Apple Making a Spreadsheet? 611
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.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but before "Pages" there was the ugly beast called "AppleWorks"... which clearly couldn't compete with MS Word.
I think they're trying to cover their asses in case Microsoft pulls the MS Office rug out from under them.
Re:Patenting a _word_? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like: Apple?
It's Just In Case (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Nah... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Remember (Score:2, Insightful)
Trademarking "Numbers" == Good
Maybe Apple trademarked it, simply so noone else can?
Not enough, not comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Why not build their own office? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Remember (Score:1, Insightful)
In the office game, it's all about document format (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Insightful)
Pages is not full featured enough that I'd want to be producing a monthly magazine on it, but for a church newsletter, or a notice for a school or something, it's a good choice. It doesn't do everything, but it does a lot of the basic stuff really easily.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:2, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice what etc. stupidity yadda yadda yadda. Apple isn't exactly in a market position where they can afford to be petty -- especially not against vendors who have so few competitors in their markets, like ATI and Sun. I don't know why Apple did decide to change strategies in those instances, but it seems very unlikely to me that it was because they dared to steal Apple's thunder by announcing a new product too soon.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Insightful)
They're really a bastard category of products. They're text editors pretending to be page layout programs... or page layout programs pretending to be text editors. The whole concept has always seemed somehow *wrong* to me. Kludgy and awkward.
Pages fixes that. It fills in the same category as things like Word, but goes about things in a sane way. Apple has a text editor already - TextEdit. It's pervasive across the OS X system, and technically I'm using it right now in this Safari text box. Pages is a page layout program that calls on TextEdit (I presume) to do its text functions, QuickTime to handle its graphics functions, and so on. The components are handled by system functions that handle those components well; Pages just puts them all together in a pretty, integrated package.
It's a lot like XHTML+CSS versus the old content-and-layout-in-one kludge that was earlier HTML standards, actually.
Re:Not enough, not comparable (Score:4, Insightful)
Also there is already Filemaker which is one of the reasons why M$ has always said they are not going to make Access for the Mac.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:4, Insightful)
The year 2000 called. (Score:1, Insightful)
But seriously. Don't you have to download the box for it to work?
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Insightful)
Word, on the other hand, is always nagging me and trying to do shit for me to "spruce up" my document, "Hey it looks like you're making a list, let me format that for you." It suffers the quintessential Microsoft flaw of the program getting in your way, trying to do things for you whether you like it or not, instead of getting OUT of your way and facilitating you to do exactly what you want. And then people go and try to use it for fancy newsletters and flyers and want me to collaborate with them and I just can't stand to work in the broken word processor paradigm when what we're really trying to do is page layout.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Insightful)
The services accessible in Cocoa apps really are hugely powerful, and it's a shame that Apple doesn't give them a better UI (in NeXTStep, the Services menu was at the top level, and could be torn off), since they are an incredibly flexible way of extending a program's functionality.