The Apple Creator Studio includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage, plus premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers and (later) Freeform too. But in the best possible news, this subscription is optional. If you prefer to buy your software outright, you still can, but this isn’t even an expensive subscription.

At $12.99/month or $129/year, it’s cheaper than the cheapest Photography plan from Adobe, and a tiny fraction of the $69.99/month you’d pay for Creative Cloud Pro. It’s even cheaper for college students and educators at $2.99/month or $29.99/year, and there’s a one month free trial too.

Crucially, this subscription isn’t just for the Mac, but also includes many apps for iPad. There are still some unique features in the iPad version of FCP, and the press release lists new features coming to both editions. Right now, these updates aren’t available, but I’ll post another article when they are — presumably on January 28 when the subscription becomes available.

We can look forward to these new features in Final Cut Pro:

• Transcript Search on Mac and iPad — transcription has been present on the timeline but it’ll be very handy to have it on source clips too

• Visual Search on Mac and iPad — presumably similar to that offered by apps like Jumper, to help you find an item in a shot by describing it

• Beat Detection on Mac and iPad — very welcome when you want to time your edits to the beat

• Montage Maker on iPad — an AI-powered rough cut feature

And these features in other apps:

• Magnetic Mask in Motion on Mac — this excellent rotoscoping feature arrived in FCP last year and it’s great to see it land in Motion too
• Synths in the AI Session Player in Logic Pro — an AI powered automatic performer

• Chord ID in Logic Pro — turning any audio or MIDI recording into a chord progression
• Quick Swipe Comping from Logic Pro on Mac is being added to iPad, and new loop packs are landing too
• Music Understanding in Logic Pro for iPad — AI-based natural language search through your loops

• Pixelmator Pro is coming to iPad as well as Mac, and both will receive a new Warp tool
• The Content Hub is a new source of photos and AI-generated material, and access to OpenAI’s models for image creation and transformation. Upscaling is also included, though that’s on-device. 

• Keynote will be able to generate a draft of a presentation from an outline, presumably in an extension of the existing outline-first workflow
• Keynote will be also able to generate presenter notes automatically
• Magic Fill in Numbers will enable smart automatic formulas

How deep will the AI-focused features be? Time will tell, but I can’t wait to check them out. 

Conclusion

While a subscription was recently rumoured, I didn’t think Apple would pursue a subscription-only path, and I’m very pleased they haven’t. If you were already subscribed to Final Cut Pro for iPad, this is a huge update for a small price increase. If you don’t already own Final Cut Pro, this  is a fantastic way to get started, and because you get so many other apps too, this might be the one-stop-shop a fresh content creator, designer or animator needs.

Best of all, if you already own Final Cut Pro, Motion, or any of the other Mac apps, you can keep using them, and continue to expect free updates.  At a time when Adobe’s solution continues to increase in price, this feels like a smart move — and crucially, one that shouldn’t annoy anyone. It’s terrific news for existing users and curious new users, and it invites Mac users to enjoy the iPad versions of these apps too.

Look for a more in-depth review later in January when these updates drop, but for now, existing users can breathe easier — new features are indeed coming soon, and you won’t need to subscribe if you don’t want to.