There is no need to use 'less' before a 'grep', since the former can't 'see' the console anymore it won't page the output. You could put it after the 'grep' though.
The main interest of apt over apt-get isn't that it has more commands, only that its syntax is simpler and its output more user-friendly. It is, for example, easier to clean up packages that were installed to solve dependencies and that are no longer needed (autoremove is a recent addition to apt-get). It's no better than apt-get at solving dependency hell though, you'll want to use 'aptitude' here.
It is, also, very specific to Debian derivatives : Red Hat and its ilk use dnf, yum and other dependency solvers to manage rpm packages... apt and apt-get won't be much use on them.