Archive for February 10, 2026

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Apple Creator Studio and the App Store

Adam Engst:

The transition from version 14.4 of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers to version 15.1 has been confusing, to say the least. In late January, Apple released version 14.5 of all three apps, with the App Store claiming “This update contains bug fixes and performance improvements” for all three. I wonder if even that is true, given that 14.5 doesn’t appear in the version history for any of them.

The actual change in 14.5 is a dialog that appears at launch, informing the user that 14.5 will no longer receive updates and directing them to download version 15 from the App Store.

When you click the Go to App Store link in each of these dialogs, you’re taken to the appropriate page to download version 15.1. (There’s no indication of what happened to 15.0.)

Armin Briegel:

In the Finder the two apps look the same, except for the icon. But when you look at them in detail, there are two important differences. The new apps have a different name in the file system, which you can see in Terminal. The name in the file system is /Applications/Keynote Creator Studio.app.

[…]

This may seem cosmetic, but it will lead to broken dock items when the old version is removed. A user might be confused why Keynote is suddenly a question mark in the dock.

[…]

When you further inspect the application bundle by looking at the Info.plist or with a tool like Apparency, you will see that the bundle identifier of the new app is com.apple.Keynote vs. com.apple.iWork.Keynote for the old one.

digidude23:

Apple violating their own guidelines

Jason Snell:

This Creative Studio roll-out really has highlighted how lousy and inflexible the App Store back-end is. Double versions, app updates that tell you to download other app updates, and presumably why there’s only one bundle on offer… developers knew this already of course

David Deller:

As a third-party dev, I expect to have to deal with things like this. But I think it really says something that Apple themselves can’t make it work better for their own apps. (Or don’t care enough to?)

Steve Troughton-Smith:

The new subscription-based iWork apps are a whole new Universal Purchase SKU on the Mac App Store, ditching the old Mac-only records. The old standalone apps still exist (for now), but if you search the store you’ll find two completely different versions each of Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Mario Guzmán:

What are we even doing. Ads in Apple’s apps… separate versions of subscription vs non-subscription…

Steve Jobs would be running around screaming at everyone in anger.

Matt Sephton:

If you were still in doubt we had reached, and passed, the end of an era at Apple: here is the nail in the coffin.

Marc Edwards (Reddit):

I purchased Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro via my US App Store account years ago, but my Australian account is my main account. With Logic Pro 12, it looks like it’s no longer possible for me to use that setup. Final Cut Pro still works though.

Jason Snell:

But it’s another level when the same thing happens to Apple and its own apps.

[…]

I’m also struck by the fact that Apple has had to do the App Store trick of attaching subtitles to the names of every app it makes, because the design of the App Store has led to stuffing keywords into titles becoming somehow a best practice. So it’s not Final Cut Pro anymore, it’s “Final Cut Pro: Create Video.” And Numbers is “Numbers: Make Spreadsheets.”

Craig Hockenberry:

Another reason for the subtitles: app title metadata can’t be the same as another SKU on ANY platform. If you release “Foo” on macOS, you can’t use “Foo” on iOS or a universal app.

(We had to deal with this in Triode by using a dash, endash, and emdash on different platforms.)

Previously:

Apple Creator Studio Icons

BasicAppleGuy:

A comparison between the original icons, the pre–Creator Studio icons, and the non–Creator Studio icons.

Adam Engst:

I have to wonder whether the Numbers icon expresses the designer’s disdain for Liquid Glass or the community’s criticism of it.

It looks like it’s giving the finger.

Ezekiel Elin:

I thought that the new Creator Studio icons would have a light mode variant. You know, cause Apple has spent a few years talking about making icon variants.

Nope, it uses the same icon in both modes and it looks weird in light mode.

Benjamin Mayo:

So, even after you pay (I’m in the trial period), the Creator Studio exclusive features stick out with a purple highlight in the toolbar.

Benjamin Mayo:

apple clearly listened to your feedback that menu icons should use colour to distinguish them

Mario Guzmán:

Apple: “Use a single icon to introduce a group of similar items”

Also Apple:

Previously:

Apple Creator Studio Now Shipping

Agen Schmitz (MacRumors, Reddit):

Goodbye iWork, hello Apple Creator Studio. Apple has released version 15.1 of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers with a bevy of new features, as long as you pony up for the Apple Creator Studio subscription[…]

[…]

$129.99 annual Apple Creator Studio subscription; Keynote, 906.7 MB, release notes; Numbers, 722.3 MB, release notes; Pages, 859.6 MB, release notes; macOS 15.6+

Agen Schmitz:

Final Cut Pro, $299.99 new, 7.39 GB, release notes, macOS 14.6+; Compressor, $49.99 new, 253.2 MB, release notes, macOS 14.6+; Motion, $49.99 new, 3.94 GB, release notes, macOS 15.6+

Andrew Cunningham:

In lieu of running through each of these apps’ new features one by one, we’ve gathered answers to some questions about how the new subscriptions will work and how they’ll compare to the standalone versions of the apps.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

While Apple’s iWork apps all have a free mode, all the pro apps (including Pixelmator) have a splash screen to force you to subscribe at launch, with no way to play around without agreeing to the 3 month subscription trial. No real surprises there.

Geoff Duncan:

I’m sure I’ll have something pithy to say about a word processor needing a whole top-level menu item called “Privacy & Analytics” once I’m done picking my jaw up off the floor and then fuming.

“Share Analytics Data” is enabled by default. Because of course it is.

Jason Snell:

I dislike Apple’s choice to roll its “iWork” suite of apps into this bundle, not just because it turns a set of free products into freemium products with upsell, but because there are plenty of users of Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform who do not need the powerful features of Final Cut, Logic, and Pixelmator.

With that said, the new features in the three classic iWork apps are all pretty impressive. (Apple says Freeform will gain suite integration at a later time.) All three apps get access to Content Hub, a media library full of photos and illustrations that can be integrated into projects for all three apps. There are also a bunch of new “premium” templates that add more options for people who don’t want to create that flyer or presentation all by themselves.

I like the Content Hub, which is accessible from the toolbar and is searchable and filterable by media type. I was able to very quickly pick out a background image for a slide and an illustration to use on a birthday card, for example. I pay an annual subscription for access to a limited number of stock media images from a library; it’s very nice that Apple is rolling this library into the Creator Studio subscription.

[…]

I’m a little less excited about the templates, which feel “premium” more in the sense that they’re not available to the people who aren’t paying. They didn’t really feel that much more creator-focused than any other Keynote or Pages template would. Shouldn’t Apple be making an effort to make nicer templates for all users of those apps? Does the introduction of premium templates mean that Apple’s no longer motivated to create new templates for everyone else? The whole thing just hits me wrong.

Benjamin Mayo:

The Creator Hub image library is really laggy to scroll around. Feels like classic SwiftUI on AppKit performance issues.

John Voorhees:

However, what’s most exciting to me is the fact that Apple is clearly repositioning these apps to appeal to a broader cross-section of creatives. Apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are no longer just for Hollywood and music studios. By filling out the iPad lineup and adding Pixelmator Pro along with enhanced versions of their productivity apps, Apple has taken the first steps toward realigning its apps with what it means to be a creative professional in 2026.

[…]

I’ve played around with the beta versions of Final Cut Pro for both Mac and iPad, and the new features work as advertised with the exception of Transcript and Visual Search, which I couldn’t get to work on the Mac. As is the case with a lot of the Creator Studio apps, my Final Cut Pro needs are pretty simple. Background export and full external monitor support on the iPad are the two features I find most compelling, but there’s a lot to be said for Transcript and Visual Search, both for editors on longer-form content and possibly for creating chapter markers for YouTube.

[…]

The lack of a podcast editing app in Creator Studio feels like a gaping hole. Podcasting straddles the audio and video worlds in a way that can be handled by a combination of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro, but practically, a simpler app that could handle standard audio and video podcast formats would be better and would serve a large segment of the audience Apple appears to be trying to reach with Creator Studio. The fact that such an app doesn’t exist yet, despite Apple’s prominence in podcasting, is surprising, but Creator Studio’s focus on a broader swath of the creative community makes me optimistic that we might see a podcasting solution someday.

Mark Ellis:

What problem is Creator Studio addressing for creators, I asked?

John and Will noted that modern creators are no longer focused on just one skill. Musicians are often also video editors, and anyone running a creator business has to be as comfortable managing finances as they are cutting together an Instagram Reel.

By bundling together production apps like Final Cut Pro and productivity apps such as Numbers, Apple is hoping that modern creators will view Creator Studio as affordable access to high-end tools.

William Gallagher:

In AppleInsider testing, Apple Creator Studio’s Final Cut Pro for iPad is proving buggy, and if you use the default settings, your work can even be completely lost.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

For some reason I’m really taken by Pixelmator Pro’s new-document/template window, especially how it shows a preview of the clipboard. Maybe it’s the years of the travesty of Photoshop’s new file window and all of its terrible, slow variations, but seeing this all done natively makes me feel warm inside. This is a nice bit of UI

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Something I outright hate about Apple’s new Pixelmator Pro is that it saves changes automatically to disk. There’s no experimentation, no temporary workspace, it just goes right to iCloud.

That’s bad enough for something like TextEdit, but when you’re talking about a pro image editor working with potentially multi-gigabyte files, that is so incredibly irritating.

You can disable this behavior on macOS, but not on iPadOS, which I think is an existential mistake. I really hope they fix that.

Mario Guzmán:

Comparing the toolbars between Pages 15 (15.1?) and Pages 14:

Why is this a unified toolbar? You can barely see any of the title. Sure, you can expand the window but sometimes you just don’t have the space. The fat toolbar items are just so space inefficient.

Oh and it gets worse if you show the labels (as the default used to be).

Apps just tend to get more and more user hostile and I'm really trying to understand why?

Geoff Duncan:

Every single update to Logic Pro breaks fundamental interface behavior I use on every project. Sometimes its how panes open and close. Sometimes it’s how adjusting region edges changes edges you aren’t adjusting (and can permanently lose audio). It literally is like they have zero QA/testing on this stuff.

With Logic Pro 12, now it’s how it sets default scroll bar placement on the region editor EVERY SINGLE TIME. It’s either slammed to the very top of the scrollbar, or slammed to the very bottom.

Joe Rossignol:

Following the launch of Apple Creator Studio this week, Apple has quietly stopped selling its “Pro Apps Bundle for Education” separately, but it remains available with the purchase of a Mac on Apple’s Education Store on the web.

Previously:

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