numbers posts

The iWork suite of apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) play nice with each other -- for the most part. Objects such as shapes, text boxes and tables created in one app can easily be copied and pasted onto another and retain their styles. Even an image with an instant alpha filter applied will retain its transparency when pasted onto another iWork app. However, the iWork apps don't always play nice with each other when it comes to charts.

In particular, copying a chart created in Numbers and pasting it onto either a Keynote presentation or Pages document doesn't always bring the chart's legend with it respective to how it looked in Numbers. Sometimes, the legend may be misaligned, and sometimes it may even show up on a completely different page in the document.

To address this annoyance, just highlight all of the elements (the entire chart and the legend, or anything else you want retained) of the chart that you'd like to copy. Then click on Numbers "Arrange" menu and select "Group" (or hit Command-Option-G). Now, the legend of your chart retains its alignment when pasted onto either a Keynote presentation or a Pages document. To alter or undo this, just select "Ungroup" (Command-Option-Shift-G) from the same file menu.

In Apple's iWork suite, the "Paste and Match Style" or "Paste Style" options, as implied in their names, allow you to paste the style from one element onto another; or to paste an element into a document and to match the style of the document that it's getting pasted to. In many ways, they're the iWork equivalent of "format painter" found in Microsoft Office. And, in many ways, they're much better.

I recently noted the image-editing functionality of Preview.app, which can act as a "good enough" image editor for many that don't have access to Photoshop. While it's difficult to argue with the free price tag, Preview is not without its limitations. Fortunately, many of these limitations are unlocked if you happen to own Apple's iWork suite, which in its own right can serve as an image editor for the budget-minded.Read on to see how to use iWork in this unconventional way.

From Quentin Tarantino's classic, Pulp Fiction:

Vincent: ...But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

Jules: What?

Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same [things] over there that we got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different.

Jules: Example?

Vincent: ...Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: Naw, man, they got the metric system, they wouldn't know what the [heck] a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: What do they call it?

Vincent: They call it a "Royale with Cheese".

Jules: "Royale with Cheese."

Vincent: That's right.

Although they both use a different versioning nomenclature, the PC and Mac versions of Microsoft Excel are essentially the same app -- except, as in the words of Vincent Vega, they're just "a little bit different." And one of these differences is their respective date systems. By default, Excel for the PC uses the 1900 date system, while its Mac counterpart uses the 1904 date system. In most cases, users won't notice this subtle difference. For example, a file saved by a PC version of Excel using the 1900 date system will be recognized as such when it's read by its Mac counterpart, and vice versa.

As with most keynote presentations, Apple released a lot of numbers about just how many people are adopting the Mac and iPhone platforms.

First, over the last three years, the active Mac OS X installed base has grown from 25 million users to 75 million users. This is great news for the platform and for the entire Mac ecosystem.

Also, over 5,200 developers from 54 countries around the world are attending WWDC. Over a million people have downloaded the free iPhone SDK, and created 50,000 applications for Apple iPhones and iPod touch devices.

Speaking of which, over 40 million iPhones and iPod touches have been sold to date. In April, Apple announced that those users had downloaded a cumulative total of one billion applications.