One of my favorite Mac apps is Pixelmator Pro, an image editing tool that I use daily. On Friday, the company behind the app announced that Apple was acquiring it. While this seems like great news for the Pixelmator team and Apple users, my first reaction was a feeling of dread that an app I use frequently would be drastically different in the future or no longer exist in its current form.
I started using Pixelmator primarily to escape Adobe’s subscription model for Photoshop. Pixelmator is available for a one-time purchase of $50, which is much friendlier on my wallet than Photoshop’s $20 per month or Photoshop Elements’ $100 for a “3-year license”, whatever it means.
I also wanted to help the Pixelmator team build Mac-only apps. Although developers can make a living as Mac-only developers, the market is not as big as Windows or even iOS. The Pixelmator team creates top-notch software and deserves all the support they can get.
When I started using Pixelmator Pro instead of Photoshop, I had a lot to learn about the application’s user interface. After using Photoshop for years, it took a while to erase all that muscle memory. But it helped that Pixelmator Pro had a great user interface that made sense, and it didn’t take long to get familiar. But now, with the announcement of the acquisition, I’m afraid all of that will be thrown out the window. Pixelmator Pro isn’t going to change “for now,” says the Pixelmator team. That’s not very reassuring.
My main concern is that the one-time purchase plan will disappear. Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are one-time purchase Mac apps, so we hope that will be the case with Apple Pixelmator Pro. But the iPad versions of Apple’s Pro apps are subscription purchases, so there is recent precedent in which Apple implements such purchase plans. Apple’s services revenue is valuable to its bottom line, and the company could make its Mac apps subscription-based to help service revenue growth.
Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro were Apple acquisitions, but Apple didn’t have a presence in those software categories in the first place. They do this with Pixelmator and Photos, so my other concern is unfounded and overblown, but what happens if Apple decides to discontinue Pixelmator as a standalone app and incorporate it into the Photos app, possibly as a paid Photos+ option? It’s not ideal: Photos is an app for managing your photo library, and it’s not ideal for my work. What would make more sense is if Apple integrated the Photomator app into Photos and left Pixelmator as its own app.
Overall, this seems like good news for the Pixelmator team: Apple made a great acquisition and I’m happy to see them succeed. But let this be my plea to Apple to keep Pixelmator Pro as an affordable, standalone app that I can rely on for years and years.
