"but you're happy spending money on something you know is even more confining."Hey, I never said I was going to buy it. And it's confining in some ways and liberating in others. Excel on the Mac is not a good experience right now and it's expensive."happy at home using something else which works differently but does the exact same thing."The learning curve from Excel > Numbers is very small actually. I'm basing that on my experience with the trial last night. Things seem to work the way you expect. Also, there are some time savers like the drag and drop equations (sum, average, etc).One thing I found after just a few minutes of playing that may be existing in Excel but I've never found is the ability to automatically highlight cells that meet certain requirements. For instance, I created a rule that changes the color of every cell whose number is higher than $250. You can combine several rules if you have more complex requirements. I could see myself using that and I haven't seen it on Excel...not saying it isn't there though, just saying it was easier to find and use in Numbers.
I would love to see someone try to produce a newsletter or presentation in Office '07 that even came close to what you can do in iWork '08. I think your generalization that iWork is less powerful than Office is probably based on faulty evaluation methods. If you simply make a list of features in Office and then turn to iWork to find the same features, then yes, Office will look more powerful. However, if you reverse the evaluation, iWork will come out on top. The two office suites are both extremely powerful, but they offer different feature sets. I own an independent film company, and quite frankly, iWork does what we need it do to better than Office '07 does. Period. Don't confuse "ease of use" with "simplicity". For our purposes, Pages does a significantly better job managing the evolution and distribution of a 150-page script than Word 07, and Numbers does a significantly better job managing a 50-sheet production spreadsheet that combines budget, scheduling, and scouting information than does Excel 07. I think a better comparison can be found in photography. iWork is a high-end digital camera. Office is a high-end film camera.
A clone of Excel? That would lead me to believe that you didn't really spend much time with the program. The fundamental organization of a Numbers document is entirely different from Excel.
robwilkensAug 8, 2007
robotkad? Are you the same guy known as 'Captain Obvious'?
captainscarletAug 8, 2007
No HTML support in Numbers...UGH!Otherwise it looks very nice...
daffyduckAug 8, 2007
"but you're happy spending money on something you know is even more confining."Hey, I never said I was going to buy it. And it's confining in some ways and liberating in others. Excel on the Mac is not a good experience right now and it's expensive."happy at home using something else which works differently but does the exact same thing."The learning curve from Excel > Numbers is very small actually. I'm basing that on my experience with the trial last night. Things seem to work the way you expect. Also, there are some time savers like the drag and drop equations (sum, average, etc).One thing I found after just a few minutes of playing that may be existing in Excel but I've never found is the ability to automatically highlight cells that meet certain requirements. For instance, I created a rule that changes the color of every cell whose number is higher than $250. You can combine several rules if you have more complex requirements. I could see myself using that and I haven't seen it on Excel...not saying it isn't there though, just saying it was easier to find and use in Numbers.
Closed AccountAug 8, 2007
I prefer an alternative to MS Office, not a clone.
Closed AccountAug 8, 2007
I prefer an alternative to MS Office, not a clone.
pakk99Aug 15, 2007
I would love to see someone try to produce a newsletter or presentation in Office '07 that even came close to what you can do in iWork '08. I think your generalization that iWork is less powerful than Office is probably based on faulty evaluation methods. If you simply make a list of features in Office and then turn to iWork to find the same features, then yes, Office will look more powerful. However, if you reverse the evaluation, iWork will come out on top. The two office suites are both extremely powerful, but they offer different feature sets. I own an independent film company, and quite frankly, iWork does what we need it do to better than Office '07 does. Period. Don't confuse "ease of use" with "simplicity". For our purposes, Pages does a significantly better job managing the evolution and distribution of a 150-page script than Word 07, and Numbers does a significantly better job managing a 50-sheet production spreadsheet that combines budget, scheduling, and scouting information than does Excel 07. I think a better comparison can be found in photography. iWork is a high-end digital camera. Office is a high-end film camera.
pakk99Aug 15, 2007
A clone of Excel? That would lead me to believe that you didn't really spend much time with the program. The fundamental organization of a Numbers document is entirely different from Excel.
pakk99Aug 15, 2007
Are you seriously defending your own laziness?