“Today we’re revolutionizing pricing,” said Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, right before announcing that the company would be giving away OS X Mavericks, Apple’s new flagship Mac operating system. On the screen behind him, the word “Free” appeared from behind a glimmer of light, one of the hokey slide animations that Apple has used in its keynote slides since Steve Jobs was the ringmaster.

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The move comes in the face of more intense competition for Apple on the software front. Google’s suite of productivity apps, which includes Drive for storage and file syncing, and Docs for word processing and collaborative working, has increasingly established itself with users. And as Apple’s biggest mobile hardware competitor, Samsung, gains market share, Android users are that much more tempted to use Google’s productivity suite.

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Of course, productivity tools are one of Microsoft’s plumpest cash cows, the biggest revenue stream for the company after Windows. So it’s unlikely that Apple’s software play will really disrupt Microsoft Office’s mojo. But it can be a useful tactic for Apple to occupy its users while trying to disorient a competitor. “It helps to distract [Microsoft],” Webster continued. “It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts.”