What with one thing and another last week, I didn't get around to mentioning that Apple finally took a baby step toward the online office applications market by announcing the development of iWork.com at the MacWorld expo. Taking a page from Microsoft's playbook, iWork.com will offer only document storage, rather than full-fledged online applications, and probably for the same reasons: the company does not want to cannibalize its own (quite small) desktop software market.

This probably seems quite prudent according to conventional wisdom; play both sides of the fence until you see which way the market will break, and then you can put your full efforts wherever may be best. I have come to view this as folly, however; the tactic seems likely to me to simply drive adopters to more committed providers who are moving ahead at full throttle with online services. If you are just looking for storage, you can probably find a more economical solution (although pricing has not yet been announced).