2026-01-15 21:00:00
I built a micro-app for the folks over at MacStories, who as you know, produce a lot of podcasts. My aim was to streamline some of the data entry we do every week.
Whenever a new podcast episode comes out, there's a form we have to fill out that requires links to the episode on all the major podcast platforms. We need the Apple Podcasts embed code, the show notes, the episode title, all that stuff. It's all perfectly doable, but it's a manual process that involves jumping around to a bunch of different apps, often across several devices.
I wanted to make it easier, so I created a little app called Podcast Dashboard, specifically designed for this task. You can add as many podcasts as you like, though most users will probably only need one or two. You start by entering the Apple Podcasts URL. You can also add the Spotify and YouTube URLs. Unfortunately, there's no way to grab those programmatically, so they're part of the initial setup, but you can always add them later.
Once you've entered the podcast URL, the app loads the show info, giving you access to everything you need. Need to copy the episode title? Just hit the copy button. Done. You'll also find the Apple Podcasts URL and the embed code right there. The show notes are available for download in both HTML and Markdown formats. You can even download the MP3 file directly from here if you need it.
Getting the exact podcast episode links for apps like Overcast and Pocket Casts is a bit trickier. I haven't found a way to automatically determine those yet. However, both Overcast and Pocket Casts create public websites for each show based on the Apple Podcast ID. So, when you enter your Apple Podcast link, it allows me to generate links to the Overcast and Pocket Casts pages for that show on the web. The latest episode will always be at the top, making it easy to grab and share the link.
Spotify and YouTube are static links that take you directly to the show page, where you can easily find the most recent episode and share those links. The one app that's currently missing is Castro. While Castro does have episode-specific web links, it doesn't seem to offer show links. This means I don't currently have a way to easily direct you to Castro to grab the link; you'll still need to open it on your phone.
That's essentially it: basic information about your show, readily accessible, all in one place. It was built specifically for the MacStories crew to make their data entry a little less painful.
2026-01-15 05:54:45
Myself in 2015: iOS is 90% There, but That Last 10% Hurts
I know it's not happening, but I would pay a lot of money for a way to dual-boot iOS and OS X on my iPad.
I wonder if this is the first time I suggested this sort of thing. Amazingly, this was 2 years before I went all-in on the iPad (only to give it up a further 3 years after that).
It really was remarkable to read 2015 me not being able to open or do any "file management stuff" on an MP3 file from my iPhone or iPad. It turns out the Files app wasn't added until 2017! It feels like a million years ago.
2026-01-14 06:30:02
Well, well, well, Apple announced Apple Creator Studio today, and it's worth breaking down the announcement a bit.
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.
I think this framing is interesting right off the bat. Apple is subtly suggesting this is the creative suite for everyone, presumably differentiating themselves from the Adobe Creative Suite, which is premium and only for Serious Professionals.
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.
It's interesting to see Apple bundling Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform in the press release. These apps are free already for Apple users, so this got a bit of an eyebrow raise from me. It will make more sense soon, though.
Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform, Apple Creator Studio subscribers can be more expressive and productive with new premium content and intelligent features across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Okay then, so the free apps will remain free, but there will be content and presumably AI features that you need to pay to use.
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.
$12.99 per month is a quite strong price point in the current market, although I don't expect it's price to immediately kill Adobe or anything. We would have seen they with Affinity's recent update to…checks notes…free. Still, it's a decent price for pro software. It is worth noting that existing Final Cut, Logic, and Pixelmator Pro users have been using those apps with no monthly fee for many years now, and I'm not sure what their incentive will be to jump on this subscription anytime soon.
College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year.
Fantastic. College kids are going to get this sort of software one way or another, so making it dirt cheap is a good way to get something from them and hopefully turn them into long-term customers.
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.
As they clarify at the end of this post, these apps are already on the Mac App Store and you can get them now, you don't have to wait for January 28 when the bundle launches. This tells me that people like me who own all these apps already will be able to keep using them for the foreseeable future. As someone who mostly uses Final Cut Pro out of all these apps, it seems like I'll get all the updates discussed in this post, and will for at least some time into the future. I'm sure they'll push people to upgrade to the subscription eventually, but I plan on resisting as long as possible.
With Transcript Search on Mac and iPad, users can now easily find the perfect soundbite in hours of footage by simply typing phrases into the search bar to see exact or related results.
This is snazzy. The footnotes on this and other Final Cut features mention they only work in US English, but nothing about being exclusive to the subscription version of the app, so it looks like everyone gets this.
Using the power of AI…
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.
For the first time, Pixelmator Pro is coming to iPad
I'll be honest, their preview of the iPad version of the app has me mostly encouraged. The iPad app looks more feature complete than Final Cut for the iPad, which is exciting. That said, my heart did breat a bit when I saw the Mac screenshot and saw liquid glass doing its thing. I guess the good news is Final Cut and Logic don't seem to have gotten turned to brittle glass yet.
for Apple Creator Studio subscribers, both Pixelmator Pro for Mac and iPad bring a powerful new Warp tool for twisting and shaping layers any way creatives can imagine, alongside a beautiful collection of Warp-powered product mockups.
Maybe it's a killer warp feature, but this seems like a weird thing to put behind the subscription to me.
The Content Hub is a new space where users can find curated, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations. A subscription also unlocks new premium templates and themes in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.
An alternative stock photos and themes library wasn't something I was expecting, but alright, this could be interesting. There's also some junk about generating images, but whatever.
Apple Creator Studio includes access to features in beta, such as the ability to generate a first draft of a presentation from a text outline, or create presenter notes from existing slides. Subscribers can also quickly clean up slides to fix layout and object placement. And in Numbers, subscribers can generate formulas and fill in tables based on pattern recognition with Magic Fill.
Google's apps have started doing things like this, and they're really useful.
All new subscribers will enjoy a one-month free trial of Apple Creator Studio, and with the purchase of a new Mac or qualifying iPad, customers can receive three months of Apple Creator Studio for free.
Listen, I'm game to give it a trial run, but my money is on me dropping it before it costs me anything.
Before I go, can I just say something about the icons? I'm not a fan. I'm so much not a fan it has me looking at the current glass versions of Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator Pro with nostalgia. Oh how good we had it!
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.
I guess I should be happy Apple at least used different colors.
And that's it! It's cool to see Apple getting into the creative pro game a bit more, after pulling back for so many years. Bring back Aperture, make it as good compared to Lightroom as it was back then, and you'll have me as a customer for sure.
2026-01-14 03:15:00
Casey Newton: Grok gets blocked
On Friday, following days of mounting outrage over Grok generating sexualized deepfakes of women and children, X said it would restrict the feature to paying subscribers.
I know he's a ghoul, but what the fuck is Elon Musk doing?
This is absolute garbage. He's created a tool that generates CSAM and non-consensual sexual images of people and distributes them as public images anyone can see with ease. He has built it into his product, he has laughed about how funny it is, and the slightest adjustment he has made to this is to make people pay to use this. This is not any sort of remediation of this feature, this is Musk seeing something people are doing that is genuinely sick, and has decided the best way to handle it is to monetize it.
For what it’s worth, Apple is monetizing it as well.
2026-01-13 21:30:00
antirez writing on his blog: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
It is simply impossible not to see the reality of what is happening. Writing code is no longer needed for the most part. It is now a lot more interesting to understand what to do, and how to do it (and, about this second part, LLMs are great partners, too). It does not matter if AI companies will not be able to get their money back and the stock market will crash. All that is irrelevant, in the long run. It does not matter if this or the other CEO of some unicorn is telling you something that is off putting, or absurd. Programming changed forever, anyway.
It's been plain to see for almost a year now, but programming has fundamentally changed, and we're still in the early days of getting to grips with what this change means. And I'm not talking about some theoretical future version of LLMs that will finally be good enough, I'm saying that if we stopped all work on LLMs and all we had forever more was Claude 4.5, Gemini 3, and GPT 5.2, this radical change in programming work is still happening.
It's not coming, it's here.
2026-01-13 08:21:07
Quick Subtitles 1.7 is out now, and it's an especially good update for iPhone and iPad users. On both the iPhone and iPad, the app now supports background processing, so you can swipe the app away, and you'll see a Live Activity appear showing you the transcription continuing in the background. You can get on with whatever else you are doing and know when the transcription is ready for you.
This was one of the features I really wanted to support soon after launch, and I'm really happy I was able to get it in, especially since I beat Final Cut Pro to the punch on this one. This update is exclusive to the iPhone and iPad because, of course, the Mac version has always been able to process wherever the window happens to be.
I've also made an update to how the SRT file is formatted. This is a part of the code that I think I got a little too clever with in the early days of this app's development, and it could sometimes lead to excessively short bits of text on screen at once. Now you'll get more complete sentences in your subtitles, which, in my experience, has been an improvement.
You can download Quick Subtitles from the App Store today!