Q: I’ve been a Mac user for many years and have written my memoirs in Apple Pages. I find it a simple, straightforward word processor with plenty of power for my needs. Suddenly, though, it’s pushing me to upgrade to a monthly subscription to Apple Creator Studio? What’s up with this, Dave?
A: As it happens, I’m also a big fan of Pages and Apple’s Keynote program for presentation creation. The best part has always been that they were free as part of the MacOS software suite. The good news? They’ll continue to be free, with some caveats.
Let’s start with some basic economics. Apple has to keep maintaining and adding features and capabilities to these programs, but they aren’t making a dime from us customers for all that expenditure.
Where this becomes more important is programs like Final Cut Pro, Apple’s excellent video editing program that costs almost $300. It’s a one-time purchase, so Apple earns money from that transaction, but has no additional revenue over time.
I bought Final Cut Pro a decade ago. Divided out by 120 months, that works out to a modest $2.49/month. In a few more years, I could drop to an amortized cost of less than $2/month. Again, not great for Apple’s bottom line.
What if, instead, I paid for a monthly license for a suite of software that included Pages, Keynote, Final Cut Pro and many other programs? Ahhh, now we’re talking.
Meanwhile at Adobe and Microsoft
Apple’s not the first to move into the SaaS (software as a service) subscription space. The first company I saw do this was Adobe, with its “Creative Cloud” that included Photoshop, Premiere and many other big-ticket, professional apps. Microsoft’s also jumped into this particular revenue stream too, with its confusing Office 365 subscription. Want to just use Word and Excel in your Web browser? The free, online version is called Microsoft 365 and doesn’t require a subscription.
Apple Creator Studio currently costs $12.99/month, so if we multiplied that by the 120 months I’ve been using Final Cut Pro, Pages, Keynote and Numbers, it’d be $1,558. To me, as the consumer, that $299 price tag for FCPX sounds much better, but for Apple? It just figured out how to get an additional $1,259.
So far, it appears that you can opt out of the subscription and stick with your standalone versions of the basic office apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). In the future, however, Apple probably won’t add new features to the free apps, hoping users will migrate to Apple Creator Studio.
Photoshop users grumbled about the Adobe Creative Cloud when it showed up, and Microsoft fans remain unhappy about the ongoing cost of Office 365 so they can retain a supported local copy of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Like it or not, we Mac users are joining the software subscription club.
If you’re fine with the current set of features in Pages, you should be good to go. Just remember not to upgrade to the new version and inadvertently subscribe to Apple Creator Studio.
Handy tip: There are some good free alternatives worth investigating, including the open source LibreOffice and Google’s web-based office suite.
Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the beginning of the Internet. He runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech Q&A site and invites you to subscribe to his weekly email newsletter at AskDaveTaylor.com/subscribe/ You can also find his entertaining gadget reviews on YouTube at YouTube.com/AskDaveTaylor.
