Since the announcement of Apple's new Creator Studio app versions and subscriptions, I have kept my versions of Numbers, Pages, Keynote at 14.4 hoping to avoid the whole thing, including the nagging. All had been well until today. I share a couple of spreadsheets, and now when either of us open one of those spreadsheets we get prompted to update Numbers. If I choose "Don't Update" I am warned that I am editing offline. Anyone else seeing this? The same thing happens when opening the spreadsheet on a Mac. It smells like Apple is trying to force us to update, and we really don't want to.
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Universal Forced Numbers "upgrade"?
- Thread starter MacBeast
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Apple_Robert
Contributor
aries81
macrumors 6502
You can update the app just fine and it still works as intended. Only the new functions require payment.
vjl323
macrumors 6502
Unfortunately that is not true for me. No new version of Numbers is offered to me. I am running macOS 14 with dozens of shared Numbers spreadsheets with others running macOS 14 and macOS 15. There is no way to update Numbers - version 14.5 is the max I can go and it does not allow me to to share - same prompt as the OP shared.
I can not upgrade this Mac to macOS 15 due to it breaking software [by design]. So now the only option is to use a website? Will rolling back to Numbers 14.4 fix this issue?
EDIT: Can confirm rolling back to Numbers version 14.4 did not fix the issue [restored Numbers from Time Machine]. I still can't collaborate even though I used to be able to with this version.
Last edited:
vjl323
macrumors 6502
It's not just the pop-up - it now no longer functions! I was getting the pop up in 14.5, but never in 14.4. Now both versions get it, but the big thing that changed is that collaboration stopped working. It was working last week. I use it daily for work and now suddenly it is not working unless I use the iCloud website. Even downgrading to 14.4 still gives me the same pop-up and the same offline sharing - this is a feature that was removed from Numbers 14.4, and that's not cool at all.
Interesting that it stopped working for you just now. Apple indicated collaboration would require the new clients back when they were released (I know because I posted about it).
Yup, we had been using the collaboration feature daily up until my original post, so it didn't seem there was any change in that area with the new releases. This seems to imply that the collaboration change wasn't really necessary since it was still working for weeks after the new releases.
I don't recall seeing the change mentioned when the new versions came out, it must have been hidden away.
Regardless, it sure seems to me that something was taken away unless I update to v15. This in effect is a forced upgrade if I want to keep what I already have.
Starfia
macrumors 65832
I'd studied the marketing material all day to try to understand the transition and missed it myself as well. Someone pointed out my omission in describing the features and I saw it was indeed there.
I don't know whether it's about forcing users to upgrade so much as continuing to maintain one stable version rather than having to maintain more than one, but I appreciate the dilemma. Collaboration is a great feature, but the "14.5" versions are the better choice for me for the moment. (Plus, you can still keep and run both versions on the Mac if you want.)
Adora
macrumors 68010
Try this in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers TSADisableUpdateNotifications -bool yes
vjl323
macrumors 6502
Thank you. That got rid of the nag when the Numbers sheet is not shared; still gives me a 3-button nag for the shared documents. I share one document with myself - my personal AppleID and my business one. Now I am unsure who the official owner of the document is since I would update the document on both my laptop [personal] and Mac Studio [biz].
Removing the collaboration feature for macOS 14 users was not something I expected Apple to do, and am very disappointed with them. I've left them feedback:
Feedback - Numbers
Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about Numbers.
www.apple.com
I encourage others who are not happy about this, to do so as well.
stevep
macrumors 6502a
I actually went looking for a Numbers update a couple of weeks ago, as I got fed up with the app constantly crashing on me - particularly when working with charts. That’s when I discovered these latest updates. Reading some of the reviews on the App Store quickly convinced me to remain with the existing versions - some reviews mentioned subscriptions and even adverts popping up.
Anything that looks or smells like a subscription to me is an instant rejection. I’m surprised Apple haven’t learnt from Adobe on that one. And if Apple continue to degrade their software in this way they can stick their OS.
Anyway, Numbers is pretty useless as a spreadsheet - it lacks loads of useful features and is very buggy, so I’ve replaced it with MS Office 2024. I used to use MS Office back in the days of Win XP, and I have to say that going back to Excel is rather a nice experience - full of excellent features, equation functions that make Numbers look like toytown and charts that actually work.
Anything that looks or smells like a subscription to me is an instant rejection. I’m surprised Apple haven’t learnt from Adobe on that one. And if Apple continue to degrade their software in this way they can stick their OS.
Anyway, Numbers is pretty useless as a spreadsheet - it lacks loads of useful features and is very buggy, so I’ve replaced it with MS Office 2024. I used to use MS Office back in the days of Win XP, and I have to say that going back to Excel is rather a nice experience - full of excellent features, equation functions that make Numbers look like toytown and charts that actually work.
My Numbers 14.4 has just stopped collaborating too. (Just noticed this today, but it's possible it hasn't been working for longer.) I was never informed of this change, it's just happened. I get the three button message telling me I have to upgrade, but clicking the Upgrade button just takes me to a "software not available" message in the App Store. Searching for Numbers in the App Store unearths Numbers 15.2, which I can run alongside, but I would much prefer not to have pop-up animations trying to force unwanted AI subscriptions on me. Very disappointing to have this feature stripped with no warning.
For what it's worth, I've been using the updated iOS version of Numbers daily since it was released and apart from one popup that appeared on first launch and one "tutorial" that pointed out the new AI tools in the toolbar the app hasn't bugged me about AI.
Perhaps others have workflows that trigger more frequent notifications about the AI tools, but I'm not seeing them. I also don't know how it behaves on macOS.
Thanks @Puonti, maybe I'm overreacting. But "this feature worked well, and now they've stopped it working" never goes down well with me!
Spoke too soon. New Numbers is now entering text and numbers in reverse order into the cells. So typing "hello" results in "olleh", and 34.56 results in 65.43. I don't have any RTL language active, so no idea what this could be. When this happens, Number also stops responding to menu commands such as undo or quit. Madness. Fortunately, my spreadsheets are still openable in the older version for now...