iWork on MobileMe - read before you write!

9to5Mac published an intriguing rumor that they say comes from their "best source." Given that 9to5Mac has been a pretty reliable source of rumors over the past year, we should therefore pay close attention. (Albeit their predictions, like those of Cassandra, can be notoriously tricky to interpret).

This latest prediction concerns iWork and MobileMe. This blog has been predicting for some time that Apple would develop a version of iWork for iPhone, (and we still believe that will happen), but this idea makes a lot of sense as well. Adding Pages and Numbers functionality to me.com would add a lot of value to Apple's MobileMe package. Web apps like Google Docs have proved to be popular, and there's no reason to suppose that iWork for MobileMe wouldn't be a similar hit, enabling users to open, edit and save their e-mail attachments.

But in an uncharacteristic oversight, MacRumors misconstrued 9to5Mac's prediction, claiming that Apple would release web versions of iWork instead of the current Cocoa-based suite. Whilst web versions in addition to the Cocoa apps makes a lot of sense, scrapping the Cocoa apps would make no sense at all. And the limitations in terms of what might be possible for a web-based version of Keynote makes it hardly worth bothering, (beyond offering support for viewing presentation attachments online).

MacRumors messageboards are going crazy with negative votes and and doom-monger posts. Hopefully, when the MacRumors team recover from the night before, they'll update their post to clarify.

Update: MacRumors have now clarified their post