7 ms·

One feature that’s still missing, though, is actually running spreadsheet-style calculations on your numbers in Grid. Doesn't this preclude Grid from being a s

One feature that’s still missing, though, is actually running spreadsheet-style calculations on your numbers in Grid. Doesn't this preclude Grid from being a spreadsheet app?

mej10 14y ago
It isn't even that hard to get a basic implementation of such functionality. Not sure why this is missing. Just make a directed graph out of cell references. Get the strongly connected components. All of the components with more than one vertex contain a loop and can't be computed. Remove those and you get a directed acyclic graph. Now you can topological sort them for cell dependencies, and start calculating them in the order they are needed. Or if your language has a dataflow implementation it is even easier. Haven't seen one of these for Obj-C though. I will add that this looks pretty cool, though.
- martythemaniak 14y ago
  It may be easy, but it'll still take time to develop. If it's not critical and won't keep you from getting your initial batch of users, it's much better to launch and add it in 3 weeks, rather than waiting an extra 3 weeks to launch.
  - mej10 14y ago
    I may have sounded a bit negative, but I don't think it was a "bad" move, especially seeing as how I am personally excited about Grid even without it currently having this feature. It just shouldn't come as a surprise when a lot of people question the choice of leaving out the #1 feature of spreadsheets. Even on version one.
- hassy 14y ago
  You forgot parsing the formulae. You forgot having to decide which functions to include and implementing them. You forgot testing. Sure those aren't super hard, but minutes add up to hours and hours add up to days which turn into weeks. Most importantly, you forgot the UI. Building the UI for entering formulae - one that makes sense on the iPad and not just a copy of the one from Excel or Numbers (those suck) - would take a while.
- erikpukinskis 14y ago
  Apple could've thrown copy and paste into the first iPhone, but they didn't because they didn't feel they had it right. They might be in the process of actually designing an interface for formulas that actually expands the reach of such functionality. You know, something that the "I'm bad at math" crowd could actually dig into, make use of, and learn within. If you release a basic not-that-hard-to-implement version of the functionality, it's WAY harder to drop in a new, innovative model afterwards. I think there's a lot of sense in waiting until they can get it right, if they're planning on doing something different with it--which, judging by the other UI departures they've made, I wouldn't be surprised if they are.
pg 14y ago
No more than any version one of something is precluded from becoming complete. Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on innovation. I think most people agree now that it's valid strategy, particularly in software, to launch a simple version one of something and then iterate rapidly. I'm constantly pushing founders to do that. And you know what's the biggest thing holding them back? The fear that people will make fun of the first thing they launch.
- heartbreak 14y ago
  So you're telling me that you would financially back a company that intended to release a photo-sharing application that did not provide an avenue for users to upload photos? Isn't shipping version 1 worthless if what you're actually shipping is version 0.01? (Yes, I realize they haven't released yet.) I don't think he was being inane, witty, or that he is a part of one of the "worst forces at work in the world." He is simply stating that to advertise your product as spreadsheet software, it should probably include some of the features that users expect to be found in spreadsheet software. The way I see it, GRID isn't spreadsheet software at all (and doesn't seem to want to be based on the website), and shouldn't be advertising itself as such.
  - majormajor 14y ago
    There is a disconnect between what a spreadsheet originally was and all the different layout/calendering/organizational stuff people also use Excel for today. For technical users it's a startling omission, but I don't think a non-technical user is going to see this and its screenshots and immediately wonder where the formulas are. Is the term misused? Who cares? It looks really cool because it's focused on the non-math use cases (which IMO are much better suited to a tablet anyway, where I wouldn't want to be entering columns of numbers on an on-screen keyboard).
    - 14y ago
revorad 14y ago
Actually, a lot of people use Excel just as a table to list things in a semi-structured way. They don't even know how to do a sum in Excel. Grid looks like a huge improvement for them. This is way slicker than the first versions of most products.
flipside 14y ago
Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. When building something new, might as well build and experiment with the new features first to see if people really want them. Demand for calculations is a given. Nobody would care if they released a "new" spreadsheet app that did calculations, but with innovative features still on the to do list. Grid is taking the right approach and personally I think it looks sexy as hell.
- mc32 14y ago
  >Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. Yes, but it is, simultaneously, in its current incarnation, defining what spreadheet apps can't do. Sexy sells for the genral public, but as other have pointed out, in the enterprise, sexy is much less important. More important is functionality. Maybe in it's next iteration, it will meet the demands of the office worker, currently, I don't see that, beyond helping coordinate parties or meetings.
- yumraj 14y ago
  It does look great and is beautiful indeed and has very specific use cases. I might even be interested in using it. But that wasn't the point, IMvHO the point was that if it doesn't walk/talk/act/etc. like a spreadsheet, don't call it a spreadsheet and confuse your users when the basic feature that has been in spreadsheet's since VisiCalc is missing. Call it what it's called, the Grid and leave it there.
logique 14y ago
Very much agree. I would call it a gridded paper canvas / sketch book rather then spreadsheet. The metaphor is one of a generic data presentation context / place holder rather than 2d relational modeling medium, a compute data context such as a spreadsheet. Sure you can draw pixel art in excel but it is an abuse of the potential of the medium rather then the primary reason for it. You can do the same in MS Paint for instance but not the other way around. Moreover my reaction to criticism by pg on your comment is that while the demo video is indeed neat, it is also a bit contrived. I would rather shoot myself than go through all these steps to make plan for a simple camping trip. I cannot also imagine doing any serious data work on it. It is not about being negative to the idea of potentially a useful implementation of spreadsheets in tablets, but when a particular design is presented you cannot not have a critical debate for the sole reason of demotivating innovation. It is exactly the other way around, criticism is the only way you may get an agro objectivish feedback for what may or not work in a design and seek to improve.

One feature that’s still missing, though, is actually running spreadsheet-style calculations on your numbers in Grid. Doesn't this preclude Grid from being a spreadsheet app?

mej10 14y ago

It isn't even that hard to get a basic implementation of such functionality. Not sure why this is missing. Just make a directed graph out of cell references. Get the strongly connected components. All of the components with more than one vertex contain a loop and can't be computed. Remove those and you get a directed acyclic graph. Now you can topological sort them for cell dependencies, and start calculating them in the order they are needed. Or if your language has a dataflow implementation it is even easier. Haven't seen one of these for Obj-C though. I will add that this looks pretty cool, though.

martythemaniak 14y ago
It may be easy, but it'll still take time to develop. If it's not critical and won't keep you from getting your initial batch of users, it's much better to launch and add it in 3 weeks, rather than waiting an extra 3 weeks to launch.
- mej10 14y ago
  I may have sounded a bit negative, but I don't think it was a "bad" move, especially seeing as how I am personally excited about Grid even without it currently having this feature. It just shouldn't come as a surprise when a lot of people question the choice of leaving out the #1 feature of spreadsheets. Even on version one.
hassy 14y ago
You forgot parsing the formulae. You forgot having to decide which functions to include and implementing them. You forgot testing. Sure those aren't super hard, but minutes add up to hours and hours add up to days which turn into weeks. Most importantly, you forgot the UI. Building the UI for entering formulae - one that makes sense on the iPad and not just a copy of the one from Excel or Numbers (those suck) - would take a while.
erikpukinskis 14y ago
Apple could've thrown copy and paste into the first iPhone, but they didn't because they didn't feel they had it right. They might be in the process of actually designing an interface for formulas that actually expands the reach of such functionality. You know, something that the "I'm bad at math" crowd could actually dig into, make use of, and learn within. If you release a basic not-that-hard-to-implement version of the functionality, it's WAY harder to drop in a new, innovative model afterwards. I think there's a lot of sense in waiting until they can get it right, if they're planning on doing something different with it--which, judging by the other UI departures they've made, I wouldn't be surprised if they are.

pg 14y ago

No more than any version one of something is precluded from becoming complete. Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on innovation. I think most people agree now that it's valid strategy, particularly in software, to launch a simple version one of something and then iterate rapidly. I'm constantly pushing founders to do that. And you know what's the biggest thing holding them back? The fear that people will make fun of the first thing they launch.

heartbreak 14y ago
So you're telling me that you would financially back a company that intended to release a photo-sharing application that did not provide an avenue for users to upload photos? Isn't shipping version 1 worthless if what you're actually shipping is version 0.01? (Yes, I realize they haven't released yet.) I don't think he was being inane, witty, or that he is a part of one of the "worst forces at work in the world." He is simply stating that to advertise your product as spreadsheet software, it should probably include some of the features that users expect to be found in spreadsheet software. The way I see it, GRID isn't spreadsheet software at all (and doesn't seem to want to be based on the website), and shouldn't be advertising itself as such.
- majormajor 14y ago
  There is a disconnect between what a spreadsheet originally was and all the different layout/calendering/organizational stuff people also use Excel for today. For technical users it's a startling omission, but I don't think a non-technical user is going to see this and its screenshots and immediately wonder where the formulas are. Is the term misused? Who cares? It looks really cool because it's focused on the non-math use cases (which IMO are much better suited to a tablet anyway, where I wouldn't want to be entering columns of numbers on an on-screen keyboard).
  - 14y ago

revorad 14y ago

Actually, a lot of people use Excel just as a table to list things in a semi-structured way. They don't even know how to do a sum in Excel. Grid looks like a huge improvement for them. This is way slicker than the first versions of most products.

flipside 14y ago

Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. When building something new, might as well build and experiment with the new features first to see if people really want them. Demand for calculations is a given. Nobody would care if they released a "new" spreadsheet app that did calculations, but with innovative features still on the to do list. Grid is taking the right approach and personally I think it looks sexy as hell.

mc32 14y ago
>Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. Yes, but it is, simultaneously, in its current incarnation, defining what spreadheet apps can't do. Sexy sells for the genral public, but as other have pointed out, in the enterprise, sexy is much less important. More important is functionality. Maybe in it's next iteration, it will meet the demands of the office worker, currently, I don't see that, beyond helping coordinate parties or meetings.
yumraj 14y ago
It does look great and is beautiful indeed and has very specific use cases. I might even be interested in using it. But that wasn't the point, IMvHO the point was that if it doesn't walk/talk/act/etc. like a spreadsheet, don't call it a spreadsheet and confuse your users when the basic feature that has been in spreadsheet's since VisiCalc is missing. Call it what it's called, the Grid and leave it there.

logique 14y ago

Very much agree. I would call it a gridded paper canvas / sketch book rather then spreadsheet. The metaphor is one of a generic data presentation context / place holder rather than 2d relational modeling medium, a compute data context such as a spreadsheet. Sure you can draw pixel art in excel but it is an abuse of the potential of the medium rather then the primary reason for it. You can do the same in MS Paint for instance but not the other way around. Moreover my reaction to criticism by pg on your comment is that while the demo video is indeed neat, it is also a bit contrived. I would rather shoot myself than go through all these steps to make plan for a simple camping trip. I cannot also imagine doing any serious data work on it. It is not about being negative to the idea of potentially a useful implementation of spreadsheets in tablets, but when a particular design is presented you cannot not have a critical debate for the sole reason of demotivating innovation. It is exactly the other way around, criticism is the only way you may get an agro objectivish feedback for what may or not work in a design and seek to improve.