Apple makes iWork suite free for everyone

By Lory Gil
published

If you're still using an older device, and haven't purchased Pages, Keynote, or Numbers because it would cost you $9.99, you're in luck. Apple has just dropped the price of it's iWork suite to the low price of free. Plus, GarageBand and iMovie got the same treatment.

As first reported by MacRumors, Apple's most popular software line is now listed as free in the App Store, even for older devices.

Previously, all of these apps were provided for free to customers who purchased a new Mac or iOS device, but now that purchase is not required to get the software. Many Apple customers were already likely eligible to download the software at no cost if they had made a device purchase in the last few years.

This is fantastic news for people still running older Macs, iPhones, and iPads. I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro and had to drop $30 for iWork because it wasn't free for me. Now that Apple has dropped the price to zero dollars, it is likely more users will join the bandwagon. Even if you were able to download such programs as Pages on iOS, it wouldn't be very useful if you couldn't continue working on it on your Mac without paying a premium price. Now you can!

If you've been holding off on getting iWork, GarageBand, or iMovie for any reason, now is the time to download them. The price is right.

What do you think about Apple's decision to drop the price of iWork, GarageBand, and iMovie?

Lory Gil
Lory Gil

Lory is a renaissance woman, writing news, reviews, and how-to guides for iMore. She also fancies herself a bit of a rock star in her town and spends too much time reading comic books.  If she's not typing away at her keyboard, you can probably find her at Disneyland or watching Star Wars (or both).

9 Comments
  • Hmm... why this show of goodwill?
  • It makes things more consistent at least, it can be very confusing to some users as to why some people have it free and some people have to pay for it. Confusing users isn't the Apple way.
  • I agree it does make sense although my thought is so that apple people use their apps as opposed to word, excel, etc. Which is what I would have done when moving to an iPhone over the last year if it wasn't $10. But since it was a cost I ended up getting an office 365 account due to it being a better value overall.
  • Isn't Office 365 a subscription? If so, I don't see how that's better value…
  • With Office 365, you get 1TB of storage plus the Office applications, starting at $7/mo ($70/year) or $10/mo ($100/year) for five users. If you compare that to iCloud, which is $10/mo ($120/year) for 1TB for one user, I can see how it's a better value.
  • It depends what you're looking into buying, since that's an office suite + cloud storage. If you're looking solely into office suites, Apple's is the better offer. Since documents are generally pretty small files, people often just store them using the free versions of cloud storage
  • I agree, Office365's value decreases if you don't need all the features. Microsoft does offer the Office parts as free apps for iPhone and non-Pro iPads. I think it just depends on what people need. And which company they want to support.
  • They should make the Web-based ones free as well. Will definitely help with collaboration with others. I'm so sick of Google Docs....
  • The web ones are free. You get 1 GB of space. Use the account on a Mac as a user and you get bumped up to 5 GB for free, even if it isn't yours. (It would work on iOS too, buy you would need to logout... hassle.) That also enables the rest of the iCloud service; otherwise its just the iWork stuff (e.g. no Photos web app).