Okay, I've done it - I feel a little embarrassed, a little dirty, even a little childish. But yes, I've gone and got an iPad.

And promptly experimented with n billion apps, most of which are nowhere near as good as they appear at first sight.

But... in the process, I've discovered Numbers.

What an amazing application. It's enough to make you want to change over to Mac just so you can use Numbers all the time.

It's not a spreadsheet application at all. It's a kind of business pasteboard - you can put more or less any kind of information on there, anywhere you want it. The spreadsheet ability is just the icing on the cake. It's the equivalent of Microsoft OneNote for Mac - but much, much nicer to use (yes, I love the OneNote concept; no, I really don't like the OneNote execution). The only thing it doesn't appear to do (yet!) is audio recordings.

Why am I writing about Numbers in an outliner forum? For several reasons:
a) you can treat spreadsheet tables as outlines
b) you can create loads of tabs
c) the search tool searches every sheet in full (unlike the ghastly Excel)

From my point of view, it's even more powerful because it's relatively easy to share. Now that Apple have included WebDAV support in their iWorks apps, it's easy to transfer Numbers documents as PDF or Excel files to a central server (you can also use e-mail, iDisk, iWorks.com as intermediaries). The Excel conversion is neat: it creates a summary sheet at the start of each workbook and creates a separate worksheet for each table (sadly the text elements and graphics appear to get lost, but I haven't done much experimenting with that yet); the summary includes links to each separate worksheet.

There are other wonderful things on the iPad, including the lovely outliner CarbonFin (also shareable via web sync) and the neat, simple Wunderlist (ditto); both applications run on iPhone, too, so you can sync right across multiple platforms.

Actually, for all my mild embarrassment at succumbing to the Apple virus, the decision was carefully planned from a very business-oriented point of view. The impact on ease of collaboration with colleagues has already been startling, and we're only just beginning to discover what you can do with this stuff.

I'm looking forward to Apple OS X Lion, which will turn every Mac into a server - using ReaddleDocs (or Air Sharing) you can turn your iPad into a WebDAV server already, which is also a great way to share info. This is a fascinating strategy for subverting the enterprise - rather than turning all workstations into thin clients, you turn all clients into mini-servers. Very, very bold.

Congrats! Incidentally, if you'd like to see another reason to be glad you made the leap, look at this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang///id/1134

Can't say I've made the leap -- but I know it's coming. I've convinced myself to wait for the "next release."

This sounds fantastic, leading me to look around for templates or examples &c. for this sort of function. If there's any way you could provide an example or template, I'd be very interested in knowing how you're using numbers. I don't have an iPad but assume you can do the same thing on a Mac?

Thanks for posting this.

-- ge

Yes, you can, Numbers on the Mac is much more powerful than Numbers on the iPad. The mistake is to think of Numbers as in any way equivalent to Excel - it isn't, it works in a fundamentally different way. I use Excel frequently for business purposes, and I hate it. I've been keeping an eye on Numbers ever since it first came out for the Mac, because even in its first iteration it was clearly ground-breaking. Now that it's been around for a while, it's seriously impressive.

For Numbers on the Mac, I'd suggest checking out the Apple tutorials at http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#numbers
For Numbers on the iPad, check out http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/numbers.html

Even Apple hasn't really emphasized the difference between Numbers and a standard spreadsheet application, although the above info on the iPad version does say the following: "Numbers isn?t just a spreadsheet application ? it?s a flexible canvas. Which means you can add multiple tables and charts anywhere on a sheet and move them wherever you like. Drag your finger on a table to add, delete, or move columns and rows. With a tap, enter and edit data. Use the full-screen summary view to see your data by the sum, min, max, and count for your selection. Then, with just a swipe, you can see a chart of how it all adds up."

What they don't mention is that you can also enter text (with full rich-text formatting), shapes (including lines, squares, circles, ovals etc.) and do all kinds of prettifying things to all of them: think of it more as a spreadsheet+notetaker+DTP+charting package. Oh, and then you can output it all as an elegant PDF, suitable for presentation to a board meeting/client. We're using it - for example - to generate copy concepts for major international corporates. An additional benefit is that you can easily post your documents for team review to iWork.com (you are entitled to as soon as you acquire an Apple iWork app - apologies for previously misspelling that as iWorks, incidentally). Documents can be encrypted and password-protected, and team members can jot comments all over them, or download them as either Numbers or PDF or Excel files. Once OS X Lion appears, you'll be able to do these things on your own Apple server.

Let's be fair: Excel can do these things too, to an extent, but you never want to do them in Excel because the experience is so utterly ghastly (it's just crashed on me yet again, even as I type!).

What it boils down to is this: Numbers is actually fun! And replaces any number of lesser applications (on the iPad and, I suspect, on the Mac) that only offer a portion of its features.

I switched to a Mac in 2006 and have been extremely happy with the move. I only switched because my choice for a new PC was one with Vista, and Apple had just switched over to the Intel chips so I figured I could use Parallels or Boot Camp. But I never even put Windows on my Mac as the software selection was much better than I realized.

One of the best packages out there is iWork, and especially Numbers as you stated. Once I started using Numbers, I never went back to Excel. Being able to draw anything on the screen and resize and move it was a groundbreaking model, one that is not appreciated as much as it should be. Having said that, I have not used Numbers as MadaboutDana (thought it was MadaboutData at first glance) has indicated, but it does sound intriguing. I will have to play around with it a bit.

We just got the iPad 2 for my wife, and I guess I need to download the Numbers app right away. Quite a bargain in my opinion.

Apple is expected to update iWorks sometime soon, so hopefully we will get a plethora of new and exciting features.

Thanks for the great idea MadaboutDana. Much appreciated.

Vince

MadaboutDana wrote:

There are other wonderful things on the
iPad, including the lovely outliner CarbonFin (also shareable via web sync) and the
neat, simple Wunderlist (ditto); both applications run on iPhone, too, so you can
sync right across multiple platforms.

Bill,

Just wondering, what's so special about Wunderlist? I use MLO (which syncs with iPhone over wifi), so I'm just wondering what I'm missing... Thanks. (I'm also a CarbonFin fan, by the way).

I guess it's all down to horses for courses. I've experimented with dozens of different task/project management apps, and I've found that there's a real trade-off between bells and whistles and total confusion (where you actually spend more time fiddling around with task management than you spend doing the tasks!).

MLO looks very impressive, I will say. But: you have to pay money for the Pro service, and you have to pay again for the Cloud service... And it only runs on Windows and iPhone (not on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and web browser, like Wunderlist).

Personally, I've tried using various outliners for task management, and always get frustrated. My favourite outliner in Windows, for example, is ListPro, for reasons I won't bore you with, but I can't use it as a task manager for long without feeling a strong need to scream (despite all the customisability!).

Commercially, I need a task manager that I can share with other people. Wunderlist (and CarbonFin) fit the bill wonderfully well - easy to share, easy to synchronise. And the learning curve on both of them is extremely shallow (a highly desirable business trait!), whereas I've found that some colleagues have a real resistance to working with outliners (they prefer simple categories/tags, and usually also some kind of date/calendar function).

Finally, Wunderlist is currently free, in all its incarnations. I don't suppose that will last, but the boys in Berlin are tantalisingly teasing us with their next Big Thing, apparently some kind of collaboration platform, so I expect things will change.

Meanwhile we're watching Apple with growing interest because of the rumoured iCloud launch in the summer, which may subsume both MobileMe and iWork.com. And mulling over whether we ought to change over to Apple Server in the near future, because of the highly desirable Spotlight feature, the unlimited clients, and the lovely online document preview function (apparently enhanced for Wiki Server 3, due out in OS X Lion). Not to mention all the sharing options, including WebDAV, CalDAV etc. etc. - perfect for intranets and extranets. Well, I say perfect: I should know better, having been disappointed in the past, but my optimism is based on considerable research!

Actually, it's an exciting time to be a small business! Apart from minor economic/financial fluctuations, of course... aha, aha, aha...

Cheers,
Bill

Captain CowPie wrote:

Apple is expected to update iWorks sometime soon, so hopefully we will
get a plethora of new and exciting features.

Is that true that Apple killed off outlining in iWorks? That sounds like a retrograde move...

"iWork was recently upgraded, and Apple did such a poor job of it that some iWorks users are giving it up for Office. In the upgrade, Apple dumbed-down iWorks considerably, and iWorks users have been flooding the Apple support forums with complaints. Among the features Apple killed were the outline view, facing pages, being able to save in RTF format, and over 100 templates."

http://blogs.computerworld.com/desktop-apps/23055/game-over-microsoft-office-killing-google-apps-and-anemic-iworks

Yes -- outlines are gone from Pages. All three of the new iWork apps on OS X Mavericks are ugly and dumbed down. I enjoyed working with Pages and Numbers in their pre-Mavericks state. They were pleasant, slightly quirky, but unobtrusive full-featured applications. It would be an interesting case sturdy to see how the Apple corporate machinery came to decide to release these new versions.

For anyone who has the older versions installed, they are still working -- though they do not work with iCloud correctly.

Dr. Andus wrote

Is that true that Apple killed off outlining in iWorks? That sounds like a retrograde move…

Apple announces it plans to "reintroduce" some features removed from Pages, Numbers, and Keynote in the latest releases, with updated releases in "the next 6 months". Though not mentioning outlining in Pages.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6049

I'm afraid Apple turns more and more into a picture/video/social media/tablet game company and isn't interested in office like software any more.

Once I turned to a Mac because of its wonderful synthesis of a command line unix and GUI. There is plenty of Unix software I can use and there are very interesting tools like Scrivener, Tinderbox and many more.

Nevertheless, I installed Parallels to run some Windows tools that don't have a counterpart on OS X.

But now, I have to rethink if it wouldn't be the time to go back to Windows and install VMWare to run Linux besides Windows.

I'm very frustrated that a software like QuarkExpress v9 doesn't work on Mavericks any more and Apple cuts iCal synchronization, urges me into iCloud, cripples Pages/Numbers and what will show up next.

Yes, Windows isn't the answer to everything but more and more I think it wouls be the smoother way to go.

I have to admit that fan of the Mac that I've been for the last six years, I think Apple really has screwed up the launch of the latest versions of its iWorks software. I haven't been impressed with the release of the Mavericks OS either. Free of charge it may be; free of bugs it is not. When Audi tries to expand its market-place, the one thing it doesn't do (if it's wise) is to offend the users of its more up-market models; the expansion of its market-pace partly depends on image and word-of-mouth percolating down from the up-market sector.

But… recently I set up my wife's new Windows desktop. Windows 8… need I say more?