Apple Announces Free Download Policy For Apps Like Imovie And Few Others

In the past week, Apple has quietly updated some of its iOS and Mac apps, making them free of charge for all iOS and Mac users. From now on, all Apple users will have free access to the iMovie, iWork and GarageBand apps.

Customers, who purchased their Mac computers or iOS devices after August 2013 already enjoyed these applications free of cost. This move by Apple, first reported by MacRumors, is mainly beneficial for the users who had bought their Apple hardware prior to August 2013 and had not purchased the concerned apps.

iWork is a group of productivity apps, namely Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. These act as Apple's version of Microsoft Office and Google Docs, says TechCrunch. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote respectively cater as word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. GarageBand is software for music creation in a digital studio, on both professional and amateur levels.

The app that has reportedly been most welcome as a free app is the iMovie. It is efficient yet, user-friendly video editing software. This tool lets one add studio-quality music, title, and special effects to the video clips in one's library. One can even use iMovie to create a Hollywood-style trailer, using images and clips from the device library.

Another great plus point of the iWork, iMovie, and GarageBand is that the user can access it from the multiple Apple devices (MacBook, iPhone or iPad) that one has access to.

Before this new update, the Mac and iOS versions of each app from the iWork suite were available at $19.99 and $9.99 respectively. The Mac version of iMovie and GarageBand were priced at $14.99 and $4.99 respectively, whereas the iOS versions of both apps were the priced at $4.99.

Making the above-stated apps free for all Apple users is a much-appreciated update. This would result in less confusion regarding downloads. Also, this opens up more download options for users without necessarily having bought a new device.