First impressions of Numbers

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:51:08 +0100

I'm not exactly a spreadsheet maven but I do use Excel occasionally and, usually, have a hard time with it. It works but it's not the easiest application to get along with. Since I will probably upgrade to iWork '08 for the new Keynote I thought it would be a good idea to try Numbers as well.

I installed the 30-day trial (not sure why they seem intent on hiding that link, I couldn't find it anywhere on the iWork site) and fired Numbers up. I started a new sheet based on the budget template. Immediately you see how Numbers shines over Excel. Instead of a big grid of cells you have a nicely laid out set of tables that present the structural content of your spreadsheet in a way that is both friendly and easy to manipulate.

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The formulas in the various tables are all interlinked and you can add new rows to the tables just by dragging them (or using the add above/below context menu items). The pop-ups (for selecting months in this case) work nicely. In fact the whole thing works really nicely and I was very quickly able to build a nice budget spreadsheet like I never quite managed to in Excel.

I've heard that Numbers performs poorly on even moderately sized data sets that Excel has no problem with. It's a 1.0 product so I guess I don't find that too surprising and expect it will improve. In terms of usability though I think Numbers kicks Excel's ass. If it weren't for the Ubiquity of Office I could see a lot of people using Numbers. It's a pity for them that they probably won't.

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First impressions of Numbers