Before I get into this, another historical note: my favorite Mac spreadsheet used to be Informix Wingz, which was then later rebranded as Claris Resolve. Powerful functions, great graphics, and a macro language which was actually parseable by humans (based on HyperTalk, how cool is that?). This was software that was way, way ahead of its time in 1989\u2014no current spreadsheet is nearly as good. Progress is, unfortunately, not always forward.<\/p>\n
This is a battle of attrition: I don\u2019t really like Excel all that much, but the other two are just not ready for prime time. Mariner Calc is OK, but it lacks the statistical functions that I need (like z-, t-, F- and chi square distributions), I\u2019ve found more than one error in calculations (I\u2019ve reported them and Mariner claims that they\u2019re fixed, but who knows if there are more?), and the UI just doesn\u2019t make it. For example, when you\u2019re in a cell, the row and column indicators don\u2019t change to indicate where you are in the spreadsheet, like so:<\/p>\n
![\"Untitled.r86ArkrhLy6p.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/img\/Untitled.r86ArkrhLy6p.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Not really that big a deal when you\u2019re in C5, but when you\u2019re in K39 it\u2019s often useful to know, visually, what row and column you\u2019re in\u2014like in every<\/strong> other spreadsheet I\u2019ve ever used. I requested this feature ages ago, but Mariner never did anything with it. This is just a dumb UI fail, a \u201cplease don\u2019t buy our product\u201d signal from the developers.<\/p>\n Now, Numbers. Numbers is an interesting effort from Apple, an attempt to kind of change the paradigm for spreadsheets. Instead of the \u201csheet\u201d being the basic unit, the \u201ctable\u201d is the central unit, and each sheet can have multiple tables\u2014and of course each document can have multiple sheets. This is kind of interesting and there are certainly advantages to doing things this way, but it does add a lot of clutter if you just want one single very large table (and no others) because there\u2019s all this screen real estate devoted to managing multiple tables in a sheet that you won\u2019t need. OTOH, there are some cool things that this enables, as multiple separate tables on a single page can be useful, particularly for things that have to be printed out. So, there are things about Numbers that I like, but there are just as many that I hate. Here are the two things I hate the most:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Exporting from a Numbers document is incredibly cumbersome. This is important, because lots of other apps like simple and dumb, but also highly portable, you-know-everything-will-be-able-to-read-it-in-10-years formats like tab-delimited text. First of all, Numbers doesn\u2019t even support tab-delimited text<\/strong>. WTF? It supports CSV, but I hate CSV because CSV files aren\u2019t as human-readable, and commas are crappy delimiters because lots of data has commas in it one way or another. Second, Numbers handles multiple sheets\/tables incredibly stupidly: you can only export the entire<\/em> document, every single sheet and table, or nothing. You can\u2019t just export the part you want. Mind-numbing.<\/p>\n \u2022 Sorting is stupid. Numbers won\u2019t let you sort only a part of a table; again, it\u2019s all-or-nothing. (Technically, this isn\u2019t quite true; it\u2019s possible to sort only some rows, but when you do, it still sorts all columns<\/em> for those rows. Ugh.) This just defies any reasonable logic whatsoever. Well, maybe that\u2019s a little harsh. This completely defies my mental model for how a spreadsheet should work, and I can\u2019t stand it. I don\u2019t care how much of a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d this thing is supposed to be, it should not completely break major chunks of previous knowledge about how spreadsheets work. <\/p>\n The other kind of stunning thing about Numbers is that there\u2019s no way to edit a Numbers spreadsheet on an iPhone\u2014at least, none that I\u2019ve been able to find. The great irony is that there are many iPhone apps that will allow you to edit Excel spreadsheets on an iPhone, but not Numbers. (Double irony: Mariner\u2019s Calc iPhone app will let you edit Excel sheets, but not Calc sheets. WTF?) Hey, Apple, fantastic job on platform integration there! (Side note: I like having small spreadsheets on my iPhone for small tasks, and usually all the editing I do is enter data onto them, but that\u2019s enough that it\u2019s useful.)<\/p>\n So, the winner\u2014again, mostly by attrition\u2014is Excel. I\u2019m not thrilled with Excel, of course, as the launch time is hideously long and it has some UI quirks of its own, and of course is full of Microsoft bloat. However, Excel seems to do a better job of containing that bloat than the other Office apps and so it\u2019s bearable. I think this is an area where a third-party really could compete with the big boys, but none has yet risen to the challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t do a lot of serious work with spreadsheets. Most of my data either ends up getting dealt with in stats packages or if it\u2019s something requiring anything custom, I\u2019ll write a program of my own to deal with it. I use spreadsheets mostly for things like grade rosters, when I do my taxes, … Continue reading Confessions of a Mac Junkie: Spreadsheets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}