iWork rumours gain credence

The name iWork may seem a natural for Apple, which already bills its iLife suite as being "like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life." But the term is already used by many others. Sun Microsystems, for instance, uses the name for a program that allows its employees to work remotely.

IGG Software applied for a trademark of the term in March 2003. In August 2004, Apple also filed for a trademark on "iWork". IGG's application is currently suspended, while Apple's is listed as newly filed and not yet assigned to an examiner. Other trademark applications are also pending for both "iWork" and "iWorks".

It is unclear what effect an Apple product might have on Microsoft's long-term support for the Mac version of Office. The company, which at one time had a five-year pact with Apple to provide Mac versions of Office and Internet Explorer, now says that it evaluates new products one version at a time.

"We'll continue this business as long as the business case makes sense," former Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne said at an April 2002 event.

Indeed, Microsoft announced it was halting development on the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer in June 2003, after Apple released a final version of its rival browser, Safari.

Microsoft still offers Mac versions of its MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player, though both programs lack some features of their Windows counterparts. For example, Microsoft does not sell music through the Mac media player, as it does on the PC side.

Microsoft released its latest OS X version of Office -- Office 2004 for Mac -- in April. The company was among the quickest of the large software makers to move its products to Mac OS X -- readying an OS-X-only version of Office not long after Apple released the first version of Mac OS X, though it was only compatible with the second version.

Initially, Microsoft executives expressed some disappointment with sales of the Mac OS X version of Office, but more recently the company has said it is pleased with Mac Office sales.

"We've seen stronger sales in the past year than in the first year," project manager Jessica Sommer said last April. "That's pretty obviously due to OS X adoption."

Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said that although iWork is still just a rumour at this point, it would not be surprising if Apple released such a product, "once again trying to make sure that their destiny is in their own hands and not in that of a third party."

That said, Gartenberg said Apple likely would not want to lose Microsoft Office for the Mac as a result.

"There's no doubt having a version of genuine Microsoft Office available for the Mac that is regularly updated is one of the reasons that Apple is still popular in a number of markets," he said. "I don't think Apple wants to do anything that would affect that relationship."

One of the key questions would be how Apple positions such a product -- whether it is pitched as a low-end successor to AppleWorks or as a high-end product that can rival Microsoft's Office. Gartenberg noted that other rivals to Windows, such as Linux, suffer from not having a program that's fully Office-compatible.

On Tuesday Apple upgraded several of its server products: it released a faster version of its Xserve rack-mounted server and also launched Xsan, a file system for storage gear.