Apple's GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Numbers, Pages now free for all iOS & macOS users

Previously only free with purchase of new hardware, Apple's entire suites of iWork and surviving iLife apps on iOS and macOS are now free for all, with no purchase requirement.

On Tuesday afternoon, Apple changed the pricing for the entirety of its iLife productivity suite, and iLife remnants iMovie and GarageBand. The change is notable, but not likely of major impact given that both have been free for five years with hardware purchase.

The apps themselves weren't updated. In the last update to Keynote in March, Apple added the ability for users to import Keynote 1 presentations, post presentations on other websites like Medium and WordPress-hosted sites, easily replace missing forts, and quickly open password-protected presentations using Touch ID on the 2016 MacBook Pro, or any iOS device with the fingerprint sensor.

Pages improvements from March include better text formatting, bookmarking, mathematical equation entry with LaTeX or MathML notation, RTF import and export, language and region time and currency customization, and also allows for Touch ID authentication for protected documents.

Numbers added the ability to add current or historical stock information to spreadsheets, a new My Stocks template, a new editing process for data and formula entry, improved text formatting, rich text editing within table cells, and the same Touch ID support as found in Keynote and Pages.

While the three productivity apps were released at the same time as iOS 10.3, none of them require it. For iOS, all three apps still require iOS 10.0 or later.

Keynote occupies 695MB of device storage space, with Pages, and Numbers taking 481MB and 361MB respectively.

GarageBand occupies 1.7GB of device storage space, with iMovie taking 697MB. GarageBand hasn't been updated since January for iOS, with iMovie last seeing an update in July 2016.

The macOS versions of the iWork apps all require macOS 10.12 or greater, and once retailed for $19.99. Numbers occupies 173MB, with Pages demanding 230MB, and Keynote taking 472MB.

GarageBand for macOS was updated with Touch Bar compatibility in November 2016, and requires macOS 10.10 or better, and takes 956MB of storage space.

Apple's iMovie for macOS was updated more recently on April 13, and includes some bug fixes. It requires macOS 10.11.2 or better, and occupies 2.15GB of storage space.

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54 Comments

joe28753 82 comments · 17 Years

About 7 years ago

As the Apple fanboy I am, I keep trying to use Numbers or Pages, but they always feel like child's toys not meant for real work. If I'm at work, I would probably be using Office, and if I don't have that or want a free option, I'd use Google Docs, for more easily sharing and collaborating with all the other people who use Google Docs and Office. Does anyone actually use these iWork apps?

lmac 212 comments · 14 Years

I have an 8 core 2.8 Ghz Xeon processor Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM, but Apple says I can't run 10.12, so I can't run any of the current versions of iWork apps.

spheric 2702 comments · 9 Years

joe28753 said:

As the Apple fanboy I am, I keep trying to use Numbers or Pages, but they always feel like child's toys not meant for real work. If I'm at work, I would probably be using Office, and if I don't have that or want a free option, I'd use Google Docs, for more easily sharing and collaborating with all the other people who use Google Docs and Office. Does anyone actually use these iWork apps?

I use nothing else.

Well, actually, I am forced to use Google Docs occasionally for collaborative team organisation stuff (specifically Sheets). But that's just horrible.

Having recently discovered that the awesome layout mode is still in Pages (you have to convert to a layout document in the File menu), I'm a happy camper.

macxpress 5910 comments · 16 Years

lmac said:

I have an 8 core 2.8 Ghz Xeon processor Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM, but Apple says I can't run 10.12, so I can't run any of the current versions of iWork apps.

Apple has to draw a line in the sand somewhere...sorry! I'll be in the same boat soon I bet. I have a last gen tower Mid-2012 Mac Pro.

zroger73 787 comments · 13 Years

joe28753 said:

As the Apple fanboy I am, I keep trying to use Numbers or Pages, but they always feel like child's toys not meant for real work. If I'm at work, I would probably be using Office, and if I don't have that or want a free option, I'd use Google Docs, for more easily sharing and collaborating with all the other people who use Google Docs and Office. Does anyone actually use these iWork apps?

I've used Pages and Numbers for all my personal word processing and spreadsheet needs for years.

At work, I use Office on Windows, but not by choice.

I started on Tandy's DeskMate followed by WordPerfect, Microsoft Works, then Microsoft Office. I also used OpenOffice and Google Docs before buying my first Mac about 10 years ago. I currently prefer to use the iWork apps.