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

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

I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.

Are the Apple people really this oblivious, or is someone in PR trolling us?

Lightroom never matched Aperture's organizational abilities for libraries with tens of thousands of RAW photos.

They look AWEFUL.

So Apple is copying Adobe's business model?

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..

Why though isn’t such a significant announcement on the Apple.com homepage?

    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)  |

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

If not, then this would likely go the way of others before where it will eventually be removed.

Looks like some new "premium content" features will be only available to those with a subscription

Photos isn't even close to the genuine Lightroom competitor that Aperture was

So, if you are a student, you can get logic, final cut, motion, compressor and mainStage for $199.99 for ever.

(For what it's worth, the iWorks apps – Pages/Keynote/Numbers are free and bundled with macOS.)

https://i.imgflip.com/2siu6l.jpg

I hope I can still use the non subscription version of Pixelmator pro I bought

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

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

> [...] to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy.

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.

Ummm ... no, thank you.

EDIT: I know you can still buy the software... but for how long?

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.