The competition for the Creator Studio is not exactly Adobe. Of course Apple will be happy to build on their offerings to be able to really take on Adobe, but this subscription is priced to compete with the online services popping up from nowhere that have stolen the ease of use market away from Adobe.
The real competition in this market in 2026 is Canva.
Canva, really? Is this looking forward at what is coming?
I see the rise of and have to deal with Canva-generated PDFs instead of Adobe Illustrator. So the low end market of video / animation, I could absolutely see Canva dominating. Doubt we'll see audio tools though.
Final Cut Pro -- Professional non-linear video editing
* Canva? Partial: Best for social clips; lacks FCP’s RAW, multicam, and AI transcript tools.
Logic Pro -- Professional music production and MIDI sequencing
* Canva? No: No DAW capabilities, plugin hosting, or live mixing.
Pixelmator Pro -- Advanced image editing and graphic design
* Canva? Partial: Good for templates; lacks Pixelmator’s precision layers and AI retouching.
You're making your argument backward. The fact Apple can offer a bundle that includes a ton of features that Canva does not have right now does not mean that Canva is not a competitor! Canva just bought the whole Affinity suite and dumped it on the laps of its subscribers for no extra charge. They're on the warpath against Adobe. They want to dethrone them. Apple sees this battle and saw an opportunity to participate. They bought Pixelmator and bundled all their Pro apps together, making a very versatile bundle that is very different from the image editing heavy bundle of Adobe and Canva.
Apple can't take the market from professionals; they need the easel they learned at school. But they can definitely compete with Canva, whose market are untrained artists who need something done easily.
With Canva’s ownership of Affinity, yeah I see Canva as being a big competitor in parts of this space now. Or will be as those tools become more widespread across Canva’s users.
The real competition in this market in 2026 is Canva.