2026-01-24 05:59:16
Netflix and Paramount continue their battle for Warner, why Ted Sarandos might not be the villain he’s painted to be, plus letters and TV picks. (Downstream+ listeners also get: YouTube’s letter, Oscar noms, Star Search, and Heated Rivalry.)
2026-01-23 01:15:54
In October, I wrote a little piece about how I was concerned over the lack of a clear strategy with Apple’s creativity apps—in particular, the recently-acquired Pixelmator and Photomator, as well as the inconsistent development effort behind Apple’s video apps. As speculated and rumored, progress was being held for a pro apps bundle, Creator Studio, but only sorta-kinda.
It’s not the first time Apple has made a bundle for its pro creativity software. People may remember Final Cut Studio, which included Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor (as well as other software). So Apple glued Logic Pro to that. Then they glued Pixelmator Pro to that. Then they said, “Do you know what’s just like these? (Pregnant pause.) Our productivity office applications.” and bundled those in as well, but only freemium beta features. When I think of Final Cut Pro, I certainly think of “extra things I can do in Freeform.”
While it’s positive that people who have paid for apps, or just like iWork, get to continue to use them, the way the features are partitioned between all of these versions makes very little sense, and will probably make even less sense over time. Take Pixelmator, which is supposed to be Apple’s answer to Photoshop. It will still be available to buy in the Mac App Store, but won’t have the new warp tool.
Sure, that’s the one thing in your Photoshop competitor that requires a subscription, the improved warp tool.
Just one more thing…
Pixelmator Pro received an update and an iPadOS app, but there are no updates for Photomator, a Lightroom analog, and it is not a part of the Creator Studio bundle. It continues to be a product that you can pay a separate subscription for on a monthly ($8), or yearly (there are three $30 a year plans, and one $40 a year plan, with no clear differences) basis that offers nothing beyond bug fixes.
It seems unlikely Apple is going to kill Photomator, because when Creator Studio was announced, Apple didn’t say anything about it—while it announced that Pixelmator Classic for iPhone wasn’t going to receive any updates.
We’ll get back to Photomator. But first, let me explain how maddening that announcement about Pixelmator Classic was.
Pixelmator Classic was the only Photoshop-like app on the iPhone that was truly Photoshop-like. Adobe’s own iPhone Photoshop apps (there have been many) have all been attempts at reimagining Photoshop for the iPhone, and seemingly aimed at customers who find Photoshop too intimidating. Unfortunately, its solution has just been less elegant than Pixelmator Classic’s.
I pay Adobe for Creative Cloud and don’t use their Photoshop iPhone app. Instead, I use Pixelmator Classic, which is bizarrely being put out to pasture with no imminent or announced replacement. Maybe there will eventually be a Pixelmator for iPhone, and maybe that will eventually be in this Creator Studio bundle. There will simply be no way to know until, and unless, it happens. Apple loves its little surprises!
Why not forecast that possibility by telling us what will happen with the multi-platform app Photomator? It’s the direct analog to Lightroom, making it the most obvious missing piece in Apple’s bundle. If it’s because there are no updates to announce for Photomator after over a year, then I would ask, “Why is Apple charging $30 a year for the existing version of Photomator?”
If it’s because Photomator will instead be a $30 a year freemium unlock for the Photos app, then I would ask, “What’s the Creator Studio bundle for if it doesn’t include photography? And why is Apple still charging $30 a year?”
Let’s say it’s going to make it a separate up-sell for Photos. Then we’ll probably find out in June, but it won’t ship until the fall. Conveniently, that gives me just enough time to start another yearly billing cycle for Photomator, so I will have paid $60 since Apple acquired Photomator and did nothing with it.
I am not arguing that Photomator should be free. Free is unhealthy, because then there’s no motivation to improve the software. I’m arguing that if there’s a subscription fee I’m paying annually, then there needs to be at least annual development of the software. I don’t need massive updates, but I need some sign that there is, and will continue to be, value in paying an annual subscription.
This isn’t software from a small, independent company any longer. It’s now software from Apple, which embarrassingly struggles to release its yearly OS updates for its platforms, and still can’t match its multi-platform apps feature for feature.
There’s something very strange in Apple branding this as a Creator Studio, seemingly targeting independent “content” creators, but then not having a single iPhone app with a video, photo, illustration, image editing, or music specialization when the iPhone is the platform the creatives are the most concerned with as the final destination for their creativity.
That just leads me back to the same conclusion that I drew in October: What is the promise Apple is making by asking for these annual payments? The mismatched nature of the bundle, and Apple’s spotty updates before this, makes me question if it thinks that just continuing things as they were, but with a subscription fee, is good enough.
Needless to say, I’m skeptical of the Creator Studio being a Creative Cloud replacement when Apple can’t even say what its answer to Lightroom is, when they bought their own answer to Lightroom over a year ago.
2026-01-23 00:36:34
There was a time when QuickTime was more than just a playback utility; I used it frequently to perform simple video edits, like removing commercials from an off-air recording or tacking the contents of one file on the end of another.
Since those days ended with the deprecation of classic QuickTime, I’ve never really had a go-to utility for these kinds of trims. Sure, I can import the video into an editor and then re-export it, but that requires a second round of lossy encoding, which can make video look lousy. Better is to edit the already-compressed video itself. (This is what I use Rogue Amoeba’s excellent Fission to do with audio. Fission lets me edit an MP3 file without re-encoding it and adding a whole second layer of compression artifacts.)
[Update: Reader Michaël wrote in to point out, amazingly, that at some point years ago Apple added editing features back to QuickTime Player. If I knew about this, I forgot it. If you press Command-Y, you can split clips, and you can delete and re-order those clips. The issue is that the final file you save is a MOV container featuring those clips, which (I believe—tell me if I’m wrong, Michaël!) means that in the end you have to re-encode the video to get a seamless mp4 file for a video podcast.]
A few weeks ago after a Total Party Kill session, I found myself once again needing to perform some trims to the “video bootleg” of the session. In the middle of the game, we took a ten-minute break, and I didn’t want viewers of the video to have to fast forward through 10 minutes of dead air.
This time, I decided to look for a visual utility (i.e., not something I have to drive from Terminal) that could solve this problem. And I found it: the open-source app LosslessCut, which provides a nice interface atop the powerful FFmpeg command-line app.
If I’m being honest, the app is not exactly intuitive, but there’s a bunch of documentation and after about five minutes I had learned every single keystroke required to do exactly what I wanted. The app let me cut segments out of the video, but it also supports rearranging segments, combining tracks, and an enormous set of other features I don’t care about, though you might.
Since the app is open-source and on GitHub, you can get it for free, or you can get it on the Mac App Store for $19 and support the work of developer Mikael Finstad, which is what I did.
2026-01-22 07:34:08
Longtime design and software firm The Iconfactory has a new Kickstarter where they’re hoping to bring some more classic games back to the App Store as well as offer it for free to everyone. Ollie’s Arcade started as a home for minigames, including ones the Iconfactory had included in its app Twitterrific (which died when Twitter killed support for all third-party Twitter apps). Ged Maheux of The Iconfactory writes:
This week we announced a new Kickstarter that’s aimed at expanding the game offerings of Ollie’s Arcade, the fun, ad-free retro gaming app we introduced back in 2023. Ollie’s Arcade has always been a great way to escape doomscrolling, even if just for a little while, and now we have an opportunity to bring these retro games to even more people on iOS.
The Iconfactory has been hit hard by a rise of AI artwork that has really harmed its design business. The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry is working hard to recover from an Annus horribilis of his own. As Maheux writes:
We’ve struggled to pay our salaries, keep up with the rising cost of health care and to compete against the onslaught of AI driven design solutions. The new KS won’t be enough to solve all our revenue problems, but it will help give us runway to keep the lights on while we find new ways to stick around and serve you. The more we raise now, the longer and safer that runway gets.
If there’s anyone who deserves more runway, it’s The Iconfactory.
2026-01-22 07:22:50
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is back from some time off with a blockbuster report about how Apple’s planning on rolling out its new Google-based AI models and functionality:
The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining the current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the coming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features unveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen content and tap into personal data. It also will be better at searching the web.
In other words, Apple’s first plan is to make good on all of its broken AI promises from WWDC 2024, using a currently-available Google AI model. It’s an interesting decision, and suggests that Apple’s executives feel those promises hanging over their heads even now.
Gurman continues:
The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The company aims to unveil that technology in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference and release it in September.
The report says that iOS 27 will feature a newer Google-based model, and it will power Siri in both a voice and text-based chatbot mode. This just makes sense. But Gurman reports that Apple hasn’t committed to launching a full-fledged Siri app in the style of the Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT apps. This suggests that Apple may be reluctant to embrace the free-form prompt approach, which has its pros and cons. (I think having a place to refer to past chats and continue them is interesting; I also think that making a blank text box the primary interface for anything is a step backward, not forward.)
One last tidbit from Gurman:
In a potential policy shift for Apple, the two partners are discussing hosting the chatbot directly on Google servers running powerful chips known as TPUs, or tensor processing units. The more immediate Siri update, in contrast, will operate on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers, which rely on high-end Mac chips for processing.
I wonder what technical roadblocks are bringing an issue like this to the forefront. Can Apple’s carefully architected Private Cloud Compute infrastructure not provide enough power to run the Google-designed models they need? Will Google host that chatbot on hardware with similar privacy protections, or would this be a crack in Apple’s privacy approach? It will be interesting to see what Apple will do if forced to choose between privacy and functionality.
2026-01-22 07:09:22
Via Juli Clover of MacRumors, The Information is reporting that Apple is working on a “small, wearable AI pin with multiple cameras, a speaker, and microphones.” Clover’s summary:
The pin is said to be similar in size to an AirTag, with a thin, flat, circular disc shape. It has an aluminum and glass shell, and two cameras at the front. There is a standard lens and a wide-angle lens that are meant to capture photos and videos, while three microphones are designed to pick up sound around the wearer. An included speaker allows the pin to play audio, and there is a physical control button along one edge. The device is able to wirelessly charge like an Apple Watch.
This is a report about an early prototype, not a product being prepped in the supply chain, so if it ever exists, it’ll be quite a while from now—and there’s a good chance it’ll never exist.
However, I think it’s interesting that Apple’s considering this product, because in many ways it fits with Apple’s product strategy. Sure, maybe in the future everyone will just wear AR glasses containing cameras and displays and audio output and an Internet connection. But it’s also possible that we’re headed for a more mix-and-match future with a constellation of smart devices that we wear in various contexts throughout our day. If you are someone who just has an iPhone in your pocket, it’s hidden away from the outside world… a problem rectified by wearing a small device with cameras and microphones on your shirt.
Does such a device fit in the future, or would it be pointless and redundant? It’s hard to say right now, but it certainly seems like something worth an investigation by Apple. I’d be shocked if Apple’s long-term wearables strategy isn’t based on offering a load of ancillary devices that leverage the iPhone’s computing power and cellular connectivity wherever possible.
