A spreadsheet from Apple?
How’s this for a catchy first line: the January 26th edition of Apple’s eNews marketing newsletter included a blurb about iWork’s ability to perform spreadsheet-like calculations in table cells.
And this got me thinking.
Some folks have lamented the fact that Apple does not sell or otherwise provide a spreadsheet program. Pages 2 and Keynote 3 can create spreadsheet-like tables, but that’s it. However, I assert that almost no one actually needs a spreadsheet program. (You heard me.)
The vast majority of Excel spreadsheets I’ve encountered have contained no numeric calculations at all. They’ve basically been text, albeit arranged into vertical and horizontal boxes. The point here is not that spreadsheets are horribly misused…they certainly are. What I’m saying is this user behavior can be seen as a failure on the part of word processing programs to make tables easy enough to use.
And so I was thinking, “I wonder if Apple will ever play into this and release some spreadsheet software.” Right now I’m thinking not. They seem to be taking the high road and making a word processor that can include tables. Another way of saying it is that releasing a spreadsheet program invites bad user behavior (creating spreadsheets), and I don’t think Apple will encourage that.
What Mac users do need is a way of opening Excel formatted files without giving Microsoft any money. I would love it if OpenOffice.org was good enough for general use, but it’s not. You might be willing to compromise and use OOo instead of buying MS Office, but it’s not actually better in the way that Firefox beats IE. Especially on the Mac.
I’m not sure what the solution is here. Making Pages able to open XLS files? Seems awkward. The best thing I can think of is if Apple came up with a spreadsheet program that was as similar to Excel as Pages is to Word. (That is to say, not very). But, this software would be able to open XLS files and “convert” them into its native format.
Any better ideas? Post a comment.
Side note: My Rails apps have been running pretty well for a week now, so I’ll probably post them on Monday.
