So I didn't see that one coming.

John Gruber has a good take over at Daring Fireball: Pixelmator Acquired by Apple; Future of Their Apps Uncertain.

Acorn and Pixelmator came out 15 days apart from each other in 2007, and the target market between the two has always overlapped. But even with that I've always been on good terms with the Pixelmator folks. Any time we were both attending WWDC, we would meet up and complain about image APIs or just chat over lunch.

The other major player in this category is Affinity, which was purchased by Canva in March of this year. So it feels strange that Acorn is now effectively the only independent Mac image editor from that era.

I have no inside information on what Apple is going to do with Pixelmator. Will it be discontinued? Will it be part of an Apple One subscription tier? Will it be part of the OS now or folded into Photos? Was this purely a talent grab?

Time will tell.

But today I woke up, and got to work on Acorn. And I'll do the same tomorrow and the day after that.

I enjoy what I work on and I plan on doing it for many years to come. And I truly value my independence. I love being able to work on what I want, and when I want to.

Good things are happening to Acorn these days. I'm wrapping up some great new features in a new release, and if you'd like to test them out, let me know.