In a recent post, I said:

Do you think Apple create their legendary interfaces based solely on user input? Even Microsoft are smart enough to not do that.

However, I’ve noticed the following Windows 7 ads on the internet:

I give you, the OS built for Homer. :-)

Back in late 2007 I wrote an article comparing Excel functions with Apple’s Numbers ’08 - Apple’s then new spreadsheet application that was part of iWork ’08.

This week Apple released iWork ’09, which contains Numbers ’09. For completeness I thought I should do the same comparison again, to see how Numbers now stacks up.

The Numbers

Here is a link to the spreadsheet in Numbers ’09 format (zipped), and a PDF Version.

And here is a summary table:

As you can see, things have improved a lot in terms of coverage of Excel functionality. In particular, there are big increases in Statistics and Engineering functions. Almost 100 new functions were added in the new release.

What does that mean for those coming from Excel, or trying to import Excel spreadsheets? Well, Apple seem to have covered most of the common functionality. The numbers above are misleading, and look like Apple haven’t – but when you take, as an example, Engineering functions, you find that most of the missing functionality is around complex numbers. I doubt anyone reading this blog has a spreadsheet that does complex number calculations. Similarly database functions – their use is pretty obscure.

There are possibly some stats and finance functions that will break Excel import, so if you rely heavily on these you should check the list.

So, as I mentioned, that is a big increase in functions. Still, I’m disappointed Apple didn’t try and match Excels functions totally (maybe not Database Functions), and then start to add some of their own. The compatibility argument would have been a lot strong if they had, and some of the functions would have been pretty easy to add (ISNUMBER anyone?)

So is Numbers any good?

Yes. I use it daily, and it is much easier to use than Excel, the results look better, and it has some great functionality such as table categories and intelligent tables – in comparison Excel is just a big boring grid with some functions behind cells.

Being able to put small individual tables on a single page is the real advantage of Numbers, and the end results are spreadsheets that actually look great, communicate better and are easier to manipulate. Numbers is a pleasure to use for the most part.

You can export to Excel format, though it is always disappointing as Excel spreadsheets are so damn ugly. The iPhone also can view Numbers documents (as it can Excel). If you are on Windows of course, you can’t view Numbers documents. But who actually chooses to use Windows these days?!

After downloading a number of application from the App Store, I noticed that my iPhone has grown a mullet.

Here’s my first screen of icons:

Note Mail, Contacts, Phone, Notes, etc. And here is my second.

Mainly games and trivial things that I’ll probably delete by the end of the week.

So, see the mullet? It’s all “business up front, party in the back“.

You probably wish you hadn’t come back to my site after reading that, but thank you anyway.

I hate people who don’t test software. Sure, they usually say “We didn’t have time!”. In most cases it isn’t true – it is because they were too lazy to test their software. And I hate lazy people.

So anyway, I’m out visiting a business partner, and in the foyer of their building they had one of those touch screen directory displays. The type where you put in the first letter of the company you are looking for, and then select the entry you want and it gives you all their business information.

I took some photos of it with my phone, so the quality is poor. But anyway, it looked like this:

And at the bottom are these funky up down buttons for moving back and forth between pages.

So anyway, I thought I’d test the software a little – hey, it’s a hobby. What happens if I go backwards on page 1?

Oh no they didn’t? Oh yes they did! So I went back a few more pages.

I considered going all the way back to see if I could crash the software when it reached some type size limit, but there was a guy behind me wanting to use the device.

Anyway, the company wasn’t even listed. But they were in the building. So not only is the software untested (and full of the most basic of edge case bugs), it doesn’t get updated very often either.

Lazy developers. Crap software. Probably Windows developers.