Keynote is so much better for presentations that PowerPoint it's not even funny. But if you're not doing presentations, I can understand dumping it. I do like to have Pages because it means I don't have to bother with Word's annoying ribbon interface and Copilot AI when I'm writing...though sounds like that may be changing?

Keynote is completely underrated, likely because people assume it's just a Powerpoint clone, but it's more like a highly templated motion graphics app with a UI that steers people into using it as Powerpoint replacement.

So not only is it a far quicker way to make a PPT than using Powerpoint. I also see it used for making presentation videos, interactive PDFs and even animated GIFs/HTML5 animations.

The number of motion graphics marketing videos I see which are actually just Keynote files exported to video is impressive.

That’s kind of funny you mention “quicker way to make a PPT.” Everyone at my company had been asking me how I make my presentations look so good. I’m no designer; I’m a lowly engineer. But I do them in Keynote and export them to PowerPoint, which is half the battle!

(Sadly, my work laptop is Windows. So I create them on my personal laptop then migrate to PPT and do my best to fix up the fonts on Windows.)

I'd forgotten Pages and Numbers existed, but Keynote is worth paying for if it means that I don't have to use PowerPoint.

Numbers is brilliant simply because of independent freely-movable tables

It looks so much better than the grid enforced by Excel.

Yeah Numbers wins, when going back to Excel I miss it. It’s not as powerful though.

I put up with Numbers awful pivot table mechanics (why do they have to be manually updated?) because it genuinely allows you to create nice information displays with your tables.

I have a numbers file for my personal finances and it is so nice having some tables at the top with mortgage info and then details below. It makes running what-ifs super easy. Charts in excel and GSheets just kinda float over your content awkwardly.

> Would people actually pay money for them?

Why would someone need to buy them, they only run on macOS and macOS hardware comes with it by default, doesn't it?

I absolutely would. I've used them for years, alongside MS Office on Windows and Libre Office on Linux, and while they lack a few features they're not ones I've ever needed and the UI and ease of use is far superior to Office. Especially Pages is a pleasure to work with compared with Word.

I use Pages once a month for an invoice :)

Not sure why tbh, my other invoices are done in LibreOffice.

I paid for Numbers way back when it was a paid app. I have simple needs, and I much preferred the smooth inertial scrolling compared to running Excel in a VM (which was what I was doing before).

They want you to pay money for premium AI features in those apps, which is worse.

The apps themselves are fine IMO.