Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone […]. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite […].

Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with a one-month free trial, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad; Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac; and intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

Apple could have easily justified $13 a month for Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro alone. If you’re a content creator (or are hoping to become one), gaining access to six “Pro” apps for one price is a screaming good deal.

(Buying the suite of apps individually costs $650—five years of subscriptions—and doesn’t come with Pixelmator Pro for iPad, which is only available with a Creator Studio subscription.)

The “intelligent features and premium content” may be a useful value-add, but I doubt anyone who doesn’t need the Pro apps would subscribe just to gain access. I expect we’ll eventually see another subscription option soon that’s just the Apple Intelligence and premium content, so anyone buying individual apps or using the free iWork apps won’t feel left out. Why leave subscription revenue on the table, right? Apple has to pay for its reportedly $1 billion a year Google Gemini partnership somehow.

Creator Studio includes several AI features that are not available in the apps without a subscription (Warp tool in Pixelmator Pro, clean up slides in Keynote, Magic Fill in Numbers, for example). I’m betting several future Apple Intelligence features will be likewise locked behind a subscription (perhaps part of Apple One or iCloud+).

I have a gnawing unease about locking these features and content behind a subscription. If this bundle proves successful—and I have no reason to believe it won’t—the incentive to put new functionality behind a paywall may prove so tempting that Apple starts littering its apps (and, heaven forfend, operating systems) with “Premium”-tagged menu items, or we’ll see “Subscribe” windows thrown up every time a gated feature is selected. Empty Trash? Subscribe to macOS Tahoe Premium.

I hope I didn’t just type that into existence.

In addition to subscription creep—shifting functionality behind a paygate—I’m also deeply concerned about subscription permanence. On the Creator Studio product page is this FAQ:

What happens to projects and content I created if my subscription ends?

All the projects and content you create with an active subscription to Apple Creator Studio — including any images you generate or add from the Content Hub — remain licensed in the context of your original creation.

Projects in Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro remain on all your devices, and you can copy or share them to any other device. To open or edit a project, you need to be an active subscriber. Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform documents remain unchanged and can be edited; however, no new edits using paid features will be possible.

Emphasis most emphatically added.

Translation: Keep paying, or lose access to your work.

I can handle paying a subscription to access compelling functionality. What I can’t accept is a perpetual subscription just to maintain access to my own creations. This issue isn’t unique to Apple—hello, Microsoft 365—but Apple has never paygated my content before.

This feels momentous: for the first time, Apple now has a “pay us or else” model. For many people, that’s a deal breaker.

Wall Street will be thrilled.