[guytoronto]

Maybe not completely useless.

Was charting a large series of data on a 24" iMac with 4GB RAM. Trying to change any aspect of the chart spiked one of the processors at 100%, and caused the whole application to become non-responsive for at least 30 seconds.

I saved my work, quit Numbers, then relaunched. Same problem. Any changes to the chart led to the same issue.

Switching over to Excel for now.

 

[Harvey]

Well, Numbers is limited.
Personally, the lack of error bars in charts means I have to keep my OS9 based graphing program in use. However I am using Numbers more, and liking it. It's very 'pretty' and the many 'little tables' concept is quite useful as compared to Excel's monolithic sheets. Note however most of my raw data analysis is done in specialized programs with spreadsheets, graphing and statistics being done on the 'predigested' data

Regards
from Ottawa
Harvey

 

[harzack86]

Just a thought as I don't know how large your data is or how this program handles large data, but did you give "Tables" a try with the same spreadsheet?
At least, this is a Universal app as opposed to Excel.
There is a free trial download on their site.

 

[MickMac]

I know what you mean. I try to use Numbers for my spreadsheet needs, but it's pretty rough. I regularly go back to NeoOffice when Numbers messes things up. Perhaps the next version will smooth things out enough to make it my full-time spreadsheet.

 

[eMacMan]

...Trying to change any aspect of the chart spiked one of the processors at 100%, and caused the whole application to become non-responsive for at least 30 seconds....

Switching over to Excel for now.

Seem to remember a similar issue with ClarisWorks Spreadsheets on my LC475. I turned off the "Auto Calc" menu item and when all my data was up to date clicked on "Calculate Now" then took a bathroom break.

Does Numbers retain that useful feature?

 

[guytoronto]

Just to clarify, it was a range of 100 variables, all with 3 data points each. Nothing too complicated. Simple straight line graph. Very straight forward calculations. It's when the charting came into it that it went all haywire. Apple needs to cleanup some code.

 

[fyrefly]

I also had numbers randomly crash on me several times today. Weird. Not even doing anything that advanced.

 

[chas_m]

To be fair:

1. Numbers is 1.0 product. Why don't you try running your charts on a vintage copy of Excel 1.0 and see how well that works out for you?

2. You cannot rule out a variable with your system being the culprit. Show me reproducible results on different machines that occur as you claim and I'll believe it. I've done some fairly sophisticated (for me, I *loathe* spreadsheets) stuff (including charts) on Numbers and not had a noticeable problem, or any crashes.

I'm not saying Numbers is perfect, far from it: see point #1. I'm saying that before you make the claim that Numbers sucks, you need to be able to prove that it's actually NUMBERS that's the culprit. I know I've falsely blamed programs that were unstable many times, only to find out later than an obscure plug-in in a completely unrelated area was actually the culprit (coughRAPIDOWRITEcough).

 

[Harvey]

To be fair:

1. Numbers is 1.0 product. Why don't you try running your charts on a vintage copy of Excel 1.0 and see how well that works out for you?

2. You cannot rule out a variable with your system being the culprit. Show me reproducible results on different machines that occur as you claim and I'll believe it. I've done some fairly sophisticated (for me, I *loathe* spreadsheets) stuff (including charts) on Numbers and not had a noticeable problem, or any crashes.

I'm not saying Numbers is perfect, far from it: see point #1. I'm saying that before you make the claim that Numbers sucks, you need to be able to prove that it's actually NUMBERS that's the culprit. I know I've falsely blamed programs that were unstable many times, only to find out later than an obscure plug-in in a completely unrelated area was actually the culprit (coughRAPIDOWRITEcough).

No, to be fair; Numbers is a 1.0 product without an upgrade path; that is you'll pay full price for iWork 2010 regardless that you were an early adopter of Numbers 1.0 so I wouldn't cut Apple any slack on that account. iWork 2008 and Numbers have to stand on their own feet (fortunately overall iWork does).

Regards
from Ottawa
Harvey

 

[8888neal8888]

Numbers falls short : (

This past semester at university i was taking a physics lab that required the use of a spreadsheet app for almost everything. As a mac fan and owning iwork i tried numbers for my work, but in this regard it was next to useless. You just can't beat excel when making a scatter plot etc. I appreciate apple's efforts in making a spreadsheet app for the average consumer but the program is next to useless for many technical things. For example limiting the domain and range individually in a scatter plot to your specifications was near impossible. Overall a disapointing program for what i needed it for : (