Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators around the world. The apps included with Apple Creator Studio for video editing, music making, creative imaging, and visual productivity give modern creators the features and capabilities they need to experience the joy of editing and tailoring their content while realizing their artistic vision. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy…

Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with a one-month free trial, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad; Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac; and intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

The bundle itself is quite unremarkable, and it has been rumored for a while. I think it’s a pretty decent deal, especially compared to Adobe, its chief competitor. Subscribers get access to all of Apple’s Pro Mac apps, plus their iPad variants where applicable, along with some ChatGPT-powered features in the iWork apps for $130 a year. And anyone who doesn’t want another subscription can still purchase the Pro Mac apps on the App Store at their same prices and own them outright. This is the option I chose many years ago, and I’ve been satisfied with the decision since. Unless one needs the iPad versions of the apps, I suggest most people buy the apps they want outright if they use them regularly and forgo the subscription. They’ll pay for themselves in a few years. The market for this subscription is mostly people who only want access for a few months at a time or really need the iPad apps, which still remain subscription-only. (The new Pixelmator Pro iPad app is pretty neat, but more on that shortly.)

All of the Pro Mac apps, with the sole exception of Pixelmator Pro, have forgone the Liquid Glass design. They remain visually identical to their prior versions. I think this is good for Pro-focused Mac apps, since the Liquid Glass design on the Mac really is more of a distraction than an affordance. Liquid Glass looks nice in photo editing apps — which is why Pixelmator Pro presumably has it — but otherwise, it’s probably useless. Just look at Xcode: the only Liquid Glass update it received is to its windows’ corner radius. Making the text editor glassy, for instance, would just be an unnecessary nuisance.

Lest the casualties be forgotten: Photomator, the Pixelmator company’s iOS photo editor, is now discontinued, just a year after Apple’s acquisition of the company. Here’s what I wrote in November 2024, as the acquisition was announced:

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.

I was partially correct, though my nervousness about Pixelmator Pro turned out to be unfounded. Photomator really was beloved, and I wanted it to thrive as a separate app, but alas, it is a relic of the past. And Apple did slap a subscription onto Pixelmator Pro and made the iPad app only accessible via that subscription. I still frown upon independent app acquisitions, and think that if Pixelmator remained independent, it would thrive under the current Apple design climate.

When I say, “current Apple design climate,” I don’t mean Liquid Glass or macOS 26 Tahoe. I’m referring to the truly deplorable iconography all of the refreshed apps have been treated to. Words cannot adequately describe my sheer disgust, hatred, and shock at how asinine these icons are. They look as if Xiaomi was contracted to rip off Apple’s design language. The Final Cut Pro icon, currently a rainbow slate, has been replaced by a purple line art illustration of the same slate. Who at Apple Park decided purple was a fitting color for this icon? Shouldn’t it be polychromatic? And what is the Pixelmator Pro icon even supposed to be? It’s an opaque red squircle with a hollow squircle floating above it, and below the two squircles are three dots connected by lines. What even is that? I’ve been looking at it on and off for hours now — what is that?

And the new Motion icon is quite literally an unfinished McDonald’s logo, but pink instead. Maybe it’s supposed to spell out “M for Motion,” but the trajectory of the figure (it’s presumably being drawn) doesn’t look like the second arch is high enough for it to be an M. Again, what is that? What is this?! I have a strict no-profanity rule on this website, but I have never wanted to disobey it until today. I have no constructive criticism to add here. I can’t comprehend what was happening in the minds of the people who drew these icons. They should all be fired and never allowed near a graphics design program for the rest of their lives. A 14-year-old could draw better icons than this — I could draw better icons than this. What is MainStage even supposed to represent? It looks like the icon in Apple Health for the pill reminders feature, for crying out loud.

But that Pixelmator Pro icon, for Chrissake. I think that truly might be the worst icon in macOS Tahoe. I don’t know how it was approved — I don’t even think it was approved. ChatGPT made that icon or something. It can’t be real. I can’t believe this will ship in a few weeks.