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Mark Rogers was speaking at the London launch of the business software suite, which also included a demonstration of some of the - it has to be said - impressive new features.

Questioned beforehand about Apple's own productivity suite, AppleWorks, Rogers said that the company would have to take a look at what it wanted to do with the software, which is supplied

He said that AppleWorks has a lage installed base, particularly in education, that relies almost exclusively upon it. Apple has to decide, he said, whether to continue developing it or provide that base with a migration solution.

Rogers also talked about some encouraging signs for its Xserve and Xserve RAID products in the enterprise and corporate markets. He said that at a recent conference with several hundred IT directors Apple was well received, though many were completely unaware of the savings - often running to millions - that they could make by switching to Apple.

Part of the blame lies with the PC press, which, he said, does not yet understand that Xserve and Xserve RAID are platform agnostic. He added that the RAID could be the iPod of the corporate world; they are the only products that Apple has ever made which are not dependent on a single OS.