Apple is one of the largest technology companies on the planet and wields major financial might, giving it the means to acquire both successful and growing brands. Apple isn’t shy about spending millions, or even billions, to acquire companies it considers valuable. Beats and Shazam are two high-profile Apple acquisitions that live on within the company today, but others, like NextVR and Dark Sky, were shut down. Which category will Pixelmator Pro end up in?
I’m primarily a macOS user, though I own and use Windows PCs as well. The one thing keeping me on macOS is Pixelmator Pro, the macOS-exclusive photo editing app acquired by Apple earlier this year. It’s a rare professional-grade photo editing app that doesn’t come with a subscription and receives regular free updates. Or at least, it was before Apple bought it.
Pixelmator Pro is being left behind
Vague, small, and infrequent updates are the norm
For those unfamiliar, Pixelmator Pro is one of the best macOS apps to ever exist. The original app, Pixelmator 1.0, was released in 2007 and came in a physical cardboard box—that’s how old it is. Pixelmator Pro debuted in 2017 as a paid upgrade from Pixelmator. The original company behind Pixelmator also released the Pixelmator for iOS and Photomator apps along the way. Pixelmator won Mac App of the Year in 2011, 2018, and 2023, and an Apple Design Award in 2011 and 2019.
Really, Pixelmator Pro is an all-time Mac app by any metric. I’ve used Pixelmator Pro for three years now, and I can’t believe I didn’t discover it sooner. The app brings the power of professional-grade photo editors like Photoshop and Affinity Photo in a package that’s incredibly well-designed and intuitive to Apple users. Pixelmator has been using next-generation machine learning tech since way before it was cool, and got even better with the advent of modern AI.
Pixelmator operated like an Apple app from day one, steadily building out new features, quickly adapting to new macOS design changes, and mimicking the user interfaces of the company’s own apps. Perhaps it was inevitable that Apple would eventually realize Pixelmator Pro is an app it needed to own. Apple announced plans to purchase Pixelmator in late 2024, and the acquisition was completed in February 2025.
Pixelmator Pro has only been under Apple’s stewardship for about 10 months, and it has been a rocky start. Don’t take it from me, take it from the growing number of recent critical App Store reviews that are slowly chipping away at Pixelmator Pro’s near-perfect rating:
The reviews all seem to say the same thing: Pixelmator Pro is starting to fall off under Apple ownership. Updates are less frequent, release notes vaguely cite “bug fixes and other improvements,” and new features are few and far between. The biggest Pixelmator Pro update under Apple’s leadership added Genmoji and Apple Intelligence, which I doubt many photo editors were clamoring for.
On the flip side, it took Apple two months to update Pixelmator Pro’s app icon to comply with macOS Tahoe’s new design guidelines, as frustrated Reddit users pointed out. Another group of Pixelmator Pro users on Reddit noticed that YouTube tutorial videos were set to private and that the app’s forum was archived immediately after the announcement of the Apple acquisition.
Take away the Apple Intelligence update (which did separately expand support for RAW image editing), and Pixelmator Pro has largely gone untouched over the past year. Before its acquisition, it received regular updates with new features, usually every month or more frequently.
Apple’s handling of acquisitions varies
Some brands are still around, others fade into obscurity
This isn’t the first time Apple has acquired a popular software company, but its track record varies. Shazam and Shortcuts were acquired by Apple and continued to operate as standalone apps afterward. In particular, Shazam uniquely remains available on non-Apple platforms, like Android, following the purchase’s completion in 2018. Going back even further, Apple acquired the company behind Logic Pro in 2002, and it remains a standalone app today.
Logic Pro feels like the closest comparison to Pixelmator Pro in Apple’s history, which is a good sign for the app. Still, there are plenty of examples of Apple shutting down newly acquired apps and using their technology in its own apps. The company bought Beats and folded the Beats Music subscription service into what became Apple Music. More recently, apps NextVR and Dark Sky were bought and shut down entirely.
What’s next for Pixelmator Pro?
I hope it continues to give me a reason to stick with macOS
To be clear, I’m not dancing on Pixelmator Pro’s grave or taking a cheap shot at Apple by pointing out the state of the fan-favorite Mac app. My motivations are quite the opposite. I’m hoping to bring attention to what I see as a concerning trend for Pixelmator Pro, one of the few apps in my workflow I truly can’t replace. Clearly, I’m not alone, if the recent App Store reviews and Reddit posts regarding the photo editor are any indication.
I can’t say for sure what the future of Pixelmator Pro looks like—it’s too early to say if the app acquisition will end up more like Logic or Dark Sky when all is said and done. The image editor certainly hasn’t been abandoned completely by Apple, but in my view, it hasn’t been a priority either. MakeUseOf reached out to Apple for comment on the state of Pixelmator Pro and the app’s future, but didn’t hear back in time for publication. We will update this article if Apple responds.
For now, I’m going to keep using Pixelmator Pro on all of my Macs, taking advantage of one of the few subscription-free photo editors that still remain. I can’t say I’m not worried about one of the last exclusive apps keeping me on macOS being left to die, though.
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macOS
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Apple
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Supports Apple Family Sharing
Pixelmator Pro is a macOS image editing app available as a one-time purchase without a subscription. It includes over 50 image editing tools, machine learning color correction, and background removal.
