[palane]

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Huh? What part of Excel is Apple copying that Microsoft has a patent on and likewise you feel there is no "prior art" for? For that matter, what has Microsoft ever done that was both original and of significant value?

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If you don't realize how innovative Excel was, you should be sentenced to 30 days of hard labor using 1-2-3 under DOS. I've bounced around a few spreadsheets (including Quattro Pro and 1-2-3 for DOS and Windows as well as spent a lot of time using WingZ) and there is a clear reason Excel mopped the floor with the rest. WingZ still has a soft spot in my heart, but it never had a chance under Informix. Shame that Claris didn't keep it going.
All that having been said, just because Numbers looks like a spreadsheet doesn't give ground for a lawsuit. It'll sit nicely as a low end alternative. If it's got an equivalent to Solver, I'll give it a chance.
BB

[Schneb]

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I freak out over bad English

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I due two.

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That's, "Eye due two." /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[moose_n_squirrel]

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If you don't realize how innovative Excel was, you should be sentenced to 30 days of hard labor using 1-2-3 under DOS. I've bounced around a few spreadsheets (including Quattro Pro and 1-2-3 for DOS and Windows as well as spent a lot of time using WingZ) and there is a clear reason Excel mopped the floor with the rest.

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All that and Excel appeared on the Mac first. Mac fanboys can hate Microsoft, but Microsoft picked the Mac as the vehicle to advance the state of spreadsheets ahead of all other platforms.

[lovemy2ci]

Like most Apple software, I would assume that Numbers is creative and innovative. I would also assume that, regardless of the "coolness" factor, it will be used by no more than 10% of all of the people using computers world wide.
For all of the resources Apple has committed to developing software that most people will never use, I would hope Apple would eventually start to focus on cutting the cost of Mac hardware so the rest of us could justify paying 50% more for a Mac!

[Dan Frakes]

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For all of the resources Apple has committed to developing software that most people will never use, I would hope Apple would eventually start to focus on cutting the cost of Mac hardware so the rest of us could justify paying 50% more for a Mac!

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If you live in the U.S. and you're paying 50% more for a Mac for truly comparable hardware and software, your local Mac dealer is fleecing you /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[swokm]

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"Spredshet"??? Where are the editors?!?!
But regardless, I'm happy about the new iMacs. And I'm glad for all the .Mac users.
---UPDATE---
OK, it's fixed. Thanks, people...
Sorry, I'm a confessed English freak. Which means I freak out over bad English. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

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Uh, huh. Dubious. I think you're a planted Apple employee to throw us off the scent. EVERYONE knows Apple is hard at work on the Spredshet, as the pictures leaked by mcosroomers.com clearly show:
[image]http://www.northernt.../168473_lg.gif+
Typical Apple... simple, does what the name implies... I want one! (tired of spreading it by hand)

On another note, I agree with the ticked-off poster above. For users that work with a lot of fonts, applications that just throw poor quality fonts (or worse, crappy versions of standard fonts) around your system willy-nilly without so much as a by-your-leave are a major PITA. Man, that's annoying, and sometimes hard to troubleshoot. There was some official Apple tool (for iTunes, I think) that kept reinstalling such wonderful art classics as PARty LET, and Cairo, and other craptastic fonts that were made in the era of 2 dpi dot-matrix printers. Office refused to launch because it somehow could not rebuild the font cache. But I knew I hadn't added any fonts. Took me forever to isolate the problem.
To all those defending this, why? How is NOT giving the user a choice of install components, on at least some level, appropriate? Weird, I really thought the OP would get a lot more sympathy on that one. If you have Sindarin as your default system language then nifty for you, but I want the option to decline. Monolingual is a separate issue. A very dangerous hack, really, for a problem that shouldn't exist. That granularity was built into the install system for a REASON, Apple of all companies should be using it!
Apple not leading by example is a major problem! Settings appearing in my Documents folder rather than Preferences. Settings appearing as an invisible folder in my home folder. Settings appearing in Application Support. Settings held within the Application bundle. Per User settings in the root Library. ARGH. Pick one freaking place. Or at lease narrow it down for templates into root Application Support or Preferences. Maybe this user didn't know how to right-click to open an invisible folder (that really appears to be a file). How arcane is that?! Why does a normal user even need to know about the existence of these packages? Oh, and "just because" or "cuz I felt like it, and I'm the programmer" is not a valid design philosophy. Unless we're all still actually using QDOS, and I just failed to notice somehow. What if they upgrade, trash the original app, but relied on an old template? SOL? Templates (that must be actual files, somewhere) just magically disappear, it would seem. Magic is bad. Magic is the opposite of manageability, because it is by definition: ignorance. I used to think Apple "got" that.
After "brushed metal", and other perverse failures of leadership or commitment TO THEIR OWN NEW RULES, Apple needs user feedback like that. I hope they read it and take it seriously.

[nelson92]

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so the rest of us could justify paying 50% more for a Mac!

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50% more than what?

[swokm]

The username is "lovemy2ci". That means 50% more than their IIci, obviously!
Let's seee here, market price for the IIci is about $125 ...
So 50% more would be... mmmrph... carry the one... uh, $187.50 plus tax and shipping.
Whew, "lovemy2ci" you are HARD CORE cheap! My hero!! It might take a while before Apple ships a mac in that price range, though. Have you looked at whether a Shuffle runs Numbers? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Seriously, though, the infamous "price premium" for Apple is usually bunk, unless that model of mac is stale and has been on the market for over 6 months. But dell.com is freely available for comparison...

[konkomba]

With Pages, You can option-drag refs from the Endnote db or access Endnote from the services menu, but it doesn't work as well for editiing refs post insertion. Further, to create the biblio, you have to export the file as an RTF and have Endnote scan the file to produce another doc with reformatted citations and the biblio and re-open in Pages. Very slow, very clunky and not-conducive to further revision and this will not work with cited graphics and images embedded in the file.
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Just sent this feedback to Apple re: Pages '08.
I love the new Pages '08 and have spent a fair amount of time working with the trial since it's release. It is an elegant product and ALMOST makes the grade as my new full-time word-processor. ALMOST. There is one feature that I simply cannot live without: Support for integration of bibliographic/citation management software like Endnote. I believe that academia is an area where the mac has really penetrated and a very large number of academics use OS X. But academics cannot write these days without software like Endnote. Using Endnote's scan RTF file feature is simply insufficient to the task.
Another area where the mac has made significant inroads is among students. I would say 1 in 3 students on campuses use macs. Many of them also use bibliographic software.
I know what you will say. Target market, etc... not part of our strategy right now, blah, blah, blah... But seriously, you are letting Word eat your lunch by not including this feature. Apple's history in the late '80s and early '90s was a series of one missed opportunity after another... Now that the company has regained it's steam, don't let this happend again. We all like to make frun of the folks up in Redmond. And to be sure, Vista is a lemon. But OS's aside, in some ways the office suite is far more important. Word files, Excel files etc; these are the life's blood of communication in the enterprise and academic environment.
Pages and iwork '08 stands poised as a serious threat to Office:mac. But it will not eclipse this suite until bibliographic software integration haappens. This is the major stumbling block for me, and what keeps me and many other scholars and students from switching completely and wiping Office from our macs. Please, please, please address this and I will happily pay $79 for iwork with every release. Publish the API, work with Thomson Scientific Software (the makers of Endnote), whatever you have to do. But please make this happen. I must now, sadly, remove the little inkwell and pen icon from my dock and click on the little blue 'W' once again.