Spreadsheets

A 10-year old computer is an old computer! It's not "perfectly usable," not if it can't support the many advances we've seen in software during that period, including in Numbers.

Using Numbers for iCloud or Numbers for iPad/iPhone means those documents won't be accessible on a very old Mac even if an old version of Numbers can be found.

Maintaining backward compatibility is costly and takes resources that could otherwise be used to move things forward. I've been pleasantly surprised by the development of Numbers over the past 10 years, both on the Mac and iPad/iPhone. Haven't you been?

SG

Have you tried the iCloud version of Numbers? It seems to be very similar to the current version of Numbers for Mac. This assumes that you have a good internet connection.

Jerry

A 10-year old computer is an old computer!

The Numbers app is not likely to work well on it but you could try downloading LibreOffice or another of the Excel clones and see if that fits your needs.

SG

A 10-year old computer is an old computer!

Though perfectly usable. The latest version of Numbers would easily run on an older computer if Apple cared about backward compatibility. Or they could provide the latest compatible version. They have chosen to do neither. Thank you for your loyalty, now go purchase a new Apple computer or we'll leave you behind.

So, yeah, get Excel or one of the free Excel clones or use Google Sheets online. Funny how they all will work with 10 year old Apple hardware but an app designed and provided by Apple will not.

There is also Numbers for iCloud, the online version.

New functions and computing speed increases have been great but I would have been more pleased with bug fixes over most of the other new features. Personally, I thought Numbers '09 was the epitome of excellence in design and user functionality for a spreadsheet app. It fell off a cliff from there and will never reach that level again from what I see.

Numbers is a spreadsheet app, not something that requires awesome computing power and graphic acceleration. Excel is more advanced and way faster and more capable for power users and works quite well on a 10 year old computer.

Need more bug fixes definitely agree.

I don't have the same nostalgic view of the old, old Numbers, though. I remember sluggish performance, a clunky interface with inspectors galore, names of sheets down the side in a way that would never work on mobile. No Pivot Tables, no sync with mobile devices, no filtering for distinct values. And none of the nice new modern functions that have been incorporated into Numbers since, among them XLOOKUP, MAXIFS, MINIFS, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTBETWEEN, TEXTJOIN, and REGEX.

SG

I really liked and was very impressed with Numbers '09. I tolerate the newer version(s).

Sheets and Tables listed down the side was one of the outstanding features of '09. Apple chose to castrate the Mac version because iOS couldn't do the same things, but the Mac and iOS versions are very different in many other respects so what was the point of castrating the Mac version? Designing to the lowest common denominator is not how to be a leader.

Numbers '09 had WYSIWYG page layout capability and I used it often. Page layout was one of Numbers' most outstanding features. It may not have been perfect but it was far above anything from anyone else and worked excellent for smaller tables and text boxes and all that fit on a page, like when trying to create a page for a presentation. But, because iOS couldn't do it, they castrated the Mac version. Page layout now is a painful joke, basically non-existent.

The toolbar on Numbers '09 had many useful functions and features. They did away with all that and now it is click click scroll to get to the place in the correct tab of the correct inspector to do the same things then click click scroll to get to the next one you need, etc. It was a dumb design decision, something Microsoft would do.

All the other features, all the new functions and the speed increases all could have been added to Numbers '09.

Apple lost me over a decade ago. I had been a fanboy and really looked forward to the next new thing. Now I stick with them only because Microsoft and Google/Android are even worse. I put off "upgrading" or buying new devices until I absolutely have to do it.