Apple iWork’s Numbers the new killer app
Fascinating how Visicalc, the first spreadsheet was a killer app. Lotus 123 was a killer app, Excel again was a killer app (albeit helped by being part of MS Office suite).
Now we find ourselves in 2007 and Apple has revolutionized spreadsheets with its new Numbers application, part of its iWork productivity suite, that includes Keynote for presentations, and Pages for word processing and desktop publishing.
Having played a bit with it now, I’m happy to declare it a killer app. Yet again, a spreadsheet is a killer app. What is it with spreadsheets?
Tell you what it is with this one. Spreadsheet software for the last 25 years has been aimed at corporate bean counters. However, everyone from your mum to the clerk to the manager to the CEO has found a use for spreadsheets, knocking up quick tables of information.
What lacked before Numbers, was an easy way to make those tables look good and more importantly, to not have to embed them in another application to use print them in a visually appealing way.
Numbers rectifies that. With number table creation is a cinch. You can have multiple tables with *individual* column formats per sheet. And you can have multiple sheets. You can drag the tables around the sheets, place impressive looking graphs, place images and text boxes.
Essentially, Numbers is spreadsheets with desktop publishing built in.
It won’t take long for a lot of people to say “I really want that!!”
If you’re a Mac user, take the trial for a spin. If you’re a Windows user, I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to drool jealously.
Read more: Apple iWork Numbers
On Amazon:
“Apple iWork ‘06 (Mac DVD)” (Apple)
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Technorati Tags: iwork, numbers, apple
I’ve been playing with Numbers the last couple of days and just love it - more than I have Pages and Keynote, and enough to make me buy iWork (outside of work I do all my writing in plain text or html, so don’t really need the other programs)
Yesterday I had one of those fabled “Just Works” moments… I have a sheet with three different tables and a chart in it; I wanted to expand the middle table to add some detail, and as I went to do it, I thought “here we go, now I’m going to have to move the other elements around again” — I almost didn’t want to make the change because of the awkwardness it would cause… So I grab the corner and drag, and everything else on the sheet moves to make room for it! I fell in love in an instant.
-p