Apple acquires Pixelmator
There is software that does not come from the respective manufacturer of the operating system and can definitely be described as “essential”. On the Mac, for me this is Pixelmator (Pro) and Photomator, which have now found a new home at Apple.
What you don't have yourself, you simply buy from a certain size and (hopefully) integrate it well - this is what happens now with Pixelmator Pro and Photomator.
As the two brothers Saulius Dailide and Aidas Dailide announced yesterday, one of the biggest software surprises I can remember on the Mac in a long time is now final: Pixelmator Pro and Photomator are finding a new home and will therefore soon be formally based in Cupertino instead of Vilnius, Latvia.
If you look back, the journey of the two brothers and the Pixelmator team since 2007 is quite impressive and rarely have third-party applications been so natively adapted to the operating system in terms of UI and UX as Pixelmator (Pro) and Photomator on macOS and iOS/iPad OS. There is always software that you could blindly treat yourself to (kindly as a one-off purchase) over the years and the two products on all platforms were the absolute “no-brainer” for me: the standard repertoire on the Mac as well as on the mobile platforms.
So to call a spade a spade: Apple has bought Pixelmator! The deal still has to be verified and approved by the antitrust authorities. No structural changes to the products themselves are planned at the moment, although I'm really curious to see whether and how this statement can be confirmed in the future: History has already seen one or two good products disappear after being bought up, but in terms of quality, I definitely can't imagine this happening with the Pixelmator team's apps.
In the end, we can only hope that the apps will be integrated in a meaningful way or even remain independent - for my part, I could imagine that Photomator will be absorbed into Apple Photos and Pixelmator Pro will pursue a different, more professional approach. From the developers' point of view, the current merge can therefore definitely be viewed with a smile; the crying eye is certainly the lack of independence in the future and the fear of what could become of two perfect products: So let's be curious, because there are chapters that should definitely last longer than 17 years!