Archive for January 13, 2026

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Apple Creator Studio

Apple (Hacker News, ArsTechnica, MacRumors, 9To5Mac, MacStories, Reddit, Mac Power Users):

Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators around the world. The apps included with Apple Creator Studio for video editing, music making, creative imaging, and visual productivity give modern creators the features and capabilities they need to experience the joy of editing and tailoring their content while realizing their artistic vision. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite to empower creators of all disciplines while protecting their privacy.

Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with a one-month free trial, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad; Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac; and intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

[…]

For the first time, Pixelmator Pro is coming to iPad, bringing an all-new touch-optimized workspace, full Apple Pencil support, the ability to work between iPad and Mac, and all of the powerful editing tools users have come to appreciate on Mac.

[…]

In addition to Image Playground, advanced image creation and editing tools let users create high-quality images from text, or transform existing images, using generative models from OpenAI.

It does not seem to include Photomator. I don’t really use any of these apps—preferring Microsoft Office and Acorn—and nothing announced here sounds like it would change that.

Dan Moren:

As for the productivity apps, the Apple Creator Studio adds a Content Hub for what Apple describes as “curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations.” There are also new premium templates and themes for Keynote, Pages, and Numbers and integration with image-generation tools from OpenAI. Apple is also, in an unusual move, including beta features as part of the bundle: the company mentions one that can create a draft of a Keynote presentation from a text outline and one called “Magic Fill” for Numbers with lets you “generate formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition.” Freeform’s premium features aren’t yet ready to roll out but will come later this year.

Joe Rossignol:

This means that if you bought Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro via one-time purchase, which will still be an option going forward, you will no longer have access to all new features. However, Apple promises the apps will continue to receive updates.

Kirk McElhearn:

Apple is becoming Adobe. There are two types of apps in this suite: pro media apps and office apps. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are not used by the same people as Logic and Final Cut. There should be a separate iWork subscription.

Christina Warren:

On the one hand, I fully understand why Apple is finally going Adobe and doing a subscription for the creative apps. On the other hand, I don’t know if I can see this as having enough value for me to want to pay $130 a year when I use these apps almost entirely on the Mac.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

My hope is that the UI shown today for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and MainStage is a flat-out rejection of Liquid Glass for “serious” apps. My fear is that it’s only a result of their continued support for MacOS 15 Sequoia. (But I think they need to continue supporting MacOS 15 Sequoia because so many pro users are rejecting MacOS 26 Tahoe.)

Rui Carmo:

But… how viable is it, really? I have my doubts, especially given that I recently tried Final Cut Pro and found it lacking in several areas compared to freemium competitors like DaVinci Resolve. And I have been using Logic Pro for years. It’s a solid DAW, but it faces stiff competition from Ableton Live and an increasing number of free or low-cost alternatives. But that’s my personal experience; I wonder how this will play out for the broader market, where there’s stuff like Affinity Suite, which has recently surfaced after the Canva acquisition as a free alternative Pixelmator Pro (with paid add-ons).

BasicAppleGuy:

Icon History

Marc Edwards:

The Logic Pro app icon, before and after being part of Apple Creator Studio.

Mr. Macintosh:

Look at how they massacred my boy...😭

Michael Flarup:

We lost something here

Benjamin Mayo:

the ultimate icon downgrade

Previously:

Update (2026-01-14): Joe Rossignol:

Alongside the news that Pixelmator Pro is coming to the iPad, Apple has confirmed that the more basic Pixelmator app for the iPhone and iPad will no longer be updated.

Matt Birchler:

I’m just calling this out because I think it speaks to the massive influence the AI industry has had over the past three years. A couple years ago, many of us thought that Apple would never use the word “AI” to describe what they were doing. It would be “machine learning” or stuff like “Apple Intelligence”, but they’re just calling it AI now like everyone else.

[…]

These new icons remind me of when Google normalized all their icons to the point that they all look the same…no soul…no joy…just the same icon with a few shuffled pixels.

Vidit Bhargava:

Today’s app icons look as if they came out of an assembly line. All looking the same, designed for maximum scale, and devoid of any identity or soul.

Héliographe:

If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design.

See also: Apple Design and BasicAppleGuy.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Final Cut Studio used to cost $1,300 at one point, and now it’s available to students for $2.99 a month. That’s a huge win in my books.

Update (2026-01-15): Michael Flarup (Mastodon):

When everything looks the same, nothing feels loved.

Update (2026-01-20): Adam Chandler:

It’s been like this for a year and I still absolutely HATE that Final Cut Pro just doesn’t open an import dialogue box anymore and thinks there’s a universe where a video editor would want to import an image from Image Playground into Final Cut Pro.

Ray Wong (Hacker News):

Someone actually fixed the terrible Apple Creator Studio icons

John Gruber (Mastodon):

The problem isn’t with these icons in and of themselves. The problem is with the rules Apple has imposed for Liquid Glass app icons, along with their own style guidelines for how to comply with those rules. Given Apple’s own self-imposed constraints for how icons must look (with the mandatory squircle) and how Apple has decided its own app icons should look (a look which can best be described as crude), I actually think the icons in the Creator Studio are pretty good, relatively speaking. But that’s like saying one group of kids has pretty good haircuts, relatively speaking, at a summer camp where the rule is that the kids all cut each others’ hair using only fingernail clippers.

[…]

What Ive told me is that Apple didn’t change things just for the sake of changing them. That Apple was insistent on only changing things if the change made things better. And that this was difficult, at times, because the urge to do something that looks new and different is strong, especially in tech. “New” shows that you’re doing something. “The same” is boring. What’s difficult is embracing the fact that boring can be good, especially if the alternative is different-but-worse, or even just different-but-not-better.

[…]

I don’t think it makes sense to gate useful new features of these apps behind the Creator Studio subscription. Smarter autofill in Numbers, generating Keynote slides from a text outline, and Super Resolution image upscaling all sound like great features, but they sound like the sort of features all users should be getting in the iWork apps in 2026. Especially from on-device AI models. I could countenance an argument that AI-powered features that are processed on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers should require a subscription. But it feels like a rip-off if they’re running on-device. […] But it seems wrong for someone who just wants the new AI-powered features in Numbers and Keynote to need to pay for a subscription bundle whose value is primarily derived from Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and Pixelmator Pro — apps that many iWork users might never launch.

Update (2026-01-23): Joe Rosensteel (post):

  1. It’s weird that a software bundle aimed at “Creators” has no iPhone apps at all.
  2. It’s even weirder when Apple acquired a software company that made creative apps for the iPhone.
  3. Weirder still when you consider they end-of-lifed a piece of that software with no hint it will be replaced
  4. The weirdest part of all is that one piece of software has received no updates, and is not part of the bundle, but you can still pay $30 a year to use separately.

Gmail Ending Support for Gmailify and POP Fetching

Google (via Adam Engst):

Starting in January 2026, Gmail will no longer provide support for the following features:

  • Gmailify: This feature allows you to get special features like spam protection or inbox organisation applied to your third-party email account. Learn more about Gmailify.
  • Check mail from other accounts: Fetching emails from third-party accounts into your Gmail account, with POP, will no longer be supported.

Previously:

Apple Services in 2025

Eddy Cue (MacRumors):

2025 was a record-breaking year for Apple services, marked by remarkable growth, global expansion, and continuous innovation. From Apple TV, Apple Music, and Apple News, to daily essentials like Apple Pay and iCloud, we delivered enriching experiences to users worldwide. Reflecting on 2025, we remained committed to enhancing our users’ daily lives, with incredible engagement during the holiday season.

[…]

As we look ahead, we’ll continue to bring innovation and intelligent enhancements to Apple services, always guided by our commitment to privacy and a phenomenal customer experience.

I’m not sure any Apple service has a phenomenal customer experience these days. Looking at the ones he mentioned, I was thinking maybe Find My. But then I remembered how it pretty much no longer works at all on my Apple Watch SE that’s limited to OS 10. And how the Mac version doesn’t let you open more than one window.

Apple Pay does “just work” except that it often doesn’t work at gas pumps, and it’s a major pain to upgrade your watch or phone, with each card taking multiple steps (and often a phone call). Apple Cash remains less convenient than Venmo, requiring more steps to transfer funds and without e-mails for reliable notifications and record keeping. You can request a PDF statement via e-mail, but it doesn’t include the names of the people, nor any descriptions of what the transactions were for.

See also: John Gruber:

Previously:

Update (2026-01-22): Nick Lockwood:

The problem with Cook is that he seems hell bent on turning the world’s best product company into a mediocre service company.

UK Child Protections and Messaging Backdoor

Tim Hardwick:

Apple and Google will soon be “encouraged” to build nudity-detection algorithms into their software by default, as part of the UK government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, reports the Financial Times.

Jon Brodkin:

If the UK gets its way, operating systems like iOS and Android would “prevent any nudity being displayed on screen unless the user has verified they are an adult through methods such as biometric checks or official ID. Child sex offenders would be required to keep such blockers enabled.” The Home Office “has initially focused on mobile devices,” but the push could be expanded to desktops, the FT said. Government officials point out that Microsoft can already scan for “inappropriate content” in Microsoft Teams, the report said.

[…]

The push for device-level blocking comes after the UK implemented the Online Safety Act, a law requiring porn platforms and social media firms to verify users’ ages before letting them view adult content. The law can’t fully prevent minors from viewing porn, as many people use VPN services to get around the UK age checks. Government officials may view device-level detection of nudity as a solution to that problem, but such systems would raise concerns about user rights and the accuracy of the nudity detection.

Dare Obasanjo:

Maybe this explains why Apple is hesitant to add age verification at the OS level if it opens the door to requests like these.

Paige Collings:

In his initial announcement, Starmer stated: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.” Since then, the government has been forced to clarify those remarks: digital ID will be mandatory to prove the right to work, and will only take effect after the scheme’s proposed introduction in 2028, rather than retrospectively.

The government has also confirmed that digital ID will not be required for pensioners, students, and those not seeking employment, and will also not be mandatory for accessing medical services, such as visiting hospitals. But as civil society organizations are warning, it’s possible that the required use of digital ID will not end here. Once this data is collected and stored, it provides a multitude of opportunities for government agencies to expand the scenarios where they demand that you prove your identity before entering physical and digital spaces or accessing goods and services.

[…]

Digital ID systems expand the number of entities that may access personal information and consequently use it to track and surveil. The UK government has nodded to this threat. Starmer stated that the technology would “absolutely have very strong encryption” and wouldn’t be used as a surveillance tool. Moreover, junior Cabinet Office Minister Josh Simons told Parliament that “data associated with the digital ID system will be held and kept safe in secure cloud environments hosted in the United Kingdom” and that “the government will work closely with expert stakeholders to make the programme effective, secure and inclusive.”

But if digital ID is needed to verify people’s identities multiple times per day or week, ensuring end-to-encryption is the bare minimum the government should require. Unlike sharing a National Insurance Number, a digital ID will show an array of personal information that would otherwise not be available or exchanged.

Cam Wakefield (Hacker News):

Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has been handed something called Section 121, which sounds like a tax loophole but is actually a legal crowbar for prying open encrypted messages.

It allows the regulator to compel any online service that lets people talk to each other, Facebook Messenger, Signal, iMessage, etc to install “accredited technology” to scan for terrorism or child abuse material.

The way this works is by scanning all your messages. Not just the suspicious ones. Not just the flagged ones. Every single message. On your device. Before they’re encrypted.

[…]

“We have set a date of April 2026,” [Lord Hanson] said, presumably while polishing his best ‘nothing to see here’ smile, “and we expect to act extremely speedily once we have had the report back.”

Cindy Harper (Hacker News):

The government’s new Online Safety Act 2023 (Priority Offenses) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which came into force on January 8, 2026, designates “cyberflashing” and “encouraging or assisting serious self-harm” as priority offenses, categories that trigger the strictest compliance duties under the OSA.

This marks a decisive move toward preemptive censorship. Services that allow user interaction, including messaging apps, forums, and search engines, must now monitor communications at scale to ensure that prohibited content is automatically filtered or suppressed before users can even encounter it.

Previously:

Update (2026-01-15): Lindsay Clark (BBC):

The UK government has backed down from making digital ID mandatory for proof of a right to work in the country, adding to confusion over the scheme’s cost and purpose.

Jess Weatherbed:

Policymakers and the UK public expressed privacy and civil rights concerns following the announcement, with a parliamentary petition opposing the introduction of digital ID attracting almost three million signatures.

Copyright © 2000–2026 Michael Tsai.