When iWork first came out, I was quite excited and looked forward to having a play. Despite my best efforts and enthusiastic attempts to like the program, Pages was a disappointment. It was slow, bulky and just not up to scratch compared to Microsoft Word. I’ve always been a fan of Keynote and think that it runs circles around Powerpoint, but Pages really didn’t impress. I found tasks that were simple in Office took much longer to achieve and whilst documents always ended up looking much better, the additional time didn’t make it worthwhile.

I was a little skeptical about iWork 08 for the reasons above, but obviously thought it worth giving a try. Boy am I glad that I did. So many little improvements and enhancements have made this program run rings around its predecessor. Pages is completely re-worked and it a breeze to use. It’s faster, more logical and buttons are better laid out. But none of that compares to Numbers.

Microsoft Excel has been around for quite literally as long as I can remember. It does the job that it is designed to do, but I can’t put my finger on any real major improvements it has provided since Office 97. Nothing is fresh and new, nothing really makes it easier to use. Five minutes after opening Numbers I was pretty sure that Excel would never be needed again - far from the experience I had with the original Pages.

The way that sheets are laid out just makes so much more sense than Excel. The same can be said for formulas and formatting tools, charts and graphs. Everything is straight forward and easy, and the program seems to perform very well. The way that print previews can scale is revolutionary and will save Excel users such a headache. I haven’t tested it under heavy loads and huge spreadsheets (I have no need to), but for my purposes it’s a breath of fresh air for managing finances, shares and all my other information.

Microsoft Office is still a massive cash cow and is more popular than any other software package, but it’s being gradually chipped away. With continued improvements and advancements such as this one from Apple, it runs the risk of looking outdated in the very near future.