Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grid (YC S12) Reinvents The Spreadsheet For The Tablet Age

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–102 of 102 posts

Re: Grid (YC S12) Reinvents The Spreadsheet For The Tablet Age

#101

Post by erikpukinskis »

robomartin wrote: post #16
danso wrote: post #13

Business spreadsheets most definitely need help, though perhaps mobile Google Drive, which is currently atrocious, is too intimidating to take on. However, I have to applaud anything that moves our information-consumption into a more delimited, structured form. I love narrative and paragraphs, but Tufte's small multiples is something that would greatly help day-to-day communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_…

> Business spreadsheets most definitely need help In what way? Are you talking about design (look and feel) or capabilities. I can't think of too many things that could be lacking from Excel in terms of capabilities for business and engineering applications.

Excel doesn't lack capabilities, but it lacks in the ability to surface those capabilities to the people who need them.

Re: Grid (YC S12) Reinvents The Spreadsheet For The Tablet Age

#102

Post by tripzilch »

pg wrote: post #24
atacrawl wrote: post #19

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?

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…

Come on, that was a perfectly reasonable question.

It looks like a really cool app but as soon as they said it can't do spreadsheet calculations just about everybody that has ever used a spreadsheet must have immediately had the same thought, "wait a minute, then, how is it a spreadsheet?"

And asking that question is not ridicule, or making fun of the first thing someone launches.

And IF the question is critical of anything then surely it is of TC misrepresenting the app as "a spreadsheet app for tablets".

Because really, it's quite clear: as long as it doesn't do spreadsheet calculations, it's not a spreadsheet app. Instead, it's a grid. Which is in fact what it's called and it looks great.

And the minute they add spreadsheet calculations to the feature list, it'll ALSO be a spreadsheet. Happy now?

It's funny because I always thought jumping straight at the throats of people that dare to ask questions is one of the worst forces at work in the world.

It's not even a difficult question. Do you seriously think the developers of that app live in FEAR of having to say "yeah right now it's a grid. spreadsheet calculations will be in the next beta soon and then we'll call it a spreadsheet, TC just jumped the gun a bit". Must be absolutely terrifying, having to accurately describe the functionality of your application in its current version.

Post reply on HN