“Rumors that Apple Computer have been quietly developing its own spreadsheet solution gained a dab of credibility this week as sources pointed to a revealing company filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider. “Just two days after requesting a trademark on the word ‘Mactel,’ which seemingly describes the convergence of Macintosh design with Intel hardware, Apple on June 8th filed for a standard character mark on the word ‘Numbers.'”
Marsal reports, “Described only vaguely by the filing as ‘computer software,’ Numbers may pertain to Apple’s recently released graphing calculator application. However, the company in recent months has filed for other marks that more accurately describe that application, such as ‘Graphulator’ and ‘Grapher’ — that latter of which is used in the shipping version. Instead, Numbers appears to conform nicely to the naming scheme used by Apple to describe the components of its relatively new iWork productivity suite. Consisting of only two applications, the iWork bundle includes presentation software called ‘Keynote’ and a word processor dubbed ‘Pages.'”
Full article here.
More info about Apple’s iWork here.
You’re going to replace Appleworks with just a spreadsheet application?
Nice going, Steve.
I could easily imagine Apple incorporating hundreds of thousands of pre-set formulas for thousands of mathematical, scientific and educational communities; everything from subatomic formulas recently discovered at FermiLab to 7th grade physics formulas and including historical original formulas from Copernicus and Newton. Like Widgets and Automator, these formulas can be created, bundled as a file containing hundreds of individual formulas, swapped and downloaded for free. Apple would host a central database of complex formulas.
Imagine viewing the sheets as a 3 dimensional rotatable cube, where highlighting, charting, graphing functions over time is made much easier, and where 4, 5, or 6 dimensional grids can be easily viewed and manipulated.
How about flowchart-like lines indicating the cell relationships?
How about using these lines for defining formulas? The formula appears large and bold, centered at the top, and you merely drag the cells you want into the various parts of the formula and then drag the resultant variable (the completed formula) into another cell to display the answer. This can be a very simple way to build complex relationships. Loops not only can be automatically detected, but these loops can be manipulated as a function of time; resulting in a modified formula incorporating time as a variable.
Chart and graphs would not only be 3D, but could also produce animation where appropriate. In short, it would be Excel meets Mathematica using an OpenGL visual output.
All of the charting and animation tasks that interfere with a scientist’s time and patience as they try to display complex interactions would be automatically handled, regardless if the scientists are 68 years old or 8 years old.
Thank God there are a few people left on the planet that are not box-constrained-thinkers. Wouldn’t it be worth it to teach our kids to be dreamers and builders rather than subjecting them to the monotonous grind of page-after-page, chapter-after-chapter, of mind-numbing text books for over 13 years of their most creative moments in their life? What a very sad waste of youth. The result is an agonizingly slowly evolving civilization. Doesn’t it seem to be getting slower and slower? There were moon landings 60 years after powered flight began. What have we done with the 30 years since the moon landings?
“Imagine viewing the sheets as a 3 dimensional rotatable cube, where highlighting, charting, graphing functions over time is made much easier, and where 4, 5, or 6 dimensional grids can be easily viewed and manipulated.”
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Whoa, fella. Don’t eat the brown acid. You lost me on this one. “Three-dimensional” I understand. The fourth dimension is time. The Fifth Dimension is a Motown group. What the heck is the sixth dimension?
Country Joe, you seem to base your universe upon 1800’s physics; “3+1” dimensions. As I am sure you are content to conduct your daily life in such a simplified universe, it is not the universe of everyone.
A quick trip to Wikipedia’s description of “string theory” should bring you up to the 21st century…
“The term ‘string theory’ properly refers to both the 26-dimensional bosonic string theories and to the 10-dimensional superstring theories discovered by adding supersymmetry. Nowadays, ‘string theory’ usually refers to the supersymmetric variant while the earlier is given its full name, ‘bosonic string theory’.”
A more detailed description of extra dimensions packaged neatly in layman terms is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory#Extra_dimensions .
But, none of these dimensions are relevant to the dimensions wihin a spreadsheet. Let’s say you have a 2 dimensional spreadsheet of your monthly expenses; i.e., day vs category. Now you have 12 of these sheets to comprise a whole year, so now you have a 3 dimensional spread sheet where any specific amount can be found via month-day-category. But, being that you have been doing this for awhile, you now have them bundles in groups of 12 for each year; this gives you a 4 dimensional spreadsheet. But we ain’t done yet, because now you have done such an excellent job of recordkeeping, you agreed to do your 5 brothers’ and 2 sisters’ spread sheets. Now each individual piece of data has a location that must be specified by its location; person by year by month by day by category; a 5 dimensional spreadsheet.
This is a very simple example. In many fields, you can have hundreds of dimensions in a spreadsheet-like database, and they all are commonly compared to each other, often with complex formulas to describe their relationship and for possible future predictions or to model real world observations with mathematical representations.
If all of this isn’t enough, Apple could even allow the user to apply neural nets as a type of data relationship between the cells (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_net ).
But, we’re still not done exploring. If Apple does the same thing to spreadsheets like they do with Automator files and make them an independently running application, the average user will be able to construct their own complex mathematical programs with no previous knowledge of programming.
If Apple does decide to bring spreadsheets into the realm of complex relationships via a simplified user interface, Microsoft’s Excel program will be left in the dust along with its uncle Longhorn.
It’s quite amazing what can happen if you allow your own mind to be released from the confining 3+1 universe. This is why I laugh when the 3+1 dimensional minds on here try to tell the 10 dimensional thinkin’ engineers and marketing department of Apple how to do things.
>> Now you have 12 of these sheets to comprise a whole year, so now you have a 3 dimensional spread sheet
But, being that you have been doing this for awhile, you now have them bundles in groups of 12 for each year; this gives you a 4 dimensional spreadsheet
I don’t want to be overly ciritical. You seem to be a man of vision, which is commendable, but what’s teh difference between dimensions 3 and 4 in your concept above? They seem both to be 12 monthly “budgets” grouped in 12 to form a year.
“Imagine viewing the sheets as a 3 dimensional rotatable cube, where highlighting, charting, graphing functions over time is made much easier, and where 4, 5, or 6 dimensional grids can be easily viewed and manipulated.”
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Whoa, fella. Don’t eat the brown acid. You lost me on this one. “Three-dimensional” I understand. The fourth dimension is time. The Fifth Dimension is a Motown group. What the heck is the sixth dimension?
Hrmm.. someone’s getting into it a little too much. Chill. If MS with their 87% marketshare with Office can’t do this, why would Apple be able to? Quartz? If there’s someone willing to write this shit (5th dimension.. LMFAO ) then why haven’t they written it for the Office platform.. It’s not like MS hasn’t been encouraging this kind of behaviour..
If the naming convention is a trend, and you have a Keynote, and Pages, whouldn’t the spreadsheet be “Sheets”?
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Luke
“Why aren’t they working on something similar to Access, but cheaper than FileMaker Pro?”
And kill that nice moneymaker? (We’re talking 40 consecutive quarters of black figures here or something along those lines!) Nah. Besides, FMP is already as easy as you can possibly make a relational database. Heck, even I can use and ‘program’ it 😀
And Apple don’t care all that much for cheap, anyhoo.
LukeinOz
They can’t call it “Sheets” – I am happy to say “I have the Keynote” or “I have the pages” but I’ll be dammed if I will cry out “I’ve got the Sheets” in my CubeFarm!!!
S
Is any form of an equation editor too much to ask for?
While I applaud the effect to create a whole productivity suite, some basic functions are needed in the existing component apps. For example, though both Pages and Keynote contain templates for scientific presentations or reports – there is no easy way to embed equations. I would happily switch over to Pages for manuscript generation once this feature is there, but right now it’s painful having to keep PowerPoint running in the background so I can create an equation there and then cut and paste it into Pages or Keynote – not much of a replacement if you need to keep the apps you’re supposed to be replacing around.
I have submitted a bug / feature enhancement report to Apple, but perhaps anyone here who needs this functionality as well could also do the same?
Cheers
I cant see Microsoft opening office at all.
It aint gonna happen – it goes against theire business model of closed and locked in systems.
If Microsoft open up office – then it will give people choice!
THIS IS NOT WHAT MICROSOFT WANT!
re: justified
Apple have already got a replacement for ‘Appleworks’ – it’s called iWork!!
With this spreadsheet software too – iWork 06 will wipe the ass of Office!
leancuisine ,
The 3rd dimension is the months. The fourth dimension is the years in the example. You have sets of months. Brothers and sisters account for the 5th layer, or dimension. It’s easier for me to think of them as layers of information, or related tables rather than “dimensions” which open my mystical mind to thoughts that aren’t conducive to rational thought.
sDrawkCab,
You seem to be out of your league here. Why don’t you go back to the think tank? We’re just a bunch of Mac bigots.
Joking aside, Why hasn’t MS made this kind of app? Is that a real question? MS doesn’t innovate, they just add features to justify why you need to upgrade. There’s no real leadership there.
Apple can do this, just like NExT can reverse-take-over Apple. Just like Apple took the MP3 industry by making simple players. It’s the new thought paradigms that are risky and brilliant that make up true innovation.
I don’t expect Apple to make Numbers like sDrawkCab said. Expecially the rotating calculation thingie. 3D interfaces have not translated very well. What would be cool in my mind is a layers approach. When clicking through the Dashboard all the widgets seem to fly past. This would be a great paradigm for drilling through layers of data.
Apple needs to stop wasting their time on Pages and Numbers and get behind OpenOffice. It is the ONLY alternative to MS Office and it IS gaining popularity in businesses. Businesses are trying to get away from the Microsoft trap. They look at Apple and say great, we can run another system without needing Microsoft. But wait a minute, we don’t have an alternative to MS Office. So I guess we’ll look at Linux instead.
Why build another app thats proprietary and can’t share data with anyone not on a Mac. Yes its great to write software that takes advantage of OS X. But in the business world, that doesn’t mean squat. Compatibility is more important.
And Open Office is the only choice outside of MS Office.
Naraa Haras, I agree with you 100%. I think we are far too overdue for a more real-world 3-dimensional user interface. The graphics wouldn’t be any harder to implement than Bugdom.
I’d be all for the user being given a choice of ways to display the data that is most comfortable. For example, continuing our analogies, the same data can be represented by drilling through layers as you suggest or by entering a box (house, barn, hole in a tree) within a box as my multi-dimensions might suggest. Using simple graphics, complex relationships can be viewed and Apple has the staff and resources to be innovative with relational data GUIs. There have been attempts of these types of GUI in the past, but none ever really caught on.
For me, Spotlight is an unwelcome move AWAY from this type of interface. Yes, it is fast, but it tosses everything into a one-dimensional list. All of my old data was more dependent upon the name of the folder it was in and not the name of the file itself. It was much more likely that a folder of pictures of national monuments were in a folder called “NatnlMnmnts” and then each photo was named “MR0001.jpg”, “MR002.jpg”, for Mt. Rushmore photos because I couldn’t foresee a function such as Spotlight and I didn’t want to type the lengthy “rushmore001.jpg” for each file. As such, most of my existing data is more relationally-based with nested folders and not content-based, thus making Spotlight useless for locating 95% of my files. I need a Bugdom-like interface where, at a glance, I can see a more physical representation of what I have. I would incorporate Spotlight into this interface as it fades out (makes transparent) any files not relevant in the search, then it would be the best of both worlds.
I think Peter called it. First time I’d ever heard of it, but a little research was revealing Steve Jobs has already pushed a spreadsheet app when he was at NeXT, that was Improv and it was by many accounts a more powerful and more intuitive way to approach numbers solutions. The app was bloat-free, and used a powerful scripting language for the time. And it addresses the multi-dimension points that sDawkscab brings up. Sound like something he might try again? I’d bet he’s got the licenses to go ahead.
http://infocom.cqu.edu.au/Staff/Michael_O_malley/web/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html
http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/feb99/0164.html
“What’s the reason? They can’t possibly generate a spreadsheet program as powerful as Excel.”
iggyb,
You’re kidding. You must be. Check out Lotus Improv, the NeXT’s killer app, and what has been described as the greatest spreadsheet ever. Improv was the reason that NeXT became popular among many leading financial institutions; they were so impressed with the capabilities of Improv that they bought NeXT machines to run it. People talk about pivot tables in Excel as if Microsoft invented the concept. Improv had drag-and-drop pivot tables.
What’s interesting is that when Jobs sent NeXT computers to Lotus, they realized that the development environment, NeXTstep (later OpenStep, now Xcode), was powerful enough to allow them to add killer features to Improv. Jobs was instrumental in driving interest in Improv development at Lotus, and when they passed a critical milestone, he sent the development team an entire truckload of flowers to congratulate them.
In a similar vein, why should Apple continue development of OS X? They can’t possibly generate an operating system as powerful as Windows. Right? Right?
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