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Apple Making a Spreadsheet?
Raleel writes "It appears that apple has trademarked the word "Numbers". Speculation is that it is a new spreadsheet. It makes sense with Keynote, Pages, and Mail." That would sort of fill in the last major hole in their lineup.
From TFS:
Errant homonyms aside, this seems to make a lot of sense...after all, Apple is just a spreadsheet shy of an office suite...although between M$ Office and Open Office, I find myself wondering why they're even bothering...
Also, wasn't there an Apple spreadsheet program previously...called 'grid' or something? I seem to recall something along those lines...perhaps 'Numbers' isn't a spreadsheet after all. The assumption that 'Numbers' is in fact a spreadsheet is only speculation, after all.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Indeed that the word "Numbers" could make sense to a spread sheet program. However without knowing more details speculation is open to a variety of purposes; it could be a finance application or just a calculator.
But it does make sense in the naming convention of previous Apple app's that a spreadsheet program would be called "Numbers." Yet I'm not convinced that this would be a good name for it.
Unmatched Style |
and then we will see Apple's "innovative" new product line
Shouldn't this read "Speculation is that it is a new spreadsheet program "?
"Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes."
I loose my mind everytime I see silly errors like that.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
But I guess you *can* trademark Numbers...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
They finally have ehough market share to get off pen and paper. Soon they'll graduate to Quicken.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
iCal is their calendar software.
How the heck can anyone get away with trademarking a common word? Can I trademark the word "trademark" and send the world into a self-referential abyss?
I'm an apple user and supporter, but this is just silly. Name it that, fine, but don't try to limit other people from using it.
(Couldn't find the link to the Onion story - they've pulled it)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Yet I'm not convinced that this would be a good name for it.
Unfortunately the name reminds me of a stupid detective show.
Apple doesn't have a high performance virus distribution mechanism yet. It's way too easy to turn off "open safe files after download" in Safari and then all you've got to work with is social engineering.
There is nothing wrong with OpenOffice. They should make a stronger push toward that.
Numbers? Shouldn't it be iNumbers? The next word processing software will be iSentence. They can't use iWord or Ballmer will sue them silly.
Looks like I'm gonna owe Apple lots of money soon. I use the word "Numbers" about 100 times in my latest project report.
So is this just more proof that Apple is distancing themselves from Microsoft in an attempt to join forces with Intel and rule the world!!!!!!
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
There is nothing wrong with OpenOffice.
*snort*
I'd rather use punched cards.
Think about it. They trademarked "Numbers". That includes 0 and 1! All the software I use is under copyright violation now!
Bored? Browse Slashdot with a +6 modifier for Troll comme
Think that's bad? Wait for the word processor called "Alphabet". From what I hear, they'll get Sesame Street characters to perform the same function as Clippy.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
that's what [sic] is for...
sic
adv.
Thus; so. Used to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error or unconventional spelling, has been retained in its original form or written intentionally.
How long before someone makes add-ons for it: ...Of The Beast! -- helps with tax-related info ...Of Angels on the Head of a Pin -- charitable contributions module.
Book of... -- Statistics module with lots of frequency distribution functions.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
A case for outsourcing to India, perhaps?
what about a database app?
Maybe it's just their answer to calc.exe?
I really hope they do that, because NeoOffice J and Open Office are not cutting it on the Os X platform. *Hastily runs for the exit, ducking head down*
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
Deuteronomy.
It's the NextStep to the iBible.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I'm equally offended by your disregard for capital letters, jackass.
It looks like Apple might be getting prepared for the chance that Microsoft does decide to withdraw their support from the Mac. It would be an interesting turn if Apple eventually tried marketing a few of these applications on Windows like they do with iTunes. Not likely to happen because Apple still wants to sell computers, but it would give Microsoft a little competition other than Open Office.
But I guess they mean 'a spreadsheet... THAT LOOKS KEWL!'
You must think in Russian.
I'm gambling that Apple is expecting to keep profit margins up by keeping support rates extremely low by developing very high quality software.
I just downloaded this new spreadsheet program and my powerbook feels much snappier now!
It could be the Apple version of minesweeper. You need a killer app to sell all those new Mac-Intel machines.
I wonder what CBS thinks about this trademark considering that they have a crime drama entitled "Numb3rs." Will this be another challenge of Apple's trademarks (think: Tiger)?
I just trademarked the word "trademark". HA! Now are you going to do?
1) A trademark isn't a patent.
2) You can trademark common words for a particular specific business use. Trademarks aren't globally applicable.
3) When you're making a point that the rest of the IANAL morons here didn't bother with, I wouldn't emphasize the fact, redundant or no.
Now I understand why it says "News for Nerds"....congratulations.
I didn't think you could copyright just one word that is in the dictionary. I thought you'd be able to copyright "Apple Numbers" but not "Numbers" on it's own. Can anyone confirm or deny?
We thought that Apple would be able to obtain PowerPC chips for years to come that did what we wanted. Steve didn't assume and ran all OS X versions on prototype Intel-equipped Macs as early as 2000 just in case things did not pan out as IBM promised. We know now how foresight like that can help.
In 1997, to aid in Apple's revival, Microsoft initially agreed to make new versions of Office for Mac in exchange for non-voting stock options, a token deposit of $150 M in Apple's account, and under-the-table dismissal of lawsuits that Apple filed. That agreement has since expired. Although Office for Mac is healthy and profitable to both MS and Apple (since an Office version presents justification for businesses to buy Macs), Steve looks ahead, just in case, and ensures that there are Apple products that also fit the bill.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
After all, Apple can even get their engineers to continue working on projects after they're fired
Let's hope Numbers take its inspiration from Lotus Improv.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Sounds kindof like "new math". You know, they could redefine the rules one normally uses with numbers...Could be useful for benchmarks, Netcraft surveys, time-warping their release dates, etc. :-)
That could make for some interesting financial calculations.
Pages is no Word replacement. I am by no means a huge fan of Word, but things like changes tracking really have no duplicates in Pages. Same thing for Keynote. I hate PowerPoint, and Keynote is just so polished, but there are plenty of things that I have to use PPT for because Keynote just doesn't do it.
I think Apple is trying to compete with Microsoft Works, you know the light-weight office tools that can come with the system / are vastly cheaper than Office, but perfect for someone that is only typing a paper or graphing stuff from an intro chem class.
MS Office on the Mac keeps Apple in the game. Apple realizes that not everyone wants to spend $400 on an office suite, so they are attempting to give a cheaper, yet full-featured alternative.
Pages is an Apple Pro App. Other Apple pro apps (Quicktime Pro) run on Windows.. as does iTunes because it sells iPods
Apple used to sell AppleWorks 6 for Windows - I have a copy. It's horrible. Apple's Office may also appear on Win32 eventually. Hopefully somewhat more nicely
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
IIRC Claris/Apple bought Wingz Spreadsheet, many years age.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Are they using OO.org Calc or MS Excel?
...it just means that Steve is a big Kraftwerk fan.
The reason it is "redundant" is because most of us, upon reading the article, already knew that some idiot who doesn't understand trademarks would write a post like yours complaining about it.
Trademarking "Windows" == Evil
Trademarking "Numbers" == Good
Maybe Apple trademarked it, simply so noone else can?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't have a mouth, you insensitive clod!
I will give your cowardly anonymous opinion all the consideration it merits.
There, that was quick. Your point might have any weight at all if you stood behind. On the off chance that you bother to read responses to your random anonymous flames, what aspect of the trademark do you feel that I'm being an idiot about? Please show examples, compare and contrast to "Coke", "Kleenex" and so on, and show me where, O wise and glorious cowardly anonymous troll, I have misunderstood the situation
Or just go away, that'd be fine too.
Not enough, not comparable.
The "real" Microsoft Office Professional has:
o Access
o Excel
o Outlook
o PowerPoint
o Publisher
o Word
Even if Apple does a spreadsheet, that's not going to be enough. The major deployment for Office in small to medium businesses is with MS Access and a bunch of Visual BASIC/VBScript glue to turn it into vertical market custom software.
I know several people who run multimillion dollar financial services businesses, each of which is under 100 employees, and their collections applications, reporting applications, etc., are all based on this model to glue things together.
If you try to buy discounted paper - e.g. you are into factor financing, or you are dealing with a Fannie May or Freddie Mac paper, or subprime credit (face it: that's most of the people trying to get credit in the first place), etc. - then you are likely in this category. Even if you aren't, the data comes from companies like Credit Suisse First Boston, Chase Manhattan, Banc Of America, etc., on CDROMs in access database or Excel spreadsheet data formats.
The thing that would switch these people over to Macintosh (don't kid yourself, many of these people want to switch - their employees are just as likely as the next huys to surf the web and end up with spyware out the wazoo) is the ability to run all the same scripts and custom code (all of it interpreted) as they can on their Windows workstation. I know at least three companies that would switch in an instant, but who aren't willing to do so now because they don't want to have to invest in something they can't make minor changes to themselves without learning how to be a programmer. Or keeping a programmer on staff full time.
And that's just one vertical market.
You can find the same issues with document storage and retrieval systems that use optical scanning to get out from under paper. You can also find the same thing with medical billing systems, and Doctors office management systems. Many insurance companies have specific client requirements for integration with their networks for electronic billing and payment processing: if you don't do it using their app., then you get to fill out paper, and they get to it when they get to it.
The deck is seriously stacked, and it's the compatibility of the database and the inter-application scripting, not the spreadsheets, which keeps Windows entrenched. It's no mistake that neither Access or the full VisualBASIC suite has made it to platforms other than Windows.
-- Terry
I realize that most of you (at this time) are just having fun making fun of Apple's names, but I though Id chime in and sort a few things: :)
.
;)
Pages, Keynote, (and Numbers) are NOT apps that are part of the digital lifestyle, iCal, iPod, iSync and so on ARE part of a ditital lifestyle, and are more "hobby" apps then professinal apps. This is why the small movie editing package is called "iMovie" and the profesional one is called "Final Cut Pro"
However; I wouldent expect Numbers to make an appearence before autumn at least.
My though is that Apple expands its work-app suite.
Two years ago, you could buy an app called Keynote, now you can only buy Keynote (now 2.0) along with Pages (1.0) but the price is the same! So next year, it will be Keynote 3.0, Pages 2.0 and Numbers 1.0
Or at least that is what iHope
There's a difference between "Aqua coloring" and actual integration into the OS. Using OO on a Mac works, but not as well as a native OS X app would - not only does it not look right, but it doesn't work with any of the cross-app "services" that OS X provides. It's a second class citizen.
Why does everyone forget database? If you are going to replace Office you have to do something about Access.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
How can you trademark a name that gets 200 million hits on Google?
will cbs be filing a suit for being too close their show "numb3rs"? cbs is so leet! skeet skeet!
Look, OSX has it's own 'thang' going for it. Its is basically NextStep tarted up a bit. MS Office doesn't truly look and feel native, OOo damned sure isn't, and won't anytime soon. AppleWorks is too 'lite' and was a Classic App anyway. They need a native office suite and it looks like they are bout to fill in the last piece.
The interesting question is whether Steve decides that now is the time to end the unholy deal with Microsoft where MS provides Office for Mac so long as the Mac never tries to become mainstream. (Mainstream seems to be defined as >10% of PC sales for this purpose.) Being on iNtel means they could produce as many machines as they could sell. And if they played their cards right and cut HP or Dell in on the action they could probably move a metric assload of machines come next Xmas season.
Yes it would be the return of the clones, but if they really want to be a player they have to find a way to gain a significant installed base. They can't do the deal with Hollywood they so obviously lust after unless they can show an ability to get enough installed base to be worthy of signing a major content distribution deal with.
Democrat delenda est
You have got to be kidding! Microsoft is a company built on the premise of taking other people's ideas and running with them, for better or for worse. If the history of computing has taught us anything it's that sometimes a better mousetrap can revolutionize everything--that the old version of something doesn't have to be the be-all end-all, and that today's king of the hill can be tomorrow's peasant in the street.
I don't know what, and it must be different, nearly more than half of OSS community try to re create windows desktop and they do but people still uses microsoft.
Given that Windows itself is yet another idea copied from someone else you undermine your own point of view with that rather appropriate example.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
You know what I hate? Watching one company copy another's program without looking at any other examples for good ideas. This seems to be happening MORE these days, notably in the free software world.
So what WOULD make a good spreadsheet? Here's some ideas...
1) start with Lotus Improv - the key idea here is the separation of sheets, temporary work, and formulas
2) add 3D sheets from Stories, they would fit into Improv's "sheetlette" idea perfectly
3) there's got to be an idea or two from Spreadsheet 2000 worth using
4) Now make every *&%&^% part of it AppleScriptable
THAT is the spreadsheet you want.
Is anyone else troubled that a company can acquire a trademark for a word so generic as Numbers? Worse than that, companies seem to own names more than people do (though I admit that Mike Rowe was a special case). Still, it seems that corporate powers have abused the trademark system.
So Apple better do something with their document formats. That is, make it XML and open-source OR even better, use the OpenOffice document format.
Then they can slap their famous user interface on it and watch adoption grow. If they go on their own again - with no PC support for the format - fuhged it...
All the hits I found were along the lines of "Did you hear that joke on the Onion..." instead of an actual archive. 'Didn't do the in depth.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
when I was in Kindergarten in Pennsylvania, I wrote a comic book called Numbers which was about computers and robots and space aliens.
... a MILLION DOLLARS!!!! ah hah ah hah hah! ... um, look, it was in the 60s, that was a lot of money back then ... I wonder how much that would be in modern US currency ...
So obviously, I have a stronger claim.
And since at least four kids paid me a quarter for the comic book each, I did it as a small business, and thus Apple will have to pay me
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
With people rhythmically populating cells to the sounds of the Chemical Brothers...
New applications from Apple will be named "paper", "pencil", "doors", "toy". The name "clip" was not taken due to possible conflict with Microsoft Office's animated assistant.
I also have the original paperwork for All Of The Above, so noone else can use that.
Yes, trademarks and patents and copyright extensions are getting extremely silly. Ben Franklin must be spinning in his grave at about 5000 rpm right now.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Where'd you get this jacket?
Now they just need an app named "Bases" to replace Access.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
How soon they forget! Visicalc by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston 1979. First spreadsheet program for personal computers on the Apple II. Not invented by M$ (either one -- Viscalc and the Apple II).
I'm trademarking the word "Word", too.
Oh wait, it's been done. I guess all that's left is to trademark the words "Letter", "Character", "Input", and "Trademarked".
Slices, dices, eats your lunch.
Can they still trademark the word "Numbers" if it's already the title of a song by Kraftwerk?
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?" --Seymour Cray
If Apple were making a spreadsheet it would be called "iNumbers"
There is truth in humor.
WTF?!?
When Macs start on Intel chips not only will OSX be heads up with Win XP or longhorn, but now the will be taking their suite to MS Office. You would think that awakening the sleeping giant would not be the best idea.
I'll trademark and copyright the words "copyright" , "word" , "IP" , "property" .... so nobody can use them anymore!
The US copyright and trademark systems are f**king idiotic !!!!!
5) ???
6) Profit!!!
How about a Visio killer? This is one area I think Apple's design sense and the Mac's graphics capabilities could really shine. Call it Diagrams.
a cPaint
Also how about a lite version of FileMaker as part of the iWork suite to parallel Access? While they are at it how about bringing MacPaint and MacWrite back? Pages isn't really a word processor. It is more like MS Publisher.
Keynote
Pages
Numbers
Diagrams
FileMaker
M
MacWrite
Sweet!
Larry would have said A one and a two ...
...
Steve will say i1 and i2
Infuriate left and right
...trademarkin' stuff. All yer base bullongs tah mahy now. Fer great justus!
Check out CoreData apis - uses sqllite underneath. About as capable as access and easy for a developer to use. What is missing is the way to go to a larger sql database.
Ya, i know of GroupCal, but I was never particularly happy with how it worked. I would like to see iCal work with exchange over webdav at least. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but it's so blatantly missing that one has to wonder if there wasn't a hidden deal somewhere. I suppose if i were Mr. Jobs, I might just buy Snerdware.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Using OO on a Mac works, but not as well as a native OS X app would
What about NeoOffice? Has anybody tried to do some real-world work with this suite? They have a three phase roadmap aimed at NeoOffice becoming a truly native app complete with the Aqua look and feel.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Keynote, their powerpoint replacement, generates XML files for its slideshows. And you can download a long and detailed explanation of the format. I started looking into writing a web application for my school where professors could browse digital photos from the slide library, select the ones they wanted, and have a keynote presentation automatically generated. And make it possible for students to download and generate slideshows, etc. It certainly seems possible, I just never had the time to get past the initial planning stages, and now that I've graduated, I'm not going to do it for them unless someone pays me.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Both Pages & Keynote documents are XML files at their core (they aren't even Zipped like OO) -- although Apple are a little lazy with the documentation at the moment (Keynote v1 is documented on apple.com, v2 isn't yet), it's not that hard to trawl through the XML to grab content & style
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
They'd better be re-making Improv, scaring the shit out of those pencil-pushing retards...
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Unless You're still fighting the flab...
I know places where saying that can get you maced with Axe bodyspray, and beaten with birkenstocks or flipflops.
The last time apple started creating 'replacements' for existing commercial software, it was with Safari. A short time after Safari was release, Microsoft announced that they were EOLing IE for the Mac. I sometimes wonder if someone at Apple calls them up and says "Look, we like you guys, but IE for Windows is just going in directions that the mac version can't follow. We think you should start looking into making your own browser, because there's a chance we will be EOLing IE in a year." I sometimes wonder that if as soon as Apple gets all the pieces in place to make an "office replacement", that Microsoft will make a "surprise" announcement that they are discontinuing office for the mac.
'Course, the difference between IE for the mac and Office for the mac is that IE was given away for free while Office has a hefty pricetag.
Can't...resist...trollbaiting!
If my life ever becomes so sad that I not only perch myself on my keyboard all day long...
Looks like you're there, sporto. Sucks to be you.
but actually PAY to subscribe to an online forum
Oh yeah...without that $5.00, I'll never make the house payment! Woe is me!
so I can be the first karma-whoring poster to every article
Well, my posts may be on-topic and thoughtful (translation for you: karma-whoring), but they beat the hell out of your GNAA bullshit, don't they?
I hope my friends
I've got news for you, sport. Those people that you play UT against aren't your friends...they're bots. Haven't you ever wondered why they don't talk to you? (No...I imagine you wouldn't have wondered...that's pretty standard for your life.)
(if I have any left at this miserable stage of existance [sic])
I hope your friends pool their allowance and buy you a dictionary, you sad little man.
will have the courtesy to put a bullet in my brain.
Can I be your friend?
Log off before you hurt yourself...further.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Of course by the time this gets posted it'll be redundant too. Thanks Slashdot. Just FYI: 85 minutes is longer than 2 minutes.
Something like exchange, but better... :-)
OmniGraffle, especially with its upcoming version 4 is evey bit as close to a killer of Visio as Pages is to Word. Of course that might not be saying much. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/
When they'll start suing Bible publishers for trademark infringement (remember the book of Numbers?) ...
:P
But really, can you pick a stupider set of trademarks? Rightfully, you have to consider most of theirs to be completely generic as of the time they filed for the trademark. Granted, Microsoft & others haven't been too bright about choosing them, either.
Oh well, if they ever send C&D letters to people talking about the numbers in their spreadsheets, people can just send them a copy of the sosumi sound
I think it would be awesome if they started to use Gnumeric, perhaps with a bit more feedback to the developers than they did for Safari...
(It would also be better if they had just bought rights to the VisiCalc name and used that.
akatsuki
http://akatsuki.co.uk/
Also, wasn't there an Apple spreadsheet program previously...
Yeah, I seem to remember this little known app called VisiCalc or something. It must have been a failure, because no one seems to even remember it here...
Not sure what these 3d sheets from Stories are (is it a way of vieing data?). Spreadsheets in Improv were 12 dimensional, and that was only an artificial limitation. It was the only hard limit that ever got in my way, and then not very much. I personally never got close to the 2^32 (4 billion) cells per sheet limit, or the 2^32 sheets per file, views per sheet, and presentations per sheet limits. Admittedly trying to see more than about 10 dimensions to a sheet all at once started to squeeze the data area of a view pretty small.
.. can't stretch either of these to 13. It's tough. You need something like an anova experiment with 12 groups of classes x an observation structure. Anyone want to try?
Now lets see how to get a bunch of dimensions quickly, with a little ag example:
Time
Fertilizer treatement (phosphourus rate)
Fertilizer treatment (nitrogen rate)
Straw treatment
Replicate
Observation (this is realy a structure of different types of data for each observation. Structures being indistinguishile from dimensions is nice. In Improv you had to use a dimension to get a struct.)
Maybe a buisness overview example would be better:
Year
Month
Office (Baker, LaGrande, Downtown Ontario, Ontario Outskirts, Fruitland, etc..)
Section (Apple, Microsoft, Linux, PICs)
Department (Sales, Parts, Repairs, Service, Custom Programming, Custom Equipment)
Observations (Income, Expenses, Recievables, Payables, Capital, Liabilities) and Calculations (Profit, Net worth, Capital Gains)
Hmm
There's no way an Apple version of Minesweeper would ever fly without a two-button mouse.
Map "toggle flag under mouse pointer" to the space bar, and if that's too difficult, turn on autoflag. If there are 3 spaces bordering a 3, the program would automatically flag them all. Of course, there would have to be separate speed records for play with autoflag turned on.
Of all things on a Mac, that REALLY needs to be an option. It wasn't bad on all-in-one Macs with small screens, but on a 30" or dual-23s that universal, top-of-screen menu is all to often WAY OVER THERE...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Their current in-house efforts would be very "coopa-tition" 'ish with the vanilla OSS projects. Things like Safari/KHTML, samba, fink, etc... if they'd just open up and realize that the OSS will never catch them, then they can lead the pack. All Pages needs is OASIS or Scribbus compatible input/output so it can cooperate with windows/linux users. Then Apple becomes like a Linux distro provider.. you get the whole package of Apple parts that work really well, and you can still work with all your friends that are using RedHat or Ubuntu!
Linux isn't really a theat to apple.. they sell hardware! Linux just "mooches" off all the disgruntled MS users with spare computers. Who's not going to look at a windows PC with nothing [+ $300 office] versus a linux distro [$99 for everything plus a kitchen sink in there... hack it yourself] versus an apple [$150 for iLife +iWork] with spit n polish on everything.
Apple version of minesweeper. You need a killer app to sell all those new Mac-Intel machines.
iDonkey.
For those who don't know:
DTP = Desktop Publishing
(I'll admit: I had to look it up)
The space unintentionally left unblank.
Twist: I need you to see me as a whole!
Brian: I do!
Twist: A whole Brian, with a 'w'!
Can the FSF trademark the word "Gnu" if it's already the name of an African antelope?
FSF can and will run roughshod over the rights of antelope, in Africa and around the world -- unless you help. Put your money where your heart is. Give generously to the Save the Antelope Foundation.
-kgj
-kgj
A not ver related story: Numbers station:
Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin that broadcast streams of numbers, letters (using a phonetic alphabet), or words. It is not known publicly with certainty where these signals originate nor what purpose they serve. The voices that can be heard on these stations are often mysterious: mechanically generated; spoken in a wide variety of languages; usually female, but sometimes male or those of children. Numbers stations appear and disappear continuously, although some stick to regular schedules, and their overall activity has increased slightly since the early 1990s.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If this is a forthcoming spreadsheet program, then hopefully Apple makes it as functional as Excel. Excel is probably the best and most functional program in Microsoft Office. The number (ha ha) of things you can do with it is amazing. I used it all the time in my multivariate stats class to do complex matrix algebra. One problem I've had with Calc in OpenOffice, is its lack of many math/stats functions that Excel has. Yeah, I know you could write a little code to run the specific algorithms but that takes extra time and effort.
There is a lot of depth to Excel that can be hard to reproduce in one shot. I am a huge fan of Apple but I really don't think this hypothetical spreadsheet program will replace Excel for quite a while. I know Apple is probably trying to distance themselves a bit from Microsoft (at least by providing good alternatives to Office) but I don't know how good they'll do on this first version of Numbers.
Can the FSF trademark the word "Gnu" if it's already the name of an African antelope?
The answer is unclear.
But the solution is obvious: open-source antelope.
-kgj
-kgj
Claris licensed Informix WingZ (probably the most ported graphical spreadsheet), and of course there's a spreadsheet in AppleWorks.
Like most NeXT users I'm hoping for something modelled on Lotus Improv --- properly done this will allow it to work as a database as well.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
iWork is, officially, the inchoate replacement for AppleWorks. iWork is also, functionally, not a replacement for Office. You're comparing the wrong products.
AppleWorks offered a word processor and light DTP solution, spread sheet software, and presentation software. iWork is currently composed of a word processor and DTP solution (Pages) and presentation software (Keynote). Apple said when iWork was released that it was the beginning of a replacement for AppleWorks.
What's missing from iWork? Spreadsheet capabilities.
What does the name "Numbers" suggest? Spreadsheet capabilities. Crunching the numbers.
The only part of iWork today that's even vaguely a replacement for part of Microsoft Office is Keynote -- it gives PowerPoint a run for its money. Pages, however, is not a Word competitor in any sense of the word. Is it great for Grandma to write a letter or Mom and Dad to make a family newsletter? You bet. Pages doesn't even begin to approach the functionality of Word, though. It probably never will, either; business wasn't the target market for AppleWorks, and Apple hasn't (to this point) been positioning iWork as such either.
Numbers will likely be a capable spreadsheet solution, but I doubt it'll be chasing Excel off business desktops anytime soon.
I dont see 'file card' ( database ) in the list ...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Because you used the word patent in the subject line, which means you don't deserve to speak on the issue. Now please, refrain from posting in the future. It's better to keep your mouth closed and have everyone think you're an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt. There's my friendly advice for you for the day.
All you really need to make this is a good term rewriting language (think the good parts of Q, Stratego, and the one that starts with an m mixed together) tied in a sane manner to a good user interface library (most of this is UI).
This is really just a ui on an optionally distributed database with pretty transformations, written in a good term rewriting language, and a library of code for the rewriter that does everything programs like Maxima do, just better.
I would think Numbers would be like Keynote's numerical table features amped up. That would mean a solid spreadsheet with the usual functions with very easy charts and graphs (like in Keynote). In reality, that's probably what would really benefit people. People don't need a revolution in object-oriented spreadsheeting... they do need a spreadsheet that makes it easy to tell what's being added to what, and which gives you easy ways to visualize your data.
Maybe that would be a revolution, actually...
Well, they have already pulled support for IE on OSX.. Office will follow eventually.. Its not a matter of 'if'..
Especially if Dell starts selling pcs with OSX on them.. ( *gasp* )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah remember when Apple bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia and destroyed the market for Adobe Premier? And then how they introduced Motion, a fairly direct competitor to AfterEffects? And Pages, which competes against Adobe PageMaker, and then built PDF creation into Mac OS X print dialog boxes, eliminating the casual market for Adobe Acrobat?
Adobe retaliated by dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign for the Macintosh!
That's what all companies do when you compete with them: throw away all their profits to teach you a lesson.
Or maybe not...the giddy marketing and regular software releases from Microsoft's Mac Buisness Unit would suggest Microsoft is making money off the Macintosh, and a product offering on the level of AppleWorks isn't going to vaporize Office sales.
What it's saved in is not so important. It's what it can read and write. If you can't read Microsoft Office formatted file, you're a non-starter in the office game. Writing Microsoft Office files would be a positive, too.
Hopefully they incorperate the great ideas of lotus improv. Apple just might have the power to pull it off and the original source is even in objective C as it was originally written for NeXTSTEP.
Lotus Improv
Since MacOSX is very compatable with NeXTSTEP it should be a straightforward port.
http://notanumber.net/
Once they've made "Numbers," and now that they have Keynote and Pages, Apple will have two office suites that are Mac-only. Each has few users compared to MS Office, so it represents a lot of money being thrown at a small customer base. It's an odd strategy they seem to have, unless they plan to kill off AppleWorks.
q
Their answer to "Clippy" will be the "Stapler". A PG-13 rated Easter Egg will feature the graphic torture of Clippy while being held down by a swarm of staples.
An killer feature will let you add your own notes and tips to applications and documents. (Like Stickies, but context aware.)
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
My pants just exploded.
If I had mod points I'd hook you up. That was driving me nuts.
:)
Damage per Turn
Don't Turn Purple
Dumb People Tool
Thank you.
How about SpreadEagle, or better yet, iSpreadEagle? What? Why are you looking at me like that?
Like the NYTimes and Doonesbuury, The Onion has pulled their free archives. They are available to subscribers however. Still, though, the Herbert Kornfeld articles and famous ones like the MS one linked above are mirrored here and there.
Well, I was involved with this on a number of levels and can say there was no announcement. What happened was a slip up and spin control. The original article contained quotes that were taken from the end of an interview with Tony Siress on a completely different topic. He was mostly talking about OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X. Note the quote that was interpreted as being the "announcement" of a cooperation:
"I don't want to sell StarOffice for OS X," Siress said. "I want Apple to bundle it. I'll give them the code. I'd love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost--that it's their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple."
Does that sound like a product and bundling announcement? Hell no. It was Tony going off on what he'd "like" to happen, that he'd "like" to have a partnership with Apple and a bundling deal. It never existed. The StarOffice team that he was talking about was the one that existed under Patrick Luby back in 2000 prior to when Sun open sourced the failed remnants of the Mac port.
It also turns out that by this time Patrick had already been working on NeoOffice/J and, being a former Sun employee and manager of the Mac port, he was beginning to show early versions of his application to people within Sun. This is one of the projects that was mentioned by Sun managers as the Java port, even though it wasn't even a Sun project. Tony himself referenced NeoOffice/J's ancestor in his interview.
Tony later explained the mixup to the OOo community, which was later picked up by the press. He was talking out his ass and made my life hell for a whole week.
CNet was embarassed, of course, since they essentially now looked like fools by "breaking" completly false information. So they ran a counter-argument story that had longer quotes from the interview. The Quartz version that he's referring to was the Quartz porting work I had been doing in OpenOffice.org. The Java version he's referring to was the early work by Patrick. It even had some quotes from a Sun PR person confirming that Tony said what he had said. Sun PR sacrificed Tony to maintain a working relationship with CNet (apparently there had been a Sun PR person involved with the original interview but they hadn't stopped Tony from making off-topic comments).
The key point you'll see in that "refutation" article that makes it known he's full of it is the quote on laptops at the bottom. He mentions Apple wanting to sell Sun PowerBooks. His "contact" at Apple was a sales rep who was trying to sell laptops, not an engineer!
After that fun blunder, Tony never really was allowed to speak to the press again, particularly on StarOffice related issues.
Conspiracy theorists love making a big deal out of this up until this day (witness the parent), but in the end it was all a bunch of bull caused by an eager manager and an overexuberant reporter "breaking" a supposed story without doing any fact checking to confirm the horseshit coming out of the manager's mouth.
The good thing was that it pissed me and Dan off so much we created the NeoOffice project (NeoOffice/C) to prove it could be done. Eventually Patrick was convinced to open source the code Tony referred to and thus NeoOffice/J was born. Bad thing is it wrecked any chance of Sun or Apple actually providing OpenOffice.org engineering support since the PR n
Microsoft would be the one to trademark ones and zeros. Instead now Apple owns the Numbers!
I realise that this is a popular myth, and one that keeps people feeling comfortable that nothing Microsoft might do will damage their rich and exciting viral ecosystem, but unfortunately it's not true. Microsoft would merely have had to back down under the tyrannical pressure of the US Department of Justice and unbundled IE and the refreshing flood of viruses and spyware would have collapsed into a disappointing trickle.
How lucky we are that they showed such wisdom and determination!
Microsoft had just about as much marketshare before they integrated IE and the Desktop as after it, but the difference to fans of malicious software was startling. What kicked viruses into high gear was the ability of the Microsoft HTML control to run native code delivered by an untrusted website or mail message. It was the killer application for virus delivery, because it turned the previously unthinkable idea of a virus that could spread if you just opened an email message into reality. Sites like ours that banned IE and Outlook and later Windows Media Player and Realplayer and any other internet-enabled applications that used the HTML control had to put up with completely dismal virus levels.
Even refusing to use any antivirus protection other than telling people not to open unexpected attachments didn't help. It wasn't until we were forced to switch to IE by our enlightened corporate management that our virus load reached normal levels.
I guess they coulden't use Numb3rs...
Numbers has been around for a long time. It's called Lotus Improv. This application has been an obsession of Steve since the days of Visicalc on the Apple II.
There is even a video of Steve demoing it floating around the net somewhere. (Someone on the torrent, post a copy!)
I work for a large commodites trader who had financial analysts with Nextcubes for the sole purpose of running lotus improv. It's a different way to crunch numbers but it's simplicity makes so much sense over Excel you'll wonder why MS never implimented it. I can still remember seeing our MS rep walking around with a discomforting look when these analysts would say why can't excel do this.
What did we get....Pivot tables. Do not know how many of you have ever used a pivot table but there is a huge learning curve. It is also known for causing huge errors because of its design.
This app could get apple in financial institions because of it's power. Yet at the same time a 10 year old can use the drag and drop to figureout how to spend there allowance!
My question is, how did Steve get the old code out of IBM? Unless Apple hired the old development team?
Nope. No way. You, me, and my mother might be able to adapt, but your PHB is going to doubt his army of corporate drones can be that flexible. If it doesn't look like MS Office and feel like MS Office, he isn't going to touch it.
What I hope Apple is doing, because otherwise they will never get away from Microsoft, is putting out a line of "sufficient" programs to hold the line without pissing off Gates while skunkworking OpenOffice like mad somewhere in, say, Far East Siberia. Creating and maintaining a full office suite is an enormous untertaking comparable to, say, writing and maintaining and operating system or a webbrowser. Apple would be better off hitching themselves to on open source project like they did with BSD/Darwin for OS X or KHTML for Safari than trying to go it alone.
Specifics:
Why not just implement enabling technologies instead of trying to make second-rate implementations of good ideas and hard-wire them into the operating system? I'm thinking of the horrible Show Fonts gadget, the Show Colors gadget, and the Address book. Changing fonts in OS 9 took a click, drag, release. Now it requires a click, a drag, a release, a select, and then close the dialog. Why is this better again? The whole idea of building an Address book into the operating system, which they never improve and which nobody else can really make good use of. The Color gadget. WTF?
More: The random mixes of interface styles between applications. The non-spatial monstrosity they mockingly call "Finder", the lack of thought to number of mouse clicks and distance between events, and other GUI errors...
I now believe that they no longer have any real standards, just a set of guidelines that they feel free to ignore. Such details were understandably glossed over after OS X came out at first, but holy crap, Mail hasn't changed for years now, as far as I can tell. They update it, but it never improves. It's depressing.
Ah yes, Mail.app. The whole painful Mail.app interface with its weird sort-of-heirarchical menus and color labels that don't show up on messages unless they ARE NOT selected. Its underpowered rules filter. The weird implementation of Spotlight technology. The hit-and-miss interfacing with IMAP servers, misplacing messages. The ability to say "use this mailbox as the Trash," but afterwards, you can't set that back to the Trash! Endless nits like this, too many to mention, but each reflecting a lack of thought, and implying to me that Apple employees must use Eudora for their mail needs. Now it's version 2.0. Can somebody explain why this got a whole version bump? Was it just Spotlight? It's weird. Seemingly just a rewarmed Next gadget, Mail is.
Another thing is the organization of the Applications directory. Why is Grab a utility but Preview isn't? Some things go into folders, some don't. It's exactly as if each little project just picks a random spot and sticks their application there. Quick quiz: where is Stuffit Expander located? You can't move them because then they won't get updated properly. It's just crap. Crap I say!
And another thing: after software updates, sometimes the installed application is an updater such as iPod update. The installer asks me to restart, then the installed application cancels the logout to install something I don't even own. I can't choose NOT to download the update. It's pretty messed up.
Oh, I guess I'll lose karma for this post! :-) But it's the truth. OS X is a hard-core sweet technology with tons of power and is the best thing out there, but it could be a lot better if they would shine it up a bit. The spit and polish is gone, replaced mainly with spit.
Currently hooked on AMP
The MOST used AppleWorks component for me was its bitmap graphics editor. Thank goodness it still works on Mac OS X (minus a few bizarre bugs with drag-and-drop and stuff). But if Steve is going to call the new apps successors to AppleWorks, Apple had better cover image editing, too. That means at least "Pixels", but maybe "Vectors" for drawing.
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools where no one finds them). With technology like this, Apple could slap together a modern graphics editor easily, and certainly make the $49 from me for the effort. (Ahem, instead they seem to want to charge $30 for QuickTime Pro?) Why should I put up with Adobe's lack of humane interface and price gouging, or the (unfortunately) awkward GIMP? Please Apple, ask an intern to do this in a weekend with Core Image, and you'll have instantly created another source of revenue - not to mention demonstrate that it matters to you how people actually use the apps you are "deprecating".
There are many ways to do graphics right, as Apple knows well. I'm amazed at what developer tools like Quartz Composer can do (tucked away in
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
I agree completely with this. Apple needs to wake up and polish more than its icons and demos to get this OS back to its prime.
I think Tiger makes one aspect of inconsistency even worse, in the sense that they've resorted to "grafting" now. At least before, if you had a metal app, you had a metal APP: the whole app was at least consistent in itself. But now, Spotlight gets shoved into a Finder window like those widgets came from a completely different universe than the rest of the Finder. Same with the RSS part of Safari, the icons in Mail, the list goes on. It's like an application team says "okay, our app is golden, ship it" and then a team of worms comes in at the last second and grafts ugly interface elements wherever they will fit.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
AppleWorks (née ClarisWorks) was actually a counterpart to MicrosoftWorks. I'd hazard to guess that there may actually be as many or more active AppleWorks users than there are MicrosoftWorks users. Obviously AppleWorks is woefully outdated and suffers from a heinous interface. But for years it was a great app that did 95% of what most home users needed from an office program.
I think they're trying to cover their asses in case Microsoft pulls the MS Office rug out from under them.
Agreed. I'd go further, though, and say that Apple sees the bloataciousness of MS Office as its Achilles Heel. Seriously, why is it so freakin' difficult to do the most common 90% of tasks in Office? It is so complex that it tries to "help" you do things that should be simple and intuitive. In the mean time, the bloat factor is so enormous that most of the tools go unused.
If Apple can put all of the pieces together in a lean and mean fashion, they may be able to convince a lot of people that instead of another Office suite, they a slender but competent set of tools that work together in an intuitive and unintrusive manner.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Depends on whether governments around the world decide to ditch closed formats or not. Here is hoping that closed MS formats die a horrible death!
I'm trademarking "irrational" and "imaginary" because...well, you know..."real" is already taken.
What?
Why does Apple bother when Microsoft Office and Open Office are available? Good question. The answer is because neither of those suites take advantage of the operating system like Apple produced products will. And, if either or both decide to bail out, that would leave the Mac with no office suite. And that is just not acceptable.
I used to work on the Excel team (MacXL 1.5 thru XL2000). Way back when they were brainstorming for names, Doug Klunder, one of the original programmers on Excel made a passionate pitch to call it "Number Buddy".
I don't know why this even makes news. Open Source office suites have been going a long time on Linux and even Windows. OS X is finally starting up some, which aren't very full featured. Seriously, if someone was doing this for some tiny OS everyone would be pissed off with pages, etc. I don't see the point.
Wake me up when they have something like gnome office. I'd rather use something that works today and in an open environment.
Ok guys. Where are you folks who complained when microsoft sued to protect the generic "windows" word?
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Whatever publication you put out with Pages will put you WAAYYYY closer to something your Printer will smile over rather than curse, like with Publisher.
>shudder
I had the same reaction to Pages after using PageMaker & Publisher in a production environment. Publisher is NO GOOD AT ALL.
However, OpenOffice, Pages, Word & PageMaker/Quark/Publisher/InDesign/Frame cannot be fairly compared as equals.
Pages does Word + Publisher *BETTER*
Numbers will probably do Excel + Access *APPLEY*
Remember:
FileMaker, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).
It wants it's Mac Forum Nerd in-joke back.
But seriously. Don't you have to download the box for it to work?
I was talking with the developers who (on the DL (down low, as in secret, not DownLoad)) sold Apple a piece of software that translates between closed and open file formats better than any other document converter ever has. This is for use in their office suite, especially convertisg Microsoft Excel docs to the speadsheet app, which wasn't named when I talked to the devs about it two months ago or so.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Apple computers always seem to attract the kind of people who watch television specifically for the commercials.
The kind of people who believe that heaven is just one gigantic shopping mall.
The kind of people who would drive 10 miles at 3am to the all-night grocery because they drank the last can of Pepsi, even though their spouse has stockpiled four cases of Coca-Cola. They wouldn't dream on touching it. Must be Pepsi.
The kind of people never, never even consider using a different brand of shampoo...
In other words, Apple attracts a lot of neurotic upper-middle-class people who lived their entire lives believing that their mental disorders are 'cute'. Because their televisions have reflecting these eccentricities back at them with pretty actors since they were born, to keep them emmeshed in their consumtion cycle.
The kind of people who would actually think that it's 'just a simply wonderful idea' to trademark the word -numbers-. The kind of people whose greatest dream in life is to turn some common ordinary thing into a -=!!brand!!=-.
It's just a calculator with a really cool design.
I just hope they make it like Quantrix or FlexiSheet and less like Excel.
I had been hearing rumors for quite a while that Apple had a spreadsheet app for the iWorks suite tentatively called "Cells", that would replicate the functionality of Improv, the NeXT's killer app, and what I've heard described as the finest spreadsheet ever created. The "Numbers" thing really solidifies it for me.
Apparently, NeXT was, and still is, popular among a number of large financial institutions, which bought it primarily because they were so impressed with the capabilities of Improv. Apple has demonstrated at the very least that they have the makings of a competitive productivity suite with iCal, Mail, Keynote, Pages, and now the rumored "Numbers". Granted, Mail in particular is not as feature-rich or powerful as Microsoft's corresponding offering, but in my opinion, Apple is taking the correct approach: get the interface right first, add necessary features later. I also strongly believe that Apple could easily release a "Lite" version of FileMaker, which has large numbers of Windows devotees. This would fit perfectly with the two-tier consumer-pro strategy that they have adopted with their other offerings (iMovie->Final Cut Pro; GarageBand->Logic, iDVD->iDVD Studio Pro), whereby users who have outgrown the consumer versions could upgrade to more powerful, feature-rich pro versions, with the added benefit that the learing curve is not very steep. I've also begun to suspect that they have pro versions of iCal, Mail etc in development, or running internally. The Mac-on-Intel bombshell really brought home to me how little is known about what Apple is up to.
Still, Mac users aren't adopting iWork in large numbers; partly because it lacks components like a spreadsheet application, but more so because Microsoft Office has established itself as an industry standard for home and office productivity.
And remember, Pages doesn't look jack like MS Word. Which is what people want:
According to sources close to Apple's retail operations, the average Apple store only sells a handful of iWork copies each week, if that. Meanwhile, contacts at larger mail-order catalogs have used words such as "awful" and "horrible" to describe sales of the software suite. Instead, sources say the first question to roll off the tongue of most prospective Mac buyers is: "Will Microsoft Office run on my new Mac?"
Which was my point, thank you very much. The best chance for Apple to get out of the MS Office trap is OpenOffice (NeoOffice/J on the Mac). In fact, they way I see it, it is the only chance they have. Instead of fooling around with clever new ways to do things that people don't want, how about putting some oomph behind NeoOffice?
Darn.
Does this mean I owe roylaties to Apple whenever I read the Old Testament?
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
they claim to own the tiger. you should let apple have this trademark to make up for tiger being taken away.
- Corporate Whore
R.I.P ClarisWorks!
Once I had that, I never opened Word95 again!
Most of the features, but sane.
How can DEI NOT have rights to 3? It just ain't right.
Small business is not Apple's market. They are consumer oriented, and the Ipod cements that.
Really, with all the open-source 'real' databases, Access is disappearing. Most things are going web-based. Of course, Access will never disappear, there are too many legacy apps.
So, assuming you're the mod in question, you disagree with my post. That's fine, but it doesn't make it _redundant_. Redundant means "you just posted what other people in the thread have already posted". But hey, if you want to blow your mod points on stupid calls, go right ahead, I'm (a) not hurting for karma, and (b) have the balls to say what I have to say under my own ID.
I just can't argue confidently that Apple cares much more about the user experience than other companies, based on the lack of care in crafting that experience. I heard that once upon a time, every Apple program had to be checked by a special UI team. I have to guess that if that's true, then that team has diminished clout at Apple now, if it even still exists.
Probably one reason has gone to hell is that it's really hard to do good UI design. It takes a commitment and it takes work and money to make a UI that is noticeably good.
Currently hooked on AMP
About the only MS product I recommend is Excel on OSX.
Based on their recent offerings, I expect Apple's spreadsheet to be much nicer than Excel. I hope it has good file-compatibility even for complex files.
I'm not sure who MS bought the mac-dev group from, but they picked well. OpenOffice is not really a competitor in this space - the OSX OpenOffice experience is slightly inferior to the Linux/Win openoffice experience, but Excel v.X is MUCH better than anything on Win. v.X is by-far the best MS Ofc suite... and when it was still being released IE for mac was the best IE.
So I actually don't recommend that anybody use any MS software on Windows, but I do still recommend they use Excel on OSX.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Shouldn't that be iNumbers?
I never spell in funetiks
It's not technically hard to do, it's just (perceived to be) of dubious value. Remember, we've been down this road before - OpenDoc was a really ambitious attempt to break down the traditional application-oriented model, and it failed pretty thoroughly.
Now, there were a variety of reasons for that failure, some technical, some not. At least part of the reason OpenDoc didn't succeed is that it was too disruptive to the traditional business model of applications vendors.
On Windows, OLE was successful because the #1 piece of productivity software supported it heavily (Microsoft Office), and because the development tool of choice for corporate developers (Visual Basic) used it as the method of adding new widgets.
Right now, Mac OS X supports a variety of different ways for applications to support content in formats they don't natively understand - Plugins, Services, filtering content through Quicktime, etc. For many (most?) applications, display-only embedding through AppKit or Quicktime is sufficient.
I'd like to see a more unified plugin model, personally. I'm not sure what, exactly, I'd want that to look like, but something like how OLE works wouldn't be a bad thing, in my opinion.
-Mark
The limitation on Services being, essentially, one-way is where this really falls down in comparison to a genuine embedded document model. You can do the same thing with the Equation Editor in Microsoft Office, but the equation remains editable, which is much cooler.
...and I've just re-invented OpenDoc.
The low-effort way to make this work is for Apple to define some kind of container format which can carry a (probably PDF) visual representation of the content, and a link back to the original document.
Then these "container objects" can be displayed in any rich text control, just like an image, but when you double-click, it opens the original editing application.
-Mark
a program called "Program". Yea, that'd be cool. It would fit right in with programs called "Pages" and "Numbers".
Common, apple. The "Macs are for noobs & kiddies" bandwagon is only gaining in speed with these completely childish and stupid program names. Show a little imagination, for god sake.
Here apple has one of the most powerful operating systems on the planet, an OS that often makes the average unix/linux geek drool, and they are going to put out a program called "Numbers".
Apple really needs to get off the whole "Macs are easy to use" thing. Easy to use is good. Trivializing to pointlessness is bad.
The non-spatial monstrosity they mockingly call "Finder"
And I suppose windows popping up for each folder all over the screen was really a better way to do it?
I can't choose NOT to download the update.
Have you tried unchecking the item on the download screen?
Seemingly just a rewarmed Next gadget, Mail is.
Random Yodish sprinkled confusing to have, it is.
Quick quiz: where is Stuffit Expander located?
Finder. Cmd-N. Cmd-Shift-A. 'Stuf'. Cmd-O. There you go.
If there is one thing you can rely on with a tool as widely used as an office suite is that it won't be used how you expect. In my short time on this earth I have seen:
But this should be expected and embrassed. The boundaries of word processor and desktop publisher have always been blurred. If you can put words on a printed page and pictures on a printed page, why shouldn't a word processor do both as easily as each other? Thats the nice thing about Pages. Joe Sixpack probably doesn't want a dedicated Word Processor and definately doesn't want a dedicated DTP package, what they want is software that lets them get words and pictures on to a page quickly, without reading a manual. Pages does that.
If Apple really are developing a spreedsheet, I hope that they see that Joe Sixpack, doesn't know the difference between a database and a spreedsheet... nor should they have to (for the data they'll be collating). Perhaps what they should really be developing is 'Tables'. All the Joe Sixpacks I know really want is a simple way of tabluating data making it look as pretty as possible - for boss points, and letting them graph it with little more than a button press. Excel, almost does this, but still too spreedsheety and gets very annoyed when you want to do things like put bullet points in the tables, or start using SQL to lookup data or worse still, format the pages to look pretty (nigh impossible).
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!