Apple Acquires Photo Editing App Maker Pixelmator

[Naraxus]

Wasn't this started by Marco Arment?

 

[hagar]

Sounds to me like they are just heading towards having their own "Creative Cloud" subscription bundle at some point

Remember folks -- they are 110% all in on "services revenue"

You could be very very right about this.

As long as the grandfather in paid customers.

 

[Gnik Nus]

Wow! This is huge news! Pixelmator is absolutely fantastic and amazing value compared to Photoshop. I hope it gets some real love from Apple and they don't ruin it. Adobe should be scared.

 

[DocMultimedia]

Disappointing.

Check out Affinity products.

I have both Pixelmator and Affinity. Over the years I've migrated to using Affinity stuff 95% of the time just because they felt more natural to me.

 

[LV426]

Would’ve loved to see Aperture get resurrected.

But I’m not mad about this acquisition at all. Not at all.

Just think how mad you'd be if Adobe had acquired it.

 

[aibloop]

It will likely be included with every system. A huge middle finger to Adobe and I am aaaaall about that. Bitter? Yes...

ALSO... IF you are locked into any of adobes exploitative 1 year plans that you can not cancel wout paying for rest of year...(which they never disclose) upgrade and then you have 14 days to regret/cancel without paying a dime. F these vultures.

 

[LV426]

Exactly this, iTunes was the Rolls Royce of Music players, I too still use it, an older version, it was perfect until a certain version, it got bloated in later versions.

Do you have the old version that can play iTunes movies and let you take a screenshot? I feel such a shabby tramp when I see fellow forum members posting screenshots of their favourite movies and I can't. You can spot the Apple users because they take a photo of the TV with their iPhone.

 

[Regbial]

Pls just dont make it a subscription service 😣

 

[mdriftmeyer]

This is too bad. Apple will dumb down the product and make it nearly useless by gutting the features. Or worse, maybe Apple just wants some of the code so they can pull it into some kind of Aperture replacement.

Apple made a huge mistake when they killed Aperture. When professionals who depended on Apple's so-called "pro apps" found that Apple killed Aperture they very smartly concluded that Apple might kill FPCX or Logic and so they all looked for a way to be not exposed to that kind of risk. No one wants to invest time in a system that might disappear.

So people moved from Final Cut Pro and Logic to DeVinci Resolt or Pro Tools because they lost trust in Apple and would not accept the risk. It will take Apple a decade to regain trust. I hope this is the start of Apple trying to reverse their mistake with Aperture by replacing it.

But I suspect they just bought the company so they have access to a few features to be transplanted into Photos and they intend to kill the product and company

Most of Pixelmator's features will get rolled into Motion and Final Cut Pro and lesser specific features added to iWorks and Photos.

They most likely invested in the team of personnel for future projects, with Pixelmator expanding as well.

 

[canadianreader]

Sounds to me like they are just heading towards having their own "Creative Cloud" subscription bundle at some point

Remember folks -- they are 110% all in on "services revenue"

Exactly what I was thinking! Apple is huge on subscriptions they pushed it so hard in the past few years.

 

[canadianreader]

To me this is bad news. Big corporation absorbing a small company what could go wrong.

 

[topmounter]

RIP Pixelmator 😥

 

[tehabe]

Check out Affinity products.

Which were just acquired by Canva.

 

[John_Blackthorne]

Good for them. Re-release Aperture.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I have no clue why folks think this "big news" or "good" or "exciting!"

Apple is mostly quite mediocre at first party software in the last decade plus and awful on actual long term support commitments if you're all in.

The fact we are bringing up Aperture is example A1 of why one shouldn't trust them over the long term. C

EXACTLY came here to say this. WTF ? You get rid of Aperture and now this!!!!!???????? Aperture ran my Life for Years Entire Movies and TV Shows and you jus woke up one Morning and said No not gunna support it anymore and stopped updating the Camera RAW Profiles.....

This. I too had thousands of hours invested in Aperture then Apple scr*wed us.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Well yes it is. They are creeping up rapidly on Adobe level capabilities in Pixelmator and Photomator is going after Lightroom. The image processing is not quite there at least on RAW handling yet but the tools are far better designed. If they can throw more money into it with Apple's backing then we're talking a top tier Adobe competitor here. And it'll be under a reasonable pricing model unlike Adobe's monthly mugging and cloud upsells.

Apple had a top tier Adobe competitor with Aperture (IMO better than LR at the time) and led many of us to build enterprise-critical workflows around Aperture. Then Apple scr*wed us. That said, Adobe is far worse.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Is this as good as an admission that Apple doesn’t have the chops to make the kind of software their users demand?

Edit: I forgot they acquired FCP too back in the blue and white G3 days

Apple has the chops to make the kind of software their users demand. Unfortunately we cannot trust Apple not to kill good apps after we have built enterprise-critical workflows around said apps (e.g. MacProject, Aperture).

 

[Allen_Wentz]

At this point Aperture's codebase is probably too old, and there is no iOS version. This is probably the best decision as they get a good photo editing app, and a fantastic illustration app.

But what they need is a good photos management app - - which Aperture excelled at. So Apple killed Aperture and gave us totally lame Photos; go figure.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Aperture 2.0 😏

Aperture was primarily images management rather than image editing.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Sheesh! All the pessimism. I guess it’s to be expected in MacRumors forums. 🥲

This is good news! People seem to have forgotten why Aperture was discontinued. Apple acknowledged that it needed a ground up rebuild and Apple didn’t want to take it on, specially given their warm relationship with Adobe at the time that has since cooled.

Apple now has a ready-made Aperture replacement in Photomator that already plugs into the Photos app in a seamless cross-app editing workflow.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pixelmator’s clumsy name replaced with “Aperture” or new branding while retaining its UI pretty much as is and with Apple’s resources giving the app room to grow into the future.

As a photographer and a Pixelmator user, I’m excited for what’s to come!

Apple should have supported Aperture as needed instead of scr*wing all us customers using Aperture professionally. And no: "Apple now has a ready-made Aperture replacement in Photomator" is untrue. Aperture was primarily an images database more than an images editor, and Photomator does not provide pro image databasing. Most pro users did not edit in Aperture, they round tripped out of Aperture into PS for editing.

Not only did Apple kill Aperture, it has done a very poor database job with Photos. Which makes no sense, because both Filemaker and Aperture proved Apple should be capable of competent databasing. WTF?

 

[tehabe]

Aperture 2.0 😏

Aperture was already at 3.6 when it was discontinued in 2014.

 

[UnbreakableAlex]

Oh no, two of my favorite and only used apps for photo editing, Affinity Products & Pixelmator were bought by other companies.

That can turn in an absolute disaster. Looking at you aperture. Apple canceling Aperture resulted me in trying all kind of photo managing apps and now 100.000k + photos are all over the place.

Never trust apple with important software. I'll never use any subscription software, NEVER!

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I'm more concerned that they bought it to phase it out .

No chance of that IMO. Apple has no competition to Pixelmator that Apple needs to protect. Apple bought it to use it. [Edit: or at least to use the employee base]

Adobe, OTOH, would have bought it to kill it.

 

[Megaman]

Oh no! I hope that they don't turn it to a subscription model.

 

[Parowdy]

It is?

Why?

They do this sort of purchase all the time

They do? What big players in a productivity app genre did Apple buy in the last years?
Dark Sky wasn’t a productivity app.
THIS sort of acquisition isn’t common, at all.