Documents in the Cloud is a way to sync documents and data across your devices. While it may seem like it takes the place of iDisk, it doesn’t replace it. There is no Finder-like access to a file structure. Each app has its data sandboxed, so it’s app-specific. If you open the same file in Pages and GoodReader, and tell each to upload that file to iCloud, you will have two copies of the file up there.

Setting up Documents in the Cloud

The initial setup of Documents in the Cloud is very easy. On your iOS device go into Settings, then iCloud, and make sure Documents and Data is set to “On.” You can also tell it to not sync when only on cellular networks.

To use the iWork apps with Documents in the Cloud, you’ll need to be running the latest versions of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. The first time you launch each of these apps, you’ll be asked if you want to use iCloud. If you choose to use iCloud, any local iWork documents you have will be uploaded to iCloud, so don’t worry about losing them. However, once you enable iCloud, you will no longer be able to use iTunes to add a document to an iWork app. Using “Open With” from an e-mail still works just fine.

Syncing between iOS devices

Right now, syncing between iOS devices is Documents in the Cloud’s strong suit. Changes made to a Pages document on my iPad show up within seconds on my iPhone. As a control, I performed a worst-case scenario for syncing: I deleted Pages from all my iOS devices and reinstalled it on my iPad. All my files were still there.

This service isn’t limited to just iWork, as games like Scribblenauts Remix will let you use iCloud to sync your saved games between devices. GoodReader for iPad also supports iCloud. The GoodReader for iPhone update is still in Apple’s review queue as of this writing.

Syncing between Windows and OS X

This is where Documents in the Cloud starts to fall down. While there is a Documents and Data checkbox in the iCloud Preference Pane in Lion, I can’t tell where the data is saved to. I also doubt it’s user-accessible.

The only way to get data from my Mac to iCloud right now is via the iCloud.com website. Unfortunately, the only apps that show up on the website are the three iWork apps. The good news is, you can upload and download either iWork or Microsoft Office files from here. The bad news is, if you have PDFs on your Mac you want to get into GoodReader and iCloud, there isn’t an easy option outside of iTunes syncing (that still works for GoodReader).

There are APIs available for developers to use on Windows and OS X that hook into iCloud. My bet is in the long run developers that want to make it easy for users to put data into their apps. Omni Group has said the next version of OmniGraffle for iPad will support storing documents in iCloud, but I don’t see any mention of OmniGraffle for OS X and iCloud. Omni Group tends to be on the leading edge of development, so I’m curious how they will handle this.

Final thoughts

Buyer Beware

I had little faith in iCloud retaining my data during yesterday’s craziness. My tests on seeing if a changed document was properly updated on the web and iOS were successful. However, at least three times when I went back to look at something on the web interface, my documents were gone. I would either have a web page empty of documents or one prompting me to get iWork for iOS. The first time this happened was during the afternoon and I was having trouble updating the apps. I thought maybe one of the apps got rolled back and threw iCloud off. The second time I had noticed my iPhone wanted to download the update again (I think I had deleted it) and I thought maybe something had gotten wonky again. The third time I didn’t do anything. I went to the web page, saw no documents and opened up Pages for iPad and watched three documents delete themselves.

Problems are ongoing. When I create a new document in Pages on iOS, it prompts me to either create a document, or import one even though iCloud is specified in Pages’ settings. This is how Pages worked pre-iCloud, and turning iCloud on and off doesn’t fix the problem.. When this happens, both the iPhone and the iPad can’t see iCloud. At which point I thought to myself: Yep, these are the guys that brought me MobileMe. It’s possible it’s related to all the iCloud launch issues, but I’m very scared to trust it with my data.

These issues aside, until there’s an easy way to always update documents on a Mac or a PC, Documents in the Cloud is of limited use to me. I’m not optimistic this is going to happen any time soon. All of Apple’s promo videos that show iWork on iOS being used with iCloud never show a Mac as part of the chain (the Mac does feature prominently when they demonstrate photo stream). I also don’t like that third-party iCloud-enabled iOS apps can’t register themselves on the website so you can drag files to them.

I was really hoping I would be able to round-trip files from OS X to iOS without doing the download/upload two-step. It didn’t seem like a fantasy to work on a document on OS X Pages, close it, and head to diner and have it magically appear on my iPad. Until Apple and other developers use those OS X and Windows APIs, that fantasy won’t come true.

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Apple released a fresh update of its iPad productivity suite iWork yesterday, and what makes it worthwhile is that it finally makes Keynote a useful presentation tool. This update supports core iOS 4.2 features such as AirPrint and multitasking. The update also brings better PDF exporting, and provides some fixes for font issues that arise on export.

As mentioned, the update finally brings the iPad into the arena of truly powerful presentation tools: Keynote for iPad 1.3 now supports a presenter’s view of sorts. However, you’re limited in your choices: you can choose to display current, next, current and next, and current and notes. There’s no option for current and next, and notes, which a setting I use on OS X Keynote all the time.

Since previous versions only showed a black screen with slide advancement buttons, though, even this limited implementation is wondrous news. There’s still no support for any sort of Bluetooth remote, but since that would require an update to the core iOS, we’re not likely to see it introduced anytime soon. Allowing an iPhone or iPod touch with Keynote Remote installed to do the job is technically feasible, however, and something I’d like to see in future iterations.

Numbers, the iWork spreadsheet app, now supports formula entry via keyboard, including predictive function selector. You can also set pagination settings to select how a sheet prints across multiple pages, or choose Auto Fit to let the program choose for you. The best part is, PDF exporting also honors those settings, so you can export them and send them to others without fear of sharing a garbled final product. While I’ve never really needed to print from my iPad, this will make sharing PDFs a whole lot easier. Apple also claims “improved reliability” when exporting Numbers ’09 and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Changes to Pages, iWork’s document editor, are more modest. Support for automatic pagination of tables that cross page breaks has been added, as has the ever-popular “improved reliability,” which probably amounts to a handful of bug fixes.

I’m thrilled with these changes — especially the ones to Keynote. I have a dream of limiting the times I need to drag my MacBook Pro around with me, and these updates go a long way towards achieving this goal. I’m not getting too excited over printing, what with its limitations, but the fast-app switching works great. The updates are available now.

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The iWork 1.2 update for iPad brings about a whole host of welcome improvements, the best one in my opinion being the ability to import and export directly from iDisk, or any WebDAV-supported virtual disk. Dropbox isn’t WebDAV, unfortunately, and I wouldn’t hold my breath for Dropbox support.

Until now, Pages was the only one of the three apps that could export to its MS Office counterpart, but now, all three can export to Office-compatible formats. I’m curious to see how well this will work with Keynote, since most Keynote files I’ve exported to PowerPoint look like they were victims of a vicious assault.

The apps now support grouped objects as well. For Keynote especially, this is a big plus for me, as you can define builds on grouped objects, and the groups remain intact when imported from the desktop version.

A small, but welcome change is support for importing .txt and .csv files for Pages and Numbers, respectively. You can’t export them, but at least you can work with them. These are all supported via the “Open As” command, so any app can inbound the files.

Pages gets another halfway-done feature with support for footnotes, endnotes, and sections on import and export. You can’t create these, but files you copy onto the iPad to work with won’t get mangled as part of the process. I’m hoping 1.3 allows users to create them.

I’ve always believed the feature set of the iWork suite was the best available for the iPad. The sticking issue for me was transfers. With the 1.2 update, I feel Apple has made some serious progress towards creating a fantastic productivity suite. So far, the only thing I can say is missing from Pages is creation of footnotes.

I also think Apple needs to address importing fonts since I use non-standard fonts for all my presentations. Now, with iDisk support I hope Apple also fixes general syncing issues, since it looks like I’ll be storing more mission-critical data up there in the cloud.

Full release notes for Numbers, Pages, and Keynote can be read via the App Store.

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So say you want to show all negative numbers as red and bold…conditional formatting lets us do that!

We’ll cover how to apply conditional formatting to numbers, text and dates in this TechUniversity screencast on Conditional Formatting with Numbers (subscription required).

Below is a sample of the video. The full screencast clocks in at just over 10 minutes.

When first opening the Numbers app, a “welcome” spreadsheet walks you through the very basics. A spreadsheet on making spreadsheets! Once you do the walkthrough you can either create a new blank spreadsheet or use one of the 15 provided templates including a Mortgage Calculator, Auto Log, Travel planner and more.

Usage

Navigation within the spreadsheets is very similar to the desktop version of Numbers. Tap on a cell to change the contents and a specialized calculator shows up at the bottom of your screen. From there you can tap out your info or use the side pad to switch to functions (250 are included), standard input keyboard, date/time functions and logic. One difference between desktop and iPad versions is the use of tabs. The iPad version has stylish tabs at the top to move between sheets, while the desktop version puts sheet navigation on the side.

Similar to desktop Numbers, the Inspector includes the ability to insert Photos, Tables, Charts, and Shapes. Items naturally flow around existing data and editing a chart is simply a tap and drag. Instead of being a palette, the inspector is a drop menu in the upper right hand corner of the iPad. As with other applications, undo can be accessed from a button or by simply shaking the iPad. Even if you aren’t familiar with Numbers (Excel fan here!), it was extremely easy and intuitive to understand.

Getting help on the iPad version of the iWork suite requires a connection to the internet. When you choose Help from the Tools menu, Safari opens to a custom Apple webpage. This significantly limits Help’s usefulness, especially in situations such as an airplane when internet access is unavailable or cost prohibitive.

Importing Limits

If you want your spreadsheets to live their lives from creation to deletion inside the iPad ecosystem, this review would be over. Awesome product well worth the $9.99. However, the process of importing and exporting documents complicates things significantly. Mark Crump’s and Chris Ryan’s observations of the obfuscation are similar to mine.

To get spreadsheet information into the iPad, you have a three basic choices. The most obvious one, using your iDisk, is not supported! That’s a game-ending flaw in my opinion. Before using Numbers, I used Quickoffice to edit files on my iDisk. Unfortunately, as of this writing Quickoffice has not been recompiled for the iPad and looks ugly. Whichever method you choose, it’s important to note the changes are not synced directly. The iPad makes a copy and changes you make are saved to internally to the iPad.

So how do you get an existing spreadsheet into Numbers on the iPad? First, you can access it via an email attachment either through the iPad Mail app, or via Gmail’s web interface. Safari was smart enough to allow me to open an Excel attachment from Gmail into Numbers. That was a welcome surprise.

Second, you can access it via the iWork website. Open up a spreadsheet there and the iPad will offer to open it within Numbers.

Finally, you can use the iTunes file sharing function. Plan in advance though, because you can only do this via a direct iTunes USB sync with your desktop.

Exporting Problems

After completing your work, your options for getting your spreadsheets off of your iPad are extremely limited.

Unlike the importing of a spreadsheet, Numbers does not allow exporting from the iPad into Excel format. Windows users can just sit this one out, since Numbers is not made for Windows. You can export to .pdf so the file can be read in Windows, but not edited.

Similar to the import function, you can email a copy of the spreadsheet in Numbers format or PDF via the Mail app or place it on iWork.com. If you want to re-edit that same file, you’ve got to import the spreadsheet again which unfortunately leaves you with multiple copies of the same spreadsheet on your iPad. The export function is designed for a final product and “sharing” isn’t really supported. Worst of all a 500K Excel converted spreadsheet was considered a “large file” and took over a minute to compile for mailing.

Using the iTunes File sharing function will prevent multiple copies of the same file, but it requires you to do a sync in order to access it. This is a cumbersome function for a mobile device and downright stupid for purchasers of MobileMe who rarely if ever sync to their desktop.

For spreadsheet novices, Numbers might be a great way to store and calculate information while on the go. If you want to actually share the spreadsheet with your desktop computer, Excel, or Windows users, wait for Quickoffice to be optimized for the iPad or another product that supports richer import and export functions.

Like other iPad applications, Pages is fast. Loading almost instantly, the first thing you’ll see is a Welcome document, ironically created in Pages itself. The My Documents is area where you’ll see all of your synced documents, accessible by flicking left or right. It seems like managing a large number of documents in this area could be cumbersome, so it will be interesting to see how Apple addresses this UI concern with future versions. There’s also options here for exporting documents to iWork.com or email, deleting documents and importing new documents.

Creating a new document is simple as well, though you are limited to 15 templates besides a blank document. I’m honestly surprised Apple hasn’t brought over the full arsenal of templates.

Navigating around Pages is quite simple. In portrait mode, you’ll have a menu bar across the top with quick access to My Documents, an Undo button as well as an Inspector, Media, Settings and a Full Screen option.

Cool Pages Tip: Tap and hold the Undo button to initiate a Redo.

Tapping the lighter colored bar beneath the toolbar will present you with a traditional ruler, justification options and options to make your type bold, italicized or underlined. Landscape mode is primarily used for creating content in your document, so the toolbar remains hidden.

The Inspector

The Inspector provides an additional method for adjusting alignment, support for columns (limited to 4) and line spacing (limited to quarter line increments). In this view there are also options for formatting lists and applying (but not redefining) the default styles for titles, headings and subheadings. This particular view also changes, depending on what content you are editing. For example, if you’ve tapped a table and then open the Inspector, you’ll see related options here.

Media Browser

The Media Browser functions similar to the desktop version, showing photos and videos that have been synced to the iPad via iTunes. Unfortunately, none of my TV shows or movies were accessible through here, even the ones that aren’t restricted with iTunes DRM.

Options for tables, charts and shapes are included as well, allowing a user to select from a wide variety of default looks, then allowing them to use the Inspector to further fine tune them. Manipulating objects is very user friendly by just tapping and interacting as you would be naturally inclined to do. Tap two fingers on an object, pause and rotate your fingers to rotate an object. It’s simple.

Fine Tuning

Document Setup mode allows you to format your document with custom dimensions simply by tapping a margin and dragging it. You can also set watermark images as well as format the header or footer of your document. Unfortunately, documents are limited to a size of either US Letter (8.5 x 11) or A4 (8.27 x 11.69). There were no apparent options for adjusting the orientation to landscape.

Selecting text works the same as it does on Pages for the desktop, except you’re using finger taps instead of mouse clicks. Double tapping a word will select it while triple tapping will select the entire paragraph. In the pop-up menu, you have your usual options for copying the content as well as the option to copy the style if you wish to copy and paste formatting styles between areas. There is also an option to define the word you’ve selected.

Other options include a traditional spell checker which functions just like the desktop counterpart by underlining the misspelled word, allowing a user to tap and see a suggested replacement.

Syncing Files with Pages

Contrary to original rumors that suggested the iPad would mount a folder and allow for easy syncing of documents, you have to sync specific documents to the iPad through iTunes. Undoubtedly Apple realizes that this process is quite cumbersome and hopefully future iterations of iTunes or iPad software will make this process easier.

Pages documents that you receive through Mail on the iPad or browsed via iWork.com can be opened, saved and edited within Pages. Conversely, documents created in Pages can be exported and sent via Mail or uploaded to iWork.com in addition to being synced back through iTunes.

The Downside

Pages on the iPad is a great application, but it’s not without its share of missing features and limitations. Unfortunately, Pages is limited to a rather small collection of typefaces. While there’s still enough to create content that is unique, the lack of support for adding your own typefaces means Pages won’t let you easily move any document from your Mac and see the exact same thing on your iPad. In fact, you’ll get document warnings if you try and open a file that includes a typeface that your iPad is missing. This is an issue that Apple needs to address before people really begin to consider the iPad as “the laptop replacement.”

Additionally, more advanced features of Pages are missing. Here’s a quick list of some of the features that aren’t present.

• Inserting Table of Contents & Footnotes
• Inserting Section or Layout Breaks
• Inserting Merge Fields
• Tracking Changes
• Saving as Templates
• Adjusting Styles
• Adjusting Type (Tracking, Ligatures, Baseline, Capitalization)
• Printing
• Document Statistics (Word Count, Number of Pages, Page Location)

Pages is a very functional app but for those who really wanted it to replace the desktop version, you’ll be desiring a more featured packed update from Apple. Originally I’d planned to use the mobile version to put the finishing touches on documents (if I’m on the go) but it looks like the best workflow is to create your documents on the iPad and apply finishing touches when you are back on a Mac.

One last little bit to note about this application, and everyone is mixed on this, but typing on the iPad keyboard, even in landscape mode is still awkward. Personally, I’m comfortable with the full size keyboard layout on my Mac and so I find myself aiming for certain keys that just aren’t there. I strongly recommend investing in the bluetooth keyboard if you’re planning to use Pages or any of the other iWork apps on the iPad.

Check out our gallery of Pages below. Have you used Pages for the iPad? What are your thoughts?

Related TechUniversity Screencasts: Pages 101 and Word to Pages

The selling strength of Apple’s iPhone appears not to be waning very much at all with the passage of time, if the Vodafone UK launch of the device is any indication. The newest iPhone provider in the UK, which joins recent entrant Orange and original exclusive carrier O2, sold a reported 50,000 handsets when it officially started selling the iPhone on Jan. 14.

It’s an impressive number for a launch this late, when the iPhone 3GS has already been on the market for six months. Even more impressive is the fact that it beat Orange’s launch day total of 30,000 by a wide, 20,000-handset margin, only two months after that company’s introduction of the device.

The massive sales day comes despite the fact that Vodafone doesn’t really offer any significant pricing advantages over either Orange or O2. In fact, pricing and terms on all three carriers are scarcely indistinguishable. And Vodafone’s subscriber base is only the third largest in the UK, following the merger of T-Mobile and Orange. The number disparity would make more sense proportionally if Vodafone already had more market share than did Orange.

It could just be that Vodafone was more flexible with early contract upgrades and other incentive programs for its existing subscribers, but I think what we’re seeing has more to do with the growing outward appearance of freedom of customer choice. Feeling corralled into making a carrier decision based on available hardware is not a pleasant thing, speaking from experience. I would much rather choose my provider based on the testimonials of people I know who’ve actually lived with and used the service.

If I was still in the market for a handset, now that the iPhone is available on all major carriers here in Canada, I would’ve gladly waited until it became officially available on all networks before making a final decision. As it is, I bought my iPhone back when only one provider offered it, and the other two didn’t even have the network capability to support it. The 50,000 figure, then, has more to do with many more people making up their minds now that all the cards are on the table than any significant advantage offered by Vodafone over other carriers.

This strong launch is yet another reason Apple should really considering following Google’s Nexus One strategy and reconfiguring its sales strategy of the iPhone towards more openness. More choice is better for business, and with a device as popular as the iPhone, there’s little carriers can do to prevent Apple from selling its device in whatever way it chooses.

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iLife X

Probability: Guaranteed
When the last version of iLife launched, it adopted the moniker “iLife ’09.” Recently however, Apple has modified most of its website to drop the date from the title. Now simply called “iLife,” I wonder if Apple will be quick to release a new “yearly” iteration at the outset of 2010.

Based on previous versions, the next iteration of iLife will require Mac OS X 10.6. By requiring Snow Leopard, this does make iLife an Intel-only release. Though some users will be left behind, significant performance gains should be recognized by taking advantage of 64-bit technology included in Snow Leopard.

Within the apps themselves, I believe we’ll continue to see significant updates. Here’s the roundup.

iPhoto

Probability: Possible
The addition of Faces and Places to iPhoto ’09 was just the beginning. The next version of iPhoto will support more accurate facial recognition and integration with Twitter. Those who enjoy the photo slideshow themes that were added to the last version will enjoy a larger selection of new themes that will be added in the new version. I also predict that the next version will bring support for bulk renaming of files (similar to how Aperture can do this upon import) and better performance when dealing with larger libraries. I also predict revised or better photo editing controls with additional effects.

iMovie

Probability: Possible
I believe the next version of iMovie will boast support for posting videos directly to more Internet services, such as Facebook and Flickr. An expanded set of new themes as well as more advanced title options will be present as well. The user experience of the application will be refined, for those who are still frustrated by the intense switch from iMovie HD to the last two versions.

iDVD

Probability: Guaranteed
iDVD will likely see one of the most significant updates that it has ever seen in quite a while. 2010 will mark the beginning of new ways of enjoying media. From the possibility of the first out-of-the-box Blu-ray drives on the Mac to iTunes Extras & LPs to the elusive Apple Tablet, the presentation of digital content remains a key focus for Apple.

The next version of iDVD will help push this agenda forward, allowing users to create Blu-ray discs or optimize their video content into formats like iTunes Extras. Such a dramatic update would likely warrant changing the name of the application, but that’s also within the realm of possibility. iDVD has definitely been late to the party for the past two years, seeing only small maintenance updates. While many speculate that Apple plans to axe DVD creation altogether (foreseeing the death of the digital disc in favor of digital distribution), I believe Apple has been working on a successor application to take advantage of new forms of distribution (a la Blu-ray or iTunes Extras-styled media).

iWeb

Probability: Possible
iWeb is one of those apps that is difficult to pack full of compelling new features every year. I predict the next version of iWeb will support more themes and a few more widgets, including a widget that provides a live feed of your Twitter stream on your website.

GarageBand

Probability: Possible
GarageBand will likely see an expanded music lesson store with more artist lessons and lessons for drums and bass. I also predict Apple will make it easier to share GarageBand creations beyond iTunes and iWeb. Similar to the other apps, I believe we will see support for exporting to other web services such as Facebook or YouTube.

iWork X

Probability: Possible
I predict the biggest improvement to the iWork suite will be a tighter integration with the iPhone and iPod touch. On the short side, I see iWork.com coming to the iPhone as an app to allow quick browsing of documents. In an ideal world, Apple will eventually build lightweight mobile versions of its iWork apps to allow users to create and edit Pages, Keynote and Numbers files on the go.

I believe we’ll see an update to the “beta” of iWork.com, including a paid plan if Apple deems the project a huge success, or inclusion with MobileMe if Apple feels the product isn’t strong enough to stand on its own footing.

All three applications will see new templates and a refined Inspector palette. It seems very un-Apple like to mandate users bring up a palette for colors, a separate one for fonts, another for media and yet another master Inspector to control everything else. Additionally, I predict the Media Browser will be updated across all apps to support Faces and Places from iPhoto.

I also predict Pages will provide support for (or perhaps work directly with) third-party applications like bibliographic software such as Endnote or Refworks for academic publications.

iTunes

Probability: Guaranteed
iTunes is an interesting application as every version seems to bring about a large number of extra features that many people don’t expect, or at first glance, really need.

I predict the next major version of iTunes, iTunes 10, will bring support for syncing with the mythical iTablet, as well as better syncing support (including over the air syncing of content if on a Wi-Fi network). Furthermore, iTunes 10 should feature better support for managing larger libraries of content and the need to split those libraries across multiple hard drives in a simple but effective manner.

Conclusion

Finally, I’d like to see iWork and iLife dropping in price back to the familiar $49 from years past. In light of economic conditions and Apple’s vocal attempts of providing quality products to more and more users, a price drop seems wise as it would also help generate better market penetration.

Again, many of these predictions are pure speculation and hopes and dreams on my part. What do you think we’ll see in these areas over the coming year?

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Stores are given a basic set of goals, including a forecasted number of Macs to sell over the quarter, as well as a number for iPods and iPhones. Attach rate numbers also exist for One to One, ProCare and MobileMe.

In the stores, managers have access to real-time reports that show revenue and attach rates for their stores as well as the rest in the company, allowing for a quick comparative snapshot of how sales are doing.

Important Metrics

Beyond just sales of Macs, iPods and iPhones, managers are also focused on several other important sales indicators. Units Per Transaction (commonly referred to as UPT) is just what it sounds like, an average number of the units sold during each transaction. Typically this number is between one and two, as many customers will just buy one item, like an iPod or USB cable. When you experience a Specialist trying to sell you everything under the sun to go with your new iPhone or Mac, it’s really an effort to increase the store’s UPT.

The other metric that’s closely connected to UPT is the ADS, or Average Dollar Sale. This number represents the average transaction value for the day. Between selling a reasonable number of Macs (high dollar transactions) and a ton of accessories (low dollar transactions), this number typically ranges from $200-$500.

Another figure important to Apple is the conversion rate, or the rate at which people entering the store actually become paying customers. This number is often low, something that’s typically not given much thought. Some retail stores ask their employees to “slither” past sensors that count store traffic, but Apple has no official policy in place, so the volume of employees in and out can often affect this number. The system Apple uses to track visitors, however, called ShopperTrack, is extremely sophisticated, and can distinguish between something like a mom and the stroller she brings in with her, counting both as one person and not two.

Stores are also focused on EasyPay metrics as well as Personal Shopping metrics. As stores transition to less usage of cashwraps, some strive for as high as 60-70 percent of all transactions being completed via EasyPay.

All of these numbers are reviewed on a daily basis by store management in order to determine the proper direction and focus going forward. Many figures are compared to WTD (Week-to-Date) and QTD (Quarter-to-Date) numbers, as well as how the store fared in these areas on the same day in the previous year. Stores can also see how every other store in the company is doing.

Drilling Down Further, Individual Metrics

Individual numbers for Mac, iPod, iPhone and attach rate sales exist for employees as well, allowing them to see how they rank comparatively. Though the Apple Stores do not function on a commission basis, employees are given individual goals towards making the larger store goals for the quarter. These individual reports help provide feedback and focus as the quarter progresses.

Few stores put much emphasis on the accuracy of these numbers, as full-time employees work more towards helping up-and-coming part-time Specialists meet their sales goals. Regardless, it’s the responsibility of the cashier to assign “credit” for a sale to a particular employee. This can obviously become problematic when the stores are insanely busy, and Apple prefers cashiers not ask customers who helped them, as it implies they work on commission. With Apple’s emphasis on EasyPay, whoever is logged into an EasyPay will automatically get “credit” for the sale.

All of these numbers are factored into an employee’s performance reviews, held every quarter, with a more focused annual review at which employees are rated based on individual performance as well as the store’s forecasts and goals.

This should give you a better idea of how store management uses financial figures to gauge success and set targets. As you can see, there’s a lot more to it than just selling a certain number of computers. The result is that, for some, it can become frustrating to focus on sales while managers also push the importance of these other numbers. Apple’s multifaceted approach must be getting something right, as their stores continue to be wildly successful from a financial standpoint.

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Having used Microsoft Office for many years, despite my utter disdain for it, nobody was happier than me when Apple launched the iWork applications. For my light office application needs, Pages, Keynote and Numbers are just perfect. Here are a few tips I use to make my time in the iWork apps a little easier.

Multiple Inspector Palettes

If you use any of the iWork ’09 apps on a daily basis, you’ve no doubt been frustrated by the fact that you’re forever clicking different Inspector tabs to get to various features. Wouldn’t it be handy if you could have more than one Inspector palette open at a time, with different tabs displayed? Thankfully, Apple offers a way to do just that in all the iWork applications.

Multiple Inspector palettes in iWork apps

Hold down the Option key while clicking any of the tab icons at the top of the Inspector palette to have a new palette open with that group of settings showing. This works in Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

Saving Palette Locations

Open and arrange multiple iWork Inspector palettes in all three iWork apps and they’ll be “saved” for the next time you launch an app, opening in the same location as you last left them. As obvious as it may seem, many users never even notice this feature.

Using Document File Info

The Document tab of the Document Inspector palette in Pages contains some great features. Here you can view raw stats of your document, such as word and character count, enter author, title, and keyword info, and file comments.

At the bottom of the palette, just below where Pages indicates how many times the document has been printed, you’ll find a Show File Info button. Clicking this button opens the File Info box of your document in the Finder. From there, you can adjust permissions, hide the file extension, view more data about your file, and enter Spotlight comments for easy searching.

Saving Spotlight comments in Pages '09

The one thing that I’m left wondering is why Apple didn’t have Pages automatically place the Comments from within the Document Info palette into the Spotlight Comments area in the Get Info box, instead of forcing you to copy/paste.

Keynote and Numbers offer the same feature in their Document Inspector palette.

Protecting your files

Password Protecting Files

In iWork ’09, Apple added the ability to password protect your documents. Microsoft Office apps have had this feature for quite a long time, so it’s nice to finally see it in iWork’s applications.

In the same Document tab of the Document Inspector at the bottom, you’ll find a checkbox, which when clicked will pop open a dialog box where you can enter a password and hint for your file. This is a great addition to the iWork suite, especially if you work in a server/multi-user environment.

M.I.A.: Drag & Drop

Much of the Mac OS offers the ability to drag and drop files, text, and images from one app to another. For some inexplicable reason, iWork apps are different. Though you can drag text from one app to another, you can’t do the same with objects and images. For this reason, you should keep the Media Browser palette open to make it easy to drag images into your documents from iPhoto, or folders located on your hard drive.

Adding More Shadow

You probably know you can add a shadow to your text simply by selecting the text container and clicking the Shadow button in the main toolbar. If you’re looking for a bit more from your shadow, try adding a second one.

Adding a second drop shadow to text in Pages

Once you’ve customized the appearance of your shadow using the Graphic Inspector, select the text itself (rather than the text container) and apply a second shadow using the Fonts palette Shadow button. A second shadow will appear beneath your text, which is completely customizable separate from the original shadow.

While these tips are certainly not Earth-shattering, I hope I’ve been able to share at least one tip you didn’t know about. How about you, do you have any handy tips for using any of the iWork applications?

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This is the first in a series on some of the more advanced functionality of Numbers, my favorite spreadsheet app. If you’re new to spreadsheets, or just want to make them look a little less like Microsoft Excel, this article should be right up your alley. In this article, we’ll talk about conditional formatting.

What is conditional formatting?

The real power behind spreadsheets is not just how well they can crunch data, but how you can visually present the information in a variety of ways. Sometimes, however, you may want to give more attention to a particular area, or hide certain data if it’s not relevant. You often see conditional formatting applied to financial spreadsheets where positive values are in black or green, but negative values are always in “the red.” So how do you do that? It’s where conditional formatting, or formatting based on certain criteria, comes into play.

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say I have something that shows you my net worth for each month of the year. (These numbers are entirely made up, for demonstration purposes.) Assuming that these numbers were coming from a different spreadsheet, I could likely have one of three possible values for each month. If I were doing well, the value would be a positive number. If I were feeling the toils on the economy and not so great at managing money, the value might be negative. The last option would be if we haven’t gotten to a particular month yet, for example, in September 2009 the value reads “$0” as no data yet exists to calculate that value.

Net Worth without Conditional Formatting

Applying some formatting

Based on this example, you can see that before I begin to do any formatting, I have a mix of positive values, negative values, and some that read “$0” because we haven’t yet entered data for those months. To apply formatting, I would select the first cell next to January.

In the Inspector under the Cells tab, you’ll see an area that is labeled “Conditional Format” with zero rules applied. If I click “show rules” I will get a new window that allows me to start stacking on a series of rules that I want to compare this cell against.

For this example, I’m going to pick “Choose a rule” and select “Greater than.” If I enter “0” as my value, I’m telling Numbers that I want to apply special formatting to any value that is greater than zero. This would be where my net worth was in the positive numbers. If I click the “edit” button, I can now start layering on formatting. To keep things simple, I’m just going to change the text color to green and press “done.” You do have options here for a variety of other formatting choices, including bold or italics and changing the cell background. Looking back at your document, you should see that the value has now turned green!

Now I’m going to apply another rule, this time to address negative net worth. This rule is going to be “less than 0” and I am going to format the text to be a red color with bold styling.

Finally, I am going to apply one last rule, which will address the “0” values for upcoming months. Usually, you will not see a net worth perfectly at “0,” so I have used this assumption to keep our “0” values open for this next example. If a value is “0,” we’re assuming its because we are at a month in which nothing has happened yet, so we will simply want to “hide” this value until an actual value (positive or negative) can take its place. To solve this, we’re going to format the cell to take values that are “0” and turn the text white, so it will simply blend in with our background and therefore be hidden.

One down. A few to go.

Once we are finished here, we can close this window and go back to our spreadsheet. Now we’ve laid out the set of conditional formatting rules, but they currently only apply to the net worth listed in January. The next step most would take is to simply grab the little dot on the right of the cell and drag down to “fill” down, but do not do this. You will inadvertently fill down the value of that cell and not its formatting.

Net Worth with Conditional Formatting Applied

The last trick up my sleeve is how to copy formatting between cells and that is to use a feature called “Copy Style.” This is similar to the “Format Painter” of Microsoft Excel. Simply highlight the cell we were working on, go to the Format menu and select “Copy Style.” You can then highlight the remaining cells, go back to the Format menu and select “Paste Style” and you should end up with something that looks like the image to the right.

The Copy/Paste Style is a very useful tool and is found in all of the iWork applications. There is even a quick button to access it that you can add to your toolbar (open the View menu and then click “Customize Toolbar”).

If you are familiar with Conditional Formatting from Excel, nothing has really changed except the limit to the number of rules you can apply. Microsoft Excel previously limited users to applying three rules to a cell (usually that was more than enough) and, as far as I’ve found, Numbers imposes no limit. In the next article, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the power of Numbers with how to do horizontal and vertical lookups. If you have any Numbers-specific topics you would like me to cover, please use the comments below and let’s get the discussion started!

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This article will focus on showing the scriptability of Numbers by writing a very small script to retrieve data from Yahoo! Finance and put it into a custom table.

Numbers Scripting Definitions

To get an idea of what you have at your disposal, fire up /Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor and select File->Open Dictionary… and choose Numbers from the dialog:

You will should see a window that looks a bit like this:

You should definitely take some time to peruse all the options available at your disposal but you will find that, while Apple has provided many ways to manipulate the contents of documents, sheets, tables, cells and rows, there is a distinct lack of functions related to charting/graphing. Perhaps an incremental update or Numbers X will correct this oversight.

Directing the Data

Yahoo! Finance has a very nice historical data view for closing stock prices. Even with all of the enhancements, Numbers still lacks one of the nicest features of Excel: the ability to grab data from a URL. To remedy this, we can create an AppleScript that:

• lets us input the symbol of the stock we are interested in
• fetch the data from Yahoo! Finance
• and populate a new table in Numbers with this data

Part’s one and two are pretty straightforward AppleScript:

set tempFile to ((path to temporary items) as string) & "yahoo-quote"

-- get company to display from the user
display dialog "Enter symbol:" default answer "AAPL"
set company to text returned of result

-- download the file
tell application "URL Access Scripting"
 set theURL to "http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=" & company & "&a=00&b=1&c=2008&g=d&ignore=.csv"
 download theURL to file tempFile
end tell

Here’s where it gets interesting. First, we tell Numbers (the script assumes the app is open with a document ready) to become active and make the most recent document the one we want to work in. We then read in the data from Yahoo! to determine how many rows we need and use the header line to determine how many columns we need and then make a new table with this information:

tell application "Numbers"
	activate
	tell document (count of documents)
		tell sheet 1
			-- read in the file contents
			set quoteLines to paragraphs of (read file tempFile)
			set quoteValues to {}
			-- get number of rows for the table
			set nRows to length of quoteLines
			-- get number of columns for the table
			-- (grab header row first)
			set tempLine to item 1 of quoteLines
			-- we need to split the line with commas as delimeters
			set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
			set headers to every text item of tempLine
			set nCols to length of headers
			-- make a new Numbers table that fits the # rows & cols in the CSV file
			make new table with properties {name:company, row count:nRows, column count:(nCols + 1)}

Finally, we loop through each line (row) and copy the data from each column to the correct cell, then we delete the temporary file we created at the beginning:

tell table (count of tables) -- the one we just made is the last
				delete column 1 -- labels we don't need
				set nRow to 1
				repeat with aLine in quoteLines
					set cellValues to every text item of aLine
					set nCol to 1
					repeat with aCell in cellValues
						set value of cell nCol of row nRow to aCell
						set nCol to nCol + 1
					end repeat
					set nRow to nRow + 1
				end repeat
			end tell
			-- we need to put the delimeters back
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
		end tell
	end tell
end tell
tell application "Finder" to delete file tempFile

When you run the script (download the source), you will be able to watch Numbers create the new table and populate all of the cells.

This particular script duplicates a built-in functionality of Numbers: the ability to read CSV files. However, you could very easily modify it to use AppleScript to tweak the data or make a call out to a Python or Perl script to do even more substantial modifications then bring the information back in. The fundamental purpose of the script is to demonstrate just how easy it is to address cells and rows. Reading data is just as easy — set v to value of cell x of row y — and that opens up a whole host of possibilities, such as using an active Numbers sheet to send data to a web service via a global-hotkey-enabled AppleScript action.

Make sure to drop a note in the comments with how are you using the new scripting functionality in Apple’s latest iWork suite.

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When iWork was first announced, I will admit that I had a sinking feeling there was a strong danger that the suite wouldn’t see a second release. I wasn’t particularly optimistic about Apple’s chances of producing a word processor and a presentation app that would survive, especially when Apple skipped releasing an update in ’07. Today, I’m quite happy to see that iWork has not only survived, but is thriving in a third release, iWork ’09.

Keynote

Apple broke out the polish for Keynote this year, adding several new features that pretty up your presentations and make advanced animation techniques even more accessible. There are several new themes, graph types, and textures for charts, including some chrome, wood and stone textures that just look beautiful.

Magic Move tracks objects from slide to slide so that Keynote can build transitions from one slide to another and animate the movement of the object across the page. This feature shows up when creating transitions that involve images for some very polished object transitions, but also works on text where it treats letters as individual objects that can be animated across the screen. One of the impressive demonstrations involved a pile of scattered playing cards that then flew around into neatly fanned stacks of cards in the next slide. Text effects included an “anagram” transition that reused the letters by rearranging them into a new word, flying unused letters off the screen and flying in new letters to complete the word.

Also new is a Keynote Remote iPhone app that gives you control over your presentations from the iPhone. The app is smart enough to present you with the slide and speaker’s notes when in vertical orientation and it switches to the current slide and the next slide when horizontal.

Pages

Pages adds a new full-screen view, outlining, mail-merge with Numbers, new templates, and integration with MathType and EndNote. I’m not a huge fan of full-screen — I see it as more of a gimmick than a real feature. If you want to write uninterrupted, quit IM, close Twitter, and turn off notifications of new email.

Outlining is a welcome addition and quite useful for longer documents. Dynamic outlining means that rearranging sections in outline view moves that the changes are reflected in the document view in realtime.

The best part of the new Numbers integration isn’t just being able to mailmerge from a list outside of Address Book, but rather the dynamic linking of charts and graphs between the two. Changes in a graph that was copied from Numbers will update the graph in Pages.

The MathType and EndNote integration reaches a smaller audience, but support for these two programs will be enthusiastically received by the academic and scientific communities. I actually like Sente for academic citation management, but EndNote is the most recognized brand in that space.

Numbers

Numbers has two big additions — functions and categories. Schiller mentioned that Apple’s goal for this release was to add more features that power-users were clamoring for. The number of functions has been increased to 250 and have been made easier to use with a new function view that lists the available choices with a plain language description of what each does and the variables accepted. Formula list view will show you all of the formulas in your spreadsheet. I imagine that this will be tremendously useful for tracking down an error through a long chain of formulas.

Categories are a simple way of creating a summary from a list that is organized by a particular field. In the example provided in the keynote presentation, Phil Schiller showed a baseball roster grouped by position with a count of players for each position. Creating this summary is as simple as selecting “Categorize by This Column” in the pull down menu in the column header.

iWork.com

iWork.com is a new public beta from Apple that allows you to share your iWork documents online. iWork.com does not go as far as Google Apps in allowing online editing and creation of documents. It is just a way to share documents and allow others to annotate directly on the page, or to comment on the document as a whole. While all the comments and annotations are tracked online, iWork adds a menu item under Share that allows you to go straight to the page for that document to find new posts from your friends or colleagues. It can also act as on online repository of your working documents that you can reference from anywhere.

The overall functionality is a little limited, but it provides a really simple way to share Pages documents that PC users cannot open directly. Along with the web version for viewing, iWork will also upload PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint versions to allow others to download a document that they can edit on their desktop. There’s no easy way to incorporate someone else’s edits or comments back into the document directly, but I’m hopeful for the future. I was really hoping for an online editing app that would be more like the MobileMe apps for email and Address Book. The first step is a small one, but a step that might entice some PC users to check out the native apps that created the nice-looking previews they can see online, but look a little funky when downloaded and opened in Office 2007.

Should I Buy It?

This upgrade isn’t the no-brainer that iLife ’09 is for most people. If you need any of the features in Numbers or Pages, then I would say go for it. If you’re a Keynote maven, or in the financial, academic or scientific communities then I would think the new features would be really compelling to you and worth the cost of the new version. For anyone outside that community, iWork.com isn’t that exciting (yet) and the new features just expand on what you already have.

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Yesterday Apple announced and released its much anticipated spreadsheet application called Numbers.

Numbers is described as “spreadsheets the Mac way,” with the application offering significantly more functionality past just simply charting information and numbers. It’s a solid mixture of information organization, number calculation, and page layout/design.

The interface for numbers if very intuitive and is very easy to learn. Apple has quite a few Numbers tutorials on their website to help you learn even faster.

Below is a gallery of screenshots of the new Numbers interface. Enjoy!

Full layout of the new Numbers application

Numbers is part information organization, part page layout

Edit photo masks right in the program

Create checklists that tally up sums

Create simple check lists

Make table cell drop-down menus

Create a “slider” to adjust numbers

Use pre-built functions or edit them manually

Attach notes to tables and cells

Create multiple pages in one document and keep them organized with the Sheets area

Easily change the entire style of a table with customizable style sheets

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Updates include a new iMac, new keyboard, updated iWork, updated iLife, and more. It was certainly an exciting day and arguably more exciting than the past few major WWDC or Macworld events.

Check out the full details after the jump.

New iMac

The much rumored new aluminum iMac was indeed true. The overall new look is significantly more…”professional” (or Star Trek-ish, depending on who you ask).

• New glass screen enclosure
• Pricing starting at $1199
• 17″ model was trashed. Now only 20″ and 24″ models are available
• Up to 2.8 GHz Core 2 Extreme Processor
• Up to 4GB of memory
• Up to 1TB of storage space

New Keyboard(s)

Along with the new iMacs, Apple also released a new keyboard that fits in quite while with Apple’s line of “aluminum” covered products (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and now the iMac).

The new keyboards are significantly thinner than previous keyboards by Apple, with the smaller wireless keyboard coming in at only 0.33 inches. No, that isn’t a typo.

The new keys are almost identical to those on the MacBooks with much better finger response.

iLife ’08

It has been almost 2 years since iLife was updated with the last major version being iLife ’06. Today Apple released a major revision to the iLife suite with iLife ’08.

Every application received a pretty major overall with iMovie getting a complete rewrite.

Major points:
• iPhoto – Organizes photos by Event automatically
• iPhoto – New book and calendar printing
• iPhoto – Web gallery creation lets you creating extremely interactive photo galleries
• iMovie – Has a completely new interface that lets you create movies much more quickly and easily
• iMovie – .Mac web gallery and YouTube integration.
• iDVD – Better encoding and new themes
• GarageBand – New “Magic GarageBand” lets you create your own virtual band to jam with
• iWeb – Now you can upload to your own custom domain
• iWeb – Easier template and design creation

iWork ’08

Along with the iLife update came an update to Apple’s business suite of applications, iWork ’08.

The biggest thing to note with iWork ’08 is the addition of Numbers, the much sought after spreadsheet application.

Numbers is described as “spreadsheets the Mac way,” which simply means this isn’t your normal “spreadsheet” app.

With Numbers you can create intelligent tables with multiple spreadsheets in a single document, easily create charts and graphs in the same document, and you can even import your Excel files.

Ultimately Numbers is a solid mix of boring tabular data and a desktop publishing application.

A few other iWork high points:
• Pages – Switch between “writing” and “layout” mode depending on task
• Pages – Change tracking to keep up with document revisions
• Pages – Many new design templates
• Keynote – Tons of new text and transition effects
• Keynote – Voice-over recording
• Keynote – Simple animation tools

.Mac Updated

For some time now, .Mac has been Apple’s evil little stepchild that everyone has been on the verge of kicking to the curb.

Updates here include:
• Increased storage and bandwidth going from 1GB to 10GB of storage and up to 100GB of bandwidth
• You can now associate an actual domain with your .Mac account

Mac mini Updates

It’s been over a year since Apple last updated the Mac mini. Many people were convinced it would be removed from Apple’s line up, but today Apple quietly upgraded the Mac mini.

The update isn’t much to get excited about, though. The main updates to it are really just a bit more speed and memory. Nothing to write home about.

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