Comment by jasongill

Final Cut Pro X has been available for purchase (at the same price, IIRC) for well over a decade now. Pro feathers were ruffled at the time they leapt from FCP7 to FCPX: the $299 price point was something like 1/4 of the going rate for its predecessors, was Apple planning to abandon its pros for the consumer market? Well. Here we are almost 15 years later, and if you paid the one-time price back then, you're still getting free updates today (at least on desktop). And you can still buy in with 299 2025 dollars, rather than 299 2011 dollars.

At the time, the common wisdom was that they'd go the same route as Adobe: you'd have to buy Final Cut X+1 in a couple years for another $299, and Final Cut X+2 a couple years after that... to their credit, that's not the way it's gone.

So that way, I imagine, all the film folks have a little more money to chuck at their high-powered Mac hardware budgets in the next refresh cycle instead... An evergreen Final Cut Pro license costs almost as much as 1TB of SSD from those guys!

Office 365 - the subscription version of Office - was released in 2011.

Microsoft still offers a one time purchase of Office. There is precedent for Bigcorp keeping a one time purchase version and offer a prescription.

> Of course, they'll eventually remove the option to buy the software by paying once, I think everyone can see the writing on the wall

There's no indication Apple is planning to end the option of paying once for these apps.

Apple introduced subscriptions for Final Cut and Logic nearly three years ago [1]; this isn't new by any means. Pages, Numbers and Keynote remain available at no cost.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cu...

Many years ago Apple reduced their pricing on many of these apps. They also made their OS updates free.

Apple wants its customers to buy/subscribe to these tools so that you’re in the Apple ecosystem and buy more hardware and services.

Unlike Adobe, they have profit-maximizing incentives to let you stay on the buy/rent model that you prefer.

You are complaining about a problem that hasn’t happened yet and there is no inherent reason it will happen.

Why do you think they will remove the option to buy the software? They’ve kept the model for years. They’re targeting different audiences with the move.

This is such a strange way to think about what was done. Rather than just being happy they kept the pay once option and saying that's good you're imagining critics who how Apple can "shut them down."

There are features they are planning to make exclusive to the subscriptions. I don’t know if they’re planning to make the one-time purchase go away completely, but it seems like it’s going to be approached as the “lesser” option.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/13/apple-creator-studio-ex...

Not Apple, but iMazing switched to subscription model and they simply lost me as a customer.

JetBrains tried something similar a while ago too, and almost screwed it up - but managed to listen to their customers and nailed it with the perpetual fallback licensing. Making me not just pay the subscription but feel respect to the company.

YMMV, of course.

> so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!" instead of leaving those critics without answers

This is like saying that it's clever for Mars to keep Mars Bars while launching a new bar, as it "shuts down" complaints that Mars Bars will no longer exist.

The other thing that’s going to go away is purchasing only what you need. I want exactly one of these apps, I bet virtually nobody uses all of them, and yet the suckers are going to be telling us that being made to buy stuff we don’t want or use is “more value”.

Yea I've already purchased some of these apps so I was not going to thrilled if they pulled an Adobe and made me pay for an overpriced subscription on top of it >:(

Yes, shame on them for only making good decisions now, instead of in the future.

I think it's okay, or even better probably, if they move to subscription only. All Apple's paid apps have languished for years and if its actually a revenue stream for them maybe they'll actually make them industry-leading again.

> It's pretty clever that they keep the "pay one time" option still alive while announcing the availability of subscription, so anyone who says "Boo, not you too Apple" can easily be shut down with "You still have the option to buy it!"

Probably not. Those customers are almost completely irrelevant and not people who Apple or anybody else cares about. They won't mind if you kick and scream.

> but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :)

They're doing it because it makes them more money. Corporations are not your friend.

These apps have provided free updates after initial purchase for many years already. It would be big news if that stopped.

These are being sold on Apple's AppStore, and there the model is that you get all of the updates for that App. Of course there is the work-around that some apps use, which is to create a new App (i.e.: MyApp vs MyApp2), which Apple could do at some point in the future.

The best one to watch at the moment is if Pixelmater Pro license holders from before it was bought by Apple get access to any of the new improvements.

This is my argument for the Adobe subscription. One day, I'm a photographer needing apps like Photoshop and Lightroom and After Effects (because I do a lot of timelapse). One day, I'm a graphic designer, so I need Photoshop and Illustrator. One day, I'm an editor, so Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and After Effects. One day, I'm doing desktop publishing with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.

They'd be even happier if you bought one of the Mac Studios or Mac Pro. Please, someone, anyone.

Canva, really? Is this looking forward at what is coming?

I see the rise of and have to deal with Canva-generated PDFs instead of Adobe Illustrator. So the low end market of video / animation, I could absolutely see Canva dominating. Doubt we'll see audio tools though.

Final Cut Pro -- Professional non-linear video editing * Canva? Partial: Best for social clips; lacks FCP’s RAW, multicam, and AI transcript tools.

Logic Pro -- Professional music production and MIDI sequencing * Canva? No: No DAW capabilities, plugin hosting, or live mixing.

Pixelmator Pro -- Advanced image editing and graphic design * Canva? Partial: Good for templates; lacks Pixelmator’s precision layers and AI retouching.

Motion -- 2D/3D motion graphics and cinematic effects * Canva? No: Canva uses presets; Motion offers granular keyframing and VFX creation.

Compressor -- Advanced media encoding and batch exporting * Canva? No: No control over specific codecs, bitrates, or pro output formats.

MainStage -- Live performance audio rig for stage use * Canva? No: No live audio processing or MIDI instrument hosting.

Keynote -- Cinematic presentations and slide decks * Canva? Yes: Canva’s primary competitor for collaborative, template-based slides.

Pages -- Word processing and page layout * Canva? Yes: Canva Docs is a direct alternative for visual/marketing documents.

Numbers -- Spreadsheets and data visualization * Canva? Yes: Canva Sheets handles basic data viz, though lacks Numbers' complex formulas.

I would assume it's because younger generations of creatives are using their software less and less, increasing the risk of losing the market completely on the software side. At this pricing, more of them will turn to paying Apple rather than paying for multiple services, keeping them tied into the ecosystem.

Also so many people are paying for Canva, Capcut etc that taking a piece of that cake is quite a low hanging fruit if you have a distribution platform.

Most of the comments here demonstrates the lack of abstraction abilities here at HN.

My comments weren’t related to whether apple has data centres or not (afaik they don’t and actually use google hardware).

My comments were related to a business model used by amazon to destroy local shops in our neighbourhoods: offer products at vastly reduced prices, making a loss but covering those losses by profiting on aws. Once there is no competition left, prices rise and shareholder profits are made.

Hence my conjecture that apple was doing the same and hence they were offering this product at undercut price. As was the OP was wondering about.

I was actually criticising the business model increasingly used by big tech. Which has the consequences that are neighbourhoods are emptied out and left with stores that act as amazon package pickup stores or stores where packages are returned to be sent back to amazon.

Apple doesn't ever need to make much money on this software, when they make money on hardware needed to use it.

Not an Apple fan at all, but damn, in the views of some of the HN community, one can only do wrong. Pathetic.

Pretty spot on. I think what's new is that Apple is employing this tactic, before they always went with "Our stuff is more expensive because it's better", but as they seem to slightly pivot into other directions now, this choice also seems to align with the new direction.

Somehow I don't think Apple is going to put Adobe out of business.

What data centers? Does Apple even have data centers? Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers?

Among professional-ready DAWs, as far as I know, it's unique in its approach. Pro Tools and FL Studio still don't have score rendering or even MusicXML export! Reaper has limited score rendering/engraving support, but minimal customizability.

And on the notation-oriented side, you have things like MuseScore, Finale, etc. where there is an event model, but the UI itself doesn't have mature (or any) support for tracking mixer/knob automation (outside of what can be derived automatically from dynamic symbols).

Years ago, I used Logic in a musical theater context where I could build a constantly-updated demo for pitching/rehearsals/live-iteration and edit the final orchestration to be printed for the pit orchestra, both from the same living document. Could I have duplicated my changes in a DAW and notation software separately, and kept them in sync manually? Absolutely, and many creators do. But there's something special about having that holy grail at your fingertips.

It helps that you have to continue to buy their hardware to keep running said software. I guess they could be greedy and keep making me pay for Logic every few years so I'm happy they don't do that but they're still making money off my initial purchase of logic just in a different way.

So it's the GP comment that is inaccurate.

Ah, I've been mooching off an old library card for years to rent books for my Kindle. Finally got an email saying "Just pop into your local branch to renew this year." Ah...

> break the terms of the license and effectively steal the software

We're all (mostly/some) software people here, you don't need to use terms established by the "anti-piracy" firms to make your point, no one is "stealing" anything here, even if they were getting it for free from TPB or whatever.

When I moaned to the Adobe support person about a recent price hike they said "It's a real shame you haven't signed up for a free educational course online, like the ones from Google, that would qualify you for a student plan. Or have you? I'll wait here while you tell me if you are enrolled in one of those free Google courses. Take as long as you need."

So now I'm getting an education too.

Cracked software has risks attached to it, such as malware.

Spare me the morality play. Apple gifted Donald Trump a 24k gold statue! They will gift me an educational discount to Final Cut Pro.

won't somebody think of the poor trillion dollar company!

Oh yeah, my Logic for Mac is probably about that age too, but there's no choice to buy it outright on iPad sadly.

Oh interesting re: Linux. My understanding was it was rougher but maybe I should try myself!

It lacks a lot more than flashy social media features - and given their biggest driver in the 2010’s was arguably YouTubers, they actually need more robust social media features. For starters, they just added voice isolation what? A year ago? That has been bog-standard for resolve and premiere for years now. The audio tools in general are still very subpar.

I used it professionally from 2011-2020 or so. Around 2020 the gaps in feature parity became wider and more apparent, it’s clearly not a priority anymore. Once I went to resolve I basically abandoned it. I use maybe every 6mo tops now for quick stuff for friends and family or to open an old project.

The one thing I will say is for speed cutting, it’s probably the best. And that’s no small thing! But that’s about it.

I think many more would be on to Pages if they realized it was more than a simple WP. It's especially great for personal use, where there's no non-Mac sharing needed — there's no simpler layout program out there, & the typographic options are nice to have. If I have something longer/more detailed to put together, that's what ()LaTeX, Inkscape, etc., is for. We need alternate app ecosystems out there, & it's nice that Apple hasn't left these apps to rot like they did back in the 2010s.

I really enjoy Pages, but if they’re going to lock stuff behind a paywall — it might be time to look at other things. I can’t afford to add a whole bunch of new subscriptions.