Apple announced a new application Numbers, which will be part of new iWork ‘08. As iWork was not updated for quite a long time and spreadsheet function was really missing in the whole “office” suite.

The expectations from Numbers are really high. As it was announced - it is about spreadsheets the Mac way. I am a bit worried as office suite - it is not a best domain of Apple’s designers and programmers.

KeyNote is an excellent application, but Pages are not my favorite application to produce documents.

Looking at the preview of Numbers application I am really looking forward to seeing the work with large data basis and the orientation of the graphics and output. To add sliders to documents, it is a good idea, but what about the analysis of sales results for the last quarter? Will be Numbers comfortable to make it then?

Working with Microsoft Excel is fine as the application makes no borders in your work, you can use any cell you want and you can add supplemental calculations to every possible cell. But Numbers look to show just the cells you really need at the moment and adding another one will need additional action from the user.

The tables in Numbers are presented as intelligent tables, but Microsoft could tell a story about “intelligent” wizards and auto-corrections. People are usually annoyed by them. When you work with Excel right now, you have full freedom. With “intelligent” solution - it can be a real pain to make the table to make things differently.

But finally, I expect Apple to aim a different target group of customers with Numbers. Really looking forward to reading the review of new iWork’08.

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