You may already own the only word processor you need

A colleague here at the Observer cornered me recently to rave about Apple Pages. They had been using it for a few weeks, and the question they landed on is one I hear across the counter at least once a week: "So why am I paying Microsoft every year?"

It is a fair question, and for a lot of Mac owners around here, the honest answer is that you probably are not getting your money's worth.

What Pages actually is

Pages is Apple's word processor. It comes free on every Mac, iPad, and iPhone sold today, along with Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations. Not a trial. Not a limited version. Free, permanently, and it has been that way for years now.

Compare that to Microsoft 365 Personal at $99.99 a year, or the Family plan at $129.99. If you have been renewing that quietly since you bought your last computer, you have spent real money on a subscription you may open four times a year to write a letter to your insurance company.

Where Pages earns its keep

Three things make Pages genuinely good, not merely free.

First, the templates. Apple's built-in designs for newsletters, flyers, resumes, and reports are handsome out of the box. You do not need a designer's eye to produce something that does not look like a ransom note.

Second — and this is the feature almost nobody knows about — Pages has two modes. Word processing mode behaves the way you expect, with text flowing down the page. But switch to page layout mode and Pages becomes a light desktop publishing program, letting you place text boxes and images anywhere you want them. If you have ever fought Microsoft Word trying to make a church bulletin or a fundraiser flyer, you know exactly how much frustration that solves. Word simply does not work that way.

Third, it opens and saves Microsoft Word files. Someone emails you a .docx, you double-click it, Pages opens it. When you send it back, you export it as a Word file and your recipient never knows the difference. That compatibility is the whole ballgame for most people, and it works.

Worth adding: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are also free at iCloud.com in any web browser — including on a Windows PC. You do not even need to own a Mac to use them.

The part Apple made confusing this year

I have to be straight with you here, because this tripped up several of my own clients.

In January, Apple launched a subscription bundle called Apple Creator Studio — $12.99 a month or $129 a year — aimed at people using Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator. Alongside it, Apple released new versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. On the Mac, that new version arrives as a separate download rather than an update, and the older version you already have was quietly told it will stop receiving new features.

Here is what matters to you: the new Pages is still free. The subscription only unlocks extra bells and whistles — AI-assisted shape generation, tighter Pixelmator integration, that sort of thing. Everything I described above costs nothing. If you install the new version and see a subscription prompt, you can decline it and keep working.

If you have the old version on your Mac and everything works, you are fine. It will keep opening your documents for years. But new features are going to the new app, so eventually it is worth making the switch.

When you still need Microsoft

I would be doing you a disservice if I said Pages replaces Office for everyone.

If your employer runs on Microsoft — Teams, SharePoint, Outlook calendars, shared documents with tracked changes flying back and forth — stay put. Fighting your workplace's standard is not a fight worth having over a hundred dollars.

And if you live in spreadsheets, Excel remains the stronger tool. Numbers is pleasant and perfectly capable of tracking a household budget or a small club's dues, but it is not Excel, and heavy formula work will show you the ceiling quickly.

The honest bottom line

If you are a retiree writing letters, a volunteer producing a newsletter, a small business owner drafting invoices and proposals, or a homeowner who just needs to print something once a month — try Pages for 30 days before your Microsoft renewal comes due. It is already sitting in your Applications folder.

Worst case, you cancel nothing and you have lost an afternoon. Best case, you keep a hundred dollars a year and end up with better-looking documents.

That is a trade I would take.

Deryck Burnett is the founder of Megabite, a technology, creative, and multimedia company on Amelia Island. He can be reached at 904-430-0350 or megabite.co.