Happy Friday, creatives!

With the rise of Affinity, Figma, Apple, and others, it feels like everyone is improving products for creatives except Adobe.

Adobe’s stock is down over 45% in the last five years, and more importantly, trust is slipping. This read is all about the shifting landscape of the tools we use every day, and why it feels more unstable than ever.

Let’s get into it.

Apple launched Creator Studio, a new monthly subscription bundling several of its pro creative apps with exclusive access, bundled workflows, and premium content (and new icons).

The cost is 12.99/mo, or $2.99/mo for educators and students. For reference, Adobe Creative Cloud costs $779.88 per year, which still feels insane every time I say it out loud.

One time purchase options of all the included apps are still available…

So What’s Different? (here are a few of the features)

So what’s the real difference? You can still buy these apps outright on Mac, but Creator Studio changes how you access them across devices, bundles everything together, and ties certain features and content to an ongoing subscription rather than a single purchase.

Is it worth it? Here’s my honest take.

First of all, I have never seen so many sponsored posts and conveniently timed “early access” videos around an Apple product before.

Here’s what this reminds me of. In 2013, Adobe introduced Creative Cloud alongside its traditional Creative Suite licenses. CS6, released in 2012, was the last version you could buy outright. Adobe didn’t shut it down overnight, but from that point forward, all new features and updates moved exclusively to the subscription. CS6 stopped evolving, then eventually stopped being sold, and Creative Cloud became the only way to access modern versions of Adobe’s tools. Apple isn’t saying that’s the plan here, but the signals feel familiar. Creator Studio is positioned as a distinct tier, with its own branding, icons, bundled access across devices, and features and content that Apple explicitly ties to a subscription. Even if the gaps are small today, the structure makes one thing clear: Apple is showing creators where future investment and momentum are likely headed.

What do you think? Have you tried Apple Creator Studio yet? Hit reply and let me know your take.

This week was chaos for anyone who uses Adobe Animate.

Creators behind My Little Pony, Teen Titans Go!, Slither.io, and thousands of independent animators woke up to a shocking announcement.

What Happened?

Adobe emailed customers stating: “Adobe will be discontinuing Adobe Animate on March 1, 2026… Please note that access to your Animate files and project data will end on March 1, 2027.”

As expected, the backlash was immediate.

Then, in classic Adobe fashion, after the stock dropped 8%, they claimed the announcement was an accident.

Animate was suddenly not discontinued anymore, just placed into “maintenance mode.”

The cat’s out of the bag:

Even with the backtrack, Adobe Animate is effectively dead. No new features and no future.

Every time I start to trust Adobe again, something like this happens.

If it were not for universities and corporate contracts propping it up as the industry standard, I genuinely believe Adobe would already be irrelevant to most creatives. The two things that keep me using Adobe are generative fill and Lightroom.

This shift is obvious, and competitors can feel it. Apple, Figma, and Canva are all moving quickly to carve out their piece of a market Adobe once controlled alone.

After Adobe failed to acquire Figma for $20 billion, Figma has quietly grown into something much bigger than a UI tool.

Five months ago, I made a video breaking down Figma’s IPO and their new tools announced at Config, including Figma Make, Figma Draw, Figma Buzz, and Figma Sites.

At the time, it felt too early to say whether Figma could truly compete with Adobe.

That is no longer the case.

In just the past week, Figma shipped:

This is no longer about UI design. Figma is clearly positioning itself as a Creative Cloud competitor. Not just for design, but for building real products end to end.

If you’re interested in learning more about Apple Creator Studio, I made a video going into detail about what it is, and more importantly, the bigger picture at play. Check it out:

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