M ark Kellner of the Washington Times said in an article Tuesday morning that if you want to find the best new product to come out of Macworld San Francisco, look not to the iPod shuffle or Mac mini, but rather to iWork. iWork is Appleis new productivity suite that bundles Keynote 2 and a new word processing application called Pages in one US$79 package, $20 less than Keynote alone cost when it was introduced two years ago.
Mr. Kellner wrote that all of these features and combine to make a compelling solution for many people, and that Microsoft should, perhaps worry. Curiously, he postulated that it was a combination of the advance of Linux on the low end coupled with the high-end advances from Apple that really makes iWork a threat to Big Redmond.
"At the low end of the price scale," wrote Mr. Kellner, "[Microsoft is] seeing a challenge from low-cost PC makers offering the Linux operating system and related applications. [...] At the other end of the scale, Appleis announcements represent a challenge on some key Microsoft fronts. Not only will iWork engage Word and PowerPoint on price, but Mac OS X is an elegant, solid, feature-rich operating system, one that Apple will enhance further this year. "
Mr. Kellner further explores his thoughts on iWork in the full column at the Washington Times.