How to download Apple’s iWork apps on older Macs for free

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Screen Shot 2014-12-13 at 10.28.16 AM
Here's how to get the iWork suite for free on older Macs. Photo: Cult of Mac

If you bought a Mac from 2013 on, you can download the iWork suite of apps — Pages, Keynote and Numbers — from the Mac App Store absolutely free. But what if you bought an older Mac? You have to pay, and they’re expensive, running $19.99 each.

Thankfully, there’s a trick you can use to download iWork apps from the App Store for free. Here’s how.

This neat little trick was spotted by Redmond Pie. It lets owners of older Macs get free copies of Apple’s iWork programs. The cross-platform productivity suite includes presentation software (Keynote), a word processor (Pages) and a spreadsheet app (Numbers).

Here’s how it works.

How to get iWork Mac apps for Mac for free

1) First, download and install the iWork ’09 trial (.dmg).

2) Launch Pages, Numbers and Keynote, then quit each app.

3) Launch the Mac App Store, and go to the Updates tab.

4) Voila! You should now be able to update the iWork ’09 versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote to the latest versions. Do so.

5) Once you’ve updated each app, the iWork ’09 trials will have been deleted. Better yet, each app will be permanently associated with your account under the Purchases tab.

If you want to get the iWork apps for free on an older Mac, you might want to get hopping on this trick: It doesn’t seem likely Apple intends the iWork ’09 trial to be used in this way. But hey, Cupertino’s loss is your gain!

Source: Redmond Pie

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