As a data consultant, I would say those companies already do question the process, and have done for decades.
Yes there are countless situations where a dedicated system or database could and should replace Excel, but there are just as many scenarios where Excel is ideal, and swapping out a spreadsheet for what would be potentially tens of separate applications across the business, or one absurdly expensive behemoth, to perform tasks that could be done rapidly and clearly in Excel is neither practical nor economically viable for most companies. A spreadsheet is perfect for plenty of situations.
My job is literally to help these companies move to appropriate database solutions, often transitioning away from Excel. But there’s no getting around that a spreadsheet solves (often simple) problems that are impractical with other tools. You can move a company to a supplier’s sector-specific solution and solve huge numbers of issues, but unless that solution exactly meets every aspect of the business requirements, there’s always going to be a fallback and it’s often Excel, for better or worse.
I can only assume anyone still asking the question “is Excel really that much better than the alternatives?” lacks exposure to Power Query and its prevalence in business.
I installed this last night and was presented with a warning screen saying that I'd have to provide ID, then the following screen basically said "Nah, you're good bro, we don't need your ID".
I'm hoping that was as a result of my Apple ID having been set up many years ago, rather than them having seen my camera roll and concluded that this guy is clearly old as fuck.
I’ve not come across this but I’ll check it out. Is that App Store apps only?
I think probably 90% of the apps I’ve installed have been through the homebrew package manager which likely means they don’t do any phoning home, but I’ll check out the pre-installed stuff and see if I can replicate.
With respect to OP's post, they say "you can't even tell the computers we are on are 15x faster...", and I reckon that quick resume etc, is an example of "you absolutely can tell that we now have extremely fast hardware" when compared to what came before, irrespective of the quality of the software.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just picking apart the blanket "computers feel the same as they did a decade ago". Some computers might feel the same, and a lot of software might be unoptimised, but there's a good selection of examples where that's not the case.
What apps out of interest? I’m a new Mac owner, so limited experience, but everything seems insanely quick so far. Even something like Xcode is a one-bounce on this M4 Air.
I guess the counter argument for games is load times have dramatically improved, though that’s less about software development than hardware improvements.
If we put consoles in the same bracket as computers, the literally instant quick-resume feature on an Xbox (for example) feels like sci-fi.
If you’ve got a VPN, just install that on your Apple TV. Google doesn’t show ads in certain countries (the list is Googleable). That was an absolute game changer for me.
I use an Apple TV, but I assume it’s the same as any other streaming box or appropriate smart TV.
The absolute piece-of-piss way to block all YouTube ads on it is to install a VPN like Proton, choose a relevant country (easily googleable), and there will be no ads whatsoever in YouTube.
Google doesn’t serve ads on YouTube in a handful of countries.
As a data consultant, I would say those companies already do question the process, and have done for decades.
Yes there are countless situations where a dedicated system or database could and should replace Excel, but there are just as many scenarios where Excel is ideal, and swapping out a spreadsheet for what would be potentially tens of separate applications across the business, or one absurdly expensive behemoth, to perform tasks that could be done rapidly and clearly in Excel is neither practical nor economically viable for most companies. A spreadsheet is perfect for plenty of situations.
My job is literally to help these companies move to appropriate database solutions, often transitioning away from Excel. But there’s no getting around that a spreadsheet solves (often simple) problems that are impractical with other tools. You can move a company to a supplier’s sector-specific solution and solve huge numbers of issues, but unless that solution exactly meets every aspect of the business requirements, there’s always going to be a fallback and it’s often Excel, for better or worse.