Apple is going full throttle in the run-up to its Q1 FY26 fiscal call at the end of this month, boosting investor confidence with its AI partnership with Google and following that up with an announcement to inject even more growth into its all-important services division.
Introducing Apple Creator Studio
For decades, Apple has published two of the industry’s leading products for creative professionals, Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. It has accompanied these with powerful tools such as Motion, Compressor, and Main Stage, and useful productivity apps including Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. (Apple also acquired Pixelmator Pro in 2024.)
All these apps have now been combined into one subscription-based product Apple calls Creator Studio. For just $12.99 per month, Apple customers can subscribe to and use all of these creative apps, including advanced tools not available in the free versions of some of the included applications. The apps are all available for Macs. most are available for the iPad, and some (such as Keynote or Pages) are also for iPhone users.
Apple continues to sell the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage as one-time purchases on the Mac App Store, while Keynote, Numbers, and Pages are also still available for free. And Apple’s powerful image editing application, Pixelmator Pro, is available for the iPad — and compatible with Apple Pencil.
One thing that should be clear is that with its industry leading creative tools, Creator Studio represents an immediate challenge to other far more expensive imaging, video, and audio suites on the market.
What you get in Apple Creator Studio
In brief, the suite offers the following:
- Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Macs and iPads.
- Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on the Mac.
- Intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, with Freeform support to follow.
While Mac users can continue to purchase one-time versions of all the apps, iPad users will need a subscription to access the suite. Apple stresses that Pages, Numbers, and Keynote will “remain free for all users to create, edit, and collaborate with others” and will also continue to receive updates.
“Apple Creator Studio is a great value that enables creators of all types to pursue their craft and grow their skills by providing easy access to the most powerful and intuitive tools for video editing, music making, creative imaging, and visual productivity — all levelled up with advanced intelligent tools to augment and accelerate workflows,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, said in a statement.
“There’s never been a more flexible and accessible way to get started with such a powerful collection of creative apps for professionals, emerging artists, entrepreneurs, students, and educators to do their best work and explore their creative interests from start to finish,” he said.
What’s the approach?
So, if some of the apps are available free or as standalone purchases, why switch to a subscription? Apple’s approach is two-fold:
- First, given the prevalence of piracy when it comes to powerful creative apps, making software available at prices people can more easily afford makes sense; $12.99 for leading tools for audio, video, and photography seems like an approachable price, which should go some way to preventing people from downloading malware invested versions of these apps from various dodgy file repositories. Security firms, including Jamf, have identified many instances in which pirated versions of Final Cut have been infested with malware.
- Second, it looks as if Apple will field new tools and features for the subscription-based apps first. Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform users will be able to access new premium content and intelligent features across Macs, iPads, and iPhones, the company said.
With 2.5 million people already using Final Cut Pro, Apple must surely hope the suite will be a sufficiently compelling proposition to tempt them to switch to a subscription.
Now with Apple Intelligence (and friends)
Hot on the heels of news of its AI partnership with Google Gemini, it should be of no surprise that Apple is also weaving a series of intelligent new features into the Creator Studio apps. It is also easy to imagine how Apple will be able to augment all of its creative apps with smart features down the road.
Among the smart features within the current Creator Studio:
- You can search for specific soundbites across hours of video footage by typing the required phrase in Final Cut.
- You find specific clips and actions using Visual Search.
- Beat Detection uses AI to instantly analyze any music track to display on a grid in Final Cut to help align cuts to the music.
- You get a new AI driven Synth Player in Logic Pro.
- Chord ID can turn any audio or MIDI recording into a ready-to-use chord progression.
- You can search for specific or similar loops in Logic Pro tracks using written prompts.
- Keynote, Pages, and Numbers gain access to the Content Hub, a repository of high-quality images, graphics, and illustrations, along with new premium templates and themes. The three apps also gain advanced image creation and editing tools to craft high-quality images from text using generative models from OpenAI.
- Keynote subscribers will be able to use a smattering of in-development AI features, such as the ability to generate a first draft of a presentation from a text outline.
Apple’s services segment generated more than $100 billion in revenue in 2025. Developing this side of the multinational enterprise has been a big success for the company, particularly as the margins it generates on services are very high (75%). The decision to introduce Apple Creator Studio as a service can only drive these numbers higher.
The suite will be available beginning on Jan 28. In addition to the $12.99 per month price, users can opt to pay $129 a year.
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