You're kidding, right? The ribbon interface is total CRAP. I've been using it for 2 years now and STILL can't figure out where everything is!
All of this Ribbon hate confuses me.
I'm a power Excel user who has just (reluctantly) switched to 2010 from 2003, and although the Ribbon was a slight pain in the a*se to start with, I really don't see how anyone could hate it. Keyboard shortcuts remain unchanged (and that is how most power users do 95% of their work in Excel), and features that most everyday users struggled to find in the old menu system (and so never used) are much easier to find now, and so make non-power users more productive.
It's also ridiculously easy to customise the quick access toolbar at the top of the page so that all of the most used functions are available at the click of a mouse pointer no matter which page of the ribbon that you are on.
Excel 2010 is a far superior product to Excel 2003, and anyone that can't learn where things are on the Ribbon, or can't customise the quick access menu to suit their needs, is just being lazy. I certainly wouldn't go back to the limited functionality that the 2003 menu system offered, and the expanded functionality simply wouldn't be possible in the old format.
However, having said that I would love for them to go back to the old 2003 colour pallet rather than the awful selection that they've used for 2010...
Oh, and just to drag this post back on topic, Numbers is a poor substitute for Excel I'm afraid, and Excel for Mac is the main reason why I'd always stick to a PC for work.