Mac OS X Mountain Lion could release alongside iWork ’12
An updated version of Apple’s iWork suite could release alongside Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the company’s next-generation Mac operating system.
The office suite of productivity apps, which includes Pages — its version of Microsoft Word — Numbers (Excel) and Keynote (PowerPoint), hasn’t received a major upgrade since 2009, which is ancient when it comes to technology.
An updated iWork would make sense. Mac OS X Mountain Lion is due for release sometime at the end of this month and part of that new operating system is even greater integration with iCloud, Apple’s cloud-computing technology.
Before iCloud, there was MobileMe, which officially shut down this past week.
Last year, iCloud introduced a beta version of iWork.com — essentially a server website that let you log in using your iCloud account and store your documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It wasn’t overly popular and at the end of this month, it will officially shut down.
When it comes to this rumor (or any rumor for the fact), nothing is guaranteed. The uniquely named Apple blog AppleBitch speculated about the update in an opinion piece this week.
“Apple will have to release an update to iWork which allows seamless syncing of documents, through iCloud, to the individual iWork apps on OS X. Notably, at WWDC, Apple stated that automatic syncing of documents would be coming to Mountain Lion through “Documents in the Cloud.”
iWork has never been much of a threat to the traditional and popular Microsoft Office, which can pretty much be found in any corporate office around the world today. And I don’t see Apple upgrading iWork to compete against Office.
Rather, the biggest updates we’ll see in the next iWork will be the cloud syncing of documents. Google recently updated its “Google Docs” into “Google Drive,” touting it as the best way to keep all of your documents in a safe cloud.
Apple could beat Google Drive if it gets iWork ’12 right.
