I'm happy to see some of my rumors confirming, and this one was huge : a full Office suite for Mac OS X by Apple itself.
On July the 23rd 2002, I told you about the possibility that Apple releases an Apple branded MS Office - like. Almost six months later, Apple releases the first application of its Office suite which is Keynote and it's own web navigator (that had also been mentioned in this site). These applications are respectively positioned against Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software and Internet Explorer web navigator. Since then, some of my sources indicated me what we actually can guess : this is just the beginning and Apple is about to release word processing and spreadsheet applications during this year. This Apple branded applications will probably have similar compatibility with Keynote (exporting and importing tools) that will be improved on future versions.
One of my reliable sources claim that Apple will just do quite like with iLife: Apple is going to release new office related applications every six months, and once all of them are released, these applications will be bundled on a same box that may be called iOffice. My sources aren't really sure about the name, there are actually some doupts about the "iOffice" name because none of the applications in this suite will start with an "i", but they believe that the keyword Office will be in that name because Apple wants to explicitely show that it's the equivalent of MS Office, especially if one day Microsoft stops the development of its Office suite for the Mac. Other sources mentioned names that claim the superiority of Apple Software like: SuperOffice or SmartOffice. Well... if anyone has inside information about the naming scheme of Apple's office related software, please drop me a line here [1]!
As you guess all of these applications will not be free. No sources confirmed but I guess each one will cost $99 like does Keynote and the bundle should cost around $300. It is possible that Apple sells these appz half the price if they are bought with a new Mac. Some sources also mentioned a less featured integrated application that would look more like AppleWorks and that would be free for any new Mac user. Let me know here [2] if you have more inside information.