It may simply turn out to be a financial filter to better determine where to continue putting development resources.
New Apple "Creator Studio" subscription software bundle
- Thread starter cateye
- Start date
The reality of FCP, however, is that it never really recovered from the FCP -> FCP X debacle and doesn't command anywhere near the marketshare it used to. The best figures I could find suggested it's a distant third behind Premiere and Resolve. It may not help that video editing was never the Mac bulwark that, for example, graphic design was. FCP's status as "Mac only" may be more of a hindrance than a help. Which I think speaks to your broader idea, Bonusround: What's Apple's goal here?
I think the answer to that will present itself over the next couple years and be dependent on how visible the development cycle for these applications becomes: Is it a desire to re-boot, re-position, and present Apple-only software solutions as "worth" the commitment to Apple hardware, or is it little more than rent seeking from the userbase they already have?
Honestly, either way would make sense to me in context of modern-day Apple.
I think the answer to that will present itself over the next couple years and be dependent on how visible the development cycle for these applications becomes: Is it a desire to re-boot, re-position, and present Apple-only software solutions as "worth" the commitment to Apple hardware, or is it little more than rent seeking from the userbase they already have?
Honestly, either way would make sense to me in context of modern-day Apple.
I think my broader idea is more narrow: I liked the Jobs-era attitude of "we need our own" as a statement of pride if nothing more. Apple under Jobs sought to create the Platonic ideal of video (photo, DVD, motion graphics) editing software, to show the world how it could be done. That's some chutzpah in a world of bottom-lines. And it let Apple take some bold, risky swings even when the results weren't broadly popular.
Me, I'll take genuine product and design risks like FCP X or Aperture over nonsense paint jobs like Liquid Glass any and every day.
No disagreement there, but also: times change. Apple's approach—individual, platform-gated, design-centric applications—is both refreshing against the drumbeat of faster-moving, platform-agnostic tools, but also quaint. "Relevance" is a difficult metric to measure, but I think Apple recognizes that their software efforts suffer from relevancy outside of their insular ecosystem. I think this is why we get efforts like Liquid Glass: It's an attempt to reassert Apple as tastemaker, much in the way that the "Creative Studio" may be attempting to assert Apple's approach to software tools. I question how successful either will be at those goals.
I could be totally mistaken but isn't FCP X a popular app with the YouTube/Insta/TikTok crowd? Obviously not as serious as making an academy award winning film, but an important niche nonetheless.
I think it's a fools errand to look back on the Jobs days when apps like FCP was a loss leader to sell high end Macs. Back then, to do FCP right you needed a PowerMac / Mac Pro to get anywhere. I know because I attempted to run it on my Rev. C iMac back in college on a lark and holy hell it was impossible. Even iMovie back then was serious heavy lifting for consumer-grade Macs.
Also the creative market was entirely different in those days. There was no YouTube or TikTok or Instagram full of semi-pro users creating content. FCP had to compete with the likes of Avid and Premiere because that's just what professionals expected. Plus each FCP customer came with a high end hardware purchase. Even today those Pros usually buy static rigs that are then frozen in amber. PowerMac + FCP single purchase and then rarely even given a software update. When the system needs to be replaced they do it all over again.
Nowadays FCP X can run well on a $299 iPad. The majority of video editing being done these days are on consumer grade rigs with a relative few real "pros" making TV shows and films. Regular app updates are expected and users easily move up to new hardware and simply expect their apps to come along with. That means Apple has to somehow keep up with expensive, relative niche apps but see very little return on that investment. They simply can't count on that user buying a $8k Mac Pro and then pay for the latest copy of FCP every 5 years.
Going subscription will create the right incentives for Apple to maintain their pro apps properly while meeting the customers where they are today. Apple needs pro software for the new generation of creators which means apps that will cater to their demographic and price model. A sub model will help keep the initial price low for semi-pro creators but still keep them buying Macs and iPads. All while making sure that young consumers see their favorite influencer using an iPad Pro or MacBook making content and (most importantly) looking cool doing it.
I think it's a fools errand to look back on the Jobs days when apps like FCP was a loss leader to sell high end Macs. Back then, to do FCP right you needed a PowerMac / Mac Pro to get anywhere. I know because I attempted to run it on my Rev. C iMac back in college on a lark and holy hell it was impossible. Even iMovie back then was serious heavy lifting for consumer-grade Macs.
Also the creative market was entirely different in those days. There was no YouTube or TikTok or Instagram full of semi-pro users creating content. FCP had to compete with the likes of Avid and Premiere because that's just what professionals expected. Plus each FCP customer came with a high end hardware purchase. Even today those Pros usually buy static rigs that are then frozen in amber. PowerMac + FCP single purchase and then rarely even given a software update. When the system needs to be replaced they do it all over again.
Nowadays FCP X can run well on a $299 iPad. The majority of video editing being done these days are on consumer grade rigs with a relative few real "pros" making TV shows and films. Regular app updates are expected and users easily move up to new hardware and simply expect their apps to come along with. That means Apple has to somehow keep up with expensive, relative niche apps but see very little return on that investment. They simply can't count on that user buying a $8k Mac Pro and then pay for the latest copy of FCP every 5 years.
Going subscription will create the right incentives for Apple to maintain their pro apps properly while meeting the customers where they are today. Apple needs pro software for the new generation of creators which means apps that will cater to their demographic and price model. A sub model will help keep the initial price low for semi-pro creators but still keep them buying Macs and iPads. All while making sure that young consumers see their favorite influencer using an iPad Pro or MacBook making content and (most importantly) looking cool doing it.
This is my impression as well, but in that space they're also competing against products like CapCut and (god forbid) Canva, especially for things like TikToks, Reels, and Shorts, which defines much of the influencer video output these days. That leaves longer form YouTube videos, and more established creators, who are as likely to have graduated to Resolve and/or Premiere as they are FCP.
I totally agree. It would be great if Apple treated these pieces of software like flagships of the brand meant to sell Macs. But that just doesn’t seem to be the case any more. On the video production side, there’s lots of great software on the Mac. Ditto on music production. And of course MS Office is available everywhere.
Add to that the fact that Mac hardware fucking rocks in a way it didn’t 20 years ago. You don’t need the software to sell the hardware when you have hardware this good.
And the regulatory environment has changed. Using bundled or free software as a loss leader for your hardware gets you funny looks out of Brussels in a way it didn’t used to.
All of which is to say that strategies change as the context changes.
Well this is interesting. Apparently the controversial (?) icon designs for the Creative Studio applications are unique to the versions of the apps in the bundle—the versions of the applications that are separate, or can be purchased separately, will have different icons. The article extrapolates this to mean you could have two versions of the same app installed at the same time and they'll have... different icons.
On one hand, that makes sense. On the other hand...
On one hand, that makes sense. On the other hand...
It's like Apple has become the new Microsoft. I've used countless third-party software that have paid feature unlocks built into them and don't need the lazy route of separate apps. Wouldn't also surprise if it was demanded the icon be unique to indicate its part of CS and that set the direction of development, but even then couldn't the app update the icon itself?
When Apple made the “big switch” on FCP they abandoned the motion picture/feature editors in favor of a workflow optimized for spot news and shorter form programming. (Less prestigious but more prevalent.) Davinci has eaten a lot of share, but FCP still has its fans.
Inertia is a funny thing, and worked differently for me. I used old-school Final Cut as well as trying some of the others. I liked neither really, but they were the tools at hand. Way before that I edited film on a Steenbeck. And videotape in-between. When FCP X came out the interface paradigm and implementation took me back to physical film editing somehow. It was a breath of fresh air and a pleasure.
I'll have to formulate my thoughts on Apple's new thing after I read about it a bit more.
Last edited:
I think this every time I have the misfortune of using Lightroom, which still feels impossibly clunky this many years after Aperture died.
More generally, FCP X still seems to have a significant user base among solo operators or small teams, especially in-house content teams. Resolve is steadily gaining momentum in that field. "Free yet highly capable" is a great place for starting out, so that's taking the newcomers. The steadily growing feature set paired with solid performance is luring over established FCP X users. I do video as a side gig and use FCP X. If it was my main job, I'd probably switch to Resolve, but FCP X is good enough, very fast and already paid for.
Maybe this subscription approach is a response to Resolve, but Apple will have to show serious development effort and progress for it to work.
It's not ideal as it's two separate apps and costs, but try out Photo Mechanic plus Adobe Camera Raw. Much better than Lightroom, IMHO.
PM handles photo ingestion, (auto) captioning, other metadata, keywords, cropping and rating hundreds times better than Lightroom – it's the app AP, AFP and every pro photographer have used for decades to quickly go from 3,000 football or wedding photos to 100 selects in one evening (heck, sport photographers use it to send out automatically captioned photos during the match near real time). PM 0.99 way back then was the very first app to ever transmit prototype DSLR photos back to AP from the Super Bowl (or NHL or whatever it was).
ACR for the actual pixel editing of the RAWs, which is often enough for a finished product (unless you need to do pixel by pixel retouching).
PM Plus adds a robust DAM offline catalogue system running on a streaming database that can handle hundreds of millions of photos with near instant searching, also much better than Lightroom's catalogue. And if you don't need a catalogue, PM still supports full Spotlight searching through most of the metadata,
Frankly, for many the whole Photoshop is pretty much superfluous – ACR is quite enough to get good looking final photos.
And unlike Lightroom, PM has a dedicated level 3 support (yes, the CEO is active on their forum) which actually even implements users' suggestions.
From a Final Cut Pro perspective, this is a good price compared to Adobe. Creator makes me think Apple is targeting small content creators that might balk at the upfront cost but are amenable to $13/month. The education pricing is also much, much better than Adobe's which is nearly double Apple's full price and only good for a year on top of that. Premiere alone is $23/month with a year long contract and $35 month to month. I also think that Apple is going for the tablet market more than anything. Every other shot on that page is of an iPad version, and the have much less (or even none?) higher end competition there.
On desktop, it gets iffier the further up the chain you go. A place I used to work at that was very much not involved in media would use Premiere for the occasional video that would need to be put together since basically everyone was on Windows. They already had the full Adobe suite because that option ends up making the most sense if you need at least three applications. I've always suspected that this is a major area where Adobe made inroads over FCPX. $300 is a whole lot better than what FCP used to cost, but free is even better.
Resolve is where things get trickier. I've had a video project kicking around the back of my head for a while, and that is probably what I would go to. My understanding is that the full version of Resolve is just extras not major functionality so you're not significantly limited. I learned to edit video in Final Cut Pro 6 in college for non-professional reasons and still used it for quite a long time despite probably being fine with iMovie. That's not a career path I went down in any capacity, but it does make me sad that FCP wouldn't be my go to now.
On desktop, it gets iffier the further up the chain you go. A place I used to work at that was very much not involved in media would use Premiere for the occasional video that would need to be put together since basically everyone was on Windows. They already had the full Adobe suite because that option ends up making the most sense if you need at least three applications. I've always suspected that this is a major area where Adobe made inroads over FCPX. $300 is a whole lot better than what FCP used to cost, but free is even better.
Resolve is where things get trickier. I've had a video project kicking around the back of my head for a while, and that is probably what I would go to. My understanding is that the full version of Resolve is just extras not major functionality so you're not significantly limited. I learned to edit video in Final Cut Pro 6 in college for non-professional reasons and still used it for quite a long time despite probably being fine with iMovie. That's not a career path I went down in any capacity, but it does make me sad that FCP wouldn't be my go to now.
Last edited:
As has been said, there's very little incentive for Apple to keep making free updates to complex apps like Logic and FCP, other than "look what you can get on a Mac". Logic has been subscription-only on the iPad for some time.
But subscription software is a deal-breaker for me. If I'm paying for Office365, DropBox, Apple Creator Studio (and iCloud), Creative Cloud, Monotype fonts -- and even smaller utilities and apps want between $3 and $10 per month -- then that's like a taxi meter constantly running up the costs while my Mac is idling, and it's practically enough to pay for a new laptop a year.
There remain, for the most part, decent alternatives with "one-off" payments. They tend to have discount sales at various times of the year; and I can choose when I pay the update for the new version. To say nothing of free products, either like Affinity, DaVinci Resolve, or open source stuff. That way, I can splurge on updates when I have the cash, rather than having to pay continually, even when I don't.
I'm tempted to buy FCP and Pixelmator Pro now, not because I necessarily need them, but because it might be the last chance to get them outright.
I recently bought Cubase as an alternative to Logic, mostly because of its integration with Dorico, the music notation app.
But subscription software is a deal-breaker for me. If I'm paying for Office365, DropBox, Apple Creator Studio (and iCloud), Creative Cloud, Monotype fonts -- and even smaller utilities and apps want between $3 and $10 per month -- then that's like a taxi meter constantly running up the costs while my Mac is idling, and it's practically enough to pay for a new laptop a year.
There remain, for the most part, decent alternatives with "one-off" payments. They tend to have discount sales at various times of the year; and I can choose when I pay the update for the new version. To say nothing of free products, either like Affinity, DaVinci Resolve, or open source stuff. That way, I can splurge on updates when I have the cash, rather than having to pay continually, even when I don't.
I'm tempted to buy FCP and Pixelmator Pro now, not because I necessarily need them, but because it might be the last chance to get them outright.
I recently bought Cubase as an alternative to Logic, mostly because of its integration with Dorico, the music notation app.
Last edited:
Lightroom Classic is a relic of mid 2000s design but, if you haven’t already, give Lightroom Desktop a spin. The interface seems to have far more in common with Aperture than the legacy LR—smooth, fluid, and uncluttered, with nary a module in sight. It feels like Aperture’s spiritual successor
If you're eligible for Apple's education discount you can get the "Pro Apps Bundle for Education" (FCP/Logic/Motion/Compressor/Main Stage) directly from Apple for $199.99. That's where I got my license after news about FCP for iPad going rent-only surfaced.
So, it's Creator Studio day, and Apple has made the process as needlessly confusing as possible.
As an Adobe user, I have no need or desire for Apple's "creative" tools, but like keeping Pages, Numbers and Keynote around. There are now two versions of of each in the App Store. Ones just called "Pages," "Numbers," and "Keynote," and ones called "Pages 14.5," "Numbers 14.5," and "Keynote 14.5." the 14.5 versions will trigger an update to the 14.4 versions you already have installed. There's no change (that I could see) other than you get a modal dialog on launch saying those versions will no longer be updated an to download the new versions.
The new versions are 15.1 and install as separate files, but with the same names (i.e. you'll end up with "Pages.app" and "Pages.app" right next to one another, differentiated only by their icons). They install and launch for free, but (predictably) trumpet the Creator Studio features pretty hard. The tool bars have new icons for the subscription-only features, but they're dimmed out if you're not a subscriber. You can customize the toolbars and remove them, which leaves you with something not materially different than the 14.5 versions, especially if you're still on Sequoia (no Liquid Glass).
So far, I've only had one "are you sure you don't want to pay 12.99 a month?" nag screen for each, on first launch, and hopefully that will be it. Because if it reappears, I'm done with all three apps permanently.
As an Adobe user, I have no need or desire for Apple's "creative" tools, but like keeping Pages, Numbers and Keynote around. There are now two versions of of each in the App Store. Ones just called "Pages," "Numbers," and "Keynote," and ones called "Pages 14.5," "Numbers 14.5," and "Keynote 14.5." the 14.5 versions will trigger an update to the 14.4 versions you already have installed. There's no change (that I could see) other than you get a modal dialog on launch saying those versions will no longer be updated an to download the new versions.
The new versions are 15.1 and install as separate files, but with the same names (i.e. you'll end up with "Pages.app" and "Pages.app" right next to one another, differentiated only by their icons). They install and launch for free, but (predictably) trumpet the Creator Studio features pretty hard. The tool bars have new icons for the subscription-only features, but they're dimmed out if you're not a subscriber. You can customize the toolbars and remove them, which leaves you with something not materially different than the 14.5 versions, especially if you're still on Sequoia (no Liquid Glass).
So far, I've only had one "are you sure you don't want to pay 12.99 a month?" nag screen for each, on first launch, and hopefully that will be it. Because if it reappears, I'm done with all three apps permanently.
I'll give Apple the benefit of the doubt to "keep it classy" with the subtle nudges to move up to the subscription but generally stay out of people's way if they stay on the free tier. If nothing else they should know that free word processors are a dime a dozen (been using Google Docs for ages myself) so if they make the upsell too annoying users will walk. Pages is great and all but your average user just needs something to bang out a quick letter or report. You can do that in TextEdit for Pete's sake.
That's because the macOS and iOS Pages, Numbers, and Keynote were different items with different ids in the App Store. They added a macOS entry to the iOS App Store items, and that's what will be updated in the future.
An unfortunate consequence of the initial macOS/iOS split.
An unfortunate consequence of the initial macOS/iOS split.
Totally, but I have a low tolerance for being marketed to by Apple within its apps and operating systems given the cost of entry to the ecosystem. But that's my sand to pound.
Agreed, I mostly use GDocs/Sheets/etc. as my business is all based on GSuite, but I do like to at least pretend to keep business and personal separate, so sometimes I prefer to use Apple's apps when I have some household project or document to work on.
That's fair. I did figure there was some reasonable back-end explanation, but it's still a little wonky.
As a heavy Keynote, Pages, and Number user who’d pay Office 365 prices for them, I don’t see anything about the Creator Studio features that seems remotely appealing.
At $13 a month, they'd probably sell me on it if they actually had a compelling alternative to Lightroom. Pixelmator Pro isn't that. It's a fine Photoshop alternative, but doesn't have the workflow I need out of a RAW developer/library manager.
As for the rest: I prefer Resolve over Final Cut for video (on the rare occasion that I do it), I'm in the Ableton ecosystem for audio (with some actual hardware investments in that), and Keynote is the only iWork app I use (I'm on Google Docs for word processing and a mix of Sheets and Excel for spreadsheets). So that $13 a month is a hard sell for me.
As for the rest: I prefer Resolve over Final Cut for video (on the rare occasion that I do it), I'm in the Ableton ecosystem for audio (with some actual hardware investments in that), and Keynote is the only iWork app I use (I'm on Google Docs for word processing and a mix of Sheets and Excel for spreadsheets). So that $13 a month is a hard sell for me.
Already having bought Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro, and not doing much if any video editing, I can't see why I would possibly want to pay.
Thanks everyone for the warning about the wonky iWork upgrade process.
Thanks everyone for the warning about the wonky iWork upgrade process.
The new version of Logic (and MainStage) move all the samples and loops into a .library bundle, which for some reason is stored by default in ~/Music. You can configure it to another location; and I'm told that it uses APFS cleverness so that it doesn't duplicate the existing content in /Library/Application Support/Logic (and GarageBand). However, my free space did go down massively after install.
Still clumsy, though. First, you have to update the old iWork apps to v14.5, just so that they can display a dialog on launch telling you to go to the App Store to download the new v15 apps. Once you manually download the new apps, then you have both versions installed side by side differentiated only by their icons*, and also have to manually delete the old ones. And finally when you launch the new ones, things like your preferences and Open Recents menu entries don’t carry over because they’re separate apps.
* In Spotlight and the Finder, both the old and new apps have the same names: Pages, Numbers, Keynote. But I use Raycast as a Spotlight replacement, and after installing the new apps but before deleting the old ones, it somehow appended “Creator Studio” to the names of the new apps to differentiate them. But then, after deleting the old apps, the “Creator Studio” disappeared from the names of the new ones. Is this just a custom thing the Raycast developers added? Or if those names are indeed used somewhere in the new app bundles, why doesn’t macOS itself expose them?
Vincent Hanna
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Let's be fair to Apple and stress that the "pro" apps can now be used for free.
It seems that none of the functions/effects/titles of the previous FCPX has been moved to the "premium" content. The same apparently applies to Logic Pro.
So kudos to Apple.
It seems that none of the functions/effects/titles of the previous FCPX has been moved to the "premium" content. The same apparently applies to Logic Pro.
So kudos to Apple.
OK, I've had the "This software is old" message more than once now in Pages and Numbers, so back to 14.4 I go; which I shall be keeping carefully archived.
Last edited:
I've bitten the bullet, and installed "Pages: Create Documents" from the MAS, which shows up as "Pages.app" ... sitting right next to "Pages.app" in my Applications folder.
In Terminal, I can see that the real name is "Pages Creator Studio". So that's 3 different names!
However, otherwise it seems identical to the previous version of Pages, save for some extra menu items about Creative Studio; and some clip art options, including AI-generated, which are available without the subscription.
Why they "split" this app from the original, rather than just having it as an update, I've no idea.
In Terminal, I can see that the real name is "Pages Creator Studio". So that's 3 different names!
However, otherwise it seems identical to the previous version of Pages, save for some extra menu items about Creative Studio; and some clip art options, including AI-generated, which are available without the subscription.
Why they "split" this app from the original, rather than just having it as an update, I've no idea.
Pages (and Numbers and Keynote) 15 are separate downloads because Apple merged the Mac version of the app into the iOS/iPadOS listing on the App Store. Migrating an existing app between listings on the App Store does not appear to be a capability that Apple has-- it's always required a re-download on at least one platform when third-party apps merge listings that were formerly separate, and it seems that Apple has hit the same limitation.
Does have the useful side effect of leaving 14.5 available, though.
Does have the useful side effect of leaving 14.5 available, though.
AppleInsider posted an interesting story detailing the revised iPad version of Final Cut Pro included in the Creator bundle, and the numerous crashes and bugs they experienced. They also discovered that deleting FCP from your iPad (which is one of Apple's troubleshooting recommendations) will also delete any projects and video clips, unless you've manually selected the option to save them to external storage, which is not the default setup when you begin a new project. Yikkes.
TL, DR: download FCP for iPad. Start a project. FCP crashes a lot. You decide to troubleshoot. Apple suggests deleting and reinstalling FCP. Voila, your project is lost.
TL, DR: download FCP for iPad. Start a project. FCP crashes a lot. You decide to troubleshoot. Apple suggests deleting and reinstalling FCP. Voila, your project is lost.
On the one hand: this is how things have worked by default on i(Pad)OS since the beginning of time.
On the other hand: Apple itself created application-specific folders in iCloud Drive to work around exactly this scenario. It seems to me like not using them should subject the FCP developers to prosecution on criminal counts of Missing The Most Obvious Things.
Right, exactly. It's more the perfect storm of failure presented here: Project files are ingress'ed to private storage by default, that private storage is not protected on deletion, the application itself is buggy, and one of the first options listed in Apple's troubleshooting document for FCP on iPad is to nuke and re-install.
Someone on a podcast said it’s because the Mac and iOS versions used to have separate app IDs, so the new apps are Mac versions of the iOS apps.