Apple Acquires Pixelmator
Today we have some important news to share: the Pixelmator Team plans to join Apple.
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Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.
Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, Pixelmator has developed a suite of well-regarded creative tools that compete with Adobe’s offerings while maintaining a focus on ease of use and performance. The company’s apps have been exclusively available on Apple’s platforms, including Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
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Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal marks Apple’s latest investment in professional creative tools, following previous acquisitions in the space such as Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro.
My initial assumption is that this is an acqui-hire. It doesn’t seem like their stuff really fits into Photos.app. But I suppose it’s possible that Apple wants to add a new iWork/Pro app.
I don’t know what this means for the future of Apple’s apps—though I hope it means Photos is going to get a serious infusion of new talent and functionality!
If you’re a Pixelmator Pro or Photomator user, this has to be a bit of a bummer, but there’s some good news: It will probably take a few years for Apple to fully integrate the team into whatever is happening next, and the existing apps will probably still be around until then.
Pixelmator and Photomator already look like Apple’s own “pro” apps. From the get-go, the Pixelmator team hasn’t just followed Apple’s own trends and guidelines for UI design, they’ve helped define those trends.
Does Apple want to fold these advanced features into Photos? Or do they once again see the need for separate consumer/professional first-party apps? Logic, for example, was an acquisition — but that was all the way back in 2002. If Apple keeps Photomator as an actively developed product, it would be a return to the same genre they walked away from when they discontinued Aperture in 2014. And if Apple keeps Pixelmator going, it would be the first time they go head-to-head against Photoshop itself.
The calls for Apple to have its own Photoshop competitor date back to the early days of Mac OS X, and the heyday of the Final Cut Suite, when Apple had an entire lineup of pro software for various niches.
Today, this Pixelmator acquisition could have far-reaching implications for iPad and Vision Pro, who have not been as well-supported by third parties making pro apps like the Mac has.
I would very much welcome an Apple that cares as much about, and fights for, pro apps as it used to.
On the flip side, Apple has a graveyard of pro apps it acquired, extracted all the value from, and left to rot along with their legacy userbases 😅
I’m sorry if that seems cynical, but Apple’s track record with software acquisitions is abysmal. My guess is either they’ll kill it completely or replace it with something unrecognisable in a year or two.
Pixelmator Team could AppKit harder than Apple and I now feel like Apple is going to ruin this marvelous app. Damn it. Damn iiittttttt. Pixelmator Team makes Mac-ier apps than even Apple. Apple just ships even-more-stretched out iPad apps
Welp.
I am also a touch worried. The first thing I thought of was Apple’s purchase of Workflow, now Shortcuts. In the past seven years, the capability of Shortcuts has been expanded tremendously, but it has also been routinely broken in iOS updates. There are frequent errors with syncing, actions stop working without warning, and compatibility does not always feel like a priority in new first-party software releases.
So, good for Pixelmator for attracting Apple’s attention and delivering quality software for years — software which can go toe-to-toe with offerings from companies far larger and richer. I hope this acquisition is great news for users, too, but I think it is fair to be apprehensive.
As someone who does all the graphics work on this site and others with Pixelmator, I’m a little nervous what the future will bring. The last big Apple acquisition of a beloved app was Dark Sky and that was eventually killed off and rolled into the Weather app. There may be some good news—Apple also acquired Workflow, improved it and renamed it Shortcuts. Looking back even further, Logic Pro was actually an acquisition, too.
Ballpark Pixelmator acquisition math.
Apropos of nothing surely, Acorn remains a great Core Image-based Mac app for working with images.
See also: Mac Power Users Talk, TidBITS Talk.
Previously:
- Canva Acquires Affinity/Serif
- Elegy for the Native Mac App
- Photomator for Mac
- Sunsetting Dark Sky
- Pixelmator Photo Switching to Subscriptions
- Apple Acquires Primephonic
- Pixelmator Pro Gets AppleScript Support
- Apple to Acquire Intel’s Modem Business
- End of the Line for Aperture
- Pixelmator Pro vs. Photoshop CC
- Why Did Apple Spend $400M to Acquire Shazam?
- Apple Acquires Buddybuild
- Apple Acquires Workflow
Update (2024-11-05): Gus Mueller (Mastodon):
Acorn and Pixelmator came out 15 days apart from each other in 2007, and the target market between the two has always overlapped. But even with that I've always been on good terms with the Pixelmator folks. Any time we were both attending WWDC, we would meet up and complain about image APIs or just chat over lunch.
The other major player in this category is Affinity, was purchased by Canva in March of this year. So it feels strange that Acorn is now effectively the only independent Mac image editor from that era.
Update (2024-11-22): See also: List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple (via John Gruber).
