Apple vs. Adobe: The War for Your Wallet
For over a decade, Adobe has held a tight grip on the creative industry with its Creative Cloud subscription. If you wanted the industry standard tools, you had to pay the “Adobe Tax”, currently running about $60/month for the full suite.
This week, Apple announced Apple Creator Studio, a new subscription bundle that undercuts Adobe so aggressively it feels personal.
What You Get (And What It Costs)
Launching January 28th, the bundle includes Final Cut Pro (video), Logic Pro (audio), Pixelmator Pro (images), Motion (special effects), Compressor (encoding), and MainStage (live performances).
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, framed the launch clearly:
“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.”
The price? $12.99 per month or $129 per year.
For students and educators, it’s even cheaper: $2.99 per month.
The Math Doesn’t Look Good for Adobe
Let’s look at why this is such a big deal for creators:
- The Adobe Route: To get Premiere Pro, Audition, and Photoshop via Creative Cloud, you’re paying roughly $660/year. Even a single app plan usually costs more than Apple’s entire bundle.
- The Apple Route: You get the full professional suite for $129/year ($30/year for students). Plus, Apple includes Family Sharing, meaning up to five people can share that single subscription.
Adobe has been trying to make inroads with beginner creatives recently by releasing free versions of its Photoshop and Premiere apps for mobile, but the value proposition of Apple’s full professional desktop suite for $13/month is hard to ignore.
The “Good Guy” Move: No Forced Subs
When Adobe moved to Creative Cloud in 2013, they infuriated users by killing off “perpetual licenses.” You could no longer buy the software; you could only rent it.
Apple is not doing that.
If you hate subscriptions, you can still buy Final Cut Pro ($299), Logic Pro ($199), and Pixelmator Pro ($49) as one-time purchases on the App Store. The subscription is purely an optional, lower barrier to entry for creators who can’t drop $500+ upfront on software.
It’s Not Just About Adobe
While this is clearly aimed at Adobe, the landscape has changed. Apple is also competing against DaVinci Resolve, whose free version is extremely powerful and feature rich, and CapCut, which has gained massive popularity alongside the growth of vertical video content.
The Catch
There is, of course, one massive caveat: You have to be in the Apple ecosystem.
If you stream while playing games on Windows, or you’re a die-hard Android user, this does nothing for you. Adobe remains the only true cross-platform heavyweight to offer everything in one place. But for Mac-based creators this is arguably the best value proposition in the history of Apple creative software.
Between professional level editing software in DaVinci Resolve, free graphics design software in Affinity (which we covered in issue #203), and free open source streaming software in OBS Studio, there really is nothing stopping you from creating amazing content without spending any money at all.
Pete’s Content Corner
Delve into my weekly selection of content creation highlights – handpicked videos, podcasts, and tweets that promise to captivate, educate, and entertain.
- Discord has added a dynamic timestamp feature. You can now type
@timein your chat to send a time that automatically converts to the reader’s local timezone. No more “what time is that for me?” confusion when scheduling community events. - Bluesky is beta testing a Live ring indicator for users who are currently live on Twitch. This adds a ring around your profile picture that, when clicked, takes users directly to your Twitch stream.
- iShowSpeed continues to push the boundaries of IRL streaming, broadcasting live from inside the Pyramids of Egypt.
Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read Stream Report.
Pete ✌️
