Apple just acquired this beloved Mac app

By Willow Roberts Published November 1, 2024

Popular photo-editing app Pixelmator published a blog post today announcing its plans to join Apple. The post was spotted by 9to5Mac.  The acquisition is still pending approval, and the Pixelmator team has confirmed that it won’t be making any changes to its apps “at this time.”

The company offers two apps — a professional image editing tool called Pixelmator Pro and a free photo-editing app called Photomator. Pixelmator Pro is available for a one-time fee of $50, making it much more affordable and easier to buy than competitors like Photoshop.

It includes a range of features, from color adjustment and AI background removal to illustration tools. The Photomator app, on the other hand, has been one of the best Mac apps for years and is available on iPhone, iPad, and even the Apple Vision Pro.

Although Pixelmator has mentioned there won’t be any changes to its apps right now, there’s no saying what will happen if the acquisition goes through. There are historical cases of Apple both shutting down apps it acquires (like Dark Sky in 2020) and keeping them as is (like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro) — so it could go either way.

Considering the limited built-in editing features on Apple’s Photos app, integrating the tech from Photomator to expand what we can do with photos directly on our iPhones sounds like a pretty good idea.

As for the pending approval — while it could pass without any problems, you never really know when it comes to big companies. Regulatory authorities definitely have their eyes on brands like Apple but it’s usually the joining of two big names like Nvidia and Arm that gets stopped in its tracks. However, if Apple swallows up enough smaller companies, that could definitely become problematic as well.