Apple’s apps cover image, video, and audio, and can be paid for monthly or yearly. Or you can just skip the middleman and buy them outright, too.
Creative types have long needed specific apps to do their job. For a while, there was only one Photoshop and Illustrator, and then alternatives popped up.
It’s the same with video editing tools and sound editing tools, and for several years now, if you wanted to make art on your computer for fun or as part of your job, you’ve had other options beyond what Adobe made. Some of those cost money outright, but others don’t at all, and that can make for a more interesting and open marketplace for anyone looking for an app to rely on.
Take the world of Photoshop competitors: you can find offerings in Adobe’s editor of choice, but there has also been the free GIMP, the one-off purchase of Pixelmator, and the previous one-time purchases from Serif’s Affinity apps, which have now been made free by Australia’s Canva. We loved that last one so much, we gave Canva’s free edition of Affinity apps a Best Pick award for Best Surprise of 2025.
So there are clear options, and Adobe is even throwing its hand in with a collection of its own.
Set to launch at the end of January, Apple’s Creator Studio is an app collection of Apple-made (and owned) pieces of software made for Mac and iPad.
Specifically covering creative endeavours, the collection includes some favourites that have stuck around for a while, including the Final Cut Pro collection and Logic for Mac, plus their respective iPad versions, though it also includes more.
Apple’s acquisition of Pixelmator Pro from 2024 is now included, and interestingly, so are free office apps for Apple: Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. That trio will still be free technically, but the Creator Studio bundle will include beta features and premium content for paid subscribers, rather than everyone with a Mac, which is the way it has been for some time.
Elsewhere in the bundle includes the extra apps you can find for Mac’s Final Cut Pro and Logic, including Motion and Compressor for the former, while MainStage can be found for the latter.
The combination essentially brings hundreds of dollars of apps together for the Mac with their respective iPad counterparts for a $20 monthly cost or a $199 per year cost.
However, it’s also one with a bit of a catch.
You can still buy the apps outright
Apple will still sell Logic and FCP and Pixelmator Pro, and all of the other apps in its Creator Studio collection individually, allowing you to keep to a one-time purchase.
Those once-off purchases are still available and will still get updates over time. That’s a win.
But the updates may not be the same
And yet, not every app will get equal treatment when it comes to the type of updates they receive.
For instance, while there are updates for both, including new sound libraries and a synth session player in Logic plus transcription and visual clip searching in Final Cut Pro, some app updates may end up being specific to Apple Creator Studio subscribers.
Take the updates for the normally free apps of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. They’ll remain free, but generative features creating a presentation from an outline in Pages or using pattern recognition in Numbers will be a subscriber feature, and Pixelmator Pro is the same, with a warp tool for twisting layers that will only be there for Apple Creator Studio subscribers.
An extra cost
There’s also the matter of the cost, which isn’t that significant, but could end up being slightly cheaper for some people.
While a $199 yearly cost is quite inexpensive compared to Adobe’s cost which will easily hit that closer to the second or third month of subscription, Apple hasn’t confirmed whether owners of its current apps will get the cost of the subscription pro rata.
Specifically, if you already own Final Cut Pro, Logic, or even Pixelmator Pro, whether the cost of a subscription would be reduced because you already own said apps.
It’s unlikely Apple would do this, and at the time of publication, Apple hadn’t responded to requests about pro rata purchases. However given that some services do offer discounts for previous purchases, it’s an entirely fair question.
Our guess is that owning any of these apps previously won’t lower the cost of Apple’s collection, and that the inclusion of the iPad apps will likely account for the extra cost.
But the shift back to a subscription cost is still one that can feel a little off kilter, especially when Apple’s media creation apps have long been argued as a “buy it once” kind of deal, and important because of it.
This is definitely a change for Apple, though one that could be beneficial for students more than anyone else, with a student price of $4.99 per month or $49 per year, an incredible price reduction for anyone in university, and one that seriously undercuts Adobe in a big way.
Apple’s Creator Studio is available from January 29 for iPad and Mac with a one month free trial, and is included as part of family sharing, providing access for up to six family members.
