iWork Serial Number – No More!

As most of you know already, Apple's iWork is a suite of applications containing Pages, a word processing and desktop publishing application; Keynote, a presentation package; and Numbers, a spreadsheet application, so you can go as far as considering it a worthy competitor to Microsoft's Works suite. The interesting part is that, from now on, you won't need to have any iWork serial number to run the program!

No, Apple didn't turn iWorks into a freeware, although that would have been great, and we're not going to get into "WaReZ territory" here, either. Just think about this - why would you look for the iWork serial number, when you don't need it? There's a really funny answer to that, because you need this serial number and you don't, so let's clear things out, shall we?

This is official, so here's the excerpt coming right from Apple.com:

"Though retail versions of iWork '09 no longer come with serial numbers, you will need a serial number if you are using the iWork '09 trial version and decide to purchase the fully-functional version of iWork '09.

To upgrade to a fully-functional version of iWork '09, open any of the trial applications. Click the "Buy" button and enter the requested information. An email will be sent to you with the serial number you need to upgrade.

Note: If you are using the trial version of iWork '09 and then purchase a retail box, you will not need a serial number. Install iWork from the disc that came with your retail box to begin using your fully-functional version of iWork '09."

Cool, finally, some decent approach to retail boxed software. After all, you got the box, why bother entering the serial, too? We all know locks/serial numbers are not going to keep thieves/crackers at bay, so... thumbs up for this one, Apple!