Wow good for you!
Martin
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He’s certainly been pretty successful for shareholders, I’ve just found him rather uninspiring overall.
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They’ve just announced a new subscription based Creator Studio package launching 28th Jan.
$129 annually or $12.99 monthly.
Not keen on subscriptions and already have all the apps on Mac.
Probably reasonable value if you use them a lot which I don’t these days especially as you get Mac and iPad versions of some. Supposedly have enhanced AI features for some which may or may not be a good thing and won’t be available for standalone purchases!
See MacRumors.
Shame they haven’t resurrected Aperture.
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You can still purchase though; to me, this is the only reasonable thing to do
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You can buy or subscribe. If you buy you lose AI features if I read correctly. Interesting.
I use and like Photomator which is not on the list. I consider it a Lightroom lite and good enough for what I’m doing.
Family sharing for all these Apps and App packages is a def. plus.
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Yes, I generally prefer to purchase, and in fairness the prices for some of the apps on the AppStore was very good with continued support for many years and hopefully years to come with no additional expenditure.
Maybe the free trials will give people a taste for some of the apps which they can then decide to buy or subscribe to, though I’d have to wonder if development will concentrate on the subscription services.
Despite using Pixelmator probably since early release I’ve never tried Photomator.
Good to see the subscriptions can be shared with the family group - I’ve done that over the years with the purchased apps.
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Mac value is pretty awesome… I’m on a M1 16”inch Macbook pro and the machine still feels fresh about 4 years old.
I’m much more subscription aware than I was a couple of years ago. For instance, no more Office, just google docs. Mostly the same functionality and if not it’s easily added with some javascript.
My only gripe with Tahoe was that it tried to update my existing Sequoia with an incremental fixupdate rather that go to Tahoe. For all it’s worth, try to have that experience in Windows…
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I subscribe to ChatGPT+
In settings on my Apple Silicon devices I was able to select ChatGPT to augment Apple Intelligence.
With the announcement today Re: Creative Studio and with Apple’s AI deal with Google, I’ll be dropping ChatGPT in the near future.
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Final Cut Pro on the Mac and iPad
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Logic Pro on the Mac and iPad
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Pixelmator Pro on the Mac and iPad
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Motion on the Mac
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Compressor on the Mac
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MainStage on the Mac
Now you will need a subscription for these products, utter gouging
Martin
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Caveat: I’ve been away for a while, so the following may already have been posted…
For those using photo editing software, and dislike/object/refuse the subscription model, last October (2025) Affinity (now Canva) announced that Photo, Designer and Publisher are now bundled together as one program and is free.
I’ve been using it with a Mac laptop (Sonoma) and a Mini Mac (Sequoia) comprehensively since it was released; absolutely no issues.
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Well the folk that developed Aperture are now ‘Gentleman Coders’ and have RAW Power and Nitro, both a purchase.
I have no subscriptions for any software, and any software that turns into subscription, I refuse. Plenty of alternatives about.
I use cheap and small portable programs on the pc as much as possible, and occasionally (for mail merge) use an old copy of office 2007. Two best small programs I use every day for 99% of tasks are IrfanView image viewer, very lightweight, and Atlantis for all word processing, cheap, a few pounds for license, and does all text formatting I am likely to need, and very lightweight, a few megabytes (the main program is 3277 Kb and that is all that is needed to work, very impressive).
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Apple’s abandonment of Aperture was a huge disappointment for me. I love their hardware and OS for the most part (compared to Windows) but I won’t rely on any of their productivity software again. The features they rolled into the Photos app didn’t matter. They dumbed it all down too much.
I use Macs and the OS, but look elsewhere for productivity software I care about. The one exception is Numbers, but I can convert the few files I have for use elsewhere if I need to.
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The apps can still be purchased.
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If you care about using AI features, purchasing outright will be a limiting factor in that regard. If I read the MacRumors article with enough clarity for my old brain.
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You might guess I will not engage with so called AI, which should be called ‘Pattern Matching’.
Pattern Matching puts the proper emphasis on what AI does, there is nothing intelligent about it.
It seems to me that AI just makes us lazy, and de-skills our own behavior.
I started to use Aperture as soon as I got my own Mac in 2003 and started to use digital cameras, and was also dismayed when it was dropped, (as I see it), for money reasons only, never justification.
PC were the preferred system at work, so I had to learn the problems the come with microsoft, and develop alternative strategy within the microsoft deployment.
Apple have lost sight of the founding principle of the first models, and (like Naim) have embraced the capitalist model of doing business (maybe they had to, but I don’t accept that, and that is why I am keen to support small developers, freeware, portable applications, and the outright lifetime purchase of software.)
Of course nothing is this simple…
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I don’t use any of these. The only reason I let my iOS Devices and Mac update themselves is because of possible security improvements. Then I usually spend time disabling the AI features …
Damn, I forgot to quote again!
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Thanks for the heads up on Nitro and other software.
I purchased RAW Power some years ago, but as with many pro or prosumer photo/video editing tools I’ve bought and updated over the years I’ve never had the time to really use them properly as I’m just a hobbyist not a professional photographer. As the kids have grown we take fewer and fewer family pics too, but if and when I drop my work hours I may try to rekindle my photography interests which will also get me out of the house more!
IrfanView is a blast from the past which I’ve probably not used since late 2000s when I got my first Mac having reluctantly used PCs since the late 1990s when Acorn folded.
The current Apple productivity apps are ok for free but probably used to be better when you had to purchase iWork before they got dumbed down and bundled. Atlantis sounds interesting will take a look.
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The monthly subscription service would at least allow you to dip in and out to determine if those Ai features are worth it. Probably not for me but can’t rwally say without trying them.
This is me lol.
I’m subscribed to Photomator & Apple One Family and will subscribe to Creative Cloud and the enhanced AI (powered by Google) when available.
The Family Sharing feature with my kids makes the subscription model OK for me.
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