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.
The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Interesting)
The same guy was sent about a week later to deny that it was happening but accept that he did claim that it would
2 years later, Apple produces an internally-written, incomplete Office suite completely unrelated to StarOffice/OpenOffice
Assumption. As with the time ATi preannounced an Apple product by accident and was dumped for nVidia, Sun screwed up and Apple pulled the whole project in revenge. Pages/Mail/Keynote is the replacement. Numbers is the missing component.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if I could just get End Note to work with Pages, I could drop Word entirely.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
The perfect spreadsheet... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:1, Interesting)
I still await Exchange integration with iCal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not enough, not comparable (Score:4, Interesting)
It depends on your perceptive. I can agree that a lot of large firms (the type with full IT staffs and in-house programmers/pseudo-programmers) use the "real" MS Office in the manner you describe. But a lot of people just need a word processor to /read/write letters and a spreadsheet to crunch numbers.
Seriously, go drive/walk to you town/city center and look around. You'll probably see banks, maybe an accounting firm or small engineering firm that needs VB/Access functionally. But keep looking. You'll also see things like barber shops, a Ma & Pa convenience store, maybe a store front for plumber, graphic artist, and so on. These people probably wouldn't know what a database or scripting language was if you hit them over the head with one.
As long as they can read whatever Office formats that are sent to them (and thankfully that may actually happen [slashdot.org]), the combo of Pages/Keynote/Numbers will be enough for the great majority of small businesses.
Given the number of small businesses [census.gov] in the U.S., I think the potential market is higher than one might expect, especially if you think business=megacorp
Re:Patenting a _word_? (Score:3, Interesting)
It reminds me: some grocery stores here (Canada) are selling "No Name" brand products (which are much like "President's Choice" and other home brands). And "No Name" is a registered trademark.
Re:Trademarks Out of Control (Score:5, Interesting)
People have been trademarking common words since trademarks were invented. It's nothing new and aside from completely made up words it's hard to avoid.
The more common the word in the industry it's used in the less protection your trademark gives you. A completely made up word (c.f. "Exxon") and you can claim infringement in almost any use by your competitors. "Apple" is just an arbitrary word in the industry it's in so it still gives them pretty good protection. Apple could certainly stop a competitor (but not an orchard) from being named "Apple Systems, Inc." "Numbers" is NOT arbitrary, it's descriptive so Apple would probably have to live with a company in a related field called "NumberSystems Inc." or a product called "Number Cruncher" even if a similar use of a more arbitrary trademark would have been a violation of their trademark.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I would really like Apple to make iWork into a complete product. It isn't just missing an excel and access replacement. It is also missing key "Apple" functionality: applescript capability.
While keynote 2 does expose an applescript dictionary, it is completely useless. Things you should be able to do (but can't) via script:
1. Create a new document (slideshow)
2. Add a slide
3. Edit the slide
4. Set the transition effect
OK, so basically anything useful. The sad part is that Microsoft PowerPoint has an almost useful applescript integration. I say "almost" because the bindings for creating image slides is broken (you get a nice interpreter error when you try to create an image from a file).
AppleWorks did have decent scripting capability.
Menus are per-window instead of universal. (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:2, Interesting)
It is a truly great piece of software. It may be dated by today's standards but this was one of the shining stars in the Mac land long before the iApps hit the scene.
It has gone virtually untouched for years as Apple, first killed Claris Inc, then brought ClarisWorks (later re-named AppleWorks) in house and left it to die - but it still runs on Apple's latest OS.
That says an awful lot for the developers behind AppleWorks. They built an app that was compact, full-featured (for its time), fast, ran in a tiny memory footprint and was easy to use. They pretty much followed Apple's constantly changing API setup to the nail without cutting the corners that would have seen many other apps break horribly long before Tiger.
It was innovative and, given the resources, could have travelled the same prosperous road as Filemaker.
It's a shame that Apple politics have led to the demise of AppleWorks and I for one will miss it (as I'm sure it won't run on Leopard) in a couple of years.
No doubt, Microsoft played a part in Apple leaving it to stagnate.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pervasive across the OS X system, and technically I'm using it right now in this Safari text box.
I didn't realise that. So do some of the GUI features in OS X work like OpenDoc or OLE? I'm not too familiar with what goes on under the hood, but I recall glossing over an Apple developer front page that described how you could easily extend features of OS X applications, like adding a menu to TextEdit that accesses iTunes. However, I wasn't aware that it also had OpenDoc/OLE qualities. Can OS X do things with it's applications and AppleScript kind of like the way you can use OLE or Active X controls in an Access database field and control them with Visual Basic? As for Linux, I know that GNOME stands for GNU Object Model Environment, so I was wondering if GNOME also functioned that way.
Re:It's Just In Case (Score:4, Interesting)
Incidentally this infringement lawsuit was the reason QuickTime 2.5 for Mac and Windows was released free.
You'll have to Google real hard for this as all the press-releases on it where removed from Apple's site when the Microsoft's investment where announced, but I assume some courthouse somewhere has documents on it.
Re:The Numbers Game: (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't used Keynote yet, but I intend to. Looking forward to Numbers. Maybe I'll get lucky and Apple will release a personal accounting package. It'd probably be called 'Accounts' or 'Finances', since 'Money' is already taken.
*hope*
Re:It's a hole in the line-up (Score:2, Interesting)
Number Buddy (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to mention the output! (Score:3, Interesting)
>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).