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Permanent - the new spreadsheet for iPad

99 pointsby jashmennabout 12 years ago

24 comments

zavulonabout 12 years ago
I've opened the site, searched for Dropbox, didn't find it, and closed tab.<p>Sorry for harsh feedback, and feel free to disregard it if Dropbox users are not a significant portion of your target market.
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julianzabout 12 years ago
I'd love to play with a powerful Lua-enabled spreadsheet on the iPad, but the pricing is miles off. It's NZD 13.99, the same as the Apple productivity apps and Photoshop, but that price is apparently a 50% discount and the app looks a long way from finished. At NZD 4.99 I'd buy it and start playing without thinking twice.
jwrabout 12 years ago
Your page does very little to convince me to buy the app.<p>Think about it this way: most customers who will consider your app have already bought Numbers. So how is your app better than Numbers? Lua scripting sounds good, but it might not be enough. As for the rest of the page, your screenshots tell me very little about the app capabilities, while the "feature" descriptions are overly vague.<p>I will likely buy the app just hoping that it will work better (and faster) than Numbers, but I am not convinced - it feels like a die toss.<p>I am probably your target customer, so you might want to consider this.
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jorgeleoabout 12 years ago
For 9.99 introductory price I think is awesome.<p>3 questions: 1. With the Lua script, can I call a web service or a web page to get an xml or or a json with data and load that response directly to a sheet?<p>2. How do I put a button or something to trigger a script?<p>3. Can I open one of your files from a web link? as in "Open in..."<p>With those 3 items I have a server controlled reporting app.
bhntr3about 12 years ago
I wonder if this will work. I feel like spreadsheets are inherently satisficing mechanisms for data. I think the reason excel has done so well is that its a default when normal folks don't really need much. I wonder if people actively seek out "better" spreadsheet tools or if they just seek out tools to do a task better when excel fails.<p>Either way putting it on a tablet will definitely help.<p>EDIT: I should say that I think a better spreadsheet is a really important and interesting thing to build.
nigglerabout 12 years ago
I don't see a way to import or export data, and the app description says that CSV and XLSX and XLS import and export are pending.<p>Sorry, but without a way to bring data in or out this app looks unfinished.
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rayinerabout 12 years ago
I become more and more convicned every day that a spreadsheet is the ultimate "manage the stuff in my head" interface. Putting it onto an iPad is genius.
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eridiusabout 12 years ago
This looks very cool. My big worry is the only place I'll be able to get at my spreadsheet is on my iPad. Being able to sync with spreadsheets on Google Drive would be a fantastic step towards interoperability with other people/software.
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newman314about 12 years ago
In all honesty, I'm not sure how useful this will be for me. I deal with spreadsheets many columns wide and a big screen is what helps.<p>Rather, I would love to see someone work on being able to seamlessly hook up various data sources in the background to Excel so that I can still use Excel as the UI while having a proper db in the background.
tlholadayabout 12 years ago
Scripting in Lua? Neat!
FreshCodeabout 12 years ago
This is great. Please enlarge your feature-copy font to 16px and set line-height to 1.62em so I can read it :).
lancewiggsabout 12 years ago
Great to see. I expect to be disappointed with this first release, but purchased anyway to support what this could become in the future. The undo functionality provides a glimpse of what possible paths Microsoft has abandoned in favour of never-ending "enhancements" to the UI.
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sandstromabout 12 years ago
Given the usage of spreadsheets in companies (humongous) and how much room there is for improvements to certain aspects of Excel (better scripting is one thing that comes to mind) I think this has great potential.
dansoabout 12 years ago
Anything that boosts the profile of the humble spreadsheet gets a thumbs up from me. I almost always start taking notes with a spreadsheet. It may be something as simple as two fields: one for the actual note and two for a category. If it's trivial to add a timestamp, I'll do that too.<p>The notes end up being far more organized than as if I had just put them chronologically into an empty text editor (though in a pinch, I may just write my notes in a tab delimited format and import them into a spreadsheet). Even if I never need to chronologically reverse sort or sort by category.<p>More importantly, when doing a research project, it serves as a checklist for what I need to do. Awhile back I wanted to track homicides in my city and so I started off with just name of victim, name of suspect, age, time of day, link to a news article, time of arrest, address, etc. Without a spreadsheet, you'd forget at least one of those details as you did your research in the traditional note taking fashion.<p>And when you make your model more complex: i.e. realize that you need to record time of arrest, charges filed, age of suspect, etc., the spreadsheet makes it easy to backtrack and fill your past data rows.<p>And when you realize you need to make your data model more complicated: the fact that a number of suspects could be implicated and charged for a single homicide, and face various charges, you are all ready to have your "notes" be put into a database.<p>And now that it's in a database, it's just a weekend of hacking to make a homicides website or a map.
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larrywrightabout 12 years ago
I think this looks very cool from a technical standpoint, but I don't know how useful it is. Especially without a corresponding desktop application.
jeyabout 12 years ago
How is it that they can allow scripting in Lua? Doesn't the iOS SDK ToS forbid interpreters other than JavaScriptCore?
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csomarabout 12 years ago
Looks good.<p>If you are interest in getting it reviewed in iPad.appstorm send me an email with a coupon code.
mifengabout 12 years ago
I like the design, but the thought of using a spreadsheet without a keyboard makes my head hurt.
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kamakazizuruabout 12 years ago
what would really make or break this for me is if it is compatible with excel sheets..
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bsg75about 12 years ago
Give me a desktop version, so that sheets and scripts can be shared and I am sold.
rubyrescueabout 12 years ago
There's also a YC tablet spreadsheet startup out there - GRID.
zachwillabout 12 years ago
The ability to script with Lua is incredibly smart.
RBerenguelabout 12 years ago
iOS6... The time to upgrade my iPad 1 to a newer model is getting closer by the minute
martincedabout 12 years ago
Amazing. First all the semi-recent talks about Excel really being the one thing making the real-world work at all (not Linux, not OS X, not Google, no... Excel was the word)...<p>Then now that people are showing other spreadsheets suddenly we can hear the whiners: <i>"But I need my Excel shortcuts"</i> and <i>"But I need my wide-screen to show all my Excel colums"</i>.<p>I'm pretty sure that should we live one day in a world dominated by iOS / Android and online HTML5 / iOS / Android / Google Docs spreadsheets (we're already kinda are in that one in the SMEs world that said), we'd still hear the cries of a few corporate drones (or MS astroturfers) telling us that Excel is the one and only spreadsheet preventing the planet from imploding.