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The most important benefits in my opinion are choice and price - people like me who prefer to buy software outright can still do so at a reasonable cost, while

The most important benefits in my opinion are choice and price - people like me who prefer to buy software outright can still do so at a reasonable cost, while others who opt for a subscription can also do so (again, at a reasonable cost).

embedding-shape 9mo ago
It's pretty clever that they keep the "pay one time" option still alive while announcing the availability of subscription, so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" instead of leaving those critics without answers. Of course, they'll eventually remove the option to buy the software by paying once, I think everyone can see the writing on the wall, but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :)
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  Office 365 - the subscription version of Office - was released in 2011. Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. There is precedent for Bigcorp keeping a one time purchase version and offer a prescription.
  - Plasmoid2000ad 9mo ago
    Yes - but perpetual purchases have an interesting gotcha that Microsoft didn't realise at first. To encourage subscription over perpetual, ongoing or evergreen updates are limited to subscription version. Office 2024 has every feature that was added since Office 2021 to the subscription version - while a chunk of loyal customers are unaware of them. Back when Google was competing hard with Google Suite, a big perception problem formed with the perpetual customers believing and convincing others that Google were far ahead, with collab editing and other features - after Office had added equivalent. So for me, If there's a subscription and one-time option - I wonder if the one-time gets all updates going forward. If it doesn't, I realise that they'll regret that if competition picks up, and try to fix it later. If it does include updates... I worry it will be like many other lifetime updates one-time purchases - when competition is low they'll renege on that promise.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      So far from what I can tell, Final Cut Pro has gotten perpetual updates. Since you can only buy it via the Mac App Store, ther can’t do upgrade pricing.
      - chrisandchris 9mo ago
        They could - and some of the 3rd party vendors did: There is a 1Password 7 and a 1Password 8. There was also a Things 1/2, which is now a Things 3. it usually works by creating a new app, and not updating the old one anymore.
    - BeetleB 9mo ago
      > To encourage subscription over perpetual, ongoing or evergreen updates are limited to subscription version. Of course ... ? Before the subscription model, you wouldn't get free Office upgrades.
      - albedoa 9mo ago
        Yes. That sentence is setup for the speculation in the third paragraph. Folks in this sub-thread are wondering how the one-time price option plays out with Apple Creator Studio.
        dwaite 9mo ago
        If you look at Office 365, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint and Exchange Online as well as AI services and coauthoring are not included in the one time purchase price, as these require ongoing infrastructure supplied by Microsoft. If you look at Adobe Creative Cloud, you see cloud storage and cloud libraries for maintaining files and assets and sharing them for collaboration, Behance, asset licensing such as Adobe Fonts, and generative AI tooling, as well as a pile of additional apps which were never sold separately. There's also tutorials to help you learn that smattering of apps and plugins. Apple Creator Studio is a service, so there will likely be at least some product development going to create exclusive functionality - likely in the form of new apps which cannot be bought separately, content packs, AI integrations, additional collaboration features relying on hosted infrastructure, and so on. Since a lot of the storage features and base collaboration are instead part of the iCloud infrastructure, that last point may be a tricky line to walk though.
  - PinguTS 9mo ago
    Actually, you can buy only the 2024 version of MS Office for Mac, while the subscription is more up to date. You cannot buy a packaged 2025 version.
    - einr 9mo ago
      Because there is no such product as Office 2025, much like there was no Windows 96. There is Office 2004, 2008, 2011, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2024. They usually release roughly every three years so there might be an Office 2027. 365 is a separate (but closely related) product.
  - nialse 9mo ago
    The one-time purchase version of Microsoft Office is not available worldwide. Where offered, it is reduced to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, with Outlook as a Business edition extra. Individual apps can sometimes be bought separately, but pricing usually makes this impractical. This is to push buyers to Microsoft 365 subscriptions which is the primary product.
    - Obscurity4340 9mo ago
      What else is there/have they thats not?
  - addandsubtract 9mo ago
    *Microsoft 365 Copilot
    - systemtest 9mo ago
      Please note that you need Microsoft 365 Copilot Live Essentials for Business Premium if you want InsightDeck (formally PowerPoint) included.
      - patapong 9mo ago
        I had to google this to see if it was satire... What have we come to
    - LegitShady 9mo ago
      Microsoft is renaming the company to copilot, all of its software to copilot, and CEO satya nadella is changing his name to copilot copilot copilot which is also his favourite feature, software, operating system, and the names of his dog, cat, children, and spouse. Soon the company formerly known as Microsoft will turn into a garbage slop Pokémon capable of emoting only with its name, copilot.
      - dwaite 9mo ago
        If AGI ever does happen, we'll know the chatbots are coming for our jobs when the product is renamed Microsoft Pilot.
  - benterix 9mo ago
    > Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. he writing is on the wall, they will remove it sooner or later.
    - 0x457 9mo ago
      It's been available for something like 15 years since subscription purchase was introduced. Why so negative?
- fooqux 9mo ago
  > but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :) They're doing it because it makes them more money. Corporations are not your friend.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    Yes, of course, ultimately every choice they ever do is for money, because they're a for-profit company. But maybe we can be slightly more granular about exactly how that choice makes them more money, which is because it gives them good PR. I was just being more specific, but we're saying the same thing :)
    - fooqux 9mo ago
      Fair enough. I was just trying to point out / remind everyone that they're not doing it out of benevolence. Your post just read a bit like that to me. Obviously you're right that PR ultimately translates into money.
  - stanmancan 9mo ago
    Parent isn’t insinuating otherwise. They’re saying the subscription model is more lucrative, so eventually they’ll remove the one time payment option, but keeping it as an option for the announcement keeps the bad PR at bay.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago
    "PR purposes" IS doing it for money
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  > It's pretty clever that they keep the "pay one time" option still alive while announcing the availability of subscription, so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" Probably not. Those customers are almost completely irrelevant and not people who Apple or anybody else cares about. They won't mind if you kick and scream.
- SunshineTheCat 9mo ago
  Yea I've already purchased some of these apps so I was not going to thrilled if they pulled an Adobe and made me pay for an overpriced subscription on top of it >:(
  - james-bcn 9mo ago
    > overpriced Seriously? This is incredibly reasonable.
    - pantulis 9mo ago
      It's not outrageous, for sure, specially if you happen to have a use case for all the bundled apps. But things change if you consider that the one time payment for Logic Pro equals about 18 months of the subscription. In my case, I bought Logic Pro in 2013 for 180€. Obviously a subscription seems expensive no matter what the price is.
      - dylan604 9mo ago
        So you bought Logic Pro vX for 180€. Did you receive Logic Pro vX++ for free?
        wrs 9mo ago
        Yes, Logic updates have been free for many years. FCP as well.
        pantulis 9mo ago
        Well what I didn't receive for free is the 3 macs that have been running the same licensed product ;)
        wrs 9mo ago
        Indeed, and considering the 14 years of free Logic upgrades I'm surprised they bothered charging the initial $199! (I do remember being a bit miffed that it was $199 regardless of my existing license for the giant $999 box that was Logic Studio.)
- smugma 9mo ago
  Many years ago Apple reduced their pricing on many of these apps. They also made their OS updates free. Apple wants its customers to buy/subscribe to these tools so that you’re in the Apple ecosystem and buy more hardware and services. Unlike Adobe, they have profit-maximizing incentives to let you stay on the buy/rent model that you prefer.
- whycome 9mo ago
  Why do you think they will remove the option to buy the software? They’ve kept the model for years. They’re targeting different audiences with the move.
- philipallstar 9mo ago
  > so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" instead of leaving those critics without answers This is like saying that it's clever for Mars to keep Mars Bars while launching a new bar, as it "shuts down" complaints that Mars Bars will no longer exist.
  - hnlmorg 9mo ago
    I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to get at but your analogy doesn’t really work here because a new chocolate bar would be a new product. Not a different way of buying the same product.
    - philipallstar 9mo ago
      Adding a new option but keeping the old one is not some strategy to counter people criticising them removing the old option.
      - embedding-shape 9mo ago
        Every choice a company does is a strategy in some way, for some reason, which has been calculated to make them more money than another choice. This is how 99% of businesses work, and Apple as well. You have any email I could reach out to you on once Apple finally removes the purchase ability for this, and only lets people subscribe?
        philipallstar 9mo ago
        > You have any email I could reach out to you on once Apple finally removes the purchase ability for this, and only lets people subscribe? If they do this, then still no one will ever have to say something as silly as "they only kept the other option so people won't complain about them removing the other option".
  - hexasquid 9mo ago
    They're running a conspiracy to trick people into not shutting them down by offering two ways to pay, the devious foxes.
- alwillis 9mo ago
  > Of course, they'll eventually remove the option to buy the software by paying once, I think everyone can see the writing on the wall There's no indication Apple is planning to end the option of paying once for these apps. Apple introduced subscriptions for Final Cut and Logic nearly three years ago [1]; this isn't new by any means. Pages, Numbers and Keynote remain available at no cost. [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cut-pro-and-logic-pro-to-ipad/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cu...
  - Razengan 9mo ago
    [flagged]
- groundzeros2015 9mo ago
  You are complaining about a problem that hasn’t happened yet and there is no inherent reason it will happen.
- handsclean 9mo ago
  The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need. I want exactly one of these apps, I bet virtually nobody uses all of them, and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”.
  - smith7018 9mo ago
    > and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”. You're making up an individual to get mad at for no reason. > The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need There is no proof of this. So you're making up a situation to get mad at for no reason. > I want exactly one of these apps Perfect, Apple lets you buy the one app you want for a reasonable price! So what's the issue?
    - handsclean 9mo ago
      Of course predictions about the future are not present reality. It’s not set in stone, but it’s supported by the times this has happened before and by trends in Apple and in tech. “Nothing will ever change” is a prediction, too, and one much less supported by evidence.
- alwa 9mo ago
  Final Cut Pro X has been available for purchase (at the same price, IIRC) for well over a decade now. Pro feathers were ruffled at the time they leapt from FCP7 to FCPX: the $299 price point was something like 1/4 of the going rate for its predecessors, was Apple planning to abandon its pros for the consumer market? Well. Here we are almost 15 years later, and if you paid the one-time price back then, you're still getting free updates today (at least on desktop). And you can still buy in with 299 2025 dollars, rather than 299 2011 dollars. At the time, the common wisdom was that they'd go the same route as Adobe: you'd have to buy Final Cut X+1 in a couple years for another $299, and Final Cut X+2 a couple years after that... to their credit, that's not the way it's gone. So that way, I imagine, all the film folks have a little more money to chuck at their high-powered Mac hardware budgets in the next refresh cycle instead... An evergreen Final Cut Pro license costs almost as much as 1TB of SSD from those guys!
  - weinzierl 9mo ago
    That is true, but it is also true that FinalCut lost big time against DaVinci for all semi-professional users which are exactly FinalCut's main target group. I'd argue that it is very likely that Final Cut X+1 was Apple's plan. It just did not pan out and they were busy with other things. Now they made the first step correcting that (or cutting the losses, depending how you want to see it).
    - bredren 9mo ago
      I had thought a main problem for professional video editors w FC had to do with video editor UX philosophy. Something difficult to pivot away from. I’m hand waving there because I’m not a pro but my neighbor is and I don’t recall the details. But I’m curious how you see FC also lost in semi pro to Davinci specifically.
      - josephg 9mo ago
        Davinci Resolve is free. At least, for the non studio version. (There’s a few studio only features, but almost everything is available in the free version of resolve). And a lot of people want to learn resolve anyway for color grading. Why not just edit in resolve too? Resolve studio is also quite cheap, given you buy it once and own it forever. Including updates. I spent last week helping out at a short filmmaking course. The DP running it has used Final Cut for his entire career. But not a single student chose to edit their film using Final Cut. The class was split between resolve and premier pro. (Premier was chosen by a lot of people because it’s what they use at school, and they have a free licence to premier from their school while they’re studying.)
- dabinat 9mo ago
  There are features they are planning to make exclusive to the subscriptions. I don’t know if they’re planning to make the one-time purchase go away completely, but it seems like it’s going to be approached as the “lesser” option. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-exclusive-app-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...
- tshaddox 9mo ago
  Yes, shame on them for only making good decisions now, instead of in the future.
- wilg 9mo ago
  I think it's okay, or even better probably, if they move to subscription only. All Apple's paid apps have languished for years and if its actually a revenue stream for them maybe they'll actually make them industry-leading again.
- drdaeman 9mo ago
  Not Apple, but iMazing switched to subscription model and they simply lost me as a customer. JetBrains tried something similar a while ago too, and almost screwed it up - but managed to listen to their customers and nailed it with the perpetual fallback licensing. Making me not just pay the subscription but feel respect to the company. YMMV, of course.
- dopamean 9mo ago
  This is such a strange way to think about what was done. Rather than just being happy they kept the pay once option and saying that's good you're imagining critics who how Apple can "shut them down."
Someone1234 9mo ago
For *now. Adobe also started out as a choice between subscription or buying. The only thing maybe keeping Apple honest is that their stuff isn't as popular.
concinds 9mo ago
All companies should do this. Sometimes I want a one-time purchase. Sometimes I want to try the program for a few months and I prefer a cheap subscription over a big upfront cost. And very, very rarely, I'll prefer the subscription, even though it's more expensive over time, to support a cool indie studio with recurring revenue instead of one-time purchases that may dry up and lead to lack of interest from the devs.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  This is my argument for the Adobe subscription. One day, I'm a photographer needing apps like Photoshop and Lightroom and After Effects (because I do a lot of timelapse). One day, I'm a graphic designer, so I need Photoshop and Illustrator. One day, I'm an editor, so Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and After Effects. One day, I'm doing desktop publishing with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.
dylan604 9mo ago
So what about next year when all of the apps receive updates/upgrades? Will the paid-in-full versions receive the upgrade for free, or will they have upgrade prices? I remember the days of Adobe's annual version upgrades, and they were at least $99 per app. Using that as the basis, the Adobe subscription plan is not more expensive that just broken up into 12 payments. People that kept running v4 to avoid the upgrade prices eventually got left out as they could not open files provided to them from others using the most recent version. Let's not forget our history on the one-time purchase pros/cons
- wrs 9mo ago
  These apps have provided free updates after initial purchase for many years already. It would be big news if that stopped.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    That is definitely a break from the old Adobe model
    - pests 9mo ago
      You know this is a thread about Apple and not Adobe, right?
- larkost 9mo ago
  These are being sold on Apple's AppStore, and there the model is that you get all of the updates for that App. Of course there is the work-around that some apps use, which is to create a new App (i.e.: MyApp vs MyApp2), which Apple could do at some point in the future. The best one to watch at the moment is if Pixelmater Pro license holders from before it was bought by Apple get access to any of the new improvements.
iAMkenough 9mo ago
Except certain features in the software will be reserved for subscribers only.
NBJack 9mo ago
For now. Let's not forget MS Office had a period like that as well. I give it five years max.
schappim 9mo ago
This isn’t the whole story as one-time purchases will no longer have access to all new features without a subscription [1]. 1. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-exclusive-app-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...

embedding-shape 9mo ago

It's pretty clever that they keep the "pay one time" option still alive while announcing the availability of subscription, so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" instead of leaving those critics without answers. Of course, they'll eventually remove the option to buy the software by paying once, I think everyone can see the writing on the wall, but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :)

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Office 365 - the subscription version of Office - was released in 2011. Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. There is precedent for Bigcorp keeping a one time purchase version and offer a prescription.
- Plasmoid2000ad 9mo ago
  Yes - but perpetual purchases have an interesting gotcha that Microsoft didn't realise at first. To encourage subscription over perpetual, ongoing or evergreen updates are limited to subscription version. Office 2024 has every feature that was added since Office 2021 to the subscription version - while a chunk of loyal customers are unaware of them. Back when Google was competing hard with Google Suite, a big perception problem formed with the perpetual customers believing and convincing others that Google were far ahead, with collab editing and other features - after Office had added equivalent. So for me, If there's a subscription and one-time option - I wonder if the one-time gets all updates going forward. If it doesn't, I realise that they'll regret that if competition picks up, and try to fix it later. If it does include updates... I worry it will be like many other lifetime updates one-time purchases - when competition is low they'll renege on that promise.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    So far from what I can tell, Final Cut Pro has gotten perpetual updates. Since you can only buy it via the Mac App Store, ther can’t do upgrade pricing.
    - chrisandchris 9mo ago
      They could - and some of the 3rd party vendors did: There is a 1Password 7 and a 1Password 8. There was also a Things 1/2, which is now a Things 3. it usually works by creating a new app, and not updating the old one anymore.
  - BeetleB 9mo ago
    > To encourage subscription over perpetual, ongoing or evergreen updates are limited to subscription version. Of course ... ? Before the subscription model, you wouldn't get free Office upgrades.
    - albedoa 9mo ago
      Yes. That sentence is setup for the speculation in the third paragraph. Folks in this sub-thread are wondering how the one-time price option plays out with Apple Creator Studio.
      - dwaite 9mo ago
        If you look at Office 365, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint and Exchange Online as well as AI services and coauthoring are not included in the one time purchase price, as these require ongoing infrastructure supplied by Microsoft. If you look at Adobe Creative Cloud, you see cloud storage and cloud libraries for maintaining files and assets and sharing them for collaboration, Behance, asset licensing such as Adobe Fonts, and generative AI tooling, as well as a pile of additional apps which were never sold separately. There's also tutorials to help you learn that smattering of apps and plugins. Apple Creator Studio is a service, so there will likely be at least some product development going to create exclusive functionality - likely in the form of new apps which cannot be bought separately, content packs, AI integrations, additional collaboration features relying on hosted infrastructure, and so on. Since a lot of the storage features and base collaboration are instead part of the iCloud infrastructure, that last point may be a tricky line to walk though.
- PinguTS 9mo ago
  Actually, you can buy only the 2024 version of MS Office for Mac, while the subscription is more up to date. You cannot buy a packaged 2025 version.
  - einr 9mo ago
    Because there is no such product as Office 2025, much like there was no Windows 96. There is Office 2004, 2008, 2011, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2024. They usually release roughly every three years so there might be an Office 2027. 365 is a separate (but closely related) product.
- nialse 9mo ago
  The one-time purchase version of Microsoft Office is not available worldwide. Where offered, it is reduced to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, with Outlook as a Business edition extra. Individual apps can sometimes be bought separately, but pricing usually makes this impractical. This is to push buyers to Microsoft 365 subscriptions which is the primary product.
  - Obscurity4340 9mo ago
    What else is there/have they thats not?
- addandsubtract 9mo ago
  *Microsoft 365 Copilot
  - systemtest 9mo ago
    Please note that you need Microsoft 365 Copilot Live Essentials for Business Premium if you want InsightDeck (formally PowerPoint) included.
    - patapong 9mo ago
      I had to google this to see if it was satire... What have we come to
  - LegitShady 9mo ago
    Microsoft is renaming the company to copilot, all of its software to copilot, and CEO satya nadella is changing his name to copilot copilot copilot which is also his favourite feature, software, operating system, and the names of his dog, cat, children, and spouse. Soon the company formerly known as Microsoft will turn into a garbage slop Pokémon capable of emoting only with its name, copilot.
    - dwaite 9mo ago
      If AGI ever does happen, we'll know the chatbots are coming for our jobs when the product is renamed Microsoft Pilot.
- benterix 9mo ago
  > Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. he writing is on the wall, they will remove it sooner or later.
  - 0x457 9mo ago
    It's been available for something like 15 years since subscription purchase was introduced. Why so negative?
fooqux 9mo ago
> but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :) They're doing it because it makes them more money. Corporations are not your friend.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Yes, of course, ultimately every choice they ever do is for money, because they're a for-profit company. But maybe we can be slightly more granular about exactly how that choice makes them more money, which is because it gives them good PR. I was just being more specific, but we're saying the same thing :)
  - fooqux 9mo ago
    Fair enough. I was just trying to point out / remind everyone that they're not doing it out of benevolence. Your post just read a bit like that to me. Obviously you're right that PR ultimately translates into money.
- stanmancan 9mo ago
  Parent isn’t insinuating otherwise. They’re saying the subscription model is more lucrative, so eventually they’ll remove the one time payment option, but keeping it as an option for the announcement keeps the bad PR at bay.
- virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago
  "PR purposes" IS doing it for money
carlosjobim 9mo ago
> It's pretty clever that they keep the "pay one time" option still alive while announcing the availability of subscription, so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" Probably not. Those customers are almost completely irrelevant and not people who Apple or anybody else cares about. They won't mind if you kick and scream.
SunshineTheCat 9mo ago
Yea I've already purchased some of these apps so I was not going to thrilled if they pulled an Adobe and made me pay for an overpriced subscription on top of it >:(
- james-bcn 9mo ago
  > overpriced Seriously? This is incredibly reasonable.
  - pantulis 9mo ago
    It's not outrageous, for sure, specially if you happen to have a use case for all the bundled apps. But things change if you consider that the one time payment for Logic Pro equals about 18 months of the subscription. In my case, I bought Logic Pro in 2013 for 180€. Obviously a subscription seems expensive no matter what the price is.
    - dylan604 9mo ago
      So you bought Logic Pro vX for 180€. Did you receive Logic Pro vX++ for free?
      - wrs 9mo ago
        Yes, Logic updates have been free for many years. FCP as well.
        pantulis 9mo ago
        Well what I didn't receive for free is the 3 macs that have been running the same licensed product ;)
        wrs 9mo ago
        Indeed, and considering the 14 years of free Logic upgrades I'm surprised they bothered charging the initial $199! (I do remember being a bit miffed that it was $199 regardless of my existing license for the giant $999 box that was Logic Studio.)
smugma 9mo ago
Many years ago Apple reduced their pricing on many of these apps. They also made their OS updates free. Apple wants its customers to buy/subscribe to these tools so that you’re in the Apple ecosystem and buy more hardware and services. Unlike Adobe, they have profit-maximizing incentives to let you stay on the buy/rent model that you prefer.
whycome 9mo ago
Why do you think they will remove the option to buy the software? They’ve kept the model for years. They’re targeting different audiences with the move.
philipallstar 9mo ago
> so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" instead of leaving those critics without answers This is like saying that it's clever for Mars to keep Mars Bars while launching a new bar, as it "shuts down" complaints that Mars Bars will no longer exist.
- hnlmorg 9mo ago
  I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to get at but your analogy doesn’t really work here because a new chocolate bar would be a new product. Not a different way of buying the same product.
  - philipallstar 9mo ago
    Adding a new option but keeping the old one is not some strategy to counter people criticising them removing the old option.
    - embedding-shape 9mo ago
      Every choice a company does is a strategy in some way, for some reason, which has been calculated to make them more money than another choice. This is how 99% of businesses work, and Apple as well. You have any email I could reach out to you on once Apple finally removes the purchase ability for this, and only lets people subscribe?
      - philipallstar 9mo ago
        > You have any email I could reach out to you on once Apple finally removes the purchase ability for this, and only lets people subscribe? If they do this, then still no one will ever have to say something as silly as "they only kept the other option so people won't complain about them removing the other option".
- hexasquid 9mo ago
  They're running a conspiracy to trick people into not shutting them down by offering two ways to pay, the devious foxes.
alwillis 9mo ago
> Of course, they'll eventually remove the option to buy the software by paying once, I think everyone can see the writing on the wall There's no indication Apple is planning to end the option of paying once for these apps. Apple introduced subscriptions for Final Cut and Logic nearly three years ago [1]; this isn't new by any means. Pages, Numbers and Keynote remain available at no cost. [1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cut-pro-and-logic-pro-to-ipad/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cu...
- Razengan 9mo ago
  [flagged]
groundzeros2015 9mo ago
You are complaining about a problem that hasn’t happened yet and there is no inherent reason it will happen.
handsclean 9mo ago
The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need. I want exactly one of these apps, I bet virtually nobody uses all of them, and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”.
- smith7018 9mo ago
  > and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”. You're making up an individual to get mad at for no reason. > The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need There is no proof of this. So you're making up a situation to get mad at for no reason. > I want exactly one of these apps Perfect, Apple lets you buy the one app you want for a reasonable price! So what's the issue?
  - handsclean 9mo ago
    Of course predictions about the future are not present reality. It’s not set in stone, but it’s supported by the times this has happened before and by trends in Apple and in tech. “Nothing will ever change” is a prediction, too, and one much less supported by evidence.
alwa 9mo ago
Final Cut Pro X has been available for purchase (at the same price, IIRC) for well over a decade now. Pro feathers were ruffled at the time they leapt from FCP7 to FCPX: the $299 price point was something like 1/4 of the going rate for its predecessors, was Apple planning to abandon its pros for the consumer market? Well. Here we are almost 15 years later, and if you paid the one-time price back then, you're still getting free updates today (at least on desktop). And you can still buy in with 299 2025 dollars, rather than 299 2011 dollars. At the time, the common wisdom was that they'd go the same route as Adobe: you'd have to buy Final Cut X+1 in a couple years for another $299, and Final Cut X+2 a couple years after that... to their credit, that's not the way it's gone. So that way, I imagine, all the film folks have a little more money to chuck at their high-powered Mac hardware budgets in the next refresh cycle instead... An evergreen Final Cut Pro license costs almost as much as 1TB of SSD from those guys!
- weinzierl 9mo ago
  That is true, but it is also true that FinalCut lost big time against DaVinci for all semi-professional users which are exactly FinalCut's main target group. I'd argue that it is very likely that Final Cut X+1 was Apple's plan. It just did not pan out and they were busy with other things. Now they made the first step correcting that (or cutting the losses, depending how you want to see it).
  - bredren 9mo ago
    I had thought a main problem for professional video editors w FC had to do with video editor UX philosophy. Something difficult to pivot away from. I’m hand waving there because I’m not a pro but my neighbor is and I don’t recall the details. But I’m curious how you see FC also lost in semi pro to Davinci specifically.
    - josephg 9mo ago
      Davinci Resolve is free. At least, for the non studio version. (There’s a few studio only features, but almost everything is available in the free version of resolve). And a lot of people want to learn resolve anyway for color grading. Why not just edit in resolve too? Resolve studio is also quite cheap, given you buy it once and own it forever. Including updates. I spent last week helping out at a short filmmaking course. The DP running it has used Final Cut for his entire career. But not a single student chose to edit their film using Final Cut. The class was split between resolve and premier pro. (Premier was chosen by a lot of people because it’s what they use at school, and they have a free licence to premier from their school while they’re studying.)
dabinat 9mo ago
There are features they are planning to make exclusive to the subscriptions. I don’t know if they’re planning to make the one-time purchase go away completely, but it seems like it’s going to be approached as the “lesser” option. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-exclusive-app-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...
tshaddox 9mo ago
Yes, shame on them for only making good decisions now, instead of in the future.
wilg 9mo ago
I think it's okay, or even better probably, if they move to subscription only. All Apple's paid apps have languished for years and if its actually a revenue stream for them maybe they'll actually make them industry-leading again.
drdaeman 9mo ago
Not Apple, but iMazing switched to subscription model and they simply lost me as a customer. JetBrains tried something similar a while ago too, and almost screwed it up - but managed to listen to their customers and nailed it with the perpetual fallback licensing. Making me not just pay the subscription but feel respect to the company. YMMV, of course.
dopamean 9mo ago
This is such a strange way to think about what was done. Rather than just being happy they kept the pay once option and saying that's good you're imagining critics who how Apple can "shut them down."

Someone1234 9mo ago

For *now. Adobe also started out as a choice between subscription or buying. The only thing maybe keeping Apple honest is that their stuff isn't as popular.

concinds 9mo ago

All companies should do this. Sometimes I want a one-time purchase. Sometimes I want to try the program for a few months and I prefer a cheap subscription over a big upfront cost. And very, very rarely, I'll prefer the subscription, even though it's more expensive over time, to support a cool indie studio with recurring revenue instead of one-time purchases that may dry up and lead to lack of interest from the devs.

dylan604 9mo ago
This is my argument for the Adobe subscription. One day, I'm a photographer needing apps like Photoshop and Lightroom and After Effects (because I do a lot of timelapse). One day, I'm a graphic designer, so I need Photoshop and Illustrator. One day, I'm an editor, so Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and After Effects. One day, I'm doing desktop publishing with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.

dylan604 9mo ago

So what about next year when all of the apps receive updates/upgrades? Will the paid-in-full versions receive the upgrade for free, or will they have upgrade prices? I remember the days of Adobe's annual version upgrades, and they were at least $99 per app. Using that as the basis, the Adobe subscription plan is not more expensive that just broken up into 12 payments. People that kept running v4 to avoid the upgrade prices eventually got left out as they could not open files provided to them from others using the most recent version. Let's not forget our history on the one-time purchase pros/cons

wrs 9mo ago
These apps have provided free updates after initial purchase for many years already. It would be big news if that stopped.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  That is definitely a break from the old Adobe model
  - pests 9mo ago
    You know this is a thread about Apple and not Adobe, right?
larkost 9mo ago
These are being sold on Apple's AppStore, and there the model is that you get all of the updates for that App. Of course there is the work-around that some apps use, which is to create a new App (i.e.: MyApp vs MyApp2), which Apple could do at some point in the future. The best one to watch at the moment is if Pixelmater Pro license holders from before it was bought by Apple get access to any of the new improvements.

iAMkenough 9mo ago

Except certain features in the software will be reserved for subscribers only.

NBJack 9mo ago

For now. Let's not forget MS Office had a period like that as well. I give it five years max.

schappim 9mo ago

This isn’t the whole story as one-time purchases will no longer have access to all new features without a subscription [1]. 1. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-exclusive-app-features/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...