"""Apple tried to solve the issue with "Numbers" but ymmv on how well."""
Your "tiny subset" is your confusion at not seeing numbers I suspect.
Wikipedia actually does a decent job of trying to describe the philosophy.
Your "tiny subset" is your confusion at not seeing numbers I suspect.
Wikipedia actually does a decent job of trying to describe the philosophy.
Excel has Tables, which sort serve a similar purpose, but the sheet itself is a flexible grid with no pre-conceived purpose, which makes it much more flexible than Numbers.
For example, it's relatively easy to knock up a simple Gantt chart by directly coloring cells, something that I've seen often. And you could argue that it's not the best tool for the job, and you'd be right, but it's easy and does the job well enough in many cases.
And that's why it's popular and iWork isn't. Numbers concentrated on making charts and tables beautiful; Excel is a general-purpose programmable platform.