Apple’s Mac and iPad creative apps get bundled into “Creator Studio” subscription
Apple’s professional creative apps have been slower to jump on the subscription bandwagon than those of Adobe or some of its other competitors, but the company is now taking a step in that direction. Starting January 28, Apple will offer an Apple Creator Studio subscription for $13 per month, or $130 per year. Subscribers will have access to the Mac and (where applicable) iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor and MainStage, as well as “smart features and premium content” for the Mac, iPad and iPhone versions of Keynote, Pages, Numbers and Freeform.
Apple says it will also offer a one-month free trial for the subscription and a discounted version for students at $3 per month, or $30 per year.
Most apps also appear to be receiving small feature updates to accompany the Creator Studio announcement. Final Cut will get a new Transcript Search feature that lets you browse video footage looking for specific dialogue, and a new Montage Maker feature will “analyze and edit together a dynamic video based on the best visual moments in the footage.” An updated Logic Pro “helps creators provide original music for their video content” and adds a synthesizer player to the app’s lineup of “AI Session Players.”
Probably the biggest update is a new version of Pixelmator Pro for iPad, designed around the Apple Pencil accessory. When Apple announced its acquisition of Pixelmator in late 2024, the image and vector editing app was only available for Mac.
As for Keynote, Pages, and Numbers (in another life, the apps formerly known as “iWork”), the core apps remain free, but the Creator Studio subscription adds “premium templates and themes” for the apps, as well as access to a content hub that provides “curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations” for the apps. Apple also offers a handful of generative features based on OpenAI, including scaling and transforming existing images, the ability to generate images from text, and a Keynote feature that will create a slideshow from an outline of text.
