Apple's biggest iWork update in years lasted only a few hours before Apple took it back. On Thursday, the company pushed an "Intelligent Assistant" — a beta, document-aware AI — into Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Shortly after, all three apps disappeared from the iOS and Mac App Stores entirely. As Cult of Mac put it, it's still unclear whether the removal was intentional or a bug. Either way, it happened.
The restore was its own kind of mess. According to MacRumors, the update is "available again following the temporary removal of the apps from the App Store," but the Mac versions returned first without the new update — the assistant only came back hours later. Even then, the rollout looks half-finished: 9to5Mac's Ryan Christoffel installed the updates and still couldn't see the assistant, suggesting Apple hadn't flipped the server-side switch that actually turns it on. Ship the announcement, flip the switch later — an Apple classic.
When it does arrive, the assistant is the one iWork users have been waiting on. In Pages, it can draft a first document, adjust tone, and generate images or shapes from plain language, per MacRumors. Keynote gets slide generation, presenter notes, and animation help. Numbers gets the power-user treatment: complex formulas, chart suggestions, tables, and data insights. Across all three, the assistant can search the web and insert current information into your work — and walk users through advanced features, which tells you Apple knows most people never touch half of what iWork can do.
The catch is access. The assistant sits behind a Creator Studio subscription — $12.99 a month or $129 a year, with a one-month trial — requires iOS 27 or later on an Apple Intelligence-capable device, and runs in US English only, according to 9to5Mac's reading of the release notes. The same update quietly adds iPhone Duo support to all three apps, plus an open .keyx Interchange Format for Keynote files.
So the scorecard reads: an AI feature Apple wants you to pay a subscription for, gated behind device and language requirements, shipped to an App Store that promptly stopped listing the apps, activated by a server switch that wasn't flipped. This is launch week for the iPhone Duo — where Gurman has already called the pre-order timing a "major mistake" — and Apple's software delivery looks just as stretched as its hardware supply. The assistant may be good. The rollout is not the story Apple wanted to tell.
— via MacRumors