alt Hacker NewsApple Creator Studio
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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-...
[2]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixelmator-pro/id1289583905
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.
> 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?
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.
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?
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) |
> 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?
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.
I am still waiting for "XCode for iPadOS", where we can have a Smalltalk like approach to development, beyond what Swift Playgrounds allows for.
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..
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.
Cool, just don't send me your project files in email attachments.
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-...
Wow, RIP the icons I guess :/
When was the last time Apple made some significant update to its professional desktop apps?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
apple can pry my one-time final cut pro purchase from my cold, dead hands.
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…
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?
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.
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
That Synth Player and Chord ID seem to be killer features on Logic Pro. Are they recent additions? Do they work well?
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.
Innovation!
More seriously, the subscription probably comes out cheaper than buying several (even if not all) of the apps that come in the bundle.
Are they planning to discontinue Garage band?
In case anyone is familiar with our app [Jumper](https://getjumper.io), we built this exact search functionality, which comes with a Final Cut Pro plugin (aka Workflow Extension). Sharing my thoughts on this announcements with respect to how it affects Jumper, in case anyone cares
While this news is obviously not something to cheer about for us, it's not the first time - Adobe launched their Media Intelligence solution back in last year. While that is great for some, we still have a lot of customers on Premiere for a few reasons:
* Most accurate video search models out there. So far I've tested every other solution I could find with the same footage doing the same searches. The most accurate models in Jumper has always been more accurate, often dramatically better.
* Face detection and person search. In Jumper you can also find all the unique people in your footage, give them names, enabling searches like "John eating a sandwich". The ability to extremely accurately distinguish different people is crucial in many scenarios (e.g. editing reality TV). Trying to find specific people by describing their appearance will be way less accurate and unreliable.
* Integrations and interoperability: when you install Jumper you get a standalone app for macOS and Windows and fully integrated plugins/extensions for FCP, Avid, Premiere, and Resolve. The analysis data that is created and lets you search with Jumper can be shared across computers and NLEs. Meaning you could have one fast computer do the analysis continually / overnight, and use a shared location like a network drive to access the analysis from every editor machine, where in theory you could have every editor use Jumper in a different NLE and operating system, and searching just works.
* Searching using a frame or an image as input is something I'm not sure is possible in this new feature from Apple? In Jumper you search using the current frame from your source footage or timeline (or any image/screenshot), to find similar shots. We have customers using image-to-image search functionality to do conforming work. They tell us it is incredibly effective and time saving for this use-case.
And a final point is that we support older versions of the NLEs. This is not as big of a "selling point" for FCP I think, but it's very common that companies are on older versions of Avid and/or Premiere.
If anyone wants to try Jumper, it's free to download and try at [https://getjumper.io](https://getjumper.io) To get the more accurate search performance, you can go into the settings tab and change the visual search model to "Most Accurate"
I'm very curious how we will compare against Apple's solution, and we'll be testing once we have the chance. If anyone beats us to it, please come by our [Discord](https://discord.gg/3JFNYAfwSb) and tell us about it!
Pages and Numbers are trash. Keynote is good.
I would be surprised, but not shocked, if people working at Apple prefer Numbers of Excel or even Google Sheets.
Does anyone use these apps?
That’s a great deal
I'm keeping an eye on Graphite (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.
That's great if you need everything. If you need one of them, not so much.
> "come together in a single SUBSCRIPTION"
Ummm ... no, thank you.
Pixelmator Pro is fantastic. I've forgotten about Photoshop for many years. Just buy it.
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?
Another subscription slop?
lol, what a money grab.
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Alternative title: "Apple slaps subscription model on existing apps"
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.
Fuck subscription software.
Is this replacing the one-time purchase of these apps on macOS?
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