[superuser2]

When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license.

I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give you a digital download of Office 2003.

The inability to read old documents is shitty, yes, but Apple made a solution available. If you need 5-year-old software, then it's not unreasonable that you need some now-obsolete hardware.

AFAIK it's not necessary to buy Apple-branded drives - there are cheaper alternatives. You can also "share" the CD drive of any other modern Mac on the same WiFi network - I've used the family iMac to load Creative Suite onto my MBA. I bet they'd also let you use an optical drive at the Genius Bar, even if you're out of warranty.

[abat]

The core complaint is not you need to use a cd run iWork '09, it's that you need iWork '09 in the first place. The commentary on the need for cd drive is to emphasize how unreasonable it is to require iWork '09 to open several year old files.

[thatthatis]

5 years is not a long time for information to be retrievable.

By comparison, my current version of office easily allows saving (not just opening, but saving) in versions compatible with office '97. That's ~17 years of saving backward compatibility.

[yuhong]

I think you can even save in Excel 5.0/95 format in current versions of Excel.

[bananas]

You can open wordperfect 5.1 (1989) in Office 2013 no problems.

Numbers can't even open ODS files at all, destroys iWork 09 documents and pretty much sticks a fork in most xslx documents.

[yasth]

MS on the right license plan really doesn't care and will happily give you any version you want. Off the right license plan I've heard multiple reports of MS actually giving out downloads where needed. Adobe might not overly care, but MS seems to be willing to make things right for retail software (OEM software is another issue).

Though a lot of the reasons for the complaints is that you don't need generally need a copy of Office 2003.

[paultyng]

Microsoft does support Office file formats back to '97 though.