This is Technology Bytes, episode 152, for February 1st, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week, Apple released Creator Studio, and it’s a suite of apps for creators, I guess.
And there’s been quite a bit of talk about it because, well, it’s new, it’s from Apple, a lot of people are interested, a lot of people have opinions.
But in my world, as you know if you listen to any of these episodes, I am all in with Apple devices and with Apple software.
I don’t spend a lot of money on other software.
I try to use the tools that either come free with my devices or are supplied by Apple through some kind of payment plan.
So for the past number of months, I think it’s months, I have been paying the subscription price for Logic and for Final Cut for my iPad.
And so I am using Logic Pro on my iPad to record this very podcast.
And I have been doing that for some time.
I’ve been wasting money on Final Cut because I really haven’t used it much.
I played a little bit in the beginning with the multi-camera shoot with my son, but that kind of didn’t go anywhere.
But in that payment, I was already doing $5 a month for each of those.
So that gives me $10 and the Creator Studio subscription is for $13, $12.99, I guess.
And so it seemed a bit like a no-brainer because I was already spending most of that money anyway.
And there are more apps that are available to me because of that increased payment.
What apps come with the Creator Studio?
Well, there are a number of them.
So Logic Pro, and I mentioned that it’s the audio editing software, recording, editing, all in all, that’s from Apple.
I’ve been using that.
I need to learn it better because I’m not sure the audio for these podcasts that I do is super, but I’m still learning.
Final Cut Pro is the video editing software.
Again, I don’t use that very much.
I guess I don’t take a lot of video, take some photos.
And in that frame, Pixelmator Pro, I’ve used Pixelmator some in my past.
When it went to the Pro and had to pay for it, I stopped using it.
So I’m pretty excited about that being back in my life.
And I know there’s some significant tool improvements since I’ve spent any time with that.
So that’s good.
And then there are three apps, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage.
Oh, I didn’t mention those first three apps run on the Mac or on the iPad, so I can use them any place.
The Motion, Compressor, and MainStage are only Mac apps.
I haven’t used any of those three apps ever in my life.
I’m not 100% sure what they are.
I’ve been reading about them, trying to see what I would use them for.
Well, I need to do some more learning.
This is good for me because I like to learn stuff.
And now I got to just put my mind to it and actually spend some time learning.
Something else that Apple did in this move was create content for their iWork suite.
So that’s the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps that they have offered for free and continue to offer for free on every device that you purchase.
iPhone, iPad, Mac, whatever you’re using.
And those remain free, although if you pay for the Creator Studio subscription, you get some added benefits in those apps.
So you get some artificial intelligence to help you in Numbers to create formulas and those types of things that you may not initially grasp how to do.
You get some content availability through pictures and graphs and graphics and a few other things.
Again, I’m still learning.
This is brand new.
It came out on Thursday, so I haven’t really used much of those, although I have installed them all.
It’s kind of weird because both apps, the free Pages and the Creator Studio Pages, are on my devices, and I can launch either one of them, I guess.
I haven’t tried this yet because I don’t plan on it.
I don’t need the old one.
I’m going to pay for the subscription.
The new one is good.
So anyway, I haven’t used much of that.
Again, one other app is the Freeform app, and coming later this year, you’re going to get some of that artificial intelligence, some other creator things in that app as well.
So it feels like a pretty good deal.
Some people are complaining that now to use Pages and Numbers and Keynote to the fullest, they have to pay this $13 a month subscription price.
Well, you haven’t had those things yet, and maybe some…
I don’t know.
It’s one of those things.
Every move that Apple makes is gone over and critiqued and evaluated by millions of people and then talked about endlessly on hundreds if not thousands of podcasts.
I’m glad my life isn’t under that type of scrutiny.
Why is this even important?
I’m not a creator.
I work in a production environment.
I’m the production manager, and running a production environment, yeah, I need spreadsheets.
I need data, but all of that is in a Microsoft world because that’s what we live in when we’re at work often.
But my granddaughter wants to create.
I’m not saying she wants to be a creator in the terms of some kind of YouTube star or whatever, but she does enjoy watching some of those things that are created, sometimes things I don’t like, sometimes things I think are pretty interesting, but it piques her interest.
It makes her think of things that she might want to do, and if I can help that, if I can help that creative process, I gave my son an iMac not too long ago, so she has the full ability to run all of this software at home, and so I want to work with her.
I want to play around with what is here and these tool sets.
I want to learn with her, and maybe someday she’ll be teaching me how to better do audio, how to better do video, but I want to see if we can help her create things that she will be proud of, things that other people will be proud of, and it’s not so much to make her a star, but to foster the creativity of a child, and I look forward to learning these things with her.
I’m super happy that Apple has announced this suite.
Sure, we talk about subscription fatigue, and I’m paying $13 a month for something that, I don’t know, I’m willing to pay.
I think I’ll use it, and maybe with the price I’ll use it a little bit more.
We’ll see as time goes on.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
