A Problem with Numbers

Numbers

It wasn’t my usual problem with numbers (that is, that I am nearly innumerate), but instead that I had a problem with Numbers this morning. Numbers, for those not in the know is Apple’s spreadsheet program, which is cheaper (and I think nicer) than Excel.[1] The problem might have been related to being a Yosemite beta tester.[2]

On Friday, as I was updating Yosemite to Beta 2, the App Store told me that Numbers also had an update. It’s the only one of the iWork apps I’ve installed on Yosemite, so it didn’t tell me about the concurrent updates to Pages and Keynote. I downloaded the update.

On Sunday, I went to use Numbers under Mavericks (I’m still bouncing back and forth, in part constrained by apps that share data with iCloud or are based on large collections of files on the main portion of my drive[3]), it told me there was an update and should update it from the App Store. Well, that’s funny, the App Store is supposed to update these automatically.

Today, I went to the App Store. It had updated Pages and Keynote, but not Numbers. Latest version of Numbers: 3.2.2, version on my computer: 3.2. If I had waited, another update would have come along, and I would have been fine. That’s not what I wanted to do. So I tossed Numbers into the Trash. I probably should have emptied the Trash, after all if after that the App Store still didn’t recognize the need to install Numbers, I could get it back from Time Machine. Sent it to the Trash, opened the App Store, and saw that Numbers was still listed as installed.

I rebooted my computer (still to Mavericks) and checked the App Store. Numbers was still listed as installed. And I was thinking they need a “re-download this anyway option,”[4] but that doesn’t exist. It’s not like I haven’t sent a damaged app to the Trash and re-downloaded it. It didn’t work this time.
I suspected that the App Store was detecting the installation on the Yosemite drive and that was getting in the way of the update. In the end, I copied the newer version from the Yosemite drive and into the Applications folder of my Mavericks drive. I launched; it works.

This is an odd experience which I suspect is a symptom of having two boot partitions on one drive.

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1. I also prefer Pages to Word. I don’t have the Microsoft Office suite on my computer. ↩


2. Though I’m not actually certain. ↩


3. Specifically iTunes and iPhoto. ↩


4. I make no claim on this idea and would be delighted to see it in an update to the App Store.  ↩