Rui Carmo
Apple is bundling Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage into a new subscription suite (with the obligatory vague promise of AI features) and revamping Pages, Numbers, and Keynote with more content, which I find interesting in many respects…
First off, I’ll state the obvious: this is a jab at Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which has dominated the professional creative software market for years, with the side effect that it pretty much dried up the low-end prosumer space.
By offering a comprehensive suite of “professional-grade” applications under one subscription, Apple is positioning itself as a viable alternative not just for creatives who may have been hesitant to invest in Adobe’s ecosystem, but also for those looking for more affordable options.
But… how viable is it, really? I have my doubts, especially given that I recently tried Final Cut Pro and found it lacking in several areas compared to freemium competitors like DaVinci Resolve. And I have been using Logic Pro for years. It’s a solid DAW, but it faces stiff competition from Ableton Live and an increasing number of free or low-cost alternatives. But that’s my personal experience; I wonder how this will play out for the broader market, where there’s stuff like Affinity Suite, which has recently surfaced after the Canva acquisition as a free alternative Pixelmator Pro (with paid add-ons).
Apple’s move is interesting because of its breadth and ambition–it’s great value for money for consumers, and does offer a lot of tools that can be used professionally. However, I think it also confirms one of my hunches, i.e., that (statistically) nobody was paying for the iPad app subscriptions.
And I do have to wonder how many people they have developing and maintaining all these apps–there have been many glitches and issues with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro over the years that make me think they are not exactly top priority for Apple.