Today's updates to the iWorks suite focus mainly on IOS applications. Since MS clearly does not prioritze Office for Mac and Mac development in general, when will Apple infuse more power and functionality into its suite, particularly Numbers? What improvements would you like to see in Numbers to make it a real Excel alternative?
I've used al the Windows Office suites since version '97 and all Mac since 1998.
In my own use in Business and Economics school and real world after undergrad and grad school.
What I choose to use depends one final destination of the file, what machine they have, and do they need editing features. I
If nobody needs to edit but myself, I'll usually use Pages or Keynote.
For documents that need collaboration with PC users, I use PowerPoint or Word on Mac.
For simple spreadsheets, usually Excel on Mac. I know Excel enough but I'm not a ninja at it.
For real paid work, Excel on Windows via Virtual Machine 100% nothing else competes.
Unfortunately Numbers and Excel Mac do not have any of the excellent plug-ins or VBA scripts that Excel for windows has.
The simple Soulver plug-in is much more cumbersome on a Mac.
When doing more advanced things there are several Excel PC plug-ins costing $5000 or more. These plug-ins/add-ons can calculate in seconds or minutes what "might" have taken a team of NASA engineers weeks to do a decade ago.
These specialized add-on companies are focused on Windows Excel, bc it has the highest market penetration, open architecture, and they don't sell many copies by volume.
I'm a Mac user but a cheap $300 PC with $5000 add-ons will kill any Mac that doesn't have the add-on software at all. The average Mac user will never buy that customized software so the companies will never develop it.
On a plus note, I know several people that import their xls files into numbers bc it makes much better graphs.