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Apple Makes iMovie, GarageBand, and iWork Apps for Mac and iOS Free for All Users

Dekema2 said:
MS Word is a sucky application on the Mac — especially the one I use, 2011. It looks like it was 100% ported and runs in X11, Java, Flash or Wine. I don't know if the latest one is like that, but I don't care because I'm not buying it anyways.
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Maybe you shouldn't be using 6 year old software. If you are, maybe you shouldn't bash it without having used the latest MS Word.

Having the latest MS Office for Mac, I'll say using any of iWork becomes incredibly frustrating because it just doesn't have any power behind it. If you're making fliers to find your lost dog, or making a spreadsheet to add or subtract, it'll work, but anything more it just falls flat on its face.

Dekema2 said:
On the contrary, Pages is elegant, text is as smooth as a baby's behind, editing tables is so easy a caveman can do it. I'm using it to make my own resume and template from scratch and it's impressed many people already.
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I'd rather have only needed to impress once.
 
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You quickly download the free Apps and you get a message that pops up and says "You are on an old device that in incompatible with this app, please go to the Apple store to get your new Mac or iPad now."
 
mr.bee said:
How they chose this functionality above pivots I really don't understand. stock exchange is used by a niche or hobbyists looking up their stocks.

I think it's phil schiller who requested that I guess, just for his own use.

Pivots is used by practically everyone.
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Numbers has pivot capabilities but it isn't called Pivots... it's called, Categories. But that is for natively created spreadsheets in Numbers. Importing an Excel spreadsheet won't convert pivots to categories.

Making these apps "free" is nice, but I'm willing to pay serious money for a new version of iWork that at least matches (and exceeds) iWork '09. Thankfully, iWork '09 still works well under macOS Sierra.
 
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To me this just says that Apple wasn't making much money off them, so in order to encourage more adoption they make it free. No a bad move, I think the majority of people would have paid for Microsoft Office over any of these. I never purchased them and don't really know anyone who did on macs that required purchasing and didn't provide them.
 
Frign said:
A very strong move against Microsoft Office. I must admit, back when I was still using macOS these programs were a very productive and efficient addition to my workflow.
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Keynote is 1000% better than PowerPoint -- so much better that at my last job I was able to justify the purchase of several Macs just to support Keynote decks that everyone loved.

Animations are infinitely smoother, and everything just looks much cleaner. I tried (and failed) to ever wrangle PPT into anything vaguely approaching the polish of Keynote.
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bladerunner2000 said:
Eh....

I recently got a Pages document and I couldn't open it with MS Word. There needs to be better compatibility between the two apps.
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Did you export it as a .docx file or just try to open a .pages document?
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drewyboy said:
Having the latest MS Office for Mac, I'll say using any of iWork becomes incredibly frustrating because it just doesn't have any power behind it. If you're making fliers to find your lost dog, or making a spreadsheet to add or subtract, it'll work, but anything more it just falls flat on its face.
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Not remotely true for Keynote. I've spent hundreds of hours building complex decks, and PPT can't hold a candle to it.
 
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The iWork's apps are great for what they offer. For most of the things I do at home they are very adequate. When I've needed to do research papers with citations I referred to Microsoft office
 
Seems to me that people who haven't switched or at least tried the iWorks apps by now are never going to switch. There's a department at our facility that exclusively uses Microsoft Powerpoint, while the rest of us prefer keynote. Such a pain having to convert everything for that department only.
 
Back when Apple charged for yearly updates, iWork was a wonderful suite of apps. Ever since the App Store and the end of paid upgrades, they've become less and less useful. Now free... oh well. I guess that's the end of my hopes for things to turn around.
 
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mcilwraith said:
Ive got Office 2011.
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That is one of the reasons why I downgraded from Office 2016 to 2011. Not only is the total disk space of all 3 apps smaller than just one component of 2016, but I have found the performance to be much better as well.

The Cappy said:
Back when Apple charged for yearly updates, iWork was a wonderful suite of apps. Ever since the App Store and the end of paid upgrades, they've become less and less useful. Now free... oh well. I guess that's the end of my hopes for things to turn around.
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I keep iWork '09 around for those times when I need to use the functions (like linked text boxes) that are missing in the newer version.
 
mr.bee said:
true, finance/BI guy here, guilty

I only have 1 or 2 remarks for Pages.
- page orientation is only defined on the document level. or all pages are portrait or all pages are landscape...
- pasting of tables directly from Numbers can be annoying too sometimes. (especially coming from landscap reporting)

and keynote works quite well too :)
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I primarily deal with Pages (doc guys over here), and while I have some niggles, Pages layout and formatting controls are remarkably consistent and powerful, a welcome break from Word. In fact, short of pro level software like InDesign, Pages is my favorite page layout software.

And yeah, Numbers works well enough for me, but all I need is "my first spreadsheet" functionality, and pretty charts, so...
 
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Amazing Iceman said:
I wouldn't spend time asking for my money back. it's not much money.
I'll wait to see what happens.
I just know that recently Apple acquired a company and refunded all the users who purchased the app they have now made free.
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They refunded only those who purchased it recently.
 
dotheDVDeed said:
3 of the 5 require Sierra OSX 10.12.

Only Garageband & iMovie for YOU! /soup nazi
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Though let's be honest, GarageBand and iMovie are the rockstars.
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ignatius345 said:
Not remotely true for Keynote. I've spent hundreds of hours building complex decks, and PPT can't hold a candle to it.
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Yeah, it's not remotely true for Pages either. Not sure what that guy's problem was, but he wasn't very specific.
 
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maflynn said:
Not really MS Office is a more robust suite of applications.

As for the move, I think its a good move and I think was curious that they were charging for this when they were giving it away for new owners.
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I abhor Office for Mac and use it only when I absolutely have to.

Everything else is done on either Google Docs or iWork's, depending on whether I need to share it or not. iWork's latest feature to let you embed your documents on the web is pretty cool, and removes the last bit of friction that was preventing me from maintaining a school blog via my iPad.

Keynote is simply amazing, especially the quality of its stock templates. Powerpoint has nothing on it.
 
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Mad Mac Maniac said:
Good. I just realized a couple months ago that I had the old Mac version of garage band when I was using the guitar lessons to self teach guitar. I debated if it would be worth it to buy the new one, because there were some bug/compatibility issues I was running into. I didn't. Now I'll check it out. I've gotten away from practicing so many this will give me just enough motivation to get back into it!
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Anything you find particularly useful in your self teaching guitar adventures? Genuinely interested myself. Always looking for tips and motivation.
 
Yes! Makes it even easier to deploy them using VPP and DEP. We have one particular use case where Numbers works better than Excel on iOS; linked data from other sheets or files does not work on Excel, but on Numbers the most recent record pulled from the other sheet is preserved, where Excel displays it with a 0 value. Just made easily 100 of our 300+ sales reps much more happy, until we find a better way around it.
 
Pages, Keynote, and Numbers require OS X 10.12 or higher. So of course, I'm left out again.

I can't go past El Capitan. So the App Store says I can't get the iWorks apps.

They obviously want me to buy a new Mac. But they still haven't gotten around to producing a new Mac that I'd like to own.
 
Sirious said:
They made them free to any new owner since 2013... surely everyone has met that criteria by now right? Who will this appeal to?

Genuinely curious, not bashing!

(Edit:Thanks for all the answers and I got another answer from the update in the post).
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Nope - I use a 2011 iMac and a 2008 MacBook. My wife has a (before they were free) 2013 MacBook Air.

I had paid for the iWork updates at some point, along with iMovie, but had never paid for any Garage Band that wasn't bundled in the iLife box. This finally gets me around to trying out the latest Garage Band.
 
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