Only Apple could make spreadsheets fun. I only open Excel when someone sends me a file with some data and I have to take a look. But there are some tasks that really need a spreadsheet.

I had 5 minutes between tasks earlier this week, so I fired up Numbers, the new spreadsheet app in Apple iWork. I didn’t get far because as soon as I started playing with the chart tool, I was like a monkey with a piece of tin foil.

Yes, Excel can make charts and graphs but I always struggled with them and they didn’t look all that sexy when I did figure it out. I wish I could show you how much fun it was to swivel and turn and tweak this little chart (Ooh, ooh, ooh!)

I think the Apple folks would concede that Numbers is not for power users. More for math cripples like me that need a spreadsheet from time to time. I could list some of the neat features but don’t want to listen to MS Office vets tell me how easy it is to do the same thing in Excel.