Lately, updates to Apple’s official Mac software suites have tended to be first rumored by the strange source of pages for the idiot’s guides seeded on foreign Amazon dot whatever bookstore pages… and sure enough, that oh-so-reputable source is already touting iWork ’11 as coming out sometime in the near future.
But when exactly? Probably shot down the tube along with the splintered iLife ’11 apps when the Mac App Store launches, according to reports.
If you look at the sample images of the Mac App Store shown during October’s Back to Mac Event, you’ll notice that each iWork application is individually available for a price of $19.99. All together, Pages, Keynote and Numbers would cost almost $20 less than the iWork ’09 bundles $79 asking price.
The speculation: Apple will launch iWork ’11 as a digital, Mac App Store exclusive along with that marketplace’s launch in early 2011. I’m personally ambivalent about iWork, which I’ve always thought was pretty useless in the real world, but I do like the idea of Apple splitting up their iSuite packages for the Mac App Store: if that had happened when iLIfe ’11 dropped, I would have saved myself a few bucks.
