GarageBand for iOS 7 to Become Free with In-App Purchases as Apple Reveals Full Set of New iLife and iWork Icons

Ahead of Tuesday's media event, Apple has revised its Built-in Apps page for the iPhone 5s to reveal the full set of new iOS 7-themed icons for the six iLife and iWork apps offered for iOS. The new GarageBand and iPhoto icons had appeared in the Settings app on some users' devices last week.

Aside from the new icons, the updated page also reveals in a footnote that GarageBand will become a free basic download for all iOS 7 devices, joining the other five iLife and iWork apps that became free alongside the release of iOS 7.

GarageBand will, however, include in-app purchase content from Apple, with additional instruments and sounds available for a fee. Licensing fees associated with some of those sounds had been the presumed reason why GarageBand was left out the original move to make Apple's iLife and iWork apps for iOS free of charge, and it appears that the company has settled on in-app purchases as a way around this issue, offering basic functionality for free and then premium content through the paid upgrade options.

GarageBand is free on the App Store for all iOS 7 compatible devices; additional GarageBand instruments and sounds are available with an in-app purchase. iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are free on the App Store for qualifying iOS 7 compatible devices activated on or after September 1, 2013.

Each of the new entries for the iLife and iWork apps contains a link to a dedicated page that will give full details on the new versions of the apps, but those pages are not yet live. The brief blurbs for each app do, however, point to new features such as photo books and prints for iPhoto and new "iMovie Theater" functionality for iMovie.

Apple is expected to unveil the new apps at Tuesday's media event as part of a broad set of updates to iLife and iWork for both Mac and iOS, as well as new web-based iWork for iCloud offerings. Other announcements should include updated iPad and iPad mini lineups, new Retina MacBook Pros, and the official introduction of Apple's redesigned Mac Pro, as well as a final look at OS X Mavericks before its public launch in the coming days.

Update: Apple has reverted the changes to the page, removing the new text and icons.

(Thanks, Julien!)