Apple recently acquired image editing powerhouse Pixelmator. This is an app that emerged as a result of Adobe’s high prices and shift to costly and inconvenient subscriptions. With Apple buying Pixelmator, the team from Cupertino have filled a huge gap in its creative software arsenal.
Apple was, for many years, the software leader in creative industries. It did attempt to fill the image software breach with Aperture. The software was released in 2005 and stayed on the market for a decade until Apple decided to pull the pin. And over recent years, applications like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro have been usurped by competitors like Avid. And there’s always been Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
Adobe’s market advantage came from several sources. One is the dominance of the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. Another is the market dominance of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and the rest of the Creative Suite. But Adobe’s pricing has been a long-time gripe of customers and its approach to subscription software has also been contentious to many users.
The result of this was a new slew of competitors that could match Adobe on many features and support for industry standard file formats but beat them on price. Pixelmator is one of the applications that emerged.
Apple now has a complete suite of tools for creative professionals. The gap for pro image editing is being filled by Pixelmator – or whatever Apple does with the app.
Apple’s track record with acquisitions has rarely been one of simply buying another business or product and just adding them as a new product. Its approach has been to integrate the intelligence that comes from that team and equip it to fulfil some element of this strategy that it lacks the ability to execute.
Pixelmator gives Apple two things: the expertise to further boost image editing capability for the Photos app and a new product application so it has a complete software suite for creative professionals. For now, Pixelmator continues to exist as a standalone product. What this acquisition means for existing Pixelmator users (I’m one of them with the app an essential on my Mac and iPad) remains to be seen.
Adobe’s long-time dominance with creative industries has been under threat for a while. Apple’s desire to rebuild its reputation with creative professionals is, in my view, the driver behind the acquisition of Pixelmator. With the purchase, Apple gets two things.
Apple gets a ready-made competitor, built for its key operating platforms, that instantly puts it in direct competition with Adobe. And it adds a team of software developers that understand how to make a great image editing tool for Apple’s platforms. This will usher in more competition for Adobe. And as users make decisions about whether to maintain subscriptions, Apple will start to build its market share. And it’s Adobe that is most likely to pay the price.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.