But Numbers compared to Excel? No contest. Excel gives you a big spreadsheet ready to accept data.
yes, there are some shortcomings as it comes to large number of rows. don't know, why, probably it's because of the way numbers shows data. you can have multiple tables on one page, sometimes it's more like a calculator embedded into a graphic design application.
if you put 6 sheets with thousands of rows, then it is painfully slow.
however the way numbers uses formulas, does formatting, as it actually works... for me it's easier.
the only feature i miss is to import data (csv) with different field separators. if someone uses the hungarian locale settings, the separator is semicolon.
in excel you can choose it while you import the document.
but i have my handy perl scripts for this purpose.
Numbers is prettier, the fonts look better, the formatting is better, overall it's more pleasing for the eye. for my eye, at least.
but you are right, when it comes to big amount of data, numbers can't perform as fast as excel does.
Pages is a little closer to Word, but when it came to writing a book, I had to use Word for maximum interoperability with my editor(s) and publishers. Pages can import and export Word documents, but the fidelity just isn't good enough.
i strongly disagree. With pages you can do text routing, text formatting, whatever you wish. and it does it pretty well. my wife wrote her first book using pages, and she did the complete formatting solely in pages, and it worked out pretty well.
for bigger projects over 300 pages you'd need Indesign or some similar monsters.
in case you just use it as a text editor, w/o formatting or structures, there are a lot other good apps for writing... for example there's textedit
way faster than word ever will be.
i'd say pages is way more than word, it's a good mixture of the functionality available in MS word and MS Publisher.
one thing is unclear to me: why is it so hard to import .doc documents... sometimes it takes ages to wait for the file to be imported.
