The Pixelmator Team, behind Pixelmator Pro and Photomator:

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

We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance. And looking back, it’s crazy what a small group of dedicated people have been able to achieve over the years from all the way in Vilnius, Lithuania. Now, we’ll have the ability to reach an even wider audience and make an even bigger impact on the lives of creative people around the world.

Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.

First of all, I’m happy for the Pixelmator team. Some quick napkin math puts Pixelmator at worth around $25 million, and I’m sure that sum is life-changing for the small, independent crew who makes it. They should be proud of their work: Pixelmator Pro is one of my favorite Mac apps, and it’s essential to my work. I’ve completely ditched both Lightroom and Photoshop for Pixelmator Pro’s one-time-purchase, native Mac experience, and it has never let me down. Pixelmator Pro feels, looks, and is even priced as if Apple had made it itself. There’s a reason it won an Apple Design Award — it’s a flawless application that makes the Mac what it is. It’s no wonder why it attracted Apple’s attention.

As I read the news on social media earlier on Friday, another similar, amazing app came echoed through my mind: Dark Sky. Dark Sky was a beautiful, native, hyperlocal weather forecast app for iOS and Android, and it shared many iOS-native idioms, just like Pixelmator Pro. It was one of my favorite iOS apps and I recommended it to everyone for its incredibly accurate down-to-the-minute precipitation forecasts. Before AccuWeather and Foreca, Dark Sky was the only app with such good weather forecasts. It was the best iOS weather app ever made, and as such, attracted Apple’s attention in late March 2020. Here’s what Dark Sky wrote on March 31, 2020, the day it was acquired by Apple (via the Internet Archive, since the webpage now redirects to Apple’s own site):

There will be no changes to Dark Sky for iOS at this time. It will continue to be available for purchase in the App Store.

On December 31, 2022, the app was removed from the App Store, no longer available for purchase, and it ceased to work for existing users. Dark Sky was killed — murdered — by Apple. Apple bought Dark Sky not to keep its incredible iOS app around or even port it to other platforms like the Mac but to integrate its weather data into its own subpar Apple Weather app, which was one of the first apps made by Apple that shipped on the original iPhone. Apple Weather previously sourced data from The Weather Channel, which was fine but not nearly as accurate. All the weather nerds used Dark Sky, and all the nerdy weather companies licensed access to Dark Sky’s data for hefty prices. Apple wanted to build its own weather service so it could kill a competitor and scoop up the money Dark Sky made from its data, and so it did: During the Worldwide Developers Conference in 2022, Apple announced WeatherKit, which would be sourced from Apple Weather Service.

Nowadays, Dark Sky’s data and work live along in Apple Weather Service and WeatherKit, but it’s not nearly as detailed nor nerdy as Dark Sky once was. Aside from the accuracy of the data — which has been criticized ad nauseam by ex-Dark Sky users, including yours truly — the Apple Weather app is made more for people who just check the weather once a day and less for the weather-interested people who once spent real money on Dark Sky. Now, most Dark Sky users use Carrot Weather, where they can build a layout similar to Dark Sky and choose a more accurate data source. WeatherKit is now a mainstream product and Apple lost the weather nerds it tried to capitalize on while disappointing a wide swath of Dark Sky users.

None of this was expected. Obviously, Apple was going to kill the website and Android app, but back in March 2020 — when the weather was the least of people’s concerns — everyone thought Dark Sky would live on at least on iOS, similar to the acquisition of Beats. It was believed that, yes, Apple would integrate some of Dark Sky’s technology into iOS — and that was apparent as soon as iOS 14 when it added hyperlocal Dark Sky-like forecasts to the Weather app and widget — but it would still keep the legacy app around and update it from time to time, perhaps with new iOS 14 widget support. Instead, Apple announced it would kill the whole thing for everyone, forcing once-loyal users to search for another solution. It’s déjà vu.

Proponents of the acquisition have said that Apple would probably just build another version of Aperture, which it discontinued just about a decade ago, but I don’t buy that. Apple doesn’t care about professional creator-focused apps anymore. It barely updates Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and barely puts any attention into the Photos app’s editing tools on the Mac. I loved Aperture, but Apple stopped supporting it for a reason: It just couldn’t make enough money out of it. If I had to predict, I see major changes coming to the Photos app’s editing system on the Mac and on iOS in iOS 19 and macOS 16 next year, and within a few months, Apple will bid adieu to Photomator and Pixelmator. It just makes the most sense: Apple wants to compete with Adobe now just as it wanted to with AccuWeather and Foreca in 2020, so it bought the best iOS native app and now slowly will suck on its blood like a vampire.

If Apple took the Beats route with their recent acquisitions, I wouldn’t have a problem with Friday’s news. Beats today is a great line of audio products, but it has also undoubtedly spawned from the AirPods team at Apple. Beats don’t compete with AirPods — they’re both products of their own, but they rub each other’s backs. Beats makes Minecraft-themed headphones and advertises its products with celebrities, whereas AirPods are the most popular high-end wireless earbuds on the market. Both brands grow and evolve, yet they function equivalently, sharing the same internals and audio processing engines. But based on what Apple did to Dark Sky, I have no confidence Pixelmator Pro will remain identical in any capacity a year from now. Over the next six months, Pixelmator will no longer be updated with new designs and features since its developers will begin work on the next generation of the Photos app. A year from then, most of its features will be mediocrely ported to Photos and its web URL will be forwarded to Apple Support. This is the beginning of the death of a beloved product.

I would be ecstatic to be wrong. I really do love Pixelmator Pro, and I want it to become even better, more ingrained into macOS, and for it to thrive with all of Apple’s funding, just like Beats did. I loved Aperture, and if Apple fused all the features from that bygone app with Pixelmator and Photomator, I’d be happy. But even if Apple did all of that — even if Apple cared about loyal Pixelmator Pro users — it would slap a subscription onto it and eliminate the native macOS codebase because Apple itself cares more about the iPhone and iPad than it does the Mac. The Podcasts, TV, Voice Memos, and Home apps are all built iOS-first just because that’s the most economical software development solution for Apple, so I don’t see why it would differ in its policy here. Independent app makers are important, and if Apple keeps buying and ruining the best indie apps, the App Store will suffer immensely.

Apps like Halide, Flighty, and Fantastical immediately come to mind. They’re all native, beautiful apps for the iPhone — they feel just like Apple made them — but that also means they’re compelling targets for Apple. I don’t want any of them to be bought out by Apple because when that happens, we all lose.