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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple might be preparing iPad apps for Pixelmator Pro, Compressor, Motion, and MainStage, according to new App Store IDs uncovered by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. All four of the apps are currently available on the Mac only. A quick overview of each app:

• Pixelmator Pro: Professional image editing app acquired by Apple earlier this year
• Compressor: Final Cut Pro companion app for compressing audio and video files
• Motion: Final Cut Pro companion app for creating 2D/3D titles, transitions, and effects
• MainStage: Logic Pro companion app for live performances

There is already a less-capable Pixelmator app available for the iPad and iPhone.

Interesting though that — just like Final Cut and Logic — these new pro apps are reportedly iPad-only, with no support for iPhone.

Also: still no Xcode, even for iPad.

Mark Gurman, in his weekly paywalled Power On column for Bloomberg:

I reported a few years ago that Apple was working to bring more advertising to iOS. Well, now that effort is gaining traction — with a plan to start the ads as early as next year. The company is focusing on Apple Maps, which will allow restaurants and other businesses to pay to have their details featured more prominently within the app’s searches.

The concept is quite similar to Search Ads inside of the App Store, where developers can pay for their software to appear in a promoted slot based on user queries. I’m told the Maps version will have a better interface than what Google and other companies offer inside of mapping services. The Apple approach also will leverage AI to ensure that results are relevant and useful.

The big risk Apple faces here is a potential consumer backlash.

I don’t love the ads in the App Store, but I don’t hate them. They’re restrained, and clearly labeled. I do, however, despise the ads in Apple News. They’re low-quality, distracting, highly repetitive, and appear far too frequently within articles.

Joe Rosensteel, writing at Six Colors, regarding the demise of Apple’s Clips app:

It’s not that it was completely inept, but it was an aimless showcase to demonstrate what Apple could do. It withered over the course of eight years before it was quietly killed.

At no point did it supplant iMovie for iOS as the fun, easy-breezy video editor, which is also in a similarly stagnant state. The only updates iMovie has received in the past year were onboarding screens for permissions settings.

Why is it that Apple can make what is widely regarded as the best video recording experience on any smartphone, but it can’t make a good video editor for a smartphone? Is it partly because these apps don’t have direct payments, so they can only ever be demos for hardware and services that do earn money?

Rosensteel is concerned about the radio silence from Apple regarding Pixelmator and Photomator, the apps (and team) that Apple acquired a year ago:

Of course, Apple may be assembling its own mirror of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite so that it can charge one bundle price for access to a suite of pro apps, and maybe that’s why pricing for everything is frozen in place, and the iPad Pro apps aren’t in step with the Mac ones.

That’s what I hope: that Apple is somewhere near the cusp of announcing some sort of “pro apps” subscription.