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 […]

Apple Newsroom:

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. [...]

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.

One-time purchase pricing, from the footnotes:

One-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro ($299.99 U.S.), Logic Pro ($199.99 U.S.), Pixelmator Pro ($49.99 U.S.), Motion ($49.99 U.S.), Compressor ($49.99 U.S.), and MainStage ($29.99 U.S.) are available on the Mac App Store.

I’ll have more to say later today, but my first observation is that with the exception of the new version of Pixelmator, the user interfaces of these apps completely ignore Liquid Glass. That could be a statement from the design teams for these apps, or could be a factor only of version requirements:

Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later. The Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 26. [...]

The one-time-purchase versions of Final Cut Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, Logic Pro requires macOS 15.6 or later, and Pixelmator Pro requires macOS 12.0 or later. MainStage is available for any Mac supported by macOS 15.6 or later. Motion requires macOS 15.6 or later. Compressor requires macOS 15.6 or later and some features require a Mac with Apple silicon.

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.)

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch:

“We’ve structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully, long-running enterprise, but not a startup,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. [...]

“I want a companion to my phone, rather than a replacement for my phone. I want it to be more like a Swatch than a Rolex. I want it to be a little bit more fun, casual, playful, and plasticky.” Plus, he added, with the reboot of Pebble, he’s now okay with a watch that doesn’t try to do it all.

“I’m okay with a limited vision and a limited scope of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Migicovsky said.

Under the new company, Core Devices, the team has announced the Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, a round-faced Pebble Round 2, and a $75 AI smart ring, called the Index 01.

What a great profile from Perez. I think she captured the current moment for Core Devices. I personally don’t want their new watches, and I don’t see the appeal (especially ergonomically, given that it needs to be on your index finger) of the Index 01 ring, but I can see why some people might. And I’m delighted to see a small company trying these things. Better to make things a few people might love than to try to make something zillions might like.

Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.

WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.

Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes.

Here’s an illustrated follow-up regarding the absurdity of MacOS 26’s “looks like they’re rounded off like a child’s toy but actually they’re still rectangles with corners” windows. If you turn on always-visible scroll bars (which you should) and scroll to the bottom, they look like this:

(That’s Safari, which I think is a somewhat popular app.)

It would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta a year ago and deliberately sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur.