Could iWork ’12 Be A Final Cut Pro X Style Reboot?

By

iWork2011

A new job application on Apple’s site has put out the call for a new Senior User Interface Designer to rework the iWork suite on both Mac and iOS devices.

Not only does the timing of the ad combined with recent updates seem to imply that Apple may not update iWork until next year, but we have to wonder if it also might suggest that Cupertino is planning a Final Cut Pro X style reboot of the popular office suite.

The last version of iWork came out in 2009, but iWork ’09 is clearly not going anywhere fast: Apple just updated it, in fact, to bring Lion-specific features like fullscreen and autosave to the apps.

To us, this suggests that iWork might not get a 2011 update this year, slipping the next version of iWork to 2012… a three year gap between versions that would be the longest period between iWork releases since the software suite was first released back in 2005.

That’s a long gap, and between the delay between releasesand the fact that Apple’s hiring people to help re-envision the iWork UI, we wonder if we’re about to see a complete ground-up overhaul of the software, similar to the forward-thinking redesign of Final Cut Pro X that Apple released (to much contention) last month.

We’re just putting it out there. Apple’s not afraid to reinvent their software occasionally to make it ready for the future, and a three year gap between iWork releases is so long by their historical release schedule that we feel like something big might be cooking. What do you think?

[via AppleBitch]

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