[jpp_zoso]

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Just as with the prior version of Pages and Word, I think Apple has been careful not to come out with a direct replacement for Excel. There's room for both products in this market.

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"numbers" appears to be desktop publishing w/ intelligence for limited data sets vs. a "traditional" spreadsheet application. anyone thinking apple was going to directly compete w/ ms office a year into the 5-year guarantee of continued ms office development was kidding themselves. "numbers" is prolly for a target market, not intending to takeover the market.
niche app? maybe. enterprise worthy? prolly so for some functions and markets, but certainly not a 100% replacement for "traditional" spreadsheet apps. "home" spreadhseet app? prolly so.
if it runs faster and better than neooffice, and supports odf files, i'm in.

[ex2bot]

Doesn't anyone remember Microsoft Works?? AppleWorks? Etc.
These are consumer or home-level software. Fewer features. Less expensive.
iWorks is $80! Not $80 per component. $80 total. Does anyone really think Apple can compete with Microsoft's cash cow at $80 per seat?
PuhLEEZ!
You want Excel-level functionality for peanuts? RIDICULOUS!!
Uh, well, there's always OpenOffice.Org. For free. And stuff. Hmm. . .
Hey, what about Keynote? That alone is worth $80 to me. It's freaking AWESOME! It's INSANELY great!
OpenOffice.org ain't got nuthin' on Keynote my friends.
Bot

[swokm]

True, if I had $80 I'd buy the new iWork immediately. I use Excel quite a bit, but mostly for date calculations, complex lookup and text manipulation, and simple numerical calculations. Supposedly I learned the TK Derive, Solve Tools part of Excel ages ago in Engineering coursework, but I'm actually glad I've misplaced those neurons. So apparently I (and 99.999% of other Mac users) don't need that functionality from Excel.
Also, it is a personal embarrassment to me that I simply CANNOT figure out Pivot tables. Can. Not. It just bounces off of my brain as if someone threw a rock at my head. It shouldn't be that hard. I try again every few years. I've met people that use pivot tables all the time, that are... well, I hang my head in shame. I hope Apple DOESN'T copy this feature but re-implements it in a superior fashion.
This is the very first "spreadsheet program" discussion I've see that doesn't mention Mariner Calc (oops, well there it is http://www.marinersoftware.com). I'm not endorsing it by the way, last time I downloaded it seemed just OK, and didn't really inspire me to leave Excel (or Appleworks or NeoOffice). But it has been around for ever, it seems. Surely somebody has paid for it in the last 16 years...

[MacTel]

In many instances macros are used to automate formating in Excel for presentation. From what I'm hearing and seeing Numbers makes the presentation aspect easy and with the number of templates that come with it that should negate an area of need for macros.
Importing data from external sources is not something I would expect Numbers to do well since it seems more geared toward making summary data look pretty. Hence the ability to open Excel files. Excel easily connects to external data sources. This area is also one the needs macro capability. If Numbers isn't to be the a data aggregator then there goes another need for macros.
Numbers not having as many sheet functions Excel is ok. Some Excel functions are redundant.
Overall this seems to be a good start for a 1.0 product and I can easily use this for home use. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[MacTel]

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If only Apple would add a database module, I could FINALLY retire my ancient copy of Appleworks!

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That would be interesting to see. Use Pages and Numbers (need pivot tables!) as the reporting tool. It would be something like Microsoft's Infopath but would create the data structures along with the form layout. This would tie nicely with .Mac and iWeb for web based data entry.

[MacMies_MW]

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I've used Excel for over 22 years now & SuperCalc before that. Since Excel could do so much more that SuperCalc the change was much easier.
Bill the TaxMan

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Hi
How can you be using Excel for 22 years, when it was first introduced not until 1987 (as far as I know...)
I think some folks here are comparing strawberries with raspberries. Excel and Numbers are two distinct applications. Why should Numbers replace Excel on your desktop? If your duties rely on heavy spreadsheeting and sharing data with others, I think you can not replace Excel. But if you're like 80% of spreadsheet users, who do fairly simple calculations for their own use, you can get along very well with Numbers.
-MacMies-
from Finland

[sarahtim]

My spreadsheets are large but quite simple. I do use the Name feature in Excel though... My copy of iWork should be delivered tomorrow. Does Numbers do Names?
It is normal of course that people responding to articles like this give their take on the matter. Reading them would be less frustrating though if some folk showed a little more insight into their own place in the whole market. Many fail to realize that they are power users and that only a small proportion of potential users of Numbers, in this case, will require the capabilities so essential to them.
Excel is a giant. To replicate its capabilities on a first release would be a massive task and Apple shareholders could question (if they knew anything about it ) whether some return on investment might be taken by releasing a more humble version 1.0. It is unlikely that Apple will ever incorporate all the power of Excel into Numbers though. They will be satisfied with making something elegant and simple enough so that most Mac users will find it suits their needs.
I too started with VisiCalc then Multiplan, Excel, had a look at Wingz, back to Excel. Dabbled in macros but let them go. I liked Excel because of its ability to polish the print result before printing and because it handled big spreadsheets. That's all. I am sure Numbers will have to Print Preview thing nailed, the only other thing was being able to refer to cells by Name.

[Fixx]

Nice to see there is more competition in spreadsheet market. Besides Numbers there are Mariner Calc (OK) and Daniel Schwill's Tables (newcomer).

[jbh001]

Since Numbers imports OFX data, it would be interesting to see what one could with all that. Would it be possible/worthwhile to create your own financial spreadsheets that download their data from the bank, thus eliminating the need for Quicken or MS Money? That's something worth addressing in a future full review of Numbers.
PS: I know Quicken uses QFX, but the only difference that and OFX that I have been able to find is that QFX starts with a Q and OFX starts with an O. Aside from that, the data elements within the formats appear identical (at least at first glance).

[DonSmith]

Rats. My needs are simple and I was hoping to delete Excel from my Mac, but I can't.
All I have to do is fill in a company Excel sheet with my work hours and email it.
But, I can't. At least not without using a multi-step workaround.
Numbers has no "Send to..." command to email my simple sheet.
Numbers has no "Convert to Excel and Send To..." which would be the perfect answer to my needs, and I think, the perfect answer to the many who'll need to interface with Excel users by email.
Now, I understand that Numbers needs it own format to accommodate things it does that Excel cannot do, but I'd like an easier path to convert to Excel and email.
For now, it's easier to just keep MS stuff on my Mac and use Excel for my simple purposes.

[Wings]

This took a LONG time to isolate! I've been trying to create my own version of an invoice with Numbers. I worked on it for hours, and then saved... and Boom! UNexpectedly quit! Corrupted saved file to boot. I can reproduce this every time by doing this: (1) create a 2-column table with a column header, and only 1 row. (2) In the single cell in the first column create a popup item and fill the popup with 2 or 3 selections, each item being more than one line of text (hit Option-Return to enter the 2nd line; a plain ole Return will exit the popup editing). (3) Copy that cell and paste into the single cell in the 2nd column. (4) Save & Crash.
It's the copying a multi-line popup that kills ya. Actually I believe it's the pasting that gets you. I believe my first instance of this was done by pasting a multi-line item of text into the popup item's creation window (it's inspector window that you use to fill the popup). I don't think I pasted any cells the first time it crashed, just pasted into the popup's New Item.
Anyone care to test this on your Numbers?

[d00d]

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Rats. My needs are simple and I was hoping to delete Excel from my Mac, but I can't.
All I have to do is fill in a company Excel sheet with my work hours and email it.
But, I can't. At least not without using a multi-step workaround.
Numbers has no "Send to..." command to email my simple sheet.
Numbers has no "Convert to Excel and Send To..." which would be the perfect answer to my needs, and I think, the perfect answer to the many who'll need to interface with Excel users by email.
Now, I understand that Numbers needs it own format to accommodate things it does that Excel cannot do, but I'd like an easier path to convert to Excel and email.

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Sounds like an easy AppleScript/Automator script would fix the problem.

[McNotMac]

One big thing missing from Numbers is the ability to rotate text. It an obvious feature that should be in there for a spreadsheet that's focus is style over substance. For that matter, you can't rotate images or objects either.
After playing with it for a while, it's a little buggy for a production app, and it's missing lots of useful and obvious features that would make it suitable for general use as a spreadsheet (such as splitting a window to view more than one part of a large spreadsheet at once).
It does read excel workbooks, but in 1/2 the ones I attempted to import, I only got the first page of the workbook, so it doesn't do that reliably.
There's also a big gap between Numbers and Pages: merging. Pages supports mail merge from your Address Book, but not from a table. Any secretary or someone in charge of a little league team is going to want to merge a table (with custom fields) with a document. Be it filling out chunks of a form letter, to doing a simple address merge from a mailing list.
Of all the iWork apps Keynote is the most complete and robust. Pages is much improved and very good for signs, brochures, etc., but has issues like missing merge features and so on. I can't think of a really good use case for Numbers, which, in my opinion is still sufficiently feature deficient to not meet the requirements of any but a scant few (it's basically just a table editor on steriods).
At $80, I figure you're buying a best-of-breed presentation authoring applicaion and decent brochure editor. Numbers, however, is just one of those things thrown in the box.
NeoOffice and OpenOffice are the Excel competitors -- Numbers is definitely not.

[dwielt]

One really nice thing about iWork 08 overall is the way it implements adding comments and tracking changes. This is most elegant in Pages, where comments and changes can be listed in a sidebar on the left. A much nicer implementation than in Word. I notice that comments can also be made in Numbers, but I don't see a "track changes" functionality. Have I missed it? Hopefully, the implementation in Pages will fully migrate to Numbers. These features will make sharing/collaboration of iWork docs desirable. For a little more, I might buy a "family pack" so the people I share docs with most can all use iWork 08.