If you're really new to Apple and the Mac, then it may be useful for you to find out that iWork is a suite of applications coming from Apple that contains a word processing and layout application, called Pages, and a presentation package, called Keynote. Initially, this software suite was rumored to update or even replace AppleWorks, and despite the fact that Apple is currently billing it as "building a successor to AppleWorks", iWork doesn't offer spreadsheet, drawing and database features yet; so, it's unable to compete directly with Microsoft Office's Mac version. Have no worries, because things are about to change!

According to Think Secret, we should see iWork '07 launching tomorrow, and the announcement should be made by Steve Jobs during his keynote presentation, since this is expected to be one of the most important software releases coming from Apple this year. This is not only because the current version of the suite will change from iWork '06 to iWork '07, but because Apple's software suite will get closer to its competitor from Microsoft, adding a new spreadsheet application to the package.

The new spreadsheet component is internally referred to as "Lasso" and is expected to be called "Numbers" or "Charts". This program will offer more than 200 functions, as well as the ability to easily import and export Microsoft Excel documents. Since we're in 2007 and only that is not enough, a large number of built-in templates are expected to be available, offering easy to use layouts for your documents, from personal planning and finance to sales reports.

Lasso is not going to be alone, and is expected to be released together with Pages 3 "Hammer" and Keynote 4 "Cameron", the updated versions of the existing iWork components.