I agree with some of the earlier posts here that IF Apple is bringing out a new app, it will not try to be Office or AW at all. It will look forward not backward. Certainly some of the functions of previous apps will be there but the implementation will be very different.
Office and AW are really just so analog, meant for creating documents you print and fax. Today, Apple is all about digital. Any document creating app would therefore surely look to do the same thing: create digital pages for a digital age. For me, this would mean an app that let you create pages to be viewed by computer, phone, ipod, OQO etc. Of course you could print such documents but the assumption would be that the primary medium for viewing would be digital.
This would mean instead of various apps, you would have a digital canvas, perhaps hence the name "Pages". This would be free form, allowing you to put anything on it: words, tables, images, music, video, etc. It would be rather like AW and so many other apps have been trying to do for ages but done elegantly, cleanly and fully, without barrier.
To achieve this, the canvas would simply call on all those neat services Apple has been adding to the OS for the last few years - and I think Apple has been working on implementing the building blocks for this app in a very deliberate way. Thus we would be able to write a box of text, wrap it around an image which linked to a video playing an AAC song etc. It would be "page layout for the digital age".
Being based on OS services, it would be easy for a) apple to add stuff later and b) easy for 3rd parties to add plug ins too.
As an app for the digital age, we would be able to save the canvas as pdf, web page (the app would automatically convert any images, video etc to web friendliness on saving and put them in a resources folder like freeway does), and word/excel (depending on content of course).
Likely all the above is not going to happen as I know nothing about programming so perhaps impossible, but I would still argue that if Apple does bring out a "successor" to AW, it will be nothing like an analog application of the past, which Office and AW so clearly are. Today's user needs and the OS itself do not require clunky Suites of apps - arguably they never did, the Office suite was surely dreamt up in the marketing and sales department.
Likely or not, wouldn't it be nice if we could just click open a blank digital canvas and start scribbling words, music, video all over it and then save and send by email, web and phone?
Just my 2 euros worth
