I actually think Apple’s Creator Studio is a good deal. $130 a year for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and all the extras that come with them? For a working creator, that’s real value. I’d recommend it to anyone making videos or music on Apple hardware.

But I can’t for the life of me figure out why iWork is in there.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are fine apps. I use Keynote regularly. But they aren’t creator tools. They’re office tools. The people who depend on Pages for their work aren’t video editors or musicians. They’re knowledge workers who need a word processor and a spreadsheet. Those are two completely different audiences with two completely different needs.

So you end up with this weird situation. The actual creators buying the bundle probably never open Pages or Numbers. It’s not in their wheelhouse. And the knowledge workers who do live in iWork? They aren’t going to pay $130 a year for a few extra AI features bolted onto apps they already use for free. That’s a tough sell.

Apple gave iWork away years ago. It comes on every Mac and iPad. The basic apps do what most people need. Asking those same people to subscribe just to get some AI upgrades to apps they already have doesn’t track. Especially when the AI features are still pretty rough around the edges.

The bundling makes the whole thing feel padded. Like Apple needed to fill out a product page. Three more app icons in the marketing material. But nobody was asking for this combination. Creators wanted Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Office workers wanted better iWork. Smashing them together doesn’t serve either group well.

What I think Apple should have done is simple. Keep the creator bundle focused on creator tools. Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and all the AI features that make those apps better. That’s a clean pitch. Easy to explain. Easy to justify.

Then, if you want to add AI features to iWork, make that its own thing. Or just give those features to everyone already using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Those apps are free. The AI improvements would make the entire platform more attractive. That’s a rising-tide move, not a subscription upsell.

Instead, Apple stuck two different products together and hoped nobody would notice the seams. The creator tools are worth the money. The iWork inclusion is a distraction. It dilutes what could have been a really focused, compelling subscription into something that tries to be everything and doesn’t quite land for anyone.

I keep coming back to this. $130 a year for Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro? Great deal. Sign me up. $130 a year for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and office apps I already have? Now I’m doing math I shouldn’t have to do. And that’s the problem.