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!

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).

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.

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.)

- The studio version of DaVinci is still affordable should you need it.

- DaVinci has many good tutorials

Now BMD have "prosumer" cameras available too that doesn't cost half a liver, which the second-hand market seems flush with too, so you can grab really good hardware for "cheap", and get excellent software with it too as the license is movable across hosts :)

It's an optional way of editing separate from the 'edit' tab.

And that's despite Apple having zero interest in doing things that don't ultimately make them money.

I have a theory for how sales of these one-time-purchase yet indefinitely-updated apps happens to work out positively on Apple's balance sheet, while it doesn't for most other large players right now.

And that's that, due to Apple's vertical integration (they make the hardware, they make the OS that runs on the hardware, they make the apps that run on the OS) — and due to these apps only targeting their own OSes+hardware, with no consideration of portability to other platforms — a lot (like 90+%) of the "enablement" work for these apps ends up time-budgeted as OS work, rather than apps work.

Or, I guess, to be more charitable, you could say that Apple's engineers develop first-party apps not just to sell them, but at least in part to drive the development of the OS as a developer platform. You could even describe the OS frameworks as the product, and the apps themselves as the byproduct. (In that lens, the only reason FCP would cost anything at all is to avoid accusations of anti-competitive behavior.)

Now that the iPhone made Apple much more of mainstream company, it's harder to do -- what does it mean to focus on cultural leaders when 90% of American teens have an iPhone? But in the 15 years since Steve Jobs' death they have still been doing a decent job of it.

The company

It also frames the cost of the software differently, as part of a much larger purchase and as enabling other uses for the new machine. I suspect this is a fairly large sales channel for the software.

That makes me wonder how this new suite strategy (as well as other subscription efforts like AppleCare One) play into the purchase experience going forward.

Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. There is precedent for Bigcorp keeping a one time purchase version and offer a prescription.

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.

Of course ... ? Before the subscription model, you wouldn't get free Office upgrades.

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.

- the System 7 transition

- the 040 Macs and to get a “32 bit clean version”

- to get the full speed of running natively on PPC Macs

- to get a native OS X version instead of one that ran in the OS 9 sandbox

- the Intel transition to get native performance.

I would much rather pay $150 (?) a year for a five user license where each user gets 1TB of storage and each user can use Office across Macs, Windows, iPhones and iPads.

It’s the same price as Dropbox’s 2TB plan and all you get for that is storage.

On a related note: Steve Jobs was right - Dropbox is a feature not a product.

Soon the company formerly known as Microsoft will turn into a garbage slop Pokémon capable of emoting only with its name, copilot.

he writing is on the wall, they will remove it sooner or later.

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?

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.

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.

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-cu...

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.

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".

Seriously? This is incredibly reasonable.

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.

They're doing it because it makes them more money. Corporations are not your friend.

Obviously you're right that PR ultimately translates into money.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...

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.

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.

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.

1. https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...

There are many discussions e.g. https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1433515-why-does... about the reasons for its popularity, but one stands out to me - its event data model.

There are far too many tools out there (from FL Studio on one end, to MuseScore on the other) that present piano-roll-based rapid prototyping and traditional western score notation as diametric opposites. From day 1, Logic challenged itself "what if we can use the same event-based data model to render both."

None of this complexity is hidden - you can edit the raw event stream directly. If you're a developer familiar with, say, React, it makes music creation quite intuitive - everything from visual to audio output is a function of a transparently formatted data store.

And while that has its challenges, and some of the UX innovations of e.g. MuseScore have been slower to arrive in Logic, because of this "dual life" it's unmatched as a pedogogical tool, and a professional creative tool as well.

Are you saying other sequencers are unable to render the same data as piano roll and score?

And on the notation-oriented side, you have things like MuseScore, Finale, etc. where there is an event model, but the UI itself doesn't have mature (or any) support for tracking mixer/knob automation (outside of what can be derived automatically from dynamic symbols).

Years ago, I used Logic in a musical theater context where I could build a constantly-updated demo for pitching/rehearsals/live-iteration and edit the final orchestration to be printed for the pit orchestra, both from the same living document. Could I have duplicated my changes in a DAW and notation software separately, and kept them in sync manually? Absolutely, and many creators do. But there's something special about having that holy grail at your fingertips.

Cubase, surely? I'm pretty sure it has done this for decades unless I am misunderstanding what you're saying.

https://blog.dorico.com/2024/11/cubase-14-score-editor/

I'm still a Logic Pro fan, but credit where credit's due!

Considering them as alternate views of the same data model gets problematic when the composer uses the full bag of tricks that score notation allows (notably repeats, but also the problem of representing tuplets correctly when a pianoroll can offer no clues about how to structure them). So for example, the user can create a set of notes in the pianoroll that will never be played correctly by anyone reading the score; the user can create dynamics in the score that cannot be correctly presented in the pianoroll version.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to do an MVC-style system with two different views of the same data model - it clearly is. It's just moving between the two views is not lossless, and moving between the two controllers (i.e. editing) is not equivalent.

The real competition in this market in 2026 is Canva.

I see the rise of and have to deal with Canva-generated PDFs instead of Adobe Illustrator. So the low end market of video / animation, I could absolutely see Canva dominating. Doubt we'll see audio tools though.

Final Cut Pro -- Professional non-linear video editing * Canva? Partial: Best for social clips; lacks FCP’s RAW, multicam, and AI transcript tools.

Logic Pro -- Professional music production and MIDI sequencing * Canva? No: No DAW capabilities, plugin hosting, or live mixing.

Pixelmator Pro -- Advanced image editing and graphic design * Canva? Partial: Good for templates; lacks Pixelmator’s precision layers and AI retouching.

Motion -- 2D/3D motion graphics and cinematic effects * Canva? No: Canva uses presets; Motion offers granular keyframing and VFX creation.

Compressor -- Advanced media encoding and batch exporting * Canva? No: No control over specific codecs, bitrates, or pro output formats.

MainStage -- Live performance audio rig for stage use * Canva? No: No live audio processing or MIDI instrument hosting.

Keynote -- Cinematic presentations and slide decks * Canva? Yes: Canva’s primary competitor for collaborative, template-based slides.

Pages -- Word processing and page layout * Canva? Yes: Canva Docs is a direct alternative for visual/marketing documents.

Numbers -- Spreadsheets and data visualization * Canva? Yes: Canva Sheets handles basic data viz, though lacks Numbers' complex formulas.

Apple can't take the market from professionals; they need the easel they learned at school. But they can definitely compete with Canva, whose market are untrained artists who need something done easily.

Ah, yes - cross finance your loses by selling compute in your own data centres / hosting service because you can.

Also so many people are paying for Canva, Capcut etc that taking a piece of that cake is quite a low hanging fruit if you have a distribution platform.

It’s even a similar pricing model, though technically with Pages / Numbers / Keynote covers a little more ground but I think the main intent is to get creatives using Apple’s creative software again

Pixelmator being the only 3rd party software because Apple never made a competitor to Photoshop

Though since Canva went full on toward more robust tools I imagine they have started capturing the entire editing chain more than they did 2-3 years ago, hence the Affinity acquisition

Pixelmator isn’t third party. https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2024/11/01/a-new-home-for-pi...:

“November 1, 2024

A new home for Pixelmator

Today we have some important news to share: the Pixelmator Team plans to join Apple”

That deal completed almost a year ago.

"software and services" really should be broken out from the App Store cut.

Anyway, this isn’t really a meaningful quibble argument-wise, it is obvious what you mean!

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.

Best framing I’ve seen of the answer to, “Why is Apple in the streaming service business?”

As someone who came up along side adobe, the only reason photoshop is as entrenched as it is is simply because of piracy. Ditto for premiere. It created the market that they then locked down with subscriptions.

I think you are going to see shops that are smaller, doing their own design stuff internally, increasingly moving away from adobe subscriptions.

Apple absolutely has data centres. Where do you think Apple TV, Apple Music, iCloud, Maps, etc compute happens?

Here's a press release straight from the horse's mouth about one in Denmark, in late 2020: https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/09/apple-expands-rene...

> Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers?

Not to my knowledge, but that's not saying much.

But that's the entire crux of their comment: undercut the competition, and make them pay for compute on Apple's data centers.

My comments weren’t related to whether apple has data centres or not (afaik they don’t and actually use google hardware).

My comments were related to a business model used by amazon to destroy local shops in our neighbourhoods: offer products at vastly reduced prices, making a loss but covering those losses by profiting on aws. Once there is no competition left, prices rise and shareholder profits are made.

Hence my conjecture that apple was doing the same and hence they were offering this product at undercut price. As was the OP was wondering about.

I was actually criticising the business model increasingly used by big tech. Which has the consequences that are neighbourhoods are emptied out and left with stores that act as amazon package pickup stores or stores where packages are returned to be sent back to amazon.

> plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers

good on them

I wonder why? Why not today but 28th of Jan?

Part of me thinks M5 MacBook Air and M5 Pro MacBook Pro will also be released on January 28th.

I could see a press release refresh on that day to M5 chips.

https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/14/apple-may-have-hinted-at-a-hi...

As someone who defended FCPX and used it professionally for years even when it was at its most hated (2011 or so), it’s been woefully supported the last few years and no one should be on it anymore. Resolve Studio outclasses it top to bottom for the same one-time cost and runs great on both MacOS and Windows. Linux it’s bumpy unfortunately but it does technically run lol

Best 200-300 EUR I spent some years ago, and still receives free updates, Blackmagic Design is a really nice company. And, not only does Resolve run great on macOS and Windows, they have Linux native builds that run even better than it does with the same hardware using Windows, which is REALLY nice.

It lacks some flashy social media features and modern conveniences for sure, but it's still a very good and widely used editor.

I used it professionally from 2011-2020 or so. Around 2020 the gaps in feature parity became wider and more apparent, it’s clearly not a priority anymore. Once I went to resolve I basically abandoned it. I use maybe every 6mo tops now for quick stuff for friends and family or to open an old project.

The one thing I will say is for speed cutting, it’s probably the best. And that’s no small thing! But that’s about it.

In the end, their creative software is just ok; it's probably best to not rely on it too much if you don't want to get stuck. After they canceled Aperture for no good reason and destroyed the iWork suite while taking forever to even manage feature parity, I'll never rely on or recommend Apple software.

We're all (mostly/some) software people here, you don't need to use terms established by the "anti-piracy" firms to make your point, no one is "stealing" anything here, even if they were getting it for free from TPB or whatever.

Seen it in media for decades at this point, which makes sense, most people can't tell up from down.

What's sad is hearing those things echoed here of all places, a community for hackers, and people are repeating the words of the MPAA.

oh come on I thought we had gotten past this crap

So now I'm getting an education too.

Even if I had to purchase an occasional update (assuming they were reasonably priced), I'd still be coming out ahead.

I hate "renting" software.

I could see using an iPad for automation, triggered by midi, but I use an Air for that (and even if I used an my Pro, I still have to use a USB C hub because for some reason Apple things 1 (or 2) USB ports is enough. Sigh.

As it is, it's barely better than GDocs but less convenient, and since people rarely need to print stuff, layout isn't that important.

If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign. If there is a lot of math, you'll need something like Latex (typist). If there are a lot of tables, you probably need something like Word to auto-update embeds from Excel. In general, Word will allow you to control features like footnotes/endnotes, tables of figures, etc, much better than Pages ever will.

If it's mostly literature, you can use something like Vellum (https://vellum.pub/)

I don't have a list of solutions ready, but maybe I should make one. This is a complex problem, and the safe answer is usually to just use Word.

The problem with Pages is that it is extremely mediocre at everything while still locking you down to Apple hardware.

The young, foolish version of myself was a rabid Apple fanboy and pushed people to use Pages (back in the day when the iWork suite was paid but cheaper). Then people came back to me with problems that could be solved in Word relatively easily, but I had no answer for with Pages.

After being tired of saying, "no you can't do that" or "that has to be done manually," I stopped advocating for Pages.

I don't do much document preparation nowadays, but I think the ideal solution would be a GUI to bridge between web publishing and paper publishing.

Guess it’s time to take some online self-paced courses at a university for no reason in particular …