daring-rss

Kind of wild that this entire sub-site is still standing on Apple.com, including working video. (Fingers crossed that my linking to it doesn’t bring it to the attention of someone who decides to 404 it.)

 ★ 

Kind of wild that this entire sub-site is still standing on Apple.com, including working video. (Fingers crossed that my linking to it doesn’t bring it to the attention of someone who decides to 404 it.)

Read More 

From Nathan Edwards’s 6/10 review of the M4 iMac for The Verge:

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and
you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an
entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac
with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all,
and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the
iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so
we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the
world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover
books. It’s fine.

It wasn’t Edwards, but Nilay Patel, who reviewed the Studio Display for The Verge, but in that review the $1,600 cost — which called out the $400 surcharge for the optional adjustable stand — was one of the three bullet items under “The Bad”. So it’s not hard to guess that if the M4 iMac had an optional adjustable stand, it would still be listed a con, because surely that option, from Apple, would cost at least $300.

(I’ve used a Studio Display with the pricey options for nano-texture and adjustable height ever since it came out, and consider both options well worth the cost.)

But the weird thing about Edwards’s review is that the whole thing is predicated on his not seeing the appeal of an all-in-one computer. I feel the same way, personally. My primary computer is a MacBook Pro that I connect, lid-closed, to the aforementioned-in-parenthetical-aside Studio Display most of the time. If I were to buy a dedicated desktop Mac I’d get either a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and connect that to a Studio Display. But the iMac is obviously intended for people who want an all-in-one.

It makes for a very strange, dare I say pointless, review. It’s like a bicycle review from someone who admits that they only ever walk or drive a car and don’t see why anyone else doesn’t walk or drive everywhere. Does anyone make a better all-in-one PC than the iMac? If so, who? If not why is this a 6/10?

 ★ 

From Nathan Edwards’s 6/10 review of the M4 iMac for The Verge:

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and
you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an
entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac
with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all,
and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the
iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so
we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the
world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover
books. It’s fine.

It wasn’t Edwards, but Nilay Patel, who reviewed the Studio Display for The Verge, but in that review the $1,600 cost — which called out the $400 surcharge for the optional adjustable stand — was one of the three bullet items under “The Bad”. So it’s not hard to guess that if the M4 iMac had an optional adjustable stand, it would still be listed a con, because surely that option, from Apple, would cost at least $300.

(I’ve used a Studio Display with the pricey options for nano-texture and adjustable height ever since it came out, and consider both options well worth the cost.)

But the weird thing about Edwards’s review is that the whole thing is predicated on his not seeing the appeal of an all-in-one computer. I feel the same way, personally. My primary computer is a MacBook Pro that I connect, lid-closed, to the aforementioned-in-parenthetical-aside Studio Display most of the time. If I were to buy a dedicated desktop Mac I’d get either a Mac Mini or Mac Studio and connect that to a Studio Display. But the iMac is obviously intended for people who want an all-in-one.

It makes for a very strange, dare I say pointless, review. It’s like a bicycle review from someone who admits that they only ever walk or drive a car and don’t see why anyone else doesn’t walk or drive everywhere. Does anyone make a better all-in-one PC than the iMac? If so, who? If not why is this a 6/10?

Read More 

Holiday shopping bundle of 13 excellent Mac Apps, with two ways to buy. Get the whole bundle of 13 apps for $74 (a 76 percent discount from the combined regular prices), or, pick and choose a la carte and buy apps at 50 percent off.

Included in the promotion is Stairways Software’s astonishingly powerful and useful Keyboard Maestro, which almost never goes on sale. There are many longstanding Mac apps and utilities that I enjoy, appreciate, and recommend. There are very few that I can say I’d feel lost without. Keyboard Maestro is one of those.

Other apps in the Space/Time bundle that I use: TextSniper (instantly OCR any text you see on screen), DaisyDisk (disk space visualizer/cleanup), CleanShot X (advanced screenshot utility), and Bartender (menu bar item manager).

 ★ 

Holiday shopping bundle of 13 excellent Mac Apps, with two ways to buy. Get the whole bundle of 13 apps for $74 (a 76 percent discount from the combined regular prices), or, pick and choose a la carte and buy apps at 50 percent off.

Included in the promotion is Stairways Software’s astonishingly powerful and useful Keyboard Maestro, which almost never goes on sale. There are many longstanding Mac apps and utilities that I enjoy, appreciate, and recommend. There are very few that I can say I’d feel lost without. Keyboard Maestro is one of those.

Other apps in the Space/Time bundle that I use: TextSniper (instantly OCR any text you see on screen), DaisyDisk (disk space visualizer/cleanup), CleanShot X (advanced screenshot utility), and Bartender (menu bar item manager).

Read More 

Borderline incredible discount on AirPods Pro 2 at Amazon. This is just short of $100 off the retail list price of $249. (Buy through this link and I’ll get rich on the affiliate commission.)

 ★ 

Borderline incredible discount on AirPods Pro 2 at Amazon. This is just short of $100 off the retail list price of $249. (Buy through this link and I’ll get rich on the affiliate commission.)

Read More 

John Siracusa, in his inimitable style, reviewed Delicious Library 1.0 upon its release, 20 years ago this month:

Part of what makes the Mac community so special is that so many
Mac developers have itches — and, more importantly, corresponding
talents — that have little or nothing to do with computers. I
invite you to look again at some of the screenshots and artwork in
this application. Someone loved those graphics. Someone sweated
over every pixel of that application window. Someone knows what it
means to be a lover of art, music, books, video games. This is in
addition to (not instead of) the ability to write great code.

All of these human facilities and experiences have been harnessed
to create not just a mere “program”, “application” or (God forbid)
“executable”, but a digital love letter to collectors. Delicious
Monster, from its products to its web site, exudes a
spirit of passion and fun. “I’ve never been happier at work”, Wil
Shipley told me in an email. “I think it shows in the finished
product.”

I think so too. It may only be version 1.0, but it’s delicious.

Re-reading this review — which I first linked to, with little comment, upon publication — reminded me of several things. First, Siracusa is one of the few writers I’ve ever felt competitive with in this racket. This whole thing is so fucking good, and touches upon so many subtle points that are so hard to convey in words. (In some ways it’s better to read in its original multi-page layout, via Internet Archive, but those archived versions are inexplicably missing some, but not all, of the screenshots, and for a review of an app as visually ambitious as Delicious Library, the screenshots are essential. But the current Ars Technica version of the review, although it has all the inline images, is missing this “larger version” of Delicious Library’s main window. Open the version I’m hosting in a tab for reference. Note too that “larger version” meant something different 20 years ago — it’s only 183 KB, but is the largest image in the review.)

Second, I had forgotten just how ambitious Delicious Library 1.0 was, right out of the gate. I remembered that Delicious Library eventually supported barcode scanning via webcams, but that feature was in fact present in version 1.0. It worked incredibly well. And the feature was so far ahead of its time. In 2004, no Mac had yet shipped with a built-in camera. Instead, we all bought Apple’s standalone $150 iSight camera, which connected via FireWire. (What a gorgeous device.) By the end of his effusive review, Siracusa (unsurprisingly) has a wishlist of additional features, but what was in Delicious Library 1.0 comprised far more than a “minimal viable product”. It exemplified Apple’s — and Steve Jobs’s — own ethos of debuting with a bang, right out of the gate. It made you say “Wow!” And then you’d think, “Oh, but it’d be cool if it…” and, it turns out, it did that too.

Delicious indeed.

 ★ 

John Siracusa, in his inimitable style, reviewed Delicious Library 1.0 upon its release, 20 years ago this month:

Part of what makes the Mac community so special is that so many
Mac developers have itches — and, more importantly, corresponding
talents — that have little or nothing to do with computers. I
invite you to look again at some of the screenshots and artwork in
this application. Someone loved those graphics. Someone sweated
over every pixel of that application window. Someone knows what it
means to be a lover of art, music, books, video games. This is in
addition to (not instead of) the ability to write great code.

All of these human facilities and experiences have been harnessed
to create not just a mere “program”, “application” or (God forbid)
“executable”, but a digital love letter to collectors. Delicious
Monster, from its products to its web site, exudes a
spirit of passion and fun. “I’ve never been happier at work”, Wil
Shipley told me in an email. “I think it shows in the finished
product.”

I think so too. It may only be version 1.0, but it’s delicious.

Re-reading this review — which I first linked to, with little comment, upon publication — reminded me of several things. First, Siracusa is one of the few writers I’ve ever felt competitive with in this racket. This whole thing is so fucking good, and touches upon so many subtle points that are so hard to convey in words. (In some ways it’s better to read in its original multi-page layout, via Internet Archive, but those archived versions are inexplicably missing some, but not all, of the screenshots, and for a review of an app as visually ambitious as Delicious Library, the screenshots are essential. But the current Ars Technica version of the review, although it has all the inline images, is missing this “larger version” of Delicious Library’s main window. Open the version I’m hosting in a tab for reference. Note too that “larger version” meant something different 20 years ago — it’s only 183 KB, but is the largest image in the review.)

Second, I had forgotten just how ambitious Delicious Library 1.0 was, right out of the gate. I remembered that Delicious Library eventually supported barcode scanning via webcams, but that feature was in fact present in version 1.0. It worked incredibly well. And the feature was so far ahead of its time. In 2004, no Mac had yet shipped with a built-in camera. Instead, we all bought Apple’s standalone $150 iSight camera, which connected via FireWire. (What a gorgeous device.) By the end of his effusive review, Siracusa (unsurprisingly) has a wishlist of additional features, but what was in Delicious Library 1.0 comprised far more than a “minimal viable product”. It exemplified Apple’s — and Steve Jobs’s — own ethos of debuting with a bang, right out of the gate. It made you say “Wow!” And then you’d think, “Oh, but it’d be cool if it…” and, it turns out, it did that too.

Delicious indeed.

Read More 

Wil Shipley, on Mastodon:

Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to
look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users
already have (or enter manually).

I wasn’t contacted about this.

I’ve pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so
nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app.

The end of an era, but it’s kind of surprising it was still functional until now. (Shipley has been a full-time engineer at Apple for three years now.)

It’s hard to describe just what a sensation Delicious Library was when it debuted, and how influential it was. Delicious Library was simultaneously very useful, in very practical ways, and obsessed with its exuberant UI in ways that served no purpose other than looking cool as shit. It was an app that demanded to be praised just for the way it looked, but also served a purpose that resonated with many users. For about a decade it seemed as though most popular new apps would be designed like Delicious Library. Then Apple dropped iOS 7 in 2013, and now, no apps look like this. Whatever it is that we, as an industry, have lost in the now decade-long trend of iOS 7-style flat design, Delicious Library epitomized it.

They were even clever and innovative in the ways they promoted the app. The first time Delicious Monster sponsored Daring Fireball for a week, their sponsorship message read, in its entirety:

Organize the shit you like.
Get rid of the shit you don’t.
Delicious Library 2.

When they created an iPhone version of Delicious Library, they announced it via this delightfully intricate but decidedly lo-fi stop-motion-animated video.

20 years go by and there’s some inevitable nostalgia looking back at any art form. But man, Delicious Library exemplified an era of indie app development that, sadly, is largely over. And make no bones about it: Delicious Library was a creative work of art.

 ★ 

Wil Shipley, on Mastodon:

Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to
look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users
already have (or enter manually).

I wasn’t contacted about this.

I’ve pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so
nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app.

The end of an era, but it’s kind of surprising it was still functional until now. (Shipley has been a full-time engineer at Apple for three years now.)

It’s hard to describe just what a sensation Delicious Library was when it debuted, and how influential it was. Delicious Library was simultaneously very useful, in very practical ways, and obsessed with its exuberant UI in ways that served no purpose other than looking cool as shit. It was an app that demanded to be praised just for the way it looked, but also served a purpose that resonated with many users. For about a decade it seemed as though most popular new apps would be designed like Delicious Library. Then Apple dropped iOS 7 in 2013, and now, no apps look like this. Whatever it is that we, as an industry, have lost in the now decade-long trend of iOS 7-style flat design, Delicious Library epitomized it.

They were even clever and innovative in the ways they promoted the app. The first time Delicious Monster sponsored Daring Fireball for a week, their sponsorship message read, in its entirety:

Organize the shit you like.
Get rid of the shit you don’t.
Delicious Library 2.

When they created an iPhone version of Delicious Library, they announced it via this delightfully intricate but decidedly lo-fi stop-motion-animated video.

20 years go by and there’s some inevitable nostalgia looking back at any art form. But man, Delicious Library exemplified an era of indie app development that, sadly, is largely over. And make no bones about it: Delicious Library was a creative work of art.

Read More 

The Onion Editorial Board:

All great journalists, and even those lesser journalists who don’t
work for The Onion, eventually ponder why we do what we do. Is the
point of reporting to illuminate the world around us, so that we
may make meaning of it? Or is it to cause people in minority
groups to question their humanity and persuade others to demonize
them? We know where we stand, proudly dreaming of genitals.

Research shows that trans people are over four times more likely
than cisgender people to be the victim of a violent crime. We
salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly
to make that number even higher.

 ★ 

The Onion Editorial Board:

All great journalists, and even those lesser journalists who don’t
work for The Onion, eventually ponder why we do what we do. Is the
point of reporting to illuminate the world around us, so that we
may make meaning of it? Or is it to cause people in minority
groups to question their humanity and persuade others to demonize
them? We know where we stand, proudly dreaming of genitals.

Research shows that trans people are over four times more likely
than cisgender people to be the victim of a violent crime. We
salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly
to make that number even higher.

Read More 

Erin Woo, Sahil Patel, and Amir Efrati, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):

OpenAI is preparing to launch a frontal assault on Google. The
ChatGPT owner recently considered developing a web browser that it
would combine with its chatbot, and it has separately discussed or
struck deals to power search features for travel, food, real
estate and retail websites, according to people who have seen
prototypes or designs of the products. […]

Making a web browser could help OpenAI have more control over a
primary gateway through which people use the web, as well as
further boost ChatGPT, which has more than 300 million weekly
users just two years after its launch. It isn’t clear how a
ChatGPT browser’s features would differ from those of other
browsers.

In a signal of its interest in a browser, several months ago
OpenAI hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at
Google. Another recent hire is Darin Fisher, who worked with
Goodger to develop Chrome.

But OpenAI isn’t remotely close to launching a browser, multiple
people said.

Goodger and Fisher’s hirings weren’t secret — both keep up-to-date profiles on LinkedIn — and it’s not safe to assume that just because two people have previously created new web browsers that their new gig is creating a new web browser. But it sure feels like a good guess.

Fisher most recently was at The Browser Company for two years, working on Arc, an innovative browser that I admire for its originality but which simply did not click for me at all. The Browser Company is in flux, too, working both on Arc 2.0 and an as-yet-unnamed second project that might be a more traditional web browser.

Combine this with regulatory pressure on Apple’s Safari and especially Google’s Chrome, and it’s an exciting time for web browsers. It’s kind of wild how every few years the web browser market gets shaken up. The pattern that’s repeated several times is that just when the browser market seems settled — like the markets for, say, spreadsheets and word processors — there’s a period of flux and new entries shake up the market. There was a point where it seemed like Internet Explorer would be dominant forever; today it doesn’t even exist. There was a point where Firefox seemed entrenched on Windows; today it’s an afterthought. Today Chrome seems entrenched, as dominant as IE once was. Maybe not?

 ★ 

Erin Woo, Sahil Patel, and Amir Efrati, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas):

OpenAI is preparing to launch a frontal assault on Google. The
ChatGPT owner recently considered developing a web browser that it
would combine with its chatbot, and it has separately discussed or
struck deals to power search features for travel, food, real
estate and retail websites, according to people who have seen
prototypes or designs of the products. […]

Making a web browser could help OpenAI have more control over a
primary gateway through which people use the web, as well as
further boost ChatGPT, which has more than 300 million weekly
users just two years after its launch. It isn’t clear how a
ChatGPT browser’s features would differ from those of other
browsers.

In a signal of its interest in a browser, several months ago
OpenAI hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at
Google. Another recent hire is Darin Fisher, who worked with
Goodger to develop Chrome.

But OpenAI isn’t remotely close to launching a browser, multiple
people said.

Goodger and Fisher’s hirings weren’t secret — both keep up-to-date profiles on LinkedIn — and it’s not safe to assume that just because two people have previously created new web browsers that their new gig is creating a new web browser. But it sure feels like a good guess.

Fisher most recently was at The Browser Company for two years, working on Arc, an innovative browser that I admire for its originality but which simply did not click for me at all. The Browser Company is in flux, too, working both on Arc 2.0 and an as-yet-unnamed second project that might be a more traditional web browser.

Combine this with regulatory pressure on Apple’s Safari and especially Google’s Chrome, and it’s an exciting time for web browsers. It’s kind of wild how every few years the web browser market gets shaken up. The pattern that’s repeated several times is that just when the browser market seems settled — like the markets for, say, spreadsheets and word processors — there’s a period of flux and new entries shake up the market. There was a point where it seemed like Internet Explorer would be dominant forever; today it doesn’t even exist. There was a point where Firefox seemed entrenched on Windows; today it’s an afterthought. Today Chrome seems entrenched, as dominant as IE once was. Maybe not?

Read More 

Mark Gurman, in his weekly Power On column:

The best scenario for Apple in TV hardware would be a cheap stick
(perhaps with no physical remote — use your iPhone instead). It’s
an idea that Apple marketing executives detest, but it would help
the company quickly expand its presence. If consumers want more
power and storage, they can opt for the current box.

At the top of the line, Apple could offer something like the new
Mac mini, providing the best streaming quality and gaming options.
For this exercise, let’s call these three tiers the Apple TV SE,
Apple TV and Apple TV Max. It would use the same “good, better,
best” strategy employed by the iPhone, Mac, iPad, AirPods, Apple
Watch and even the Apple Pencil.

Neither of these suggestions make any sense. The only interesting thing about either idea is trying to decide which one is worse.

Streaming sticks are crap, and Apple doesn’t make crap. I also think streaming sticks are fast going the way of the dodo — they were a stopgap low-cost solution for when TV sets didn’t have “smart” experiences with built-in integration for major streaming platforms. Those built-in integrations obviate the need for streaming sticks, and Apple TV is now built into TVs from all major brands, including Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio. That’s the Apple TV app, not the full Apple TV tvOS platform, but that serves Apple’s needs. I don’t think it’s possible to provide a full-fidelity tvOS experience via a stick-sized computer that draws power from an HDMI port, and it’s certainly not possible to do so by omitting the goddamn remote control. Arguing that Apple needs to or even ought to built a cheap TV stick today is like those dumb columns from 2009 arguing that Apple needed to make a netbook to compete against shitty $300 laptops. Apple TV is to set top boxes as the Mac is to PCs — it’s never going to get a large share of the overall market, but it dominates the high-end of the market catering to people who actually care.

As for Gurman’s high-end hardware idea, a Mac Mini starts at $600. What would be the point of connecting such hardware to your TV? A Mac Mini wouldn’t offer better streaming quality than the existing Apple TV 4K offers. 4K is 4K, and even older Apple TV hardware streams it perfectly. And while in theory an M4-powered Mac-Mini-caliber Apple TV could offer better gaming than the iPhone-13-era A15 Bionic chip in the current Apple TV 4K hardware, there are zero tvOS games today that target hardware like that, and there’d be little reason for game developers to target such an “Apple TV Pro” device because almost no one would buy one. Whatever the reasons are for gaming not being a big deal on tvOS today, the lack of a “pro” $500 or $600 hardware tier is not one of them.

I think Apple should get the entry price down to $99 (current it’s $129), and sooner or later they need to update the hardware, if only to support Apple Intelligence. (Perhaps to the A18 or A18 Pro next fall — the current A15 Bionic Apple TV 4K models came out one year after the chip debuted in the iPhones 13.) But the hardware story for Apple TV is fine.

 ★ 

Mark Gurman, in his weekly Power On column:

The best scenario for Apple in TV hardware would be a cheap stick
(perhaps with no physical remote — use your iPhone instead). It’s
an idea that Apple marketing executives detest, but it would help
the company quickly expand its presence. If consumers want more
power and storage, they can opt for the current box.

At the top of the line, Apple could offer something like the new
Mac mini, providing the best streaming quality and gaming options.
For this exercise, let’s call these three tiers the Apple TV SE,
Apple TV and Apple TV Max. It would use the same “good, better,
best” strategy employed by the iPhone, Mac, iPad, AirPods, Apple
Watch and even the Apple Pencil.

Neither of these suggestions make any sense. The only interesting thing about either idea is trying to decide which one is worse.

Streaming sticks are crap, and Apple doesn’t make crap. I also think streaming sticks are fast going the way of the dodo — they were a stopgap low-cost solution for when TV sets didn’t have “smart” experiences with built-in integration for major streaming platforms. Those built-in integrations obviate the need for streaming sticks, and Apple TV is now built into TVs from all major brands, including Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio. That’s the Apple TV app, not the full Apple TV tvOS platform, but that serves Apple’s needs. I don’t think it’s possible to provide a full-fidelity tvOS experience via a stick-sized computer that draws power from an HDMI port, and it’s certainly not possible to do so by omitting the goddamn remote control. Arguing that Apple needs to or even ought to built a cheap TV stick today is like those dumb columns from 2009 arguing that Apple needed to make a netbook to compete against shitty $300 laptops. Apple TV is to set top boxes as the Mac is to PCs — it’s never going to get a large share of the overall market, but it dominates the high-end of the market catering to people who actually care.

As for Gurman’s high-end hardware idea, a Mac Mini starts at $600. What would be the point of connecting such hardware to your TV? A Mac Mini wouldn’t offer better streaming quality than the existing Apple TV 4K offers. 4K is 4K, and even older Apple TV hardware streams it perfectly. And while in theory an M4-powered Mac-Mini-caliber Apple TV could offer better gaming than the iPhone-13-era A15 Bionic chip in the current Apple TV 4K hardware, there are zero tvOS games today that target hardware like that, and there’d be little reason for game developers to target such an “Apple TV Pro” device because almost no one would buy one. Whatever the reasons are for gaming not being a big deal on tvOS today, the lack of a “pro” $500 or $600 hardware tier is not one of them.

I think Apple should get the entry price down to $99 (current it’s $129), and sooner or later they need to update the hardware, if only to support Apple Intelligence. (Perhaps to the A18 or A18 Pro next fall — the current A15 Bionic Apple TV 4K models came out one year after the chip debuted in the iPhones 13.) But the hardware story for Apple TV is fine.

Read More 

Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac back in May 2023:

Now that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad are
official, let’s talk about pricing. These apps coming out
on a random day in May is surprising. Subscription pricing? Not so
much. Nevertheless, pricing for these long overdue apps is
interesting when you consider their Mac counterparts and the Apple
One bundle.

First, let’s address the Mac apps.

How would Apple price Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for Mac if they
were released today? In the era of service revenue, Apple would
almost certainly charge a subscription fee for access rather than
a one-time fee.

Mac users have had years of free updates to Logic and Final Cut
Pro after paying once for each app. In fact, Logic Pro X will be a
decade old in July, and Final Cut Pro X turns 12 next month. The
price of Logic Pro for Mac today ($199.99) is the same as four
years of subscribing to Logic Pro for iPad, and Final Cut Pro for
Mac ($299.99) will equal six years of paying for the iPad version.

The iPad versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are both priced the same: $5/month or $50/year. There is no bundle to get both at a discount.

I was a little surprised when Apple announced Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac two weeks ago and didn’t announce a switch to subscription pricing. Instead, it remains a $300 one-time purchase, and for existing users version 11 is a free upgrade. Subscription pricing is not longer the future, it’s the present, and it’s the dominant model for professional creative tools today.

Adobe made this switch years ago, with the particular emphasis on the Creative Cloud bundle that includes their entire suite of apps — Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Audition, Acrobat Pro, and more. You get access to Adobe’s entire suite for $90/month, or $60/month if you pay annually ($720/year). They currently offer a first-year 50 percent discount if you pay annually. A la carte, subscriptions to each app cost $20–$23/month, so the Creative Cloud bundle is good deal if you use three of them, and a great deal if you use more than three.

Apple clearly understands the appeal of subscription bundles too, with Apple One. Despite the fact that Apple didn’t switch to subscription pricing for Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac, I still expect them to sooner rather than later, and if they do, I would further expect a bundle. Apple is never going to offer a swath of creative tools as broad as Adobe’s, but the biggest missing pieces right now would be alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom. My gut feeling is that’s why they acquired Pixelmator and Photomator. They could sell a bundle for, just spitballing here, $20/month or $200/year that would include the Mac and iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator, and possibly Photomator. Maybe throw in some extra iCloud storage.

 ★ 

Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac back in May 2023:

Now that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad are
official, let’s talk about pricing. These apps coming out
on a random day in May is surprising. Subscription pricing? Not so
much. Nevertheless, pricing for these long overdue apps is
interesting when you consider their Mac counterparts and the Apple
One bundle.

First, let’s address the Mac apps.

How would Apple price Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for Mac if they
were released today? In the era of service revenue, Apple would
almost certainly charge a subscription fee for access rather than
a one-time fee.

Mac users have had years of free updates to Logic and Final Cut
Pro after paying once for each app. In fact, Logic Pro X will be a
decade old in July, and Final Cut Pro X turns 12 next month. The
price of Logic Pro for Mac today ($199.99) is the same as four
years of subscribing to Logic Pro for iPad, and Final Cut Pro for
Mac ($299.99) will equal six years of paying for the iPad version.

The iPad versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are both priced the same: $5/month or $50/year. There is no bundle to get both at a discount.

I was a little surprised when Apple announced Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac two weeks ago and didn’t announce a switch to subscription pricing. Instead, it remains a $300 one-time purchase, and for existing users version 11 is a free upgrade. Subscription pricing is not longer the future, it’s the present, and it’s the dominant model for professional creative tools today.

Adobe made this switch years ago, with the particular emphasis on the Creative Cloud bundle that includes their entire suite of apps — Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Audition, Acrobat Pro, and more. You get access to Adobe’s entire suite for $90/month, or $60/month if you pay annually ($720/year). They currently offer a first-year 50 percent discount if you pay annually. A la carte, subscriptions to each app cost $20–$23/month, so the Creative Cloud bundle is good deal if you use three of them, and a great deal if you use more than three.

Apple clearly understands the appeal of subscription bundles too, with Apple One. Despite the fact that Apple didn’t switch to subscription pricing for Final Cut Pro 11 for Mac, I still expect them to sooner rather than later, and if they do, I would further expect a bundle. Apple is never going to offer a swath of creative tools as broad as Adobe’s, but the biggest missing pieces right now would be alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom. My gut feeling is that’s why they acquired Pixelmator and Photomator. They could sell a bundle for, just spitballing here, $20/month or $200/year that would include the Mac and iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator, and possibly Photomator. Maybe throw in some extra iCloud storage.

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