Darn You Apple

I honestly don’t complain about Apple very often. I’m not a fanboy that goes around different websites defending them at every turn, I just don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. Not like I did when I used Windows. But they have finally done something that really pisses me off.

iWork ‘08 I’m so seriously annoyed that I’m amazed that I can type. I have been a long time Excel user. Ok, that’s not exactly true, at my last 3 jobs I was not just an EXCEL user, I was THE Excel GUY. I got phone calls from all over the company 3 or 4 times a week asking about how to do something in Excel. I know how to do things in Excel that are simply crazy. At one point I had an excel document that was 19 Megabytes. This was a useable, daily document for tracking information that I couldn’t do without, and there were several this size and bigger.

So my beef is this, Numbers is SO nice. I mean, it’s a JOY to work in. Creating a beautiful invoice is easy, fast, and just plain enjoyable. I built a tracking spreadsheet for my billings and such in about 10 minutes. I’m not to the point where a full fledged accounting package is really necessary, but I am getting there, and oh man! There are some compelling reasons for me to stick with Excel for things, but Numbers is just inching its way in. It’s not necessarily about the functionality of the documents. I can make Excel do EXACTLY what Numbers is doing. But making them look as good in Excel as they just start out as in Numbers is much more difficult.

So thanks a lot Apple for making my life more difficult by making it easier.