and that's without even getting into the compatibility problems, where it is unable to maintain format of even simple MS Office documents. Apple simply has not dedicated resources to Pages, and especially to Pages in iOS. It's a policy that marks their lack of interest for the enterprise.
If iWork was good enough, Microsoft's main selling point for the Surface would vanish. MS will sell millions of these to businesses who would use the iPad if they could open their documents correctly on it. That's why Office is included. They know this is their one advantage. Apple has been negligent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
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.
I don't agree with you.
I live in Portugal and I'm studying mechanical engineering at the best Portuguese university. All students organize all sorts of materials/exams/etc. and share it through Dropbox. It works great.
It works very well to save all of your documents, like i do (since unlike iCloud, dropbox saves the files on the computer too), your photos (it even has similar features like uploading your photos from your phone, etc)...
It truly is the best cloud solution for regular users. It also helps everyone seeing the iPad as a true alternative to PCs since we have dropbox there too. If for some reason i'm not with my mac, I still can access all my files on any computer/tablet.
System wise, dropbox is a resource hog when syncing. I guess it's up to users to understand that "start on login" any program/app is a bad idea. When I need to sync something, I turn dropbox on, otherwise i close it.
Great app, great storage bonus for colleges/universities... It's the best cloud solution for most people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Link?
Add: Found it. Thanks. (Hope it works!).
Further add: Wow. It looks good. Thank you.
It does look very good. And it makes me wonder why Apple doesn't market this even more. All the pundits who described RP on Macs as pointless have obviously not used one. One of the clearest way to see the improvement is to open up the same website in FireFox and Safari, side by side. It is, to me, a holy shit experience.
The average consumer is smart enough to not pay MSFT a monthly "subscription" fee. The average corporate IT department needing to stay in compliance with MSFT licensing rules for mobile device software products has no choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
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.
Really? That would come as a surprise to many people in the education field in Canada and Europe. Can you please point me to the source of this gem of information so that I can enlighten my friends and colleagues accordingly before they are arrested?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
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.
Every time? Funny that we have 200 machines running DropBox on Windows and another 25 running it on Macs here in my vicinity (education field by the way, and constant sharing with government types) and nary a crawler. You just have all the bad luck, don't you? Or perhaps you take a bit of creative license in making your point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by pedromartins
Great app, great storage bonus for colleges/universities... It's the best cloud solution for most people.
Great app indeed. But the best? Can you describe your comparison metrics and process? Which alternatives did you try? For how long?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonso Perez
If iWork was good enough, Microsoft's main selling point for the Surface would vanish. MS will sell millions of these to businesses who would use the iPad if they could open their documents correctly on it. That's why Office is included. They know this is their one advantage. Apple has been negligent.
Disagree. IWork could be equivalent or superior to Office and it would be hard pushed to become the standard bearer on either MacOS or iOS. Just ask the WorkPerfect. Anything is possible but legacy is a powerful marketing tool.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Originally Posted by zunx
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
You mean 70% of the world.
More like 50%. Windows market share may be 70% but not all of them have Powerpoint installed. Same with Mac/iOS machines. Although some have Keynote installed certainly not all. I have found Keynote somewhat compatible with PowerPoint so long as you don't use any of the cool features that make Keynote so much better than PowerPoint. In my experience if you add animation in Keynote, it usually, if not always breaks, in Powerpoint. If you do just a straight slide show it can export to PowerPoint reasonably well but is not dependable enough for exchanging shows with your Windows associates on a professional level, in my opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ankleskater
Great app indeed. But the best? Can you describe your comparison metrics and process? Which alternatives did you try? For how long?
It's multiple platform, they gave to every user from our university 25 gigs + previous storage (free.. Dropbox space race challenge), stable, fast, ease of use, widespread, etc.
Tried Google drive, box and skydrive. Both use more resources even on idle mode, are less widespread, with box you do not have a free app and storage on your computer, etc.
Is it enough?
Quote:
Originally Posted by zunx
If you need compatibility with 99% of the world, then PowerPoint is the way. Unfortunately, but that is the fact!
If you keep your animations and transitions down to a minimum, and use compatible fonts, you can export your KN file as PPT. Shows up pretty well at the other end.
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
#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; }
I am still waiting for a decent simulation add-in (or app) for the Mac or iOS.
I've never figured out why someone hasn't jumped in to this void.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ankleskater
Really? That would come as a surprise to many people in the education field in Canada and Europe. Can you please point me to the source of this gem of information so that I can enlighten my friends and colleagues accordingly before they are arrested?...
Any place with decent information and privacy laws (Canada, Europe) typically has the requirement (and I know in Canada that this is specifically the case), to protect the information given to them by others. Once a student gives you personal information, you are legally responsible for what happens to it.
In a classroom setting for example, the teacher is bound by federal law to maintain the security of any student information imparted to them. If any of the students personal information is revealed or exposed, the teacher is directly at fault and can actually be sent to jail if that should occur although I am fairly certain that hasn't happened yet.
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States. Because the teacher can no longer be certain that the students data is secure when using US based online services, it is specifically and universally prohibited from using them.
I am surprised that your teacher friends are not aware of this. It's Federal law and has been for many years now.
Facebook, Google+, iCloud, DropBox and pretty much any other storage service that has it's servers located in the USA are completely forbidden in a classroom environment in Canada.
A lot of these services are looking into building servers in other countries and in finding some way to keep the data separate from the US data for this reason. A lot more people could use them that way since the Patriot act is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon and the US probably won't have data protection and privacy laws of it's own for decades yet as they are way out of the loop on freedom of information etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
Any place with decent information and privacy laws (Canada, Europe) typically has the requirement (and I know in Canada that this is specifically the case), to protect the information given to them by others. Once a student gives you personal information, you are legally responsible for what happens to it.
In a classroom setting for example, the teacher is bound by federal law to maintain the security of any student information imparted to them. If any of the students personal information is revealed or exposed, the teacher is directly at fault and can actually be sent to jail if that should occur although I am fairly certain that hasn't happened yet.
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States. Because the teacher can no longer be certain that the students data is secure when using US based online services, it is specifically and universally prohibited from using them.
I am surprised that your teacher friends are not aware of this. It's Federal law and has been for many years now.
Facebook, Google+, iCloud, DropBox and pretty much any other storage service that has it's servers located in the USA are completely forbidden in a classroom environment in Canada.
A lot of these services are looking into building servers in other countries and in finding some way to keep the data separate from the US data for this reason. A lot more people could use them that way since the Patriot act is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon and the US probably won't have data protection and privacy laws of it's own for decades yet as they are way out of the loop on freedom of information etc.
You are full of shit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
By virtue of the lack of any privacy laws in the USA and the abridgement of the US constitution enabled by the Patriot Act, it is illegal in Canada (and I'm fairly certain most of Europe) to store such information on any service where the servers are located in the United States.
Several governments around the world also share an equal distrust of Canada's RIM requiring them to install servers in their respective countries and hand over the encryption keys as well.
Problems w/ Pages:
- Poor Bibliography support (I think it has EndNote support now, but that seems like a Kludge)
- Inability to add in references (i.e. See Figure 3, See Table Above, See Page 10)
- Poor mathematical equation support
Its a real shame. I would prefer to use Pages than LaTeX or Word, but those three things make it a non-starter for writing technical papers or books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
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.
Actually the use of almost any cloud-based provider for handling personal information in a commercial context will violate EU law. (I use the word "almost" mainly because I haven't analysed ALL offerings, but all that I do know about are way off from being compliant with German law). Purely personal use (by a private person for personal use only) is mostly exempted.
So Numbers isn't any good because you couldn't import comma separated values (csv) files.
Wow.
You know csv files have a very loose definition and conversion depends on the language setting of the OS and tool that does the conversion.
It's probably just luck that the MS tools had the right configuration.
Anyway, you will find that if you change the commas to semicolons (in your case, because other language settings of the OS have the comma as a default) it works perfectly well on iOS and the Mac.
I created and edited several large spreadsheets on my iPad and used csv files as input.
I found out that e-mail with a csv text file attachment shows the spreadsheet in preview if you tap on it and you can open it directly in Numbers if you like.
Numbers is excellent in representing data and I am certain that you didn't need to buy MS Office.
J.
The big issue with regard to privacy is not really the patriot act. Many countries have similar capabilities under existing laws ... usually where "national interest" or "security of the state" is called into play. The much more serious problem is simply that "law enforcement" agencies are showing an increasing tendency to confiscate IT systems and servers and to access these in various ways, including wiretapping and trojans to pursue their interests. Continuous and incremental stretching the limits of "what we can get away with" is not just an issue in the US.
Speaking as a european data privacy professional I can assure you that its NOT the case that there is a lack of privacy legislation in the US. There IS a lack of federal legislation, but most US states have state laws. In the health (HIPAA and HiTech, and the Banking sector) sectors the US regulations are both more stringent and much more drastically enforced than in the EU.