[jasongill]

It's $12.99/mo or $129/yr for a subscription that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, MainStage, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers

Educational discount with verification required drops the price to $2.99/mo / $29.99/yr.

The regular-price subscription includes family sharing, education price does not.

One-time purchase versions remain available: Final Cut Pro ($299.99), Logic Pro ($199.99), Pixelmator Pro ($49.99), Motion ($49.99), Compressor ($49.99), and MainStage ($29.99).

Comes out January 28th

[jasoneckert]

The most important benefits in my opinion are choice and price - people like me who prefer to buy software outright can still do so at a reasonable cost, while others who opt for a subscription can also do so (again, at a reasonable cost).

[embedding-shape]

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!" instead of leaving those critics without answers. 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, but still clever of them to choose to do it later for PR purposes. 1-0 to Apple :)

[dylan604]

So what about next year when all of the apps receive updates/upgrades? Will the paid-in-full versions receive the upgrade for free, or will they have upgrade prices? I remember the days of Adobe's annual version upgrades, and they were at least $99 per app. Using that as the basis, the Adobe subscription plan is not more expensive that just broken up into 12 payments. People that kept running v4 to avoid the upgrade prices eventually got left out as they could not open files provided to them from others using the most recent version. Let's not forget our history on the one-time purchase pros/cons

[concinds]

All companies should do this. Sometimes I want a one-time purchase. Sometimes I want to try the program for a few months and I prefer a cheap subscription over a big upfront cost. And very, very rarely, I'll prefer the subscription, even though it's more expensive over time, to support a cool indie studio with recurring revenue instead of one-time purchases that may dry up and lead to lack of interest from the devs.

[schappim]

This isn’t the whole story as one-time purchases will no longer have access to all new features without a subscription [1].

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

[NBJack]

For now. Let's not forget MS Office had a period like that as well. I give it five years max.

[Someone1234]

For *now.

Adobe also started out as a choice between subscription or buying. The only thing maybe keeping Apple honest is that their stuff isn't as popular.

[iAMkenough]

Except certain features in the software will be reserved for subscribers only.

[thecupisblue]

That's actually surprisingly cheap compared to other subscriptions in the industry, especially for such a high powered suite.

[jonwinstanley]

As long as you buy a macbook to use it on, they are happy

[philistine]

The competition for the Creator Studio is not exactly Adobe. Of course Apple will be happy to build on their offerings to be able to really take on Adobe, but this subscription is priced to compete with the online services popping up from nowhere that have stolen the ease of use market away from Adobe.

The real competition in this market in 2026 is Canva.

[brk]

That was my thinking. I already use several of these apps, the $130/mo. is a no brainer to pick up the others.

[rchaud]

Get them in the door now and jack up the price later.

[Towaway69]

Undercut the competition until there is no competition, then raise prices or have I missed something?

Ah, yes - cross finance your loses by selling compute in your own data centres / hosting service because you can.

[btown]

As someone who's loved Logic Pro since the days before Apple bought Emagic, this is amazing that it will be accessible to a broader audience.

There are many discussions e.g. https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1433515-why-does... about the reasons for its popularity, but one stands out to me - its event data model.

There are far too many tools out there (from FL Studio on one end, to MuseScore on the other) that present piano-roll-based rapid prototyping and traditional western score notation as diametric opposites. From day 1, Logic challenged itself "what if we can use the same event-based data model to render both."

None of this complexity is hidden - you can edit the raw event stream directly. If you're a developer familiar with, say, React, it makes music creation quite intuitive - everything from visual to audio output is a function of a transparently formatted data store.

And while that has its challenges, and some of the UX innovations of e.g. MuseScore have been slower to arrive in Logic, because of this "dual life" it's unmatched as a pedogogical tool, and a professional creative tool as well.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

There's a lot of information in a traditional western score that cannot be easily represented in a pianoroll, at least not losslessly.

Considering them as alternate views of the same data model gets problematic when the composer uses the full bag of tricks that score notation allows (notably repeats, but also the problem of representing tuplets correctly when a pianoroll can offer no clues about how to structure them). So for example, the user can create a set of notes in the pianoroll that will never be played correctly by anyone reading the score; the user can create dynamics in the score that cannot be correctly presented in the pianoroll version.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to do an MVC-style system with two different views of the same data model - it clearly is. It's just moving between the two views is not lossless, and moving between the two controllers (i.e. editing) is not equivalent.

[jmsgwd]

How else could you represent piano roll data than as a stream of events? I thought that was ubiquitous since the invention of MIDI.

Are you saying other sequencers are unable to render the same data as piano roll and score?

[Forgeties79]

Not related to your comment exactly but I feel like I need to get this out in this thread somewhere:

As someone who defended FCPX and used it professionally for years even when it was at its most hated (2011 or so), it’s been woefully supported the last few years and no one should be on it anymore. Resolve Studio outclasses it top to bottom for the same one-time cost and runs great on both MacOS and Windows. Linux it’s bumpy unfortunately but it does technically run lol

[embedding-shape]

> Resolve Studio outclasses it top to bottom for the same one-time cost and runs great on both MacOS and Windows

Best 200-300 EUR I spent some years ago, and still receives free updates, Blackmagic Design is a really nice company. And, not only does Resolve run great on macOS and Windows, they have Linux native builds that run even better than it does with the same hardware using Windows, which is REALLY nice.

[geerlingguy]

Not arguing against Resolve, but FCP is still great for edits.

It lacks some flashy social media features and modern conveniences for sure, but it's still a very good and widely used editor.

[dangoodmanUT]

Thank god they preserved the one time purchase. I bought all of these apps back in like ~2013 and have been using them for literally 13 years with all updates (fcp, compressor, motion)

good on them

[bombcar]

It's rare for a company to not only offer one-time purchases, and keep updating them, but also not rebranding/renaming/version cut-off charging at some point.

[g947o]

I thought they basically gave away Keynote/Pages etc to anyone with an Apple device?

[yohannparis]

It's literally in the introduction of the page.

> plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers

[hmbakhsh]

Potentially AI slop features coming to both that they'll charge for?

[ksec]

>Comes out January 28th

I wonder why? Why not today but 28th of Jan?

Part of me thinks M5 MacBook Air and M5 Pro MacBook Pro will also be released on January 28th.

[ksec]

Well I guess either Great Mind thinks alike or they just read my HN comment

https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/14/apple-may-have-hinted-at-a-hi...

[fckgw]

Mac Studio is still on M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips.

I could see a press release refresh on that day to M5 chips.

[systemtest]

Could be related to billing cycles

[ExoticPearTree]

I would like this to be very true. Can’t wait to get the new Air.

[drcongo]

That's actually a hell of a deal considering I already pay $5 a month just for Logic on the iPad.

[apercu]

I bought Logic maybe 8-9 years ago, and get free upgrades.... If I had paid $5/mo it would already have cost me ~$280.00 more than I paid.

Even if I had to purchase an occasional update (assuming they were reasonably priced), I'd still be coming out ahead.

I hate "renting" software.

[xattt]

> Educational discount with verification required drops the price to $2.99/mo / $29.99/yr.

Guess it’s time to take some online self-paced courses at a university for no reason in particular …

[sleepybrett]

Meanwhile the subscription for Adobe Premiere ALONE is 22.99/mo

[FireBeyond]

Yeah, I'm pissed that the Photography plan (Lightroom/Photoshop) has gone from 9.99/mo to 24.99/mo in the last 18 months.

[prodigycorp]

time to dust off that 20 year old edu email address. with these discounts, college has paid for itself!

[yardie]

I finally had to give mine up. Needed to reset the password which required a trip to 4HELP office and I live halfway around the globe now. But the kiddo will be starting college soon so I can mooch off their edu email address.

[SirMaster]

That almost never works for me, they usually use a service that verifies current student enrollment like SheerID.

[WmWsjA6B29B4nfk]

If you are planning anyway to break the terms of the license and effectively steal the software, why even bother paying something for the privilege? Just get it for free, surely it has to be available cracked

[benterix]

Make the one-time purchase while you still can. The educational version is a great value, and the license allows the software to be used for commercial purposes.

[simjnd]

But Keynote, Pages and Numbers are already free

[butterisgood]

Hopefully staying as such. I like Numbers, but I suspect I could totally replace my use of it with Emacs org-mode.

[aobdev]

From the subheading: “plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers”

[Rebelgecko]

Seems like a great "opportunity" for Apple to pump up their Services revenue

[butterisgood]

I thought Keynote, Pages, and Numbers were complimentary. Or part of an iCloud subscription or something. Is that changing?

[cultofmetatron]

the other benefit is that subs can be a sort of extended trial. Ive been wanting to try out final cut pro but I don't want to do a full video project if i'm going to be evaluating it. better to have 1-3 months to really know before I plunk down 299 bucks.

[tarentel]

They offer a 3 month trial already.

[kolanos]

Does this mean Keynote and Pages are now paid products? Aren't they included with Mac OS?

[aobdev]

From the subheading: “plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers”

[deafpolygon]

My concern here is are they going to start locking features for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote behind a paywall? Yes, it’s free—but will they still have all of the newer features without a subscription?

[mrkstu]

I’m assuming that they’re going to (fairly) lock AI generative features behind the subscription since they’ll be incurring ongoing costs.

[apparent]

They'll be pressured by gdocs and other similar products to not keep too much of this behind a paywall. I already don't know anyone who loves using Pages (every time I share a document I have to export it to .docx, which is annoying), so they're already starting off behind by a bit.