I want to get iWork on my iPhone and Mac, so when OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6 come out, I'll have all my documents in the cloud and everything will just work (I.e. any changes made on my Mac will show up on my iPhone and vice versa). Should I hold off on buying the current iWork apps and wait for iWork '12 to come out? I understand iWork hasn't been updated in a while and so I'm wondering if I should just go with the current version now or wait for Apple to update iWork?
Well, there are a couple of things here you could think about and maybe you find a good answer to your question:
The Mac AppStore does NOT have an option for paid upgrades. And iWork is the perfect example for the incentive that developers have to upgrade their applications when you cannot charge for upgrades. Right, the answer here is: Developers have ZERO incentive to work for free. And that includes Apple.
The "buy once get all updates for free for life" approach only works for the OWNER of the market, which is Apple. They can still sell Macs and subsidize their software development costs with hardware sales. Unfortunately, that business model only works for them and nobody else.
Just read Wil Shipley's blog about this topic:
http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html
Then, there is this other curiosity: At least in Germany, you can order a new Mac from Apple's website with Microsoft Office 2011 pre-installed. But you CANNOT order a Mac with iWork pre-installed. What does that tell you?
Just for the record, I own a Microsoft Office license pack and I also own iWork, Scrivener, StoryMill, Montage, Mellel and a couple of other applications in that niche. For creative writing, Scrivener is THE killer application. Nothing beats Scrivener in that niche, end of story. For scientific and technical writing, Mellel is great.
For business purposes, Microsoft Office is AND REMAINS the king of the hill. Nothing beats MS Office in the business world. Also: End of story.
iWork...? I don't know. It looks nice at the first glimpse and it might be good enough for simple home use, but then it runs quickly out of steam.
So would I wait for a new version of iWork? No. Not because iWork is bad, but because I don't have the feeling that Apple will EVER give that software a major upgrade. They will indefinitely keep it in maintenance mode, but I doubt that there will ever come a mind blowing new killer version of the suite. If they were still serious about iWork, they would not bundle Microsoft Office with their Macs, but they would still sell iWork along with them (as they have in the past, by the way).
Maybe you should rather wait for Microsoft's next Service Pack for Office 2011 and the rumored iPad version of Office. Maybe.
The thing for me is: I don't participate in the waiting for an upgrade game. If I --NEED-- some software or hardware today, then I buy what is available today and upgrade later if I NEED the upgrade. If I don't NEED it, then I don't have a reason to buy it today or tomorrow or next year and the whole discussion is moot.
NEED has something today with business requirements and using my machine park as tools to make a living. So my attitude towards shoveling money in the direction of Cupertino certainly is different than the ideas of most other people who hang out here.