Compatibility of Pages, Numbers and Keynote?

On macOS, the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote applications have preference lists that track the minimum versions of these applications that are compatible for iOS/macOS collaboration, sharing, and certain devices that are considered unsupported. Right now, your iPad 4 is supported, but iPad 3,6 is not.

The challenge in the Apple Pages, Numbers, and Keynote ecosystem is backwards document compatibility with older respective applications on both macOS, iOS, and iCloud. Apple even maintains a living list of unsupported hardware, and minimum application versions for collaboration and sharing in the macOS preferences list (.plist) for each application. Have too old a version of Pages on iOS, or macOS, or unsupported iOS hardware, and the document won't open there. This information is not out in the clear for casual fact checking, because it would give marketing a black eye.

In the macOS Terminal:

defaults read com.apple.iWork.Pages | more

will show the backwards compatibility restrictions for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. The concealed message is to keep your iOS and macOS hardware, operating systems, and versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote current to avoid backwards compatibility issues.

If one were using a respective Microsoft application on iOS, macOS, and Cloud, one would not have to deal with Apple Pages, Numbers, and Keynote backward compatibility issues, or supported platform nonsense.

It would take more time than I have this morning to reconstruct tables for the current Pages v7.3 .plist information on backwards compatbility from that Terminal command above.

I will second Vikings post and simplify it, Apple has made this an unholy mess.

Sadly Apple does not give a hoot for its user's work, nor that it is internally more incompatible than it is with PC users.

If you export your Pages documents, no matter what versions, to Word doc/x you will be able to open your files with far greater certainty than leaving it in its native format.

Sad and stupid!