Apple's "Numbers" - Office should watch out.
Posted by Joe Rinehart at 9:11 PM
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Here's a confession: I can design software, I can code, I can even animate, but if you ask me to use a corporate office phone to do a conference call, run a fax machine, or use something like Excel or Word or Powerpoint, you're going to be entertained, because it's like watching a caveman use an iPhone (sorry, GEICO cavemen).
When I first had a Mac (a 1.0 Ghz Powerbook G4), there wasn't much in the way of mature office software other than, well, Microsoft Office.
When I bought my current MacBook Pro and came back to the light side (after a 2-year sentence to an IBM Thinkpad and a Dell Insprion), I forked over the $79 for a copy of iWork.
Holy cow, it had a word processor I could use. Not only could I use it, I made documents that looked _professional_. Like they were designed, not just typed. It's not often a freelancer gets feedback like "Your contract just *looked* good." All I did was put the Firemoss logo in the template...
I've spent the past week using Powerpoint (due to requirements). I've spent the past year doing Keynote presentations. The difference is shameful: what the heck has Redmond been doing all these years?
And now we've got Numbers. Spreadsheets are the cornerstone of business software - releasing a spreadsheet package is putting your chips on the high-stakes table of office software. After using their software, I don't think Apple's bluffing.
Nando wrote on 08/29/07 6:48 PM
Powerpoint is definitely the worst piece of software i've ever used. It hits that sweet spot where it's too complicated for a novice user to understand, in that special, inane way MS can make software complicated, and it's impossible for a power user to do anything useful with it. Powerpoint is the reason i bought a Mac.Not that it's been all roses with Keynote. Or with Mac support. I had a problem with Keynote crashing the Mac. I spoke with several support folks and they kept asking me if Keynote could open a file. When i said yes, they said "Then it's not a problem with Keynote, it's a problem with the file."
When i told them that Keynote _created_ the file that's crashing my Mac, and it happens with more than one file, they started at the top of the script again.
"Tell me, can Keynote open a file?" ...
I fear the computer world will never be the utopia that lives only in my imagination, but Keynote is a helluva lot better than Powerpoint.