Numbers 4+

This is a brilliant Mobile and Desktop spreadsheet app, I use it all the time. But I wish 2 things.

1) Apple would change its obsession of popping up menus, right where you’re selecting something across iOS. It’s not helpful popping a Cut or Paste button, right where you’re trying to perform the equivalent of keyhole surgery with your index finger. Please move the pop up menu further away from the action. It’s not going to leave its users out of breath, moving their finger to the top of the screen. It is so frustrating trying to select an exact point and suddenly you delete something or paste a load of text in the wrong place.

2) More specific to Numbers, please leave space at the start and end of formulas to add something. The enter and delete buttons are so close to the ends of the formula text, it’s impossible to add a bracket or something to either end of a formula. Apple does this with Safari as well. If you want to change the end of a URL, there’s a nice juicy “X” button sitting right next to where you want to add something to the URL. “Bang” you’ve just deleted it. Just leave enough of a gap between somewhere that needs to be manipulated, especially the ends of text fields, and any buttons. Thanks 🙂

As a data scientist, I usually rely on tableau / R / python in order to get the results I need. Recently my MacBook was out of action and with a creeping deadline I needed to get some results done quickly.
Thankfully it was pretty basic stuff, but doing it in excel for iPad turned out to DOOM-esque nightmare, with macros and unwanted functions coming out the walls, and weird esoteric quirks that have been embedded in the user base since the early 90s that are just accepted as being “the right way”.
I am sure that excel is a fantastic application if you’re familiar with the desktop versions, but I have managed to avoid it altogether in my career so far. With only 8 hours left from my deadline, I thought I’d give the data another crack in numbers. What can I say, everything is laid out in such a sane way with the same functionality.
It appears that the apple guys really do still care about intuitive app design! I managed to get up to grips and bash the data into shape in less than 1 hour (I’d been struggling with excel for 3 hours that morning). Whilst it may be true that in terms of raw speed excel is faster, I found that for my needs - a relative spreadsheet noob - I was able to get the results I wanted very quickly.

TL,DR; if you already know excel, get excel. If you don’t - get Numbers instead and save yourself the headaches and steep learning curve.

I have to use Microsoft apps for my work but what users interprete as great power is simply great over-complication. For every task that needs multiple selections to accomplish in Excel. I can achieve the same thing in a couple of clicks in Numbers. It’s the same with Excel and PowerPoint. I write scripts, screenplays and reports; add charts and create diagrams, all with the free suite of Pages, Numbers and Keynote. It’s simple, elegant and very effective. When I’m done, I simply export to Word/Excel/PowerPoint and upload to SharePoint. My Pages/Numbers/Keynote documents are all saved on iCloud so I can access them and edit them on any of my Apple devices (or on any Windows device via the Browser version of the suite). So versatile, so elegant, so… FREE!!!