31 ms·

Apple Creator Studio

515 points by lemonlime227 9mo ago

andsoitis 9mo ago
> Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — come together in a single subscription So Apple is copying Adobe's business model?
- boringg 9mo ago
  Well really they are copying the original Microsofts suite packaging which everyone has copied over the years! But yes specific they are trying to take market share on Adobe. Its actually like taking on MS and Adobe together... but they aren't really taking on MS office.
- jpalomaki 9mo ago
  Depends on if you are stuck with the subscription for life, or if there's actually a reasonable way to unsubscribe.
  - bambax 9mo ago
    You're never free to unsubscribe because you become accustomed to the tools, and use the file formats, etc. (That's why I don't do subscription, ever.)
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  When there are no more new buyers to sell devices, or new versions of existing software packages, the only way to keep the curve growing for shareholders and MBAs is to sell subscriptions. It is also the only way to convince developers to pay for software. Having a part hosted on some server is so much better than whatever anti-piracy schemes one can think of, and provides the continuous growth curve for printing money. Thus subscriptions aren't going away in the modern software world.
- bayindirh 9mo ago
  No, all apps are available for purchase for a one time payment. I don't care about video, so I'll be buying Pixelmator now, and maybe music stuff later, and Video part never. So it works like before, if you want.
  - bearjaws 9mo ago
    Available for purchase... for now.
    - bayindirh 9mo ago
      The only "...for now" event I have seen in last 20 years of Apple software is iWorks and Mac OS X become free. ...and they integrated some of the Aperture to new Photos app, which is again was a transition to free. Name me something a product, not a service which you can only subscribe in Apple's ecosystem.
      - arvinsim 9mo ago
        Logic Pro in iPad is subscription only.
        asimpletune 9mo ago
        They didn’t take away a one-time purchase option for it though. It just never existed to begin with so the op’s point remains.
      - ascagnel_ 9mo ago
        > Name me something a product, not a service which you can only subscribe in Apple's ecosystem. The shows on Apple TV are only available via a subscription; there's no way to have a perpetual purchase (at least as far as that a la carte style of purchase is perpetual).
        dagmx 9mo ago
        They specifically said “not a service” and you brought up a service.
- tapoxi 9mo ago
  Yeah but this is $129/yr, that's significantly cheaper
  - whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
    It’s cheap enough it’s not enough to fund development of Final Cut but also not enough money to bother spending time on it. Find it odd personally, just offering them free to keep hardware makes more sense than trying to push a tiny subscription revenue number.
    - anticorporate 9mo ago
      It's the problem that the whole industry is facing - the current generation of hardware is sufficient that hardware refreshes will continue to decline, and companies that want to keep milking us for money regularly need to find a new way to do it.
      - no_wizard 9mo ago
        Sufficient for whom? At my job they’re still refreshing workstations regularly. They buy and churn hardware on a regular basis. Not quite “buying on release week” basis but some % of employees always getting new hardware at max specs in the design org Makes even engineering jealous sometimes
      - alwillis 9mo ago
        > the current generation of hardware is sufficient that hardware refreshes will continue to decline If anything, Apple is refreshing their hardware much faster now compared to the Intel days. There's literally a new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air every year. And of course there are 3-4 new iPhones every year.
        anticorporate 9mo ago
        By declining hardware refreshes, I meant on the consumer side, not the producer side.
- acomjean 9mo ago
  Subscription model so it’s adobes model. But you can buy “one time”. Though they have a tendency to just end product support (aperture software was canceled leaving a lot of bad taste for photographers that used it) Wonder what Adobe thinks of this. Their support for Mac was pretty important in getting OS X off the ground, now they’re competing with a unified stack. When I was a Mac user I remember buying Logic express 9 (I still have the disk). The price is a good deal, but you really are all in forever..
- Someone 9mo ago
  FTA: “Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.”
- mirzap 9mo ago
  How so? Apple's subscription cancellation is one click away, and you don't get overcharged when canceling.
- F7F7F7 9mo ago
  Adobe invented subscription bundles? In that sense did the Creative Cloud copy iCloud?
Fraaaank 9mo ago
Alternative title: "Apple slaps subscription model on existing apps"
- jen20 9mo ago
  Except that isn’t an alternative title, unless you want to lie by omission thus being wrong. “Apple offers new option for subscription in addition to existing one-time purchase optinos” might be an alternative though, and reduce the number of cynically inane comments from people that apparently didn’t RTFA before commenting.
pjmlp 9mo ago
I am still waiting for "XCode for iPadOS", where we can have a Smalltalk like approach to development, beyond what Swift Playgrounds allows for.
- eurekin 9mo ago
  I played once with hosting a VSCode server on a raspberry pi for general development and it was actually quite powerful, when used from an iPad. Just not strictly for Swift unfortunately
  - qn9n 9mo ago
    The ecosystem is fine for non-Apple development. It's just building apps for iOS, macOS, etc. that is impossible on iPad right now past some basic applications.
  - ajcp 9mo ago
    I'm hosting a VSCode server with Termux/Ubuntu container on my old Pixel 6a and I cannot overstate how awesome it is for just a fun dev setup, especially with a tablet. Easy to nuke and start clean too!
- kmeisthax 9mo ago
  Unless Apple gets off several high horses regarding code signing and, more importantly, app containerization; any Xcode for iPadOS is going to be useless. Like, imagine Xcode without custom build steps or third-party compilers. The larger problem is that the iPad has a dual nature. At the launch of the product, Apple positioned it as a netbook killer - i.e. a simplified computer for specific tasks, one where the locked down nature of the device might actually be considered a feature. That's why they built everything on iPhone OS[0]. However, there's always been the implication that this is supposed to Someday™ replace the Mac. It keeps getting new features to make it more useful as a computer replacement, which just makes the deliberate restrictions placed on the device more and more glaring. And Apple seems to think they can just keep adding features until they can make you do every computing task wearing a strait-jacket in a padded room. This particular duality came to a head with the Apple Vision Pro. Any app that would actually be useful on a VR headset is either: - Incompatible with Apple's code-signing and containerization requirements (i.e. developer tools) - Not economic to offer at the small scale of the visionOS app market (at least, not while Apple is demanding 30%) - A game (Apple really doesn't wanna talk about the Vision Pro as a games machine) On a related note, Swift Playgrounds stopped getting updates almost a year ago. I updated my HTML editor demo project for iPadOS 26 and now I can't even compile it because Apple has yet to ship the version 26 SDK. And there's really nothing any third party can do to fix Swift Playgrounds to make it actually usable again. [0] Strictly speaking, Apple's first internal demos of capacitive touch were for a tablet project specifically to spite Windows XP tablets. Although by the time they were writing actual shipping code it was intended for iPhone and iPad came later.
isoprophlex 9mo ago
God fucking damn not you too, Apple. Adobe isn't a role model to emulate. I hate Adobe's practices. The whole world hates Adobe's practices. I want to pay for a thing with my money and then use it without worrying about ongoing costs, the UI changing, features breaking, or shit being shoved down my throat because some seedy PM wants a raise. EDIT: I know you can still buy the software... but for how long?
- spott 9mo ago
  You can. They are offering both options.
- joshstrange 9mo ago
  RTFA, you can still buy them for a one-time purchase on the App Store
  - moolcool 9mo ago
    For now...
xd1936 9mo ago
Is this replacing the one-time purchase of these apps on macOS?
- shmoogy 9mo ago
  Doesn't sound like it > Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.5
- artimaeis 9mo ago
  No, fta: > Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.
cupofjoakim 9mo ago
That's great if you need everything. If you need one of them, not so much.
- al_borland 9mo ago
  I'm curious how many people actually use all this stuff themselves. It seems like an extreme niche, and more often than not will have people paying for apps they will never use.
  - d_runs_far 9mo ago
    Maybe I'm old skool... but for the last 30+ years I've been using a combination of photoshop, illustrator, FCP, after effects (back when it was CoSA...), some audio editing and mixing in quite a bit of code as well. While others on my team specialize in one or two domains, I've managed to keep my skills in many. Back in the day I was considered a 'MultiMedia' creative. I don't even know what to call myself these days.
- bayindirh 9mo ago
  You can buy the individual tools, if you want.
jasongill 9mo ago
It's $12.99/mo or $129/yr for a subscription that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, MainStage, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers Educational discount with verification required drops the price to $2.99/mo / $29.99/yr. The regular-price subscription includes family sharing, education price does not. One-time purchase versions remain available: Final Cut Pro ($299.99), Logic Pro ($199.99), Pixelmator Pro ($49.99), Motion ($49.99), Compressor ($49.99), and MainStage ($29.99). Comes out January 28th
- thecupisblue 9mo ago
  That's actually surprisingly cheap compared to other subscriptions in the industry, especially for such a high powered suite.
  - Towaway69 9mo ago
    Undercut the competition until there is no competition, then raise prices or have I missed something? Ah, yes - cross finance your loses by selling compute in your own data centres / hosting service because you can.
    - crazygringo 9mo ago
      Somehow I don't think Apple is going to put Adobe out of business.
      - echelon 9mo ago
        They don't need to. They want marketshare to enhance their other market positions and give them optionality for future strategy. They'd love the whole market, but they don't need it and they won't employ too many resources chasing that. They're a powerful giant with hands in so many places. Each enforcing other endeavors. This encourages people to stay in the Apple hardware ecosystem, for instance. It dog foods their silicon. It keeps people thinking of Apple as the creative brand and operating system. More creatives buying Apple -> more being produced and consumed for and on Apple. Also the strategy of getting kids young has always been genius. They started that in the eighties, I think.
al_borland 9mo ago
Too bad they killed Aperture.
- hbbio 9mo ago
  Now they acquired Photomator with Pixelmator, but it's still an independent subscription... not even included in this bundle. Maybe they just forgot.
dormento 9mo ago
Wow, RIP the icons I guess :/
kurishutofu 9mo ago
When was the last time Apple made some significant update to its professional desktop apps?
- joezydeco 9mo ago
  Forget that. TikTokers are the revenue stream now.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    TikTokers ("influencers" in general) don't do their editing or any part of their "production pipeline" on computers, kids are doing the full thing via smartphones nowadays. Blew my mind initially too, as I always did "serious work" at a computer and never the phone, but seems they're managing it somehow.
    - igufrcybh 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - no_wizard 9mo ago
      They often start there, some stay there, some graduate to an iPad, but a a lot of the higher end creators absolutely edit in desktops or laptops (usually MacBooks) My old job dealt with this quite a lot as they were our target market, so I got some up close views of how for example, creators like MrBeast go about their editing (well the employees anyway) Though I did note a lot of creators that do graduate to more robust software basically go from lightweight editor via Canva -> iMovie or equivalent -> professional software e.g. FCPX or Premiere
      - embedding-shape 9mo ago
        Yeah, that matches what I've seen too, bigger productions adopting a more traditional pipeline, while "influencers" or whatever they're called today, kind of stick with the tools they've learned, until they "graduate" as they expand the team and bring in actual professionals.
tjpnz 9mo ago
Pages, Numbers and Keynote are the first apps I bin whenever I'm setting up a new Mac. Would people actually pay money for them?
- troupo 9mo ago
  They want you to pay money for premium AI features in those apps, which is worse. The apps themselves are fine IMO.
- piersroberts 9mo ago
  I'd forgotten Pages and Numbers existed, but Keynote is worth paying for if it means that I don't have to use PowerPoint.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  > Would people actually pay money for them? Why would someone need to buy them, they only run on macOS and macOS hardware comes with it by default, doesn't it?
- nottorp 9mo ago
  I use Pages once a month for an invoice :) Not sure why tbh, my other invoices are done in LibreOffice.
- insane_dreamer 9mo ago
  I absolutely would. I've used them for years, alongside MS Office on Windows and Libre Office on Linux, and while they lack a few features they're not ones I've ever needed and the UI and ease of use is far superior to Office. Especially Pages is a pleasure to work with compared with Word.
- void-pointer 9mo ago
  Numbers is brilliant simply because of independent freely-movable tables It looks so much better than the grid enforced by Excel.
  - bromuro 9mo ago
fidotron 9mo ago
> These apps will continue receiving updates, with the latest versions adopting the beautiful new visual design language with Liquid Glass on all platforms Are the Apple people really this oblivious, or is someone in PR trolling us?
- DonHopkins 9mo ago
  Apple no longer supports GL, so Liquid Glass - GL = Liquid Ass.
- codebyaditya 9mo ago
  I read it less as obliviousness and more as internal language leaking into marketing. What’s “Liquid Glass” to Apple reads like an aesthetic system though but to outsiders it sounds like jargon inflation. I feel the gap between internal coherence and external clarity shows up in these releases a lot.
  - faust201 9mo ago
    Pretty sure these marketing speak was decided half-an-year before. Sales and marketing just do their job /S
  - nottorp 9mo ago
    > like an aesthetic system An idiotic aesthetic system that ignores all the human interface guidelines that the Apple of 30+ years ago helped start.
- storus 9mo ago
  I guess it's enforced top-down. Yesterday I picked up my MacBook from a logicboard repair and they forced Tahoe on it despite running Sonoma originally so I spent most of yesterday getting rid of Tahoe and reverting back to Sonoma.
  - Fnoord 9mo ago
    Sonoma won't receive updates for long any more. Better off switching to Sequoia. It'll give you 20 months to switch away, instead of 8 months.
deleted 9mo ago
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me_online 9mo ago
apple can pry my one-time final cut pro purchase from my cold, dead hands.
- acomjean 9mo ago
  Many years ago, before Final Cut Pro x my cousin asked me to help inject some video from tapes and keep the time code. In Final Cut Pro. I couldn’t figure it out. So in desperation I read the manual. It was seriously well written and I understood the program, what needed to be done and how to do it.
sirwhinesalot 9mo ago
And here's the ruining of Pixelmator Pro everyone was waiting for. I paid one time 20 euros for it (discounted). And I would gladly pay again even full price for a new major version. I don't want yet another subscription. I see that they can still be bought (for now) but I wonder how long that will last.
- joshstrange 9mo ago
  One-time purchase versions are still available. For Pixelmator Pro it's $49.99 on the App Store
  - sirwhinesalot 9mo ago
    For now.
  - dsego 9mo ago
    That's not very reassuring.
- bayindirh 9mo ago
  Pixelmator Pro is upgraded a couple of times under Apple's wings, and this thing is not being ruined. You'll still be able to buy it if you want. All apps are still can be bought. It's in the text. Apple surprised me nicely there.
moolcool 9mo ago
How long until the option to buy-once for this software goes away? I am not a fan of this trend.
- rvz 9mo ago
  You will (soon) own nothing and be happy.
joshstrange 9mo ago
In this thread: No one who has even skimmed the article I'll say this loud for the people in the back: YOU CAN STILL BUY IT OUTRIGHT They are still offering one-time purchases, calm down.
- dsego 9mo ago
  But for how long?
andsoitis 9mo ago
Excited to see whether the new Apple boss will lead to software innovation, which has been pretty stagnant the last few years. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-cook-john-ternus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...
EagnaIonat 9mo ago
Are they planning to discontinue Garage band?
torben-friis 9mo ago
I don’t get why they think “professional” is a generic tier. If I’m a music producer, what’s the value of being given a digital art drawing program? If I’m an illustrator, why do I need a cinema post production suite? Some people might happen to do both, but overlap is largely accidental, right? The fact that they think of all professions as a bundle is even insulting as it signals the products are mostly toys/hobbyist stuff.
- jen20 9mo ago
  > If I’m a music producer, what’s the value of being given a digital art drawing program? If I’m an illustrator, why do I need a cinema post production suite Are you talking about Adobe here?
  - bigyabai 9mo ago
    Probably not, seeing as Creative Cloud has bundles focused on specific mediums.
    - jen20 9mo ago
      Their default is the "All" plan which includes many of the same categories as the Apple bundle.
- Forgeties79 9mo ago
  A lot of people round trip through various softwares to create things. As a film editor I use NLE’s, DAW’s, music production tools, various encoders (like compressor), graphic design tools…I’d say it’s the norm not the exception to need 2-3 specialized pieces of software during projects.
- steve1977 9mo ago
  I think that's why they call it "Creator" studio. Creators - in the way the term is usually used today - indeed do use many of these tools. Maybe you produce music, create a video about you producing music and also need an engaging thumbnail for YouTube. In a feature film production, these would certainly be separate roles. But apart from maybe Logic Pro for composers, Apple's tools are not really relevant at those levels of the entertainment business anymore. Post-pro would be Pro Tools for audio, something like Avid Media Composer for editing etc. I think Apple has realized they are not playing on that level anymore and target their marketing to where they are still in the game. That's not necessarily a bad move.
deleted 9mo ago
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lemonlime227 9mo ago
The individual one time purchase versions are still available for all the apps. Final Cut, Logic, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage are offered in a bundle for education by Apple as a $199.99 one time purchase (no education status is verified) [1]. Pixelmator Pro is available as a one time purchase as well for $49.99 [2]. Not included in the Creator Studio is the Lightroom alternative Photomator, which is available as a one time purchase of $119.99. You could recreate just the Creator Studio as a one time $250 purchase, or the entire suite (including Photomator) for $370. Not available for one time purchase are the AI features and templates available for the free apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform). Personally, I'm glad that one time purchases are still options for the core pro suite: long term they do hold value compared to paying Adobe a subscription (or dealing with the high seas on macOS). However, I don't see things like the education bundle sticking around much longer, so purchase it sooner rather than later. [1]: https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/bmge2z/a/pro-apps-bundle-for-education https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/bmge2z/a/pro-apps-... [2]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator-pro/id1289583905 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator-pro/id1289583905
- no_wizard 9mo ago
  The inclusion of Pixelmator Pro is simply so they no longer have a hole in the software lineup as a competitor vs Affinity (I think the real competitor to this bundle) and Adobe I think they view Photos as a viable replacement for Lightroom and equivalents.
  - admp 9mo ago
    Photomator would be a more level Lightroom alternative, odd it's not included in the new Creator Studio package.
    - AlanYx 9mo ago
      That's probably a clue that maintaining Photomator is not on Apple's long-term roadmap. I imagine they'll merge some features into Photos and eventually discontinue it.
deleted 9mo ago
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throwaway85825 9mo ago
Another subscription slop?
samgranieri 9mo ago
I wondered when Apple was going to do this. Seemed inevitable when Final Cut Pro on the iPad had a subscription, I think. I hope I can still use the non subscription version of Pixelmator pro I bought
aosaigh 9mo ago
It’s odd not to see Photomator in this bundle. Feels even more likely that they’re going to kill it off in place of the regular Photos app.
andsoitis 9mo ago
Innovation! More seriously, the subscription probably comes out cheaper than buying several (even if not all) of the apps that come in the bundle.
- lysace 9mo ago
  Yeah! They were courageous enough to take the step that Microsoft did with the Office suite (announced 1988, launched 1990) and with Microsoft 365 as subscription in 2011.
Kye 9mo ago
I'm keeping an eye on Graphite (https://graphite.art/ https://graphite.art/) as something to move to from Affinity's stuff, but it's good there's a new option for people who need more.
deleted 9mo ago
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geerlingguy 9mo ago
I still miss Aperture. Photos is a far cry still, many years later. Lightroom never matched Aperture's organizational abilities for libraries with tens of thousands of RAW photos.
- apgwoz 9mo ago
  I’ve been waiting to see what happens with Photomator, and the fact that it’s not being included in anyway here makes me think it might not survive? Either that, or it’s gonna be heavily integrated into Photos…
  - herrherrmann 9mo ago
    I was also surprised to not see Photomator included. Wouldn’t it perfectly complement the lineup? I hadn’t thought of such a pessimistic interpretation, but now I’m worried as well …
    - apgwoz 9mo ago
      I think Apple killed Aperture primarily because it was confusing to have iPhoto and Aperture with largely overlapping workflows. Aperture had the loupe view, and side by side comparison stuff, saved color grading tools (I think?), sure, but it wasn’t differentiated enough to justify a Pro designation. I think it makes more sense for Photomator features to be absorbed into Photos… and maybe Photos gets some new Pixelmator integrations if you have it, for quick touch ups / enhancement type things. On the other hand, Final Cut / iMovie will exist side by side because it’s truly a basic vs Pro situation. Not a product manager at Apple, of course, but this is what logically seems to make sense.
      - herrherrmann 9mo ago
        Uff, I sure hope you are wrong! I don’t want to use the iCloud library for photos, but have my photos available as digital files elsewhere on the ssd. Of course, your prediction makes more sense from Apple’s standpoint, unfortunately.
reactordev 9mo ago
Apple CC Like Adobe CC I love Logic and all but really? I can’t help but notice Apple in the last decade has kind of been spinning in circles software wise while their hardware division makes breakthroughs with M-series chips. 2026, the year of the Linux Desktop…
rado 9mo ago
Pixelmator Pro is fantastic. I've forgotten about Photoshop for many years. Just buy it.
felineflock 9mo ago
That Synth Player and Chord ID seem to be killer features on Logic Pro. Are they recent additions? Do they work well?
- steve1977 9mo ago
  It's not released yet.
H1Supreme 9mo ago
Seems like a pretty solid deal, if you need everything. I don't know who that person is though. The intersection between Final Cut Pro and Logic users is pretty small, I'd imagine.
- pier25 9mo ago
  I'm that kind of user but I would rather not use Logic, Final Cut, or PixelMator unless Apple really improves those. On top of that there's also the platform lock-in concern.
- 542458 9mo ago
  TBF, you can say the same thing for adobe creative cloud - the intersection between After Effects and Indesign users is also effectively nil! But having one simple opex line item for "software I buy for the creative types" is appealing for a lot of orgs.
  - pier25 9mo ago
    But the CC subscriptions offers a lot more. Photohsop, Illustrator and After Effects are pretty much industry standards.
    - srik 9mo ago
      Apple really should’ve grabbed Affinity before canva. Would’ve rounded out this suite much better.
      - pier25 9mo ago
        Yeah. The Affinity team with Apple's resources could have made an amazing Adobe CC alternative for Mac users.
  - doctorpangloss 9mo ago
    Yes, re: opex. The product is “renewals,” not software really.
- 9mo ago
bobse 9mo ago
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ksec 9mo ago
This is Off Topic, but the first thing I notice on that page were those icons for apps with Apple Creator Studio. They look AWEFUL.
- MattRix 9mo ago
  I don’t think they look awful, and they’re more interesting and opinionated than most boring icons you see these days.
  - simjnd 9mo ago
    They're definitely awful compared to the icons they're replacing. Losing so much identity and detail.
    - MattRix 9mo ago
      Eh not sure I agree. The former icons are definitely unique, but not consistent or cohesive at all, especially when viewed as a group. I think these new icons will grow on people. There were similar negative reactions back ~15 years ago when Adobe switched to their minimalist icon style.
      - simjnd 9mo ago
        > There were similar negative reactions back ~15 years ago when Adobe switched to their minimalist icon style. Adobe icons are terrible and should not be the standard. Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, InDesign 2 were so much more memorable and recognizable than the lazy minimalist slop we have now. Even the first CS or CS2 icons were a thousand times better. The fact that the company behind the most powerful and popular creative software did this is unforgivable. Some tasteless manager made a PowerPoint about "brand cohesion", got his promotion and ruined it for everybody else.
        MattRix 9mo ago
        I think we fundamentally disagree about what the purpose of icons is. The point isn’t just to be something that looks cool in isolation.
speak_plainly 9mo ago
This seems like an Apple AI subscription under the guise of a software bundle. It’s a good value for some, especially if you want to use FCP, but seems like a bad value for most users who are expecting more value from their Mac purchase. I wonder if new Macs will offer a three-month trial for this suite, or if the standard apps will be pre-installed and the AI features are unlocked through a subscription. If bundled versions of iWork go away, we may see a renaissance for G Suite.
- TimTheTinker 9mo ago
  Sounds plausible. Someone internally likely has AI sales numbers to meet, so creating new subscriptions and adding "AI" to them can help juice AI-related numbers toward that quota.
NoSalt 9mo ago
> "come together in a single SUBSCRIPTION" Ummm ... no, thank you.
arvinsim 9mo ago
Is the one-time purchase versions guaranteed for life? If not, then this would likely go the way of others before where it will eventually be removed.
- prmoustache 9mo ago
  Nothing is ever guaranteed for life...except the promise of death.
WillAdams 9mo ago
Is anyone finding Freeform useful? I tried it out when it was first announced and found it painfully limited --- did I miss something? Has it gotten better?
- jonpurdy 9mo ago
  I find it useful as a massive canvas for keeping a bunch of stuff in context, visually. And accessible via Mac and iPhone. But it is sorely lacking a major feature: highlight text to add a hyperlink. I end up with full URLs instead of hyperlinked words and it's pretty messy.
- Toutouxc 9mo ago
  I use it regularly to do rough sketches of objects on my iPad to model in CAD later on the computer. It doesn't feel right for artwork or notes or basically anything else.
- thadk 9mo ago
  The main thing about Freeform that has been useful is that it has been a https://infinitecanvas.tools https://infinitecanvas.tools without a lock-in subscription.
cush 9mo ago
That’s a great deal
nxobject 9mo ago
When you're not plowing money into putting AI everywhere, it's easier to be cheaper than Adobe I guess... (For what it's worth, the iWorks apps – Pages/Keynote/Numbers are free and bundled with macOS.)
noodlesUK 9mo ago
I think this is a huge mistake at least as far as the office software goes. One of the key advantages to Pages.app and friends is that they are pre-installed and free on MacOS. This will just drive people to M365 and Google Docs.
- zffr 9mo ago
  Pages and other iWork apps will remain free. The premium features are for curated images and templates, and AI assisted document creation. If you don't care for those features, you will not be affected by the change.
- dagmx 9mo ago
  Good thing they remain free and pre installed. As per the article.
wildredkraut 9mo ago
lol, what a money grab.
tomovo 9mo ago
It's a pity Apple didn't choose to acquire Affinity when there was a chance. Pixelmator Pro looks like a toy app compared to Logic or Final Cut. I don't see how it could ever catch up to Photoshop. Even at such small scale it's always been very buggy in my experience and development seems to have stalled (apart from some obligatory AI features). I am glad the standalone purchases are still available and I assume they will stay updated in sync with the subscription-based ones. I would hate my copy of Logic getting slowly obsolete..
- philistine 9mo ago
  Affinity never made mac-assed Mac apps. Pixelmator is more a Mac app than Messages or Music. That's why they bought them instead of Affinity.
  - tomovo 9mo ago
    Maybe. Form over function, not a surprise.
    - philistine 9mo ago
      A truly well-designed Mac app is not just form, it is function as well. If you think a good Mac citizen is only what it looks like you're not looking at all.
      - tomovo 9mo ago
        Sadly mac-assedness doesn't automatically mean feature richness or overall robustness. Those are actually quite hard to achieve when you spend half of each year updating the UI widgets to the latest SDK and fixing new performance problems you didn't cause. That should be clear when you compare Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro.
- handsclean 9mo ago
  Your experience is starkly different than mine. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro’s much more toy-like predecessor from ~10 years ago? My experience is that while there’s a feature and community gap for both Pixelmator Pro and Affinity, Affinity just tried to copy Photoshop, positioning it as a worse but cheaper Photoshop, while Pixelmator Pro feels like an attempt to make a better photo editor, losing some familiarity points but also being tangibly better than Photoshop at most use cases it can handle, which is many. It’s also an excellent macOS citizen. Between those two factors, it seems much more up Apple’s alley.
brcmthrowaway 9mo ago
Does anyone use these apps?
pentagrama 9mo ago
Here is a quick side by side comparison between Apple Creator Studio and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Each app may be stronger or weaker depending on the use case, workflow, and specific user needs, so this is only a rough equivalence. Function | Apple | Adobe | Adobe price / month --------------------|----------------------|---------------------|-------------------- Image editing | Pixelmator Pro | Photoshop | ~USD 20 Video editing | Final Cut Pro | Premiere Pro | ~USD 23 Motion graphics | Motion | After Effects | ~USD 23 Audio production | Logic Pro | Audition | ~USD 23 Video encoding | Compressor | Media Encoder | Included with Premiere Pro Live audio | MainStage | No direct equivalent| N/A Docs/presentations | Keynote/Pages/Numbers| Express/Acrobat | ~USD 10 to 24 --------------------|----------------------|---------------------|-------------------- TOTAL | USD 12.99 / month | ~USD 100+ / month | | (7 apps bundle) | (5 apps separately)| | | USD 69.99 / month | | | (bundle 20+ apps) | Disclaimer: table formatting assisted by ChatGPT (hope it works on HN).
- Svoka 9mo ago
  Pixelmator probably is Lightroom. And adobe has "Photography Bundle" with Lightroom and Photoshop for $20/mo.
  - ezfe 9mo ago
    No, Photomator (and Photos) is Lightroom. Pixelmator is Photoshop.
  - mesh 9mo ago
    No, Lightroom is a dedicated photo editor and DAM. Pixelmator is closer to Photoshop, you can do some photo editing, but its not focused on it, and does not have asset management.
- mesh 9mo ago
  What this misses is that Creative Cloud is much more than a bundle of apps. It includes everything you need around the apps for pro workflows (i.e. fonts, AI, stock, collaboration, etc...). (I work for Adobe)
jwr 9mo ago
After Apple suddenly discontinued Aperture, which left users like me with huge complex photo archives hanging, I will never trust any professional software tool from Apple again. It is a disaster that I still haven't fully recovered from. I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.
- incanus77 9mo ago
  Me too, with Aperture. Huge misstep and insult to the user base. This is a useful tool: https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive However, you still need to run an older OS. I've still got on my todo list the process of fixing all of this.
- trinix912 9mo ago
  Not only Aperture. The FCP7-FCPX transition was a disaster as well.
- redundantly 9mo ago
  It's been a decade and it still hurts that it was discontinued.
- steve1977 9mo ago
  Logic users on Windows also weren't too happy when Apple bought Emagic and dropped Windows support shortly after.
- dgxyz 9mo ago
  Learned that lesson too. Then got into Lightroom. Now getting out of that by exporting stuff slowly. Moving to files on disk and edits in Darktable now. No "library".
- movedx 9mo ago
  Please don’t take this as me saying you were wrong to ever trust Apple, however the best way to organise any data is usually just files on a disk. That’s becoming a recurring theme for me and even some of my corporate clients now. Confluence, for example, is out the window for secure documentation around sensitive environments and Word Docs in One Drive are back in. It’s surprisingly refreshing and gets the job done way better.
karmakaze 9mo ago
OT: ...protecting their privacy. LOL (wrong playbook triggered writing this) > [...] to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy.
krm01 9mo ago
It’s actually a pretty big deal. I always wondered why they didnt compete with Adobe. Even when Steve Jobs was still around. 90%+ of Adobe users are on Macs. Why though isn’t such a significant announcement on the Apple.com homepage?
- mrkstu 9mo ago
  Because Adobe would have gone Windows only, which would have been a potentially fatal blow to Apple at the time. Same reason Claris was spun out.
- timeon 9mo ago
  At least Acrobat reader is not relevant on macOS.
MaxGL 9mo ago
[dead]
MaxGL 9mo ago
[dead]
opengrass 9mo ago
Cool, just don't send me your project files in email attachments.
JeremyJaydan 9mo ago
I've had "buy motion" on my todo list for a while now.. just wanted to learn something new but it never made sense to buy it. With the subscription I think I'll give it a shot. Awesome!
zuInnp 9mo ago
Last thing I did when I was a student was to buy the Apple pro apps bundle for education. It still haven't regretted it :D So, if you are a student, you can get logic, final cut, motion, compressor and mainStage for $199.99 for ever.
qubex 9mo ago
The only apps from Apple I give a sizeable fraction of a dam about are Pages and Numbers, and hopefully they’ll emerge from the scourge of AI largely unscathed.
- thenaturalist 9mo ago
  I'm sorry to break it to you, but they certainly won't. It's in the announcement and look at what Microslop and Google have done to their versions.
  - qubex 9mo ago
    Yeah I read that but what I meant (and failed to express clearly, I openly admit) is that I hope it doesn’t somehow become core functionality you’re kinda-sorta expected to have. Pages and Numbers work fine and I’d be willing to go back to paying for them as was true back in the iLife days (I still have an iLife ‘06 or ‘09 distribution CD or DVD on my shelf in a storeroom) but paying a subscription for creative apps I just never use just to get stuff everybody will expect you to have in productivity apps is a path I hope they don’t go down. Incidentally what Numbers really lacks is a circular converge-to-solution mode like Excel has had for decades, that would make it a serious tool tor simple business planning and financial projections.
user3939382 9mo ago
Fuck Apple I’m done with all their rent seeking and shit lock-in. Broken CLI tools. Hello Asahi Linux and x64 FreeBSD.
imagetic 9mo ago
Bad move Apple. Bad move.
bob1029 9mo ago
> Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg
spankalee 9mo ago
Tangential, but: MainStage the best deal in the entire pro audio industry. As a keyboard player who mainly plays (and owns) classic electro-mechanical keyboards like Hammonds, Rhodes, Clavinets, and Wurlitzers, Apple's emulators that they brought from Logic are really top-notch - often better than what you get with dedicated hardware. $30 is an insane price for what it delivers. I just wish it were available for iPad, and I'd use it more for gigging.
cramcgrab 9mo ago
[dead]
nipperkinfeet 9mo ago
All these companies can go to hell with their subscription traps.
bluesounddirect 9mo ago
So can i use this to purge the liquid metal from MacOS 26 ?
- gilgoomesh 9mo ago
  You got Liquid Metal? I'm stuck with Liquid Glass :-(
  - bluesounddirect 9mo ago
    liquid metal / glass whats the difference its all shiny and amorphous.
oliyoung 9mo ago
An Aperture-like is still the stand out missing piece here, especially when you have the Garageband to Logic and iMovie to Final Cut progression Photos isn't even close to the genuine Lightroom competitor that Aperture was
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 9mo ago
  Not only that, but Photos has gotten less and less capable over time.
FootballMuse 9mo ago
> A one-time purchase will still be available, but access to some of the premium content is available only to Apple Creator Studio subscribers. If you already own Final Cut Pro, it will continue to be updated. Looks like some new "premium content" features will be only available to those with a subscription
felixding 9mo ago
The icons...so this is what the future looks like under Steve Lemay?!
ulfw 9mo ago
I am done with Apple. They've become a company only extracting money on the margins rather than innovating. Most products are stale, especially on the software side. Asking for yet another subscription is what makes the boiling kettle run over.
miguel-muniz 9mo ago
Multiple thoughts on this: 1.0 Creating a software bundle is the expected play by a company that keeps trying to grow their subscription revenue, but lots of creators are fed up paying an arm and a leg for software they'll never own that they need to do their job. Canva turned a lot of heads and got new people into Affinity just by making it free, I would have liked to see Apple lead with the same pitch rather than make just another bundle. 2.0 I feel like this is a u-turn on what made buying Apple hardware so great. You paid a pretty penny for the hardware but you would get high quality software with more care and attention paid to it than their competitors. This has changed in recent years, with many of the iWork products languishing with only minor updates as the market has evolved towards simplified cloud-based tools. Although there's still free functionality and the subscription provides a more affordable way to get into their pro tools, I fear the free versions will become second-class. 2.1 The same has happened to their stance on advertising as well, with the App Store getting ads and Maps being next in line to get them too. Microsoft and Google are still much worse than Apple in this regard, but I thought they would hold out for much longer than cave to growing pressures to grow revenue. 3.0 I'm not a fan of putting generative AI as a selling point in a product called "creator studio". Many artists are against the usage for various reasons, and Apple has a long history of aligning themselves with creative individuals. Seems like a misunderstanding of what their audience would want. 4.0 No Garageband or iMovie feels like they've abandoned them. Which is a shame for tools that have started so many creator's careers. There's still a need for simplified tools for creators early in their careers or with simpler needs, something that CapCut has shown. 5.0 There's still gaps in their bundle. There's no software for UI design. I could see Apple acquiring Sketch, they would just need to reach feature parity with Figma. There's lots of organizations getting squeezed by Figma's enterprise contracts, and most product designers I know are already on Macs. There's also no drawing or animation software. I could see them acquiring the team behind Procreate and Procreate Dreams to fill it. That software already sells iPads, many artists have gotten their start with digital art with it. Another gap is publishing, although they could probably add functionality to Pages or buy Swift Publisher. 6.0 Who is this for? Every organization under the sun already pays for Office 365, and I've never known a designer who's used Pixelmator for their day to day work. Affinity felt like a much more compelling alternative to Adobe, and anyone with simple enough needs to use these tools is probably already using web-based tools on their Windows laptop. I suppose hobbyists, but I'm not sure if a subscription is compelling for them.
maomaomiumiu 9mo ago
This sounds really cool, but I honestly can’t imagine stopping using Adobe apps after so many years and switching to completely new tools. It feels like that would take a lot of time and effort to relearn everything.
bpavuk 9mo ago
Apple hit all the buzzwords from Apple Bingo Card in the very first paragraph announcing their $13/mo creative suite subscription: > Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators around the world. The apps included with Apple Creator Studio for video editing, music making, creative imaging, and visual productivity give modern creators the features and capabilities they need to experience the joy of editing and tailoring their content while realizing their artistic vision. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy. Count with me: 1. Groundbreaking 2. Powerful 3. Studio-grade 4. Power into the hands of everyone 5. Essential role of <INSERT APPLE PRODUCT(S)> 6. Exciting new 7. Familiar experiences 8. Empower 9. Privacy --- P.S. is HN frontend open-source? I'd like to submit a fix for Markdown list rendering

515 points by lemonlime227 9mo ago

> Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — come together in a single subscription So Apple is copying Adobe's business model?

boringg 9mo ago
Well really they are copying the original Microsofts suite packaging which everyone has copied over the years! But yes specific they are trying to take market share on Adobe. Its actually like taking on MS and Adobe together... but they aren't really taking on MS office.
jpalomaki 9mo ago
Depends on if you are stuck with the subscription for life, or if there's actually a reasonable way to unsubscribe.
- bambax 9mo ago
  You're never free to unsubscribe because you become accustomed to the tools, and use the file formats, etc. (That's why I don't do subscription, ever.)
pjmlp 9mo ago
When there are no more new buyers to sell devices, or new versions of existing software packages, the only way to keep the curve growing for shareholders and MBAs is to sell subscriptions. It is also the only way to convince developers to pay for software. Having a part hosted on some server is so much better than whatever anti-piracy schemes one can think of, and provides the continuous growth curve for printing money. Thus subscriptions aren't going away in the modern software world.
bayindirh 9mo ago
No, all apps are available for purchase for a one time payment. I don't care about video, so I'll be buying Pixelmator now, and maybe music stuff later, and Video part never. So it works like before, if you want.
- bearjaws 9mo ago
  Available for purchase... for now.
  - bayindirh 9mo ago
    The only "...for now" event I have seen in last 20 years of Apple software is iWorks and Mac OS X become free. ...and they integrated some of the Aperture to new Photos app, which is again was a transition to free. Name me something a product, not a service which you can only subscribe in Apple's ecosystem.
    - arvinsim 9mo ago
      Logic Pro in iPad is subscription only.
      - asimpletune 9mo ago
        They didn’t take away a one-time purchase option for it though. It just never existed to begin with so the op’s point remains.
    - ascagnel_ 9mo ago
      > Name me something a product, not a service which you can only subscribe in Apple's ecosystem. The shows on Apple TV are only available via a subscription; there's no way to have a perpetual purchase (at least as far as that a la carte style of purchase is perpetual).
      - dagmx 9mo ago
        They specifically said “not a service” and you brought up a service.
tapoxi 9mo ago
Yeah but this is $129/yr, that's significantly cheaper
- whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
  It’s cheap enough it’s not enough to fund development of Final Cut but also not enough money to bother spending time on it. Find it odd personally, just offering them free to keep hardware makes more sense than trying to push a tiny subscription revenue number.
  - anticorporate 9mo ago
    It's the problem that the whole industry is facing - the current generation of hardware is sufficient that hardware refreshes will continue to decline, and companies that want to keep milking us for money regularly need to find a new way to do it.
    - no_wizard 9mo ago
      Sufficient for whom? At my job they’re still refreshing workstations regularly. They buy and churn hardware on a regular basis. Not quite “buying on release week” basis but some % of employees always getting new hardware at max specs in the design org Makes even engineering jealous sometimes
    - alwillis 9mo ago
      > the current generation of hardware is sufficient that hardware refreshes will continue to decline If anything, Apple is refreshing their hardware much faster now compared to the Intel days. There's literally a new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air every year. And of course there are 3-4 new iPhones every year.
      - anticorporate 9mo ago
        By declining hardware refreshes, I meant on the consumer side, not the producer side.
acomjean 9mo ago
Subscription model so it’s adobes model. But you can buy “one time”. Though they have a tendency to just end product support (aperture software was canceled leaving a lot of bad taste for photographers that used it) Wonder what Adobe thinks of this. Their support for Mac was pretty important in getting OS X off the ground, now they’re competing with a unified stack. When I was a Mac user I remember buying Logic express 9 (I still have the disk). The price is a good deal, but you really are all in forever..
Someone 9mo ago
FTA: “Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.”
mirzap 9mo ago
How so? Apple's subscription cancellation is one click away, and you don't get overcharged when canceling.
F7F7F7 9mo ago
Adobe invented subscription bundles? In that sense did the Creative Cloud copy iCloud?

Fraaaank 9mo ago

Alternative title: "Apple slaps subscription model on existing apps"

jen20 9mo ago
Except that isn’t an alternative title, unless you want to lie by omission thus being wrong. “Apple offers new option for subscription in addition to existing one-time purchase optinos” might be an alternative though, and reduce the number of cynically inane comments from people that apparently didn’t RTFA before commenting.

pjmlp 9mo ago

I am still waiting for "XCode for iPadOS", where we can have a Smalltalk like approach to development, beyond what Swift Playgrounds allows for.

eurekin 9mo ago
I played once with hosting a VSCode server on a raspberry pi for general development and it was actually quite powerful, when used from an iPad. Just not strictly for Swift unfortunately
- qn9n 9mo ago
  The ecosystem is fine for non-Apple development. It's just building apps for iOS, macOS, etc. that is impossible on iPad right now past some basic applications.
- ajcp 9mo ago
  I'm hosting a VSCode server with Termux/Ubuntu container on my old Pixel 6a and I cannot overstate how awesome it is for just a fun dev setup, especially with a tablet. Easy to nuke and start clean too!
kmeisthax 9mo ago
Unless Apple gets off several high horses regarding code signing and, more importantly, app containerization; any Xcode for iPadOS is going to be useless. Like, imagine Xcode without custom build steps or third-party compilers. The larger problem is that the iPad has a dual nature. At the launch of the product, Apple positioned it as a netbook killer - i.e. a simplified computer for specific tasks, one where the locked down nature of the device might actually be considered a feature. That's why they built everything on iPhone OS[0]. However, there's always been the implication that this is supposed to Someday™ replace the Mac. It keeps getting new features to make it more useful as a computer replacement, which just makes the deliberate restrictions placed on the device more and more glaring. And Apple seems to think they can just keep adding features until they can make you do every computing task wearing a strait-jacket in a padded room. This particular duality came to a head with the Apple Vision Pro. Any app that would actually be useful on a VR headset is either: - Incompatible with Apple's code-signing and containerization requirements (i.e. developer tools) - Not economic to offer at the small scale of the visionOS app market (at least, not while Apple is demanding 30%) - A game (Apple really doesn't wanna talk about the Vision Pro as a games machine) On a related note, Swift Playgrounds stopped getting updates almost a year ago. I updated my HTML editor demo project for iPadOS 26 and now I can't even compile it because Apple has yet to ship the version 26 SDK. And there's really nothing any third party can do to fix Swift Playgrounds to make it actually usable again. [0] Strictly speaking, Apple's first internal demos of capacitive touch were for a tablet project specifically to spite Windows XP tablets. Although by the time they were writing actual shipping code it was intended for iPhone and iPad came later.

isoprophlex 9mo ago

God fucking damn not you too, Apple. Adobe isn't a role model to emulate. I hate Adobe's practices. The whole world hates Adobe's practices. I want to pay for a thing with my money and then use it without worrying about ongoing costs, the UI changing, features breaking, or shit being shoved down my throat because some seedy PM wants a raise. EDIT: I know you can still buy the software... but for how long?

spott 9mo ago
You can. They are offering both options.
joshstrange 9mo ago
RTFA, you can still buy them for a one-time purchase on the App Store
- moolcool 9mo ago
  For now...

xd1936 9mo ago

Is this replacing the one-time purchase of these apps on macOS?

shmoogy 9mo ago
Doesn't sound like it > Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.5
artimaeis 9mo ago
No, fta: > Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

cupofjoakim 9mo ago

That's great if you need everything. If you need one of them, not so much.

al_borland 9mo ago
I'm curious how many people actually use all this stuff themselves. It seems like an extreme niche, and more often than not will have people paying for apps they will never use.
- d_runs_far 9mo ago
  Maybe I'm old skool... but for the last 30+ years I've been using a combination of photoshop, illustrator, FCP, after effects (back when it was CoSA...), some audio editing and mixing in quite a bit of code as well. While others on my team specialize in one or two domains, I've managed to keep my skills in many. Back in the day I was considered a 'MultiMedia' creative. I don't even know what to call myself these days.
bayindirh 9mo ago
You can buy the individual tools, if you want.

jasongill 9mo ago

It's $12.99/mo or $129/yr for a subscription that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, MainStage, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers Educational discount with verification required drops the price to $2.99/mo / $29.99/yr. The regular-price subscription includes family sharing, education price does not. One-time purchase versions remain available: Final Cut Pro ($299.99), Logic Pro ($199.99), Pixelmator Pro ($49.99), Motion ($49.99), Compressor ($49.99), and MainStage ($29.99). Comes out January 28th

thecupisblue 9mo ago
That's actually surprisingly cheap compared to other subscriptions in the industry, especially for such a high powered suite.
- Towaway69 9mo ago
  Undercut the competition until there is no competition, then raise prices or have I missed something? Ah, yes - cross finance your loses by selling compute in your own data centres / hosting service because you can.
  - crazygringo 9mo ago
    Somehow I don't think Apple is going to put Adobe out of business.
    - echelon 9mo ago
      They don't need to. They want marketshare to enhance their other market positions and give them optionality for future strategy. They'd love the whole market, but they don't need it and they won't employ too many resources chasing that. They're a powerful giant with hands in so many places. Each enforcing other endeavors. This encourages people to stay in the Apple hardware ecosystem, for instance. It dog foods their silicon. It keeps people thinking of Apple as the creative brand and operating system. More creatives buying Apple -> more being produced and consumed for and on Apple. Also the strategy of getting kids young has always been genius. They started that in the eighties, I think.

al_borland 9mo ago

Too bad they killed Aperture.

hbbio 9mo ago
Now they acquired Photomator with Pixelmator, but it's still an independent subscription... not even included in this bundle. Maybe they just forgot.

dormento 9mo ago

Wow, RIP the icons I guess :/

kurishutofu 9mo ago

When was the last time Apple made some significant update to its professional desktop apps?

joezydeco 9mo ago
Forget that. TikTokers are the revenue stream now.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  TikTokers ("influencers" in general) don't do their editing or any part of their "production pipeline" on computers, kids are doing the full thing via smartphones nowadays. Blew my mind initially too, as I always did "serious work" at a computer and never the phone, but seems they're managing it somehow.
  - igufrcybh 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - no_wizard 9mo ago
    They often start there, some stay there, some graduate to an iPad, but a a lot of the higher end creators absolutely edit in desktops or laptops (usually MacBooks) My old job dealt with this quite a lot as they were our target market, so I got some up close views of how for example, creators like MrBeast go about their editing (well the employees anyway) Though I did note a lot of creators that do graduate to more robust software basically go from lightweight editor via Canva -> iMovie or equivalent -> professional software e.g. FCPX or Premiere
    - embedding-shape 9mo ago
      Yeah, that matches what I've seen too, bigger productions adopting a more traditional pipeline, while "influencers" or whatever they're called today, kind of stick with the tools they've learned, until they "graduate" as they expand the team and bring in actual professionals.

tjpnz 9mo ago

Pages, Numbers and Keynote are the first apps I bin whenever I'm setting up a new Mac. Would people actually pay money for them?

troupo 9mo ago
They want you to pay money for premium AI features in those apps, which is worse. The apps themselves are fine IMO.
piersroberts 9mo ago
I'd forgotten Pages and Numbers existed, but Keynote is worth paying for if it means that I don't have to use PowerPoint.
embedding-shape 9mo ago
> Would people actually pay money for them? Why would someone need to buy them, they only run on macOS and macOS hardware comes with it by default, doesn't it?
nottorp 9mo ago
I use Pages once a month for an invoice :) Not sure why tbh, my other invoices are done in LibreOffice.
insane_dreamer 9mo ago
I absolutely would. I've used them for years, alongside MS Office on Windows and Libre Office on Linux, and while they lack a few features they're not ones I've ever needed and the UI and ease of use is far superior to Office. Especially Pages is a pleasure to work with compared with Word.
void-pointer 9mo ago
Numbers is brilliant simply because of independent freely-movable tables It looks so much better than the grid enforced by Excel.
- bromuro 9mo ago

fidotron 9mo ago

> These apps will continue receiving updates, with the latest versions adopting the beautiful new visual design language with Liquid Glass on all platforms Are the Apple people really this oblivious, or is someone in PR trolling us?

DonHopkins 9mo ago
Apple no longer supports GL, so Liquid Glass - GL = Liquid Ass.
codebyaditya 9mo ago
I read it less as obliviousness and more as internal language leaking into marketing. What’s “Liquid Glass” to Apple reads like an aesthetic system though but to outsiders it sounds like jargon inflation. I feel the gap between internal coherence and external clarity shows up in these releases a lot.
- faust201 9mo ago
  Pretty sure these marketing speak was decided half-an-year before. Sales and marketing just do their job /S
- nottorp 9mo ago
  > like an aesthetic system An idiotic aesthetic system that ignores all the human interface guidelines that the Apple of 30+ years ago helped start.
storus 9mo ago
I guess it's enforced top-down. Yesterday I picked up my MacBook from a logicboard repair and they forced Tahoe on it despite running Sonoma originally so I spent most of yesterday getting rid of Tahoe and reverting back to Sonoma.
- Fnoord 9mo ago
  Sonoma won't receive updates for long any more. Better off switching to Sequoia. It'll give you 20 months to switch away, instead of 8 months.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

me_online 9mo ago

apple can pry my one-time final cut pro purchase from my cold, dead hands.

acomjean 9mo ago
Many years ago, before Final Cut Pro x my cousin asked me to help inject some video from tapes and keep the time code. In Final Cut Pro. I couldn’t figure it out. So in desperation I read the manual. It was seriously well written and I understood the program, what needed to be done and how to do it.

sirwhinesalot 9mo ago

And here's the ruining of Pixelmator Pro everyone was waiting for. I paid one time 20 euros for it (discounted). And I would gladly pay again even full price for a new major version. I don't want yet another subscription. I see that they can still be bought (for now) but I wonder how long that will last.

joshstrange 9mo ago
One-time purchase versions are still available. For Pixelmator Pro it's $49.99 on the App Store
- sirwhinesalot 9mo ago
  For now.
- dsego 9mo ago
  That's not very reassuring.
bayindirh 9mo ago
Pixelmator Pro is upgraded a couple of times under Apple's wings, and this thing is not being ruined. You'll still be able to buy it if you want. All apps are still can be bought. It's in the text. Apple surprised me nicely there.

moolcool 9mo ago

How long until the option to buy-once for this software goes away? I am not a fan of this trend.

rvz 9mo ago
You will (soon) own nothing and be happy.

joshstrange 9mo ago

In this thread: No one who has even skimmed the article I'll say this loud for the people in the back: YOU CAN STILL BUY IT OUTRIGHT They are still offering one-time purchases, calm down.

dsego 9mo ago
But for how long?

andsoitis 9mo ago

Excited to see whether the new Apple boss will lead to software innovation, which has been pretty stagnant the last few years. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-cook-john-ternus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...

EagnaIonat 9mo ago

Are they planning to discontinue Garage band?

torben-friis 9mo ago

I don’t get why they think “professional” is a generic tier. If I’m a music producer, what’s the value of being given a digital art drawing program? If I’m an illustrator, why do I need a cinema post production suite? Some people might happen to do both, but overlap is largely accidental, right? The fact that they think of all professions as a bundle is even insulting as it signals the products are mostly toys/hobbyist stuff.

jen20 9mo ago
> If I’m a music producer, what’s the value of being given a digital art drawing program? If I’m an illustrator, why do I need a cinema post production suite Are you talking about Adobe here?
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  Probably not, seeing as Creative Cloud has bundles focused on specific mediums.
  - jen20 9mo ago
    Their default is the "All" plan which includes many of the same categories as the Apple bundle.
Forgeties79 9mo ago
A lot of people round trip through various softwares to create things. As a film editor I use NLE’s, DAW’s, music production tools, various encoders (like compressor), graphic design tools…I’d say it’s the norm not the exception to need 2-3 specialized pieces of software during projects.
steve1977 9mo ago
I think that's why they call it "Creator" studio. Creators - in the way the term is usually used today - indeed do use many of these tools. Maybe you produce music, create a video about you producing music and also need an engaging thumbnail for YouTube. In a feature film production, these would certainly be separate roles. But apart from maybe Logic Pro for composers, Apple's tools are not really relevant at those levels of the entertainment business anymore. Post-pro would be Pro Tools for audio, something like Avid Media Composer for editing etc. I think Apple has realized they are not playing on that level anymore and target their marketing to where they are still in the game. That's not necessarily a bad move.

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lemonlime227 9mo ago

The individual one time purchase versions are still available for all the apps. Final Cut, Logic, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage are offered in a bundle for education by Apple as a $199.99 one time purchase (no education status is verified) [1]. Pixelmator Pro is available as a one time purchase as well for $49.99 [2]. Not included in the Creator Studio is the Lightroom alternative Photomator, which is available as a one time purchase of $119.99. You could recreate just the Creator Studio as a one time $250 purchase, or the entire suite (including Photomator) for $370. Not available for one time purchase are the AI features and templates available for the free apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform). Personally, I'm glad that one time purchases are still options for the core pro suite: long term they do hold value compared to paying Adobe a subscription (or dealing with the high seas on macOS). However, I don't see things like the education bundle sticking around much longer, so purchase it sooner rather than later. [1]: https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/bmge2z/a/pro-apps-bundle-for-education https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/bmge2z/a/pro-apps-... [2]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator-pro/id1289583905 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator-pro/id1289583905

no_wizard 9mo ago
The inclusion of Pixelmator Pro is simply so they no longer have a hole in the software lineup as a competitor vs Affinity (I think the real competitor to this bundle) and Adobe I think they view Photos as a viable replacement for Lightroom and equivalents.
- admp 9mo ago
  Photomator would be a more level Lightroom alternative, odd it's not included in the new Creator Studio package.
  - AlanYx 9mo ago
    That's probably a clue that maintaining Photomator is not on Apple's long-term roadmap. I imagine they'll merge some features into Photos and eventually discontinue it.

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throwaway85825 9mo ago

Another subscription slop?

samgranieri 9mo ago

I wondered when Apple was going to do this. Seemed inevitable when Final Cut Pro on the iPad had a subscription, I think. I hope I can still use the non subscription version of Pixelmator pro I bought

aosaigh 9mo ago

It’s odd not to see Photomator in this bundle. Feels even more likely that they’re going to kill it off in place of the regular Photos app.

andsoitis 9mo ago

Innovation! More seriously, the subscription probably comes out cheaper than buying several (even if not all) of the apps that come in the bundle.

lysace 9mo ago
Yeah! They were courageous enough to take the step that Microsoft did with the Office suite (announced 1988, launched 1990) and with Microsoft 365 as subscription in 2011.

Kye 9mo ago

I'm keeping an eye on Graphite (https://graphite.art/ https://graphite.art/) as something to move to from Affinity's stuff, but it's good there's a new option for people who need more.

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geerlingguy 9mo ago

I still miss Aperture. Photos is a far cry still, many years later. Lightroom never matched Aperture's organizational abilities for libraries with tens of thousands of RAW photos.

apgwoz 9mo ago
I’ve been waiting to see what happens with Photomator, and the fact that it’s not being included in anyway here makes me think it might not survive? Either that, or it’s gonna be heavily integrated into Photos…
- herrherrmann 9mo ago
  I was also surprised to not see Photomator included. Wouldn’t it perfectly complement the lineup? I hadn’t thought of such a pessimistic interpretation, but now I’m worried as well …
  - apgwoz 9mo ago
    I think Apple killed Aperture primarily because it was confusing to have iPhoto and Aperture with largely overlapping workflows. Aperture had the loupe view, and side by side comparison stuff, saved color grading tools (I think?), sure, but it wasn’t differentiated enough to justify a Pro designation. I think it makes more sense for Photomator features to be absorbed into Photos… and maybe Photos gets some new Pixelmator integrations if you have it, for quick touch ups / enhancement type things. On the other hand, Final Cut / iMovie will exist side by side because it’s truly a basic vs Pro situation. Not a product manager at Apple, of course, but this is what logically seems to make sense.
    - herrherrmann 9mo ago
      Uff, I sure hope you are wrong! I don’t want to use the iCloud library for photos, but have my photos available as digital files elsewhere on the ssd. Of course, your prediction makes more sense from Apple’s standpoint, unfortunately.

reactordev 9mo ago

Apple CC Like Adobe CC I love Logic and all but really? I can’t help but notice Apple in the last decade has kind of been spinning in circles software wise while their hardware division makes breakthroughs with M-series chips. 2026, the year of the Linux Desktop…

rado 9mo ago

Pixelmator Pro is fantastic. I've forgotten about Photoshop for many years. Just buy it.

felineflock 9mo ago

That Synth Player and Chord ID seem to be killer features on Logic Pro. Are they recent additions? Do they work well?

steve1977 9mo ago
It's not released yet.

H1Supreme 9mo ago

Seems like a pretty solid deal, if you need everything. I don't know who that person is though. The intersection between Final Cut Pro and Logic users is pretty small, I'd imagine.

pier25 9mo ago
I'm that kind of user but I would rather not use Logic, Final Cut, or PixelMator unless Apple really improves those. On top of that there's also the platform lock-in concern.
542458 9mo ago
TBF, you can say the same thing for adobe creative cloud - the intersection between After Effects and Indesign users is also effectively nil! But having one simple opex line item for "software I buy for the creative types" is appealing for a lot of orgs.
- pier25 9mo ago
  But the CC subscriptions offers a lot more. Photohsop, Illustrator and After Effects are pretty much industry standards.
  - srik 9mo ago
    Apple really should’ve grabbed Affinity before canva. Would’ve rounded out this suite much better.
    - pier25 9mo ago
      Yeah. The Affinity team with Apple's resources could have made an amazing Adobe CC alternative for Mac users.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  Yes, re: opex. The product is “renewals,” not software really.
9mo ago

bobse 9mo ago

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ksec 9mo ago

This is Off Topic, but the first thing I notice on that page were those icons for apps with Apple Creator Studio. They look AWEFUL.

MattRix 9mo ago
I don’t think they look awful, and they’re more interesting and opinionated than most boring icons you see these days.
- simjnd 9mo ago
  They're definitely awful compared to the icons they're replacing. Losing so much identity and detail.
  - MattRix 9mo ago
    Eh not sure I agree. The former icons are definitely unique, but not consistent or cohesive at all, especially when viewed as a group. I think these new icons will grow on people. There were similar negative reactions back ~15 years ago when Adobe switched to their minimalist icon style.
    - simjnd 9mo ago
      > There were similar negative reactions back ~15 years ago when Adobe switched to their minimalist icon style. Adobe icons are terrible and should not be the standard. Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10, InDesign 2 were so much more memorable and recognizable than the lazy minimalist slop we have now. Even the first CS or CS2 icons were a thousand times better. The fact that the company behind the most powerful and popular creative software did this is unforgivable. Some tasteless manager made a PowerPoint about "brand cohesion", got his promotion and ruined it for everybody else.
      - MattRix 9mo ago
        I think we fundamentally disagree about what the purpose of icons is. The point isn’t just to be something that looks cool in isolation.

speak_plainly 9mo ago

This seems like an Apple AI subscription under the guise of a software bundle. It’s a good value for some, especially if you want to use FCP, but seems like a bad value for most users who are expecting more value from their Mac purchase. I wonder if new Macs will offer a three-month trial for this suite, or if the standard apps will be pre-installed and the AI features are unlocked through a subscription. If bundled versions of iWork go away, we may see a renaissance for G Suite.

TimTheTinker 9mo ago
Sounds plausible. Someone internally likely has AI sales numbers to meet, so creating new subscriptions and adding "AI" to them can help juice AI-related numbers toward that quota.

NoSalt 9mo ago

> "come together in a single SUBSCRIPTION" Ummm ... no, thank you.

arvinsim 9mo ago

Is the one-time purchase versions guaranteed for life? If not, then this would likely go the way of others before where it will eventually be removed.

prmoustache 9mo ago
Nothing is ever guaranteed for life...except the promise of death.

WillAdams 9mo ago

Is anyone finding Freeform useful? I tried it out when it was first announced and found it painfully limited --- did I miss something? Has it gotten better?

jonpurdy 9mo ago
I find it useful as a massive canvas for keeping a bunch of stuff in context, visually. And accessible via Mac and iPhone. But it is sorely lacking a major feature: highlight text to add a hyperlink. I end up with full URLs instead of hyperlinked words and it's pretty messy.
Toutouxc 9mo ago
I use it regularly to do rough sketches of objects on my iPad to model in CAD later on the computer. It doesn't feel right for artwork or notes or basically anything else.
thadk 9mo ago
The main thing about Freeform that has been useful is that it has been a https://infinitecanvas.tools https://infinitecanvas.tools without a lock-in subscription.

cush 9mo ago

That’s a great deal

nxobject 9mo ago

When you're not plowing money into putting AI everywhere, it's easier to be cheaper than Adobe I guess... (For what it's worth, the iWorks apps – Pages/Keynote/Numbers are free and bundled with macOS.)

noodlesUK 9mo ago

I think this is a huge mistake at least as far as the office software goes. One of the key advantages to Pages.app and friends is that they are pre-installed and free on MacOS. This will just drive people to M365 and Google Docs.

zffr 9mo ago
Pages and other iWork apps will remain free. The premium features are for curated images and templates, and AI assisted document creation. If you don't care for those features, you will not be affected by the change.
dagmx 9mo ago
Good thing they remain free and pre installed. As per the article.

wildredkraut 9mo ago

lol, what a money grab.

tomovo 9mo ago

It's a pity Apple didn't choose to acquire Affinity when there was a chance. Pixelmator Pro looks like a toy app compared to Logic or Final Cut. I don't see how it could ever catch up to Photoshop. Even at such small scale it's always been very buggy in my experience and development seems to have stalled (apart from some obligatory AI features). I am glad the standalone purchases are still available and I assume they will stay updated in sync with the subscription-based ones. I would hate my copy of Logic getting slowly obsolete..

philistine 9mo ago
Affinity never made mac-assed Mac apps. Pixelmator is more a Mac app than Messages or Music. That's why they bought them instead of Affinity.
- tomovo 9mo ago
  Maybe. Form over function, not a surprise.
  - philistine 9mo ago
    A truly well-designed Mac app is not just form, it is function as well. If you think a good Mac citizen is only what it looks like you're not looking at all.
    - tomovo 9mo ago
      Sadly mac-assedness doesn't automatically mean feature richness or overall robustness. Those are actually quite hard to achieve when you spend half of each year updating the UI widgets to the latest SDK and fixing new performance problems you didn't cause. That should be clear when you compare Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro.
handsclean 9mo ago
Your experience is starkly different than mine. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro’s much more toy-like predecessor from ~10 years ago? My experience is that while there’s a feature and community gap for both Pixelmator Pro and Affinity, Affinity just tried to copy Photoshop, positioning it as a worse but cheaper Photoshop, while Pixelmator Pro feels like an attempt to make a better photo editor, losing some familiarity points but also being tangibly better than Photoshop at most use cases it can handle, which is many. It’s also an excellent macOS citizen. Between those two factors, it seems much more up Apple’s alley.

brcmthrowaway 9mo ago

Does anyone use these apps?

pentagrama 9mo ago

Here is a quick side by side comparison between Apple Creator Studio and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Each app may be stronger or weaker depending on the use case, workflow, and specific user needs, so this is only a rough equivalence. Function | Apple | Adobe | Adobe price / month --------------------|----------------------|---------------------|-------------------- Image editing | Pixelmator Pro | Photoshop | ~USD 20 Video editing | Final Cut Pro | Premiere Pro | ~USD 23 Motion graphics | Motion | After Effects | ~USD 23 Audio production | Logic Pro | Audition | ~USD 23 Video encoding | Compressor | Media Encoder | Included with Premiere Pro Live audio | MainStage | No direct equivalent| N/A Docs/presentations | Keynote/Pages/Numbers| Express/Acrobat | ~USD 10 to 24 --------------------|----------------------|---------------------|-------------------- TOTAL | USD 12.99 / month | ~USD 100+ / month | | (7 apps bundle) | (5 apps separately)| | | USD 69.99 / month | | | (bundle 20+ apps) | Disclaimer: table formatting assisted by ChatGPT (hope it works on HN).

Svoka 9mo ago
Pixelmator probably is Lightroom. And adobe has "Photography Bundle" with Lightroom and Photoshop for $20/mo.
- ezfe 9mo ago
  No, Photomator (and Photos) is Lightroom. Pixelmator is Photoshop.
- mesh 9mo ago
  No, Lightroom is a dedicated photo editor and DAM. Pixelmator is closer to Photoshop, you can do some photo editing, but its not focused on it, and does not have asset management.
mesh 9mo ago
What this misses is that Creative Cloud is much more than a bundle of apps. It includes everything you need around the apps for pro workflows (i.e. fonts, AI, stock, collaboration, etc...). (I work for Adobe)

jwr 9mo ago

After Apple suddenly discontinued Aperture, which left users like me with huge complex photo archives hanging, I will never trust any professional software tool from Apple again. It is a disaster that I still haven't fully recovered from. I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.

incanus77 9mo ago
Me too, with Aperture. Huge misstep and insult to the user base. This is a useful tool: https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive However, you still need to run an older OS. I've still got on my todo list the process of fixing all of this.
trinix912 9mo ago
Not only Aperture. The FCP7-FCPX transition was a disaster as well.
redundantly 9mo ago
It's been a decade and it still hurts that it was discontinued.
steve1977 9mo ago
Logic users on Windows also weren't too happy when Apple bought Emagic and dropped Windows support shortly after.
dgxyz 9mo ago
Learned that lesson too. Then got into Lightroom. Now getting out of that by exporting stuff slowly. Moving to files on disk and edits in Darktable now. No "library".
movedx 9mo ago
Please don’t take this as me saying you were wrong to ever trust Apple, however the best way to organise any data is usually just files on a disk. That’s becoming a recurring theme for me and even some of my corporate clients now. Confluence, for example, is out the window for secure documentation around sensitive environments and Word Docs in One Drive are back in. It’s surprisingly refreshing and gets the job done way better.

karmakaze 9mo ago

OT: ...protecting their privacy. LOL (wrong playbook triggered writing this) > [...] to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy.

krm01 9mo ago

It’s actually a pretty big deal. I always wondered why they didnt compete with Adobe. Even when Steve Jobs was still around. 90%+ of Adobe users are on Macs. Why though isn’t such a significant announcement on the Apple.com homepage?

mrkstu 9mo ago
Because Adobe would have gone Windows only, which would have been a potentially fatal blow to Apple at the time. Same reason Claris was spun out.
timeon 9mo ago
At least Acrobat reader is not relevant on macOS.

MaxGL 9mo ago

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MaxGL 9mo ago

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opengrass 9mo ago

Cool, just don't send me your project files in email attachments.

JeremyJaydan 9mo ago

I've had "buy motion" on my todo list for a while now.. just wanted to learn something new but it never made sense to buy it. With the subscription I think I'll give it a shot. Awesome!

zuInnp 9mo ago

Last thing I did when I was a student was to buy the Apple pro apps bundle for education. It still haven't regretted it :D So, if you are a student, you can get logic, final cut, motion, compressor and mainStage for $199.99 for ever.

qubex 9mo ago

The only apps from Apple I give a sizeable fraction of a dam about are Pages and Numbers, and hopefully they’ll emerge from the scourge of AI largely unscathed.

thenaturalist 9mo ago
I'm sorry to break it to you, but they certainly won't. It's in the announcement and look at what Microslop and Google have done to their versions.
- qubex 9mo ago
  Yeah I read that but what I meant (and failed to express clearly, I openly admit) is that I hope it doesn’t somehow become core functionality you’re kinda-sorta expected to have. Pages and Numbers work fine and I’d be willing to go back to paying for them as was true back in the iLife days (I still have an iLife ‘06 or ‘09 distribution CD or DVD on my shelf in a storeroom) but paying a subscription for creative apps I just never use just to get stuff everybody will expect you to have in productivity apps is a path I hope they don’t go down. Incidentally what Numbers really lacks is a circular converge-to-solution mode like Excel has had for decades, that would make it a serious tool tor simple business planning and financial projections.

user3939382 9mo ago

Fuck Apple I’m done with all their rent seeking and shit lock-in. Broken CLI tools. Hello Asahi Linux and x64 FreeBSD.

imagetic 9mo ago

Bad move Apple. Bad move.

bob1029 9mo ago

> Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg

spankalee 9mo ago

Tangential, but: MainStage the best deal in the entire pro audio industry. As a keyboard player who mainly plays (and owns) classic electro-mechanical keyboards like Hammonds, Rhodes, Clavinets, and Wurlitzers, Apple's emulators that they brought from Logic are really top-notch - often better than what you get with dedicated hardware. $30 is an insane price for what it delivers. I just wish it were available for iPad, and I'd use it more for gigging.

cramcgrab 9mo ago

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nipperkinfeet 9mo ago

All these companies can go to hell with their subscription traps.

bluesounddirect 9mo ago

So can i use this to purge the liquid metal from MacOS 26 ?

gilgoomesh 9mo ago
You got Liquid Metal? I'm stuck with Liquid Glass :-(
- bluesounddirect 9mo ago
  liquid metal / glass whats the difference its all shiny and amorphous.

oliyoung 9mo ago

An Aperture-like is still the stand out missing piece here, especially when you have the Garageband to Logic and iMovie to Final Cut progression Photos isn't even close to the genuine Lightroom competitor that Aperture was

UqWBcuFx6NV4r 9mo ago
Not only that, but Photos has gotten less and less capable over time.

FootballMuse 9mo ago

> A one-time purchase will still be available, but access to some of the premium content is available only to Apple Creator Studio subscribers. If you already own Final Cut Pro, it will continue to be updated. Looks like some new "premium content" features will be only available to those with a subscription

felixding 9mo ago

The icons...so this is what the future looks like under Steve Lemay?!

ulfw 9mo ago

I am done with Apple. They've become a company only extracting money on the margins rather than innovating. Most products are stale, especially on the software side. Asking for yet another subscription is what makes the boiling kettle run over.

miguel-muniz 9mo ago

Multiple thoughts on this: 1.0 Creating a software bundle is the expected play by a company that keeps trying to grow their subscription revenue, but lots of creators are fed up paying an arm and a leg for software they'll never own that they need to do their job. Canva turned a lot of heads and got new people into Affinity just by making it free, I would have liked to see Apple lead with the same pitch rather than make just another bundle. 2.0 I feel like this is a u-turn on what made buying Apple hardware so great. You paid a pretty penny for the hardware but you would get high quality software with more care and attention paid to it than their competitors. This has changed in recent years, with many of the iWork products languishing with only minor updates as the market has evolved towards simplified cloud-based tools. Although there's still free functionality and the subscription provides a more affordable way to get into their pro tools, I fear the free versions will become second-class. 2.1 The same has happened to their stance on advertising as well, with the App Store getting ads and Maps being next in line to get them too. Microsoft and Google are still much worse than Apple in this regard, but I thought they would hold out for much longer than cave to growing pressures to grow revenue. 3.0 I'm not a fan of putting generative AI as a selling point in a product called "creator studio". Many artists are against the usage for various reasons, and Apple has a long history of aligning themselves with creative individuals. Seems like a misunderstanding of what their audience would want. 4.0 No Garageband or iMovie feels like they've abandoned them. Which is a shame for tools that have started so many creator's careers. There's still a need for simplified tools for creators early in their careers or with simpler needs, something that CapCut has shown. 5.0 There's still gaps in their bundle. There's no software for UI design. I could see Apple acquiring Sketch, they would just need to reach feature parity with Figma. There's lots of organizations getting squeezed by Figma's enterprise contracts, and most product designers I know are already on Macs. There's also no drawing or animation software. I could see them acquiring the team behind Procreate and Procreate Dreams to fill it. That software already sells iPads, many artists have gotten their start with digital art with it. Another gap is publishing, although they could probably add functionality to Pages or buy Swift Publisher. 6.0 Who is this for? Every organization under the sun already pays for Office 365, and I've never known a designer who's used Pixelmator for their day to day work. Affinity felt like a much more compelling alternative to Adobe, and anyone with simple enough needs to use these tools is probably already using web-based tools on their Windows laptop. I suppose hobbyists, but I'm not sure if a subscription is compelling for them.

maomaomiumiu 9mo ago

This sounds really cool, but I honestly can’t imagine stopping using Adobe apps after so many years and switching to completely new tools. It feels like that would take a lot of time and effort to relearn everything.

bpavuk 9mo ago

Apple hit all the buzzwords from Apple Bingo Card in the very first paragraph announcing their $13/mo creative suite subscription: > Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators around the world. The apps included with Apple Creator Studio for video editing, music making, creative imaging, and visual productivity give modern creators the features and capabilities they need to experience the joy of editing and tailoring their content while realizing their artistic vision. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy. Count with me: 1. Groundbreaking 2. Powerful 3. Studio-grade 4. Power into the hands of everyone 5. Essential role of <INSERT APPLE PRODUCT(S)> 6. Exciting new 7. Familiar experiences 8. Empower 9. Privacy --- P.S. is HN frontend open-source? I'd like to submit a fix for Markdown list rendering