How a Hobart app developer partnered with Apple to became a global powerhouse

Hobart software developer James Cuda says without Apple he would not have been able to take on Adobe and count Disney and Pixar as customers.

CEO and co-founder of Savage Interactive James Cuda, who developed popular app Procreate, said the Apple’s iPad Pro changed the game for his company. Picture: Zak Simmonds

James Cuda, who founded Adobe challenger Procreate a decade ago with wife Alanna in Hobart, is not concerned about the potential for artificial intelligence to take over art.

As the technology shows it can produce stunning images – whether it’s via Leonardo. AI, which developed Australia’s homegrown AI model, or Adobe’s Firefly – Cuda says there is one thing it cannot replicate.

“You need human-made content in order to generate that content. So what it does is collect a lot of artwork and mushes it together, and then you get an output,” he says. “They’re kind of jumping the creative process … if you have an idea that you want to bring to life, you have your imaginative process, and then you have the end result you’re trying to achieve with these kind of products.

Artwork by Rocco Fazzari using the Procreate app on the iPad.

“You’ve missed the in-between part. You’ve missed the lovely process of discovery when you’re making something. It’s like time and space warp around you.

“It is that creative process – which has been part of humans since man painted pictures on cave walls through to chapel ceilings and now, in Procreate’s case, tablet computers – that will insulate artists from AI.

“It’s like playing an instrument. I play terribly. But, you’re playing an instrument, the playing itself is not the end result. You’re not waiting for the song to finish or for you to stop playing. That’s not the end result. It’s the journey of making something that is intensely human,” Cuda says.

“And so when you look at what’s happening with generative AI, we feel strongly that it’s going to definitely be another tool in the toolbox, but I don’t think it’s going to stop humans from wanting to express themselves, whether it’s visually, audibly, through literature, poetry, whatever that is. People will still make stuff. People will still want to because it’s kind of like a dance.”

A piece of artwork created on Procreated that will feature in the Made on iPad campaign during the Australian Open.

That dance will be on full display this week as the Australian Open tennis tournament begins in Melbourne, with Procreate featuring in Apple’s new “Made on iPad” campaign. Illustrations created on Procreate and Procreate Dreams will appear on billboards around Melbourne Park, on social media and Apple’s website, capturing the excitement of tennis fans.

While Apple has faced criticism about its App Store ecosystem from Australian and European regulators, for Cuda it democratised software development, allowing him to create an app in Hobart and challenge a tech behemoth like Adobe, amassing almost 30 million downloads. Mr Cuda’s company Savage Interactive made about $32m in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year, making it one of Australia’s most profitable start-ups.

“Prior to App Store, with digital distribution, we would have been stamping CDs, putting them into boxes, printing the boxes – it was a complex business. But with digital distribution, suddenly the need for overhead and infrastructure around inventory was zero, and all we had to do is really just focus on meeting the demand of the customer. That kind of levelled the playing field with the likes of Adobe.

Procreate co-founder James Cuda still lives and works in Hobart.

“Once everything went digital distribution, suddenly it wasn’t who had the best firepower and distribution channels, it was who made the best software.

“That really helped us compete directly with those larger corporations.”

And Cuda has continued to do it all from Hobart, with no need to move to Silicon Valley, largely thanks to the launch of the iPad Pro nine years ago. Artists at Disney and Pixar are now using Procreate, making it one of Australia’s greatest app success stories. “Prior to iPad Pro, we were doing OK. We’re in the top charts and we were ticking along. We were able to build a business. But, man, iPad Pro was a huge boost to sales,” he says.

“That was really where we saw growth of the company. We actually were scrambling to keep up because we were getting so much demand from customers: ‘hey, I need this feature. I need that. I need this. I’ll leave my Adobe subscription if you can get this done and get that done’. From 2015 to 2020, we grew the team pretty rapidly and tried to meet that demand. Procreate 4 was where we really hit that maturity level. Disney and Pixar use it unofficially in their pipelines and officially in some capacity. But the hardware – the chip that Apple was able to throw into that tiny little thin device and a much bigger screen, with that all-day battery life and accuracy of the pencil, it was a game changer for the creative industry.”

Originally published as How a Hobart app developer partnered with Apple to became a global powerhouse