Re: my guess to what will happen to the suite

Your comments are why I think they'd never sell the apps as separate programs. They each have a competitor that is better on the high end and possibly on the low end as well.

SoundTrackPro has competition from Apple itself with GarageBand on the bottom and Logic on the top. I'd think the entire STP would have to be integrated into FCPX or maybe they'll add Logic integration such that they'd be tied to a common time line (Logic would "Plug-in" to FCPX).

Color might sell as a "poor person's" Resolve though. Keep in mind that a good colorist is going to need control surface integration. But even Resolve has a "poor person's" Resolve which is . . . Free. Apple would have to once again have an app that integrates using a common timeline as a sales motivator.

Motion can't compete with After Effects or Nuke so keys would be ease of use and integration into a common timeline. Motion still has potential to be very powerful and easy to use.

Compressor, in its current state is a mess. It has just about the worst H.264 encoding in the industry, can be unreliable talking to FCP7 and QMaster can have fits. Even with a major overhaul it would still have to be an integrated freebee as it can't compete with Telestream Episode or Sorenson Squeeze. The low end competition is MPEGStreamClip which is free. Whatever Apple does, they'll still need a free clustering, batch encoding tool especially if we are to take them seriously about file distribution replacing disk.

So STP and Compressor have to be integrated since there's virtually no value as separate sales.

Motion and Color can go either way as separate apps or integrated. Motion has value as a "mid market" FX tool for those who don't use high end dedicates tools and want a Mac UI ease of use experience. Color isn't a very Mac like interface to begin with so Apple may weigh development costs vs price vs ease of integration.