14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a year since the first 'Numbers' rumors started surfacing and people started expecting the spreadsheet application to make its appearance in the latest version of iWork. Now that Numbers is finally here, many were curious to see how it would rise to the challenge, considering that it has long been awaited as a replacement for Microsoft's Excel.
So far, reviews of Numbers are quite positive, as Apple has managed to deliver what people were expecting. The application manages to break free of many of the rules that surround Excel and offer something that does the same job but in a different way. Numbers does not have an infinitely expanding grid of cells, instead offering a workspace (called a 'sheet') in which you can create individual tables. Each individual table is a speadsheet and they are expandable, formatable and movable. Each sheet can hold as many tables and associated graphs as needed and each document can have multiple sheets. Overall, the general consensus is that Numbers is far more user friendly than Excel and better at getting every day work done. "Apple doing what Apple does best: improving, refining, and concentrating on user experience," Phil Windley blogs for ZDNet.
But Numbers is a slap in Microsoft's face in more ways than one. Not only does its inclusion in iWork make the suite a viable replacement for Office and not only does it win in terms of user experience and ease of use, but it also does office documents better than Office.
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was delayed last week until mid-January, one of the chief reasons being the shift to the Open XML as the suite's native format. This is simply hilarious considering the fact that Apple's Numbers handles the format without any issue. The handling of the Open XML format is so good in Numbers that it has even won praise from a program manager for Office 2007. "[iWork '08] reads the Office Open XML files with very high fidelity," said Brian Jones on his company blog.
Considering that iWork is available now and it has everything needed to make it a viable alternative to Office and that it is significantly cheaper than Microsoft's alternative, it will be a hard job to win back any switchers. The free 30-day trial for iWork will help a lot of people see that they still have a choice.