New iWork and Older Macs

[gfreeze]

I have two MacBooks - one is a mid-2012 model for use at home, and my other is my "spare" 2006 model black Intel Macbook that I use when I need Mac apps at work (I am working in a "Dell Shop" as per my hospital's IT director). I upgraded it a while back with a 60gb SSD, and as an extra machine it does a great job.

I am fully aware that a 7-year old laptop will have limitations. I could live with not getting the upgrades to Mountain Lion and Mavericks. However, I have a question that I wanted to pose:

Why can I use the versions of iWork available on the icloud.com site with no trouble - they actually run great...but am not allowed to install the full versions, which are identical?

Are they coded as 64-bit? If so, again, I can live with that. If not, is there a workaround to be able to use them on older Macs? I have done as extensive a Google search on this but can't find anything - thanks for any information / advice / guidance.

 

[ufkdo]

In order to use the new iWork, you should have Mavericks and I don't think there is a way to make it work on older macs. Every OS has different frameworks etc. and Apple has dropped their support for older OS versions with new iWork and iLife. Making apps work on a lot of OS's is too much work for Apple apparently, as they have made the OS free in order to avoid that extra work.

 

[rick d]

new iWork on old Mac

There's no reason to go to the new iWork. If you can use 09 don't bother you lose too much. First time an upgrade went backwards!!!

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Trust us, you don't want the new iWork.

 

[MRU]

Sadly the above is true.

Besides if you have an old mac and you want to use the new iWork just use it from the iCloud.com site because its essentially as stripped back as the web app anyway.

 

[gfreeze]

I agree with you guys - that's why I'm glad that when I installed the new iWork apps on my "real" MacBook that they didn't upgrade over the '09 version. I mainly liked the iCloud integration with the new iWork, and primarily wanted to be able to use the apps offline on my old MacBook.

It's a testament to Apple that a nearly 8-yr old laptop still performs this good; my wife's 2.5 yr-old Windows laptop is already showing its age. If they didn't make these things to last so well, the upgrade paths for OSX and the apps wouldn't be such an issue!