Pixelmator Pro is Officially an Apple App
Toggle Dark Mode
Apple made a surprising acquisition last November when it welcomed the Pixelmator Team into its fold. Now, it looks like it’s officially completed that acquisition with an announcement in the most subtle of ways.
While Apple never publicly acknowledged the Pixelmator acquisition, the company shared the news in a blog post, which presumably wouldn’t have happened without Apple’s blessing. All the team said at the time was that the two companies had signed an agreement while promising that there would be “no material changes to” the company’s apps in the near term — although they also told us to “stay tuned for exciting updates to come.”
This was a complete acquisition, bringing in the entire group of employees and rights to all three of the company’s apps: Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator. In raw dollars, it’s likely one of Apple’s smaller acquisitions — a small company that originated in Lithuania 17 years ago — but in terms of the apps, it’s a pretty high-profile acquisition that could turn out to rival some of the most successful Apple acquisitions of all time.
Apple makes many smaller acquisitions, but most are companies the average person has never heard of. Pixelmator is an app that most Mac users are familiar with and one that many use every day as a powerful (and significantly less expensive) alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop.
The initial news of the acquisitions sparked a round of speculation about exactly what Apple might do with this acquisition. Pixelmator Pro and Photomator both fill a gap in Apple’s high-end creative apps, which include powerful video and audio editing tools like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, but nothing of the same caliber as Photoshop.
Pixelmator’s apps can certainly fill that gap, but it’s still not entirely clear what direction Apple will take them in. However, the good news for Pixelmator fans is that the answer — for now, at least — appears to be “business as usual.”
Apple announced the acquisition with a minor update to the Pixelmator apps that appears to have been made solely to present an introductory splash screen and change a few other internal references.
The splash screen will appear when you first open Pixelmator Pro on your Mac, after which it can be found under Help > What’s New in Pixelmator Pro if you’d like to see it again (although there’s really no reason to unless you think it’s pretty as it contains no other useful information beyond a link to Apple’s privacy policy).
Pixelmator for iPhone shows the same screen formatted for the iPhone, while Photomator gets a different graphic of a person wearing sunglasses staring at a set of colored rings.
There don’t appear to have been any other changes in Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro, or Photomator. The apps are still listed as published by the “Pixelmator Team,” and support links go to the same places on Pixelmator’s website as before. Apple telegraphed that in the release notes, which say only “This update includes an important announcement regarding Pixelmator Pro” (or Pixelmator, or Photomator, as the case may be).
Perhaps most significantly, there have been no price changes, either. Pixelmator Pro is still a $50 one-time purchase, and Photomator is a free download with the “Pro” version activated via an in-app purchase for $29.99 per year or $7.99 per month. That’s probably not too surprising, considering that Apple also sells its Pro apps for Mac and iPad similarly.
