Numbers 14.4
Apple today updated its iWork apps Keynote, Numbers, and Pages with new features that require iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, or macOS 15.4.
For example, in the latest version of each app, you can now make text edits using Writing Tools directly in a presentation, spreadsheet, or document.
[…]
Each app also received a few other enhancements that are not tied to the latest software updates.
Perform complex calculations with over 30 new functions. For example, you can use a LAMBDA function to create and name custom functions, the SORT function to organize the contents of a range or array, or the LET function to perform calculations using defined variables. See the Formula and Functions user guide.
There’s a whole family of higher order functions: LAMBDA, LAMBDA.APPLY, BYCOL, BYROW, MAP, REDUCE, and SCAN (via Hacker News).
This is cool, but I’ve never really gotten into using Numbers, despite repeatedly trying. There are definitely some things that it does better than Excel, but others, like tables not expanding to fill the window, still feel weird to me after all these years. Anything with interactive collaboration I do with Google Sheets. Anything with manual collaboration I do with Excel. Any time I need to keep important records for a long time, I feel more comfortable with the Excel file format. Same with large data sets. That doesn’t leave much for Numbers, and I haven’t found anything that hooked me.
Previously:
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Numbers is my "pretty time sheets for freelance work" app and what I occasionally use as a go-between when pasting from and back into BBEdit. Too many little aggravations after its iOS-ification to depend on it any deeper than that.
I'd hazard a guess that basically no serious spreadsheet user uses Numbers.
I could be wrong, but I've literally never met anyone using it for anything big, complex, or serious. Google Sheets sometimes, but 95-99% Excel.
@billyok Yes, the iOS-ification did a lot of damages to Keynote and Numbers. It's still possible to do mostly the same things but using them intuitively is gone.
Long time Numbers user, running my household budget on it since it first came out (Excel was the last MSFT app for I ever used)....
I'm writing this on a M2 MBP running Sonoma 14.7.5 (updated last Monday) and the iWork updates came late last week. I'm at 14.4 (7043.0.93), so the claim that macOS 15.4 seems to be in error.
Apologies, I need to proofread my comments better! It should have read "... the claim that macOS 15.4 *is required* seems to be...".
Numbers has unique (distinct) counts in pivot tables, while Excel for Mac still doesn’t have it after years and years.
Plus Excel has horrible tiny fonts and cruddy scientific number auto formatting when I open CSVs in it, whereas Numbers just displays my CSV intact and readable.
I do wish Numbers get rid of the popup about “formatting can be changed” when opening CSVs though. It covers up the column headers I'm trying to read.
@Michael_Tsai, a direct quote from your post:
"Apple today updated its iWork apps Keynote, Numbers, and Pages with new features that require iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, or macOS 15.4"
No explanation, and none needed. Except.... over 30 new functions? I guess some require Apple Intelligence in some sort of way? The way you quoted make it sounds like 14.4 *requires* macOS 15.4. It simply does not.
I have come to rely o your blog for both a place I can rely on for news (even if secondhand, you are awesome about attribution) and accuracy. My point with my comment maybe should have been directed elsewhere, but based on your post I thought it best to say macOS 14.X can still download - without certain AI features - the latest version of Numbers.
Peace.
@gildarts: you are correct, I am a heavey user of spreadsheets (professionally, of course ;)) and unfortunately there is no alternative to Excel - Not Google Sheets, Not Libre Calc and sure AF not Numbers.
The main problem with the Pages, Numbers and Keynotes app is that while they all look nice and polished, they continually get in the way of the user - How far we've strayed from Claris Works and FileMaker Pro
