Apple Creator Studio: Deployment Considerations

By: Andrea Menotti, Consulting Engineer

Apple recently introduced Apple Creator Studio. This subscription brings together powerful creative apps — Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — with new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. We’ve rounded up some questions that schools have asked us about this new subscription and answered them below. As always, please reach out to your Apple Education team with additional questions!

Can schools subscribe to Apple Creator Studio?

Subscriptions and in-app purchases are currently not available for institutions in Apple School Manager. One-time purchase versions of Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage for Mac continue to be available.

Can schools continue to use Keynote, Pages, and Numbers without this subscription?

Yes. Customers can continue to view, edit, and create projects in these apps and collaborate with others without subscribing.

Why are there new Keynote, Pages, and Numbers apps for Mac?

Keynote, Pages, and Numbers (15.1) have transitioned to universal purchase and now appear as a single listing across platforms on the App Store. Schools can continue to use the 14.5 versions on Mac until they are ready to transition. However, collaboration requires the new version. 

For end users, we have published guidance on transitioning from Keynote/Pages/Numbers 14.5 to Keynote/Pages/Numbers 15.1 when using password-protected documents.

Using Device Management to deploy these new versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers simplifies the transition. Once your end users are using the new apps, you will want to remove the prior (14.5) versions. Remember that if you had the old versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers in a dock configuration, you will want to update that configuration with the new versions as well.

What about the Pro Apps Bundle for Mac Education, which includes one-time purchase versions of Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage; Is this still available for purchase?

Yes. The Pro Apps Bundle for Education is still available via your Apple Education Store. If you have already purchased this bundle, you can continue to use these apps as before.

For Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, can schools ensure that students and teachers are not prompted to purchase the new subscription?

Yes. Subscription prompts are suppressed in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers when a Managed Apple Account is signed into the primary account in Settings on the device. 

A Managed App Configuration is also available to suppress the subscription prompt in situations where a Personal Apple Account is used. The Managed App Configuration for Keynote, Pages, and Numbers is:

<dict>
<key>suppressPrompts</key>
<true/>
</dict>

Documentation for this configuration is found in our Apple Platform Deployment guide. 

Some of Creator Studio’s new intelligence features in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers leverage OpenAI. Do existing Apple Intelligence restrictions apply to those?

The allowExternalIntelligenceIntegrations restriction is built for system provided features, like Compose with ChatGPT in Writing Tools. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers leverage a direct connection to OpenAI and do not use Private Cloud Compute. Though traffic is anonymized through a private relay, the apps continue to function in the presence of this restriction, just like any third party app would. As such, if an organization wants to restrict the use of these OpenAI-based features, they can use the app management capabilities described above to ensure that end users are not prompted to subscribe.

Our school has no accounts in Settings. We are seeing a sign-in prompt on launch with Keynote/Pages/Numbers 15.1.

With no Apple account in Settings, users will see a sign-in prompt when the app launches. Users can tap Cancel to dismiss this prompt and continue to work as normal. Deploying the allowAccountModification restriction will prevent this sign-in prompt from appearing. We are investigating additional ways to prevent sign-in prompts from appearing in this case.

There is a student and educator discount for Apple Creator Studio. Who is this for?

This is for college students and college educators (affiliated with a higher education institution) who purchase the subscription with a Personal Apple Account. They can go through the in-app purchase flow and choose an education plan as described in our documentation. The buyer’s affiliation with their higher education institution will be verified as part of the purchase flow.

In the latest versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, can subscribers and non-subscribers still collaborate? What will happen when Creator Studio premium content is used?

If one person in the document is a Creator Studio subscriber, all collaborators will have full access to premium content for that document, including when the document is shared offline.