I succumbed, and bought a new retina iPad Mini this weekend.  My old iPad, the first release of the iPad 2, was showing its age on iOS7.  Apps were running slower, and the spiffiness of the newest iPads had me thinking about an upgrade.  Based on specs, I couldn’t make the decision between the iPad Air and the iPad Mini; in-store playing with the two iPads side-by-side, I knew that I wanted the iPad Mini within seconds.

I knew that new iOS 7 devices (anything purchased after September 1, 2013) were supposed to get iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers for free.  After I had transferred everything from my iPad 2 to my new iPad Mini, I opened up the App Store to download these apps.  But they all showed their full price, and didn’t show that they were free for new devices.  My husband also purchased an iPad Mini at the same time (upgrading from the short-lived iPad 3), and the apps all showed up free for him.  If you’re like me and the apps didn’t show up for free, here’s what worked for me to get it:

1. Quit all apps: double-tap your Home button and swipe every running app up to fully quit out of it).
2. Clear out Safari’s caches: Open up the Settings app, tap on Safari, then “clear history” and “clear cookies and data”.
3. Try downloading the apps again: Open up the App Store and search for one of them.  It should show up as “free” now.

The support page says that you’re supposed to be presented with a dialog offering to download all of them for you when you launch the App Store, but that wasn’t the case for me.  I had to individually search them all out.

On my first attempt to do this, it mostly worked.  I was able to search for and install Keynote, Numbers, iPhoto, and iMovie.  However, Pages behaved strangely: it showed up for free, and when I tapped on it to install, I would get the round progress indicator and then the “free” button again.  I tried a couple of times without success.  I finally waited for the other apps to finish installing, verified that they had all worked correctly, and then repeated the steps outlined above.  This time, when I searched for Pages, there wasn’t a “free” or “install” button, just the round button that had previously indicated progress.  When I tapped on it, I got a message saying that I had already purchased the app and that it would download it again to my iPad.  It did, it works, and I haven’t yet seen a charge for it.  As far as I can tell, it has worked.  I can’t explain why everything except Pages behaved well, but at least I was able to finally install it.

I couldn’t find this documented anywhere else, so I’m sharing it in case someone else has the same problem.