

Regardless of whether you own an Apple device, anyone can sign up for a free iCloud account. On the whole, other rival office suites, including our Editors' Choice winner Microsoft 365 Personal, offer better features and compatibility. If you find Apple’s apps sufficient for your needs, they’re a pleasure to use, and they offer unique features that you won’t find elsewhere-but which only relatively few users will need. Whether Apple wants you to think of them as a suite, all three share a unique graphic-centric approach. Pages, Numbers, and the Keynote presentation app are the three parts of an office suite that Apple’s website calls iWork but aren’t identified as such elsewhere. Both programs have features that you won’t find in any rival software, and their native file formats can't be read by any other apps.

Now there's no more confusion surrounding the availability of Apple's basic apps. Until now, users with hardware released before 2013 still had to pay for iWork and iLife if they hadn't made a new Apple purchase recently. In 2013, Apple made iWork and iLife apps free for new Mac and iOS customers, but that meant you had to purchase a new Apple device before you could download any of those apps at no cost. Individual programs cost between $5 and $20 each, which would add up if a user with an old Mac or iOS device wanted to download and use both suites. Previously, users with old hardware had to pay for each app. Further Reading What the death of 32-bit iOS could mean for Apple’s hardware and software
