Will this new Version 1.6.2 of Pages work as real publisher software or is it just a few user unfriendly mods to the Word Processor version of Pages?

You seem pretty confused. 1.6.2 is for the iPad/iPhone. Is that what you mean to ask about? If so, you need to go to the forum for that version. If you are talking about OS X, then the latest version is 4.2, and this is the correct forum. In either case, I don't how anyone could really answer you without some more info about what your personal feature requirements are for something to be "real publisher software."