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Introducing Apple Creator Studio, an inspiring collection of creative apps

Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — plus new AI fea­tures and pre­mium con­tent in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — come to­gether in a sin­gle sub­scrip­tion

Apple Creator Studio is a col­lec­tion of pow­er­ful cre­ative apps for video edit­ing, mu­sic mak­ing, cre­ative imag­ing, and vi­sual pro­duc­tiv­ity.

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.

Final Cut Pro in­tro­duces ex­cep­tional new video edit­ing tools and in­tel­li­gent fea­tures for Mac and iPad to im­prove the ef­fi­ciency of even the most com­plex work­flows.1 For the first time, Pixelmator Pro is com­ing to iPad with a uniquely crafted ex­pe­ri­ence that is op­ti­mized for touch and Apple Pencil.2 Music cre­ation with Logic Pro for Mac and iPad in­tro­duces even more in­tel­li­gent fea­tures like Synth Player and Chord ID to in­spire any­one to write, pro­duce, and mix a range of pop­u­lar mu­sic.3 And with 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.4

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.5

Apple Creator Studio is a great value that en­ables cre­ators of all types to pur­sue their craft and grow their skills by pro­vid­ing easy ac­cess to the most pow­er­ful and in­tu­itive tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic mak­ing, cre­ative imag­ing, and vi­sual pro­duc­tiv­ity — all lev­eled up with ad­vanced in­tel­li­gent tools to aug­ment and ac­cel­er­ate work­flows,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Internet Software and Services. There’s never been a more flex­i­ble and ac­ces­si­ble way to get started with such a pow­er­ful col­lec­tion of cre­ative apps for pro­fes­sion­als, emerg­ing artists, en­tre­pre­neurs, stu­dents, and ed­u­ca­tors to do their best work and ex­plore their cre­ative in­ter­ests from start to fin­ish.”

A per­son sit­ting at their work­sta­tion work­ing on a pro­ject in Final Cut Pro on mul­ti­ple screens.

A per­son wear­ing AirPods Max work­ing in Logic Pro on their MacBook Pro.

A per­son draw­ing in the Pixelmator Pro app on their iPad Pro.

The suite of apps in­cluded with Apple Creator Studio gives pro­fes­sion­als, emerg­ing cre­atives, en­tre­pre­neurs, stu­dents, and ed­u­ca­tors the fea­tures and ca­pa­bil­i­ties they need to re­al­ize their artis­tic vi­sion.

The suite of apps in­cluded with Apple Creator Studio gives pro­fes­sion­als, emerg­ing cre­atives, en­tre­pre­neurs, stu­dents, and ed­u­ca­tors the fea­tures and ca­pa­bil­i­ties they need to re­al­ize their artis­tic vi­sion.

The suite of apps in­cluded with Apple Creator Studio gives pro­fes­sion­als, emerg­ing cre­atives, en­tre­pre­neurs, stu­dents, and ed­u­ca­tors the fea­tures and ca­pa­bil­i­ties they need to re­al­ize their artis­tic vi­sion.

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.6 Video pod­casts and in­ter­views can be as­sem­bled quickly, elim­i­nat­ing ex­ten­sive time spent skim­ming through footage. Looking for a spe­cific video clip also gets an in­tel­li­gence as­sist with Visual Search.7 Now, users can quickly pin­point ex­act mo­ments across all footage by search­ing for an ob­ject or ac­tion, and then add that vi­sual to their time­line in sec­onds.

With Transcript Search in Final Cut Pro, users can eas­ily find the ex­act or re­lated sound­bites by sim­ply typ­ing phrases into the search bar.

Visual Search pre­cisely iden­ti­fies mo­ments across footage when search­ing for an ob­ject or ac­tion.

Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad also makes edit­ing video to the rhythm of mu­sic fast and fun with Beat Detection, an amaz­ing new way to see mu­si­cal beats, bars, and song parts right in the pro­ject time­line. Beat Detection uses an AI model from Logic Pro to in­stantly an­a­lyze any mu­sic track and dis­play the Beat Grid, so users cre­at­ing fast-paced videos can quickly and vi­su­ally align their cuts to the mu­sic. Re-editing mu­sic tracks to dif­fer­ent lengths is also eas­ier than ever.

The new Montage Maker in Final Cut Pro for iPad lets users kick-start their edit in just sec­onds. Using the power of AI, Montage Maker will an­a­lyze and edit to­gether a dy­namic video based on the best vi­sual mo­ments within the footage, with the abil­ity to change the pac­ing, cut to a mu­sic track, and in­tel­li­gently re­frame hor­i­zon­tal videos to ver­ti­cal with Auto Crop to sim­plify shar­ing across so­cial plat­forms.

Apple Creator Studio also un­locks full ac­cess to Motion, a pow­er­ful mo­tion graph­ics tool for cre­at­ing cin­e­matic 2D and 3D ef­fects with in­tel­li­gent fea­tures like Magnetic Mask, which ef­fort­lessly iso­lates and tracks peo­ple and ob­jects with­out a green screen. It also in­cludes Compressor, which in­te­grates with Final Cut Pro and Motion to seam­lessly cus­tomize out­put set­tings for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Synth Player joins the AI Session Player lineup,8 de­liv­er­ing in­cred­i­ble elec­tronic mu­sic per­for­mances with a di­verse range of chordal and synth bass parts — all pow­ered by AI and the ad­vanced soft­ware in­stru­ment tech­nol­ogy of Logic Pro. Using Synth Player is like hav­ing ac­cess to a skilled syn­the­sist that can in­stantly take a mu­si­cal idea in new di­rec­tions when needed. Developed in-house us­ing Apple’s own team of ex­pert sound de­sign­ers, Synth Player de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble re­al­ism and fi­delity fu­eled by the vast ar­ray of soft­ware syn­the­siz­ers and sam­plers in Logic Pro. And like every AI Session Player, cre­ators can di­rect Synth Player us­ing in­tu­itive con­trols for com­plex­ity and in­ten­sity, while ad­di­tional pa­ra­me­ters un­lock ac­cess to ad­vanced per­for­mance ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Synth Player can also ac­cess any third-party plug-in Audio Units, or even con­trol an ex­ter­nal hard­ware syn­the­sizer.

Tapping into the power of AI, Chord ID be­comes a per­sonal mu­sic the­ory ex­pert by turn­ing any au­dio or MIDI record­ing into a ready-to-use chord pro­gres­sion, elim­i­nat­ing te­dious man­ual tran­scrip­tion and bring­ing demo ideas to life even faster. Designed to help every­one get the most out of the Session Player ex­pe­ri­ence, Chord ID can an­a­lyze com­plex har­monic con­tent from nearly any record­ing to au­to­mat­i­cally pop­u­late the chord track in Logic Pro. And since the chord track dri­ves the per­for­mances of any AI Session Player, users can quickly au­di­tion dif­fer­ent play­ers, styles, and gen­res, al­low­ing them cre­ative free­dom to ex­per­i­ment and dial in their fa­vorite vibe.

The new Sound Library in Logic Pro for Mac de­liv­ers Apple-designed packs and Producer Packs with hun­dreds of roy­alty-free loops, sam­ples, in­stru­ment patches, drum sounds, and more. Additionally, Logic Pro for iPad users will now have ac­cess to the in­dus­try-lead­ing Quick Swipe Comping fea­ture from Logic Pro for Mac, an in­dis­pens­able tool for vo­cal­ists and pro­duc­ers who want to cre­ate seam­less per­for­mances in­side or out­side the stu­dio.

The Sound Library in Logic Pro dis­played on MacBook Pro.

The new Sound Library in Logic Pro for Mac de­liv­ers hun­dreds of roy­alty-free loops, sam­ples, in­stru­ment patches, drum sounds, and more.

The in­dus­try-lead­ing Quick Swipe Comping fea­ture comes to Logic Pro for iPad.

Logic Pro for iPad also pre­sents Music Understanding fea­tures with nat­ural lan­guage search in the Sound Browser to help users de­scribe a loop or find sim­i­lar loops — no tags, guesses, or fil­ters re­quired. AI-based aware­ness of the mas­sive col­lec­tion of loops in Logic Pro makes it easy to search ei­ther through nat­ural lan­guage or a record­ing to find a sim­i­lar or com­ple­men­tary loop or sound.

Apple Creator Studio also un­locks ac­cess to MainStage, which turns Mac into an in­stru­ment, voice proces­sor, or gui­tar rig. Now, the sound users love in their record­ing can be the sound their au­di­ence hears. Setup is fast, tear­down is faster, and every­thing in be­tween is more re­li­able.

An im­age in Pixelmator Pro dis­played on iPad Pro.

An im­age in Pixelmator Pro dis­played on MacBook Pro.

For the first time, Pixelmator Pro comes to iPad, bring­ing the full suite of beloved fea­tures, cus­tomized for touch and Apple Pencil.

For the first time, Pixelmator Pro comes to iPad, bring­ing the full suite of beloved fea­tures, cus­tomized for touch and Apple Pencil.

Intuitive touch con­trols make it even eas­ier to cre­ate desk­top-class de­signs wher­ever users take their iPad. The full-fea­tured Layers side­bar al­lows cre­ators to build de­signs us­ing a range of unique el­e­ments like im­ages, shapes, text, and even video. Smart se­lec­tion tools help users iso­late and edit spe­cific parts of im­ages ef­fort­lessly, and with ad­vanced bitmap and vec­tor masks, users can hide or re­veal dis­crete por­tions of their de­signs. The deep in­te­gra­tion of hard­ware, soft­ware, and Apple sil­i­con un­locks fea­tures like Super Resolution for in­tel­li­gently up­scal­ing pho­tos, Deband for re­mov­ing com­pres­sion ar­ti­facts, and au­to­matic com­po­si­tion sug­ges­tions with Auto Crop. With full sup­port for Apple Pencil, dig­i­tal artists can en­joy paint­ing in the most nat­ural way with a beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of pres­sure-sen­si­tive brushes. And un­matched Apple Pencil pre­ci­sion — com­bined with fea­tures like hover,9 squeeze,10 and dou­ble-tap11 — gives cre­ators the abil­ity to craft pixel-per­fect de­signs.

The Layers side­bar in Pixelmator Pro dis­played on iPad Pro.

A Pixelmator Pro pro­ject dis­played on iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil at­tached.

Users can build de­signs with the full range of tools avail­able in the Layers side­bar.

Apple Pencil fea­tures, in­clud­ing hover, squeeze, dou­ble-tap, and more give Pixelmator Pro for iPad users the abil­ity to edit their de­signs even more pre­cisely.

Additionally, 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.

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.12 On-device AI mod­els en­able Super Resolution to up­scale im­ages while keep­ing them sharp and de­tailed, and Auto Crop pro­vides in­tel­li­gent crop sug­ges­tions, help­ing users find eye-catch­ing com­po­si­tions for pho­tos.

To help users pre­pare pre­sen­ta­tions even more quickly in Keynote, 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.

Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform will re­main free for all users to cre­ate, edit, and col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, in­clud­ing Apple Creator Studio sub­scribers. These apps will con­tinue re­ceiv­ing up­dates, with the lat­est ver­sions adopt­ing the beau­ti­ful new vi­sual de­sign lan­guage with Liquid Glass on all plat­forms, and sup­port­ing the new win­dow­ing and menu bar im­prove­ments in iPa­dOS 26.

Apple Creator Studio will be avail­able be­gin­ning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 (U. S.) per month or $129 (U.S.) per year. 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,13 cus­tomers can re­ceive three months of Apple Creator Studio for free.14

Education sav­ings are avail­able for col­lege stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors15 for $2.99 (U.S.) per month or $29.99 (U.S.) per year.

Apple Creator Studio is avail­able to down­load on the App Store as a uni­ver­sal pur­chase.

Up to six fam­ily mem­bers can share all of the apps and con­tent in­cluded in Apple Creator Studio with Family Sharing.

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.

Free ver­sions of Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform con­tinue to be avail­able and are in­cluded with every new iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — plus new AI fea­tures and pre­mium con­tent in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — come to­gether in a sin­gle sub­scrip­tion

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA 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.

Final Cut Pro in­tro­duces ex­cep­tional new video edit­ing tools and in­tel­li­gent fea­tures for Mac and iPad to im­prove the ef­fi­ciency of even the most com­plex work­flows.1 For the first time, Pixelmator Pro is com­ing to iPad with a uniquely crafted ex­pe­ri­ence that is op­ti­mized for touch and Apple Pencil.2 Music cre­ation with Logic Pro for Mac and iPad in­tro­duces even more in­tel­li­gent fea­tures like Synth Player and Chord ID to in­spire any­one to write, pro­duce, and mix a range of pop­u­lar mu­sic.3 And with 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.4

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.5

Apple Creator Studio is a great value that en­ables cre­ators of all types to pur­sue their craft and grow their skills by pro­vid­ing easy ac­cess to the most pow­er­ful and in­tu­itive tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic mak­ing, cre­ative imag­ing, and vi­sual pro­duc­tiv­ity — all lev­eled up with ad­vanced in­tel­li­gent tools to aug­ment and ac­cel­er­ate work­flows,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Internet Software and Services. There’s never been a more flex­i­ble and ac­ces­si­ble way to get started with such a pow­er­ful col­lec­tion of cre­ative apps for pro­fes­sion­als, emerg­ing artists, en­tre­pre­neurs, stu­dents, and ed­u­ca­tors to do their best work and ex­plore their cre­ative in­ter­ests from start to fin­ish.”

Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad em­pow­ers con­tent cre­ators, video ed­i­tors, and film­mak­ers to el­e­vate their pro­jects with in­tu­itive fea­tures. One-time-purchase Mac users and Apple Creator Studio sub­scribers can ex­pe­ri­ence blaz­ing-fast per­for­mance with Apple sil­i­con for the most de­mand­ing work­flows, and get into the cre­ative flow faster than ever with new on-de­vice in­tel­li­gent fea­tures that make video cre­ation ef­fort­less and easy.

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.6 Video pod­casts and in­ter­views can be as­sem­bled quickly, elim­i­nat­ing ex­ten­sive time spent skim­ming through footage. Looking for a spe­cific video clip also gets an in­tel­li­gence as­sist with Visual Search.7 Now, users can quickly pin­point ex­act mo­ments across all footage by search­ing for an ob­ject or ac­tion, and then add that vi­sual to their time­line in sec­onds.

Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad also makes edit­ing video to the rhythm of mu­sic fast and fun with Beat Detection, an amaz­ing new way to see mu­si­cal beats, bars, and song parts right in the pro­ject time­line. Beat Detection uses an AI model from Logic Pro to in­stantly an­a­lyze any mu­sic track and dis­play the Beat Grid, so users cre­at­ing fast-paced videos can quickly and vi­su­ally align their cuts to the mu­sic. Re-editing mu­sic tracks to dif­fer­ent lengths is also eas­ier than ever.

The new Montage Maker in Final Cut Pro for iPad lets users kick-start their edit in just sec­onds. Using the power of AI, Montage Maker will an­a­lyze and edit to­gether a dy­namic video based on the best vi­sual mo­ments within the footage, with the abil­ity to change the pac­ing, cut to a mu­sic track, and in­tel­li­gently re­frame hor­i­zon­tal videos to ver­ti­cal with Auto Crop to sim­plify shar­ing across so­cial plat­forms.

Apple Creator Studio also un­locks full ac­cess to Motion, a pow­er­ful mo­tion graph­ics tool for cre­at­ing cin­e­matic 2D and 3D ef­fects with in­tel­li­gent fea­tures like Magnetic Mask, which ef­fort­lessly iso­lates and tracks peo­ple and ob­jects with­out a green screen. It also in­cludes Compressor, which in­te­grates with Final Cut Pro and Motion to seam­lessly cus­tomize out­put set­tings for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Taking Music Creation to the Next Level

A new lineup of fea­tures for Logic Pro for Mac and iPad sup­ports mu­si­cal artists and helps cre­ators de­liver orig­i­nal mu­sic for their video con­tent as an Apple Creator Studio sub­scriber or one-time-pur­chase Mac user. The new tools are so­phis­ti­cated, in­tu­itive, and in­tel­li­gent to in­spire beat mak­ing, song­writ­ing, remix­ing, and more.

Synth Player joins the AI Session Player lineup,8 de­liv­er­ing in­cred­i­ble elec­tronic mu­sic per­for­mances with a di­verse range of chordal and synth bass parts — all pow­ered by AI and the ad­vanced soft­ware in­stru­ment tech­nol­ogy of Logic Pro. Using Synth Player is like hav­ing ac­cess to a skilled syn­the­sist that can in­stantly take a mu­si­cal idea in new di­rec­tions when needed. Developed in-house us­ing Apple’s own team of ex­pert sound de­sign­ers, Synth Player de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble re­al­ism and fi­delity fu­eled by the vast ar­ray of soft­ware syn­the­siz­ers and sam­plers in Logic Pro. And like every AI Session Player, cre­ators can di­rect Synth Player us­ing in­tu­itive con­trols for com­plex­ity and in­ten­sity, while ad­di­tional pa­ra­me­ters un­lock ac­cess to ad­vanced per­for­mance ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Synth Player can also ac­cess any third-party plug-in Audio Units, or even con­trol an ex­ter­nal hard­ware syn­the­sizer.

Tapping into the power of AI, Chord ID be­comes a per­sonal mu­sic the­ory ex­pert by turn­ing any au­dio or MIDI record­ing into a ready-to-use chord pro­gres­sion, elim­i­nat­ing te­dious man­ual tran­scrip­tion and bring­ing demo ideas to life even faster. Designed to help every­one get the most out of the Session Player ex­pe­ri­ence, Chord ID can an­a­lyze com­plex har­monic con­tent from nearly any record­ing to au­to­mat­i­cally pop­u­late the chord track in Logic Pro. And since the chord track dri­ves the per­for­mances of any AI Session Player, users can quickly au­di­tion dif­fer­ent play­ers, styles, and gen­res, al­low­ing them cre­ative free­dom to ex­per­i­ment and dial in their fa­vorite vibe.

The new Sound Library in Logic Pro for Mac de­liv­ers Apple-designed packs and Producer Packs with hun­dreds of roy­alty-free loops, sam­ples, in­stru­ment patches, drum sounds, and more. Additionally, Logic Pro for iPad users will now have ac­cess to the in­dus­try-lead­ing Quick Swipe Comping fea­ture from Logic Pro for Mac, an in­dis­pens­able tool for vo­cal­ists and pro­duc­ers who want to cre­ate seam­less per­for­mances in­side or out­side the stu­dio.

Logic Pro for iPad also pre­sents Music Understanding fea­tures with nat­ural lan­guage search in the Sound Browser to help users de­scribe a loop or find sim­i­lar loops — no tags, guesses, or fil­ters re­quired. AI-based aware­ness of the mas­sive col­lec­tion of loops in Logic Pro makes it easy to search ei­ther through nat­ural lan­guage or a record­ing to find a sim­i­lar or com­ple­men­tary loop or sound.

Apple Creator Studio also un­locks ac­cess to MainStage, which turns Mac into an in­stru­ment, voice proces­sor, or gui­tar rig. Now, the sound users love in their record­ing can be the sound their au­di­ence hears. Setup is fast, tear­down is faster, and every­thing in be­tween is more re­li­able.

Pixelmator Pro, the award-win­ning im­age ed­i­tor for Mac, comes with the all-new Apple Creator Studio, bring­ing an ap­proach­able and pro­fes­sional edit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to even more cre­ators. Pixelmator Pro is packed with pow­er­ful im­age edit­ing tools, em­pow­er­ing Apple Creator Studio sub­scribers and one-time-pur­chase Mac users to de­sign, draw, paint, and re­fine their cre­ative vi­sion, and so much more. 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. Pixelmator Pro for iPad of­fers fast and ef­fi­cient im­age edit­ing, lever­ag­ing the blaz­ing per­for­mance of Apple sil­i­con and built from scratch for the lat­est iPa­dOS.

Intuitive touch con­trols make it even eas­ier to cre­ate desk­top-class de­signs wher­ever users take their iPad. The full-fea­tured Layers side­bar al­lows cre­ators to build de­signs us­ing a range of unique el­e­ments like im­ages, shapes, text, and even video. Smart se­lec­tion tools help users iso­late and edit spe­cific parts of im­ages ef­fort­lessly, and with ad­vanced bitmap and vec­tor masks, users can hide or re­veal dis­crete por­tions of their de­signs. The deep in­te­gra­tion of hard­ware, soft­ware, and Apple sil­i­con un­locks fea­tures like Super Resolution for in­tel­li­gently up­scal­ing pho­tos, Deband for re­mov­ing com­pres­sion ar­ti­facts, and au­to­matic com­po­si­tion sug­ges­tions with Auto Crop. With full sup­port for Apple Pencil, dig­i­tal artists can en­joy paint­ing in the most nat­ural way with a beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of pres­sure-sen­si­tive brushes. And un­matched Apple Pencil pre­ci­sion — com­bined with fea­tures like hover,9 squeeze,10 and dou­ble-tap11 — gives cre­ators the abil­ity to craft pixel-per­fect de­signs.

Additionally, 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.

For more than 20 years, Apple’s vi­sual pro­duc­tiv­ity apps have em­pow­ered users to ex­press them­selves with beau­ti­ful pre­sen­ta­tions, doc­u­ments, and spread­sheets us­ing Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. And Freeform has brought end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for cre­ative brain­storm­ing and vi­sual col­lab­o­ra­tion.

With Apple Creator Studio, pro­duc­tiv­ity gets su­per­charged with all-new fea­tures that bring more in­tel­li­gence and pre­mium con­tent to cre­ators’ fin­ger­tips so they can take their pro­jects to the next level. 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.

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.12 On-device AI mod­els en­able Super Resolution to up­scale im­ages while keep­ing them sharp and de­tailed, and Auto Crop pro­vides in­tel­li­gent crop sug­ges­tions, help­ing users find eye-catch­ing com­po­si­tions for pho­tos.

To help users pre­pare pre­sen­ta­tions even more quickly in Keynote, 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.

Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform will re­main free for all users to cre­ate, edit, and col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, in­clud­ing Apple Creator Studio sub­scribers. These apps will con­tinue re­ceiv­ing up­dates, with the lat­est ver­sions adopt­ing the beau­ti­ful new vi­sual de­sign lan­guage with Liquid Glass on all plat­forms, and sup­port­ing the new win­dow­ing and menu bar im­prove­ments in iPa­dOS 26.

Apple Creator Studio will be avail­able be­gin­ning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 (U.S.) per month or $129 (U.S.) per year. 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,13 cus­tomers can re­ceive three months of Apple Creator Studio for free.14

Education sav­ings are avail­able for col­lege stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors15 for $2.99 (U.S.) per month or $29.99 (U.S.) per year.

Apple Creator Studio is avail­able to down­load on the App Store as a uni­ver­sal pur­chase.

Up to six fam­ily mem­bers can share all of the apps and con­tent in­cluded in Apple Creator Studio with Family Sharing.

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.

Free ver­sions of Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform con­tinue to be avail­able and are in­cluded with every new iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

About Apple

Apple rev­o­lu­tion­ized per­sonal tech­nol­ogy with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in in­no­va­tion with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six soft­ware plat­forms — iOS, iPa­dOS, ma­cOS, watchOS, vi­sionOS, and tvOS — pro­vide seam­less ex­pe­ri­ences across all Apple de­vices and em­power peo­ple with break­through ser­vices in­clud­ing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV. Apple’s more than 150,000 em­ploy­ees are ded­i­cated to mak­ing the best prod­ucts on earth and to leav­ing the world bet­ter than we found it.

The Apple Creator Studio ver­sion of Final Cut Pro for Mac will be com­pat­i­ble with Mac mod­els with Intel or Apple sil­i­con chips run­ning ma­cOS 15.6 or later. Some fea­tures re­quire Apple sil­i­con. Final Cut Pro for iPad will be com­pat­i­ble with iPad mod­els with the A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later run­ning iPa­dOS 18.6 or later.

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 Apple Creator Studio ver­sion of Logic Pro for Mac re­quires ma­cOS 15.6 or later and a Mac with Apple sil­i­con. Logic Pro for iPad re­quires iPa­dOS 26 or later and an iPad with the Apple A12 Bionic chip or later. Some fea­tures re­quire the Apple A17 Pro chip or later.

Apple Creator Studio ver­sions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers will re­quire iOS 18.0 or later, iPa­dOS 18.0 or later, or ma­cOS Sequoia 15.6 or later. Some in­tel­li­gent fea­tures in­clud­ing im­age gen­er­a­tion will re­quire iOS 26, iPa­dOS 26, or ma­cOS Tahoe. Premium con­tent and fea­tures in Freeform are not cur­rently avail­able and are ex­pected to be in­cluded in the Apple Creator Studio sub­scrip­tion later this year.

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.

Transcript Search in Final Cut Pro re­quires a Mac with Apple sil­i­con and ma­cOS 15.6 or later, or an iPad with the Apple M1 chip or later, iPad (A16), or iPad mini (A17 Pro) and iPa­dOS 26 or later. Available only in U.S. English.

Visual Search re­quires a Mac with Apple sil­i­con and ma­cOS 15.6 or later, or an iPad with the Apple M1 chip or later, iPad (A16), or iPad mini (A17 Pro) and iPa­dOS 26 or later. Available only in U.S. English.

Session Players re­quire iPad with the Apple M1 chip or later or Mac with Apple sil­i­con is rec­om­mended.

Apple Pencil squeeze is only avail­able when us­ing Apple Pencil Pro with iPad Pro 13- and 11-inch (M4 and M5), iPad Air 13- and 11-inch (M2 and M3), and iPad mini (A17 Pro).

Apple Pencil dou­ble-tap works with Apple Pencil (2nd gen­er­a­tion) with iPad mini (6th gen­er­a­tion), iPad Air (4th and 5th gen­er­a­tions), iPad Pro 11-inch (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen­er­a­tions), and iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th gen­er­a­tions); and with Apple Pencil Pro with iPad mini (A17 Pro), iPad Air 11-inch and 13-inch (M2 and M3), and iPad Pro 11-inch and 13-inch (M4 and M5).

Some fea­tures of Apple Creator Studio re­quire an Apple Intelligence-capable de­vice. For a list of Apple Intelligence avail­abil­ity and tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​121115. Some ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence fea­tures of Apple Creator Studio uti­lize third-party mod­els and may have us­age lim­its and re­stric­tions.

A new Mac or iPad pur­chased from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller. iPad must have at least 6 GB mem­ory and an A16, A17 Pro, or M-series chip or later.

New and qual­i­fied re­turn­ing sub­scribers only. Plan re­news at $12.99 per month or $129 per year based on plan se­lected. Only one of­fer per Apple Account and only one of­fer per fam­ily if they’re part of a Family Sharing group, re­gard­less of the num­ber of de­vices that they or their fam­ily pur­chase. This of­fer is not avail­able if the ac­count holder or their Family have pre­vi­ously ac­cepted an Apple Creator Studio sub­scrip­tion three months free of­fer. Offer good for the lat­ter of (i) three months af­ter el­i­gi­ble de­vice ac­ti­va­tion or (ii) three months af­ter first avail­abil­ity for sub­scrip­tion to Apple Creator Studio. Plan au­to­mat­i­cally re­news un­til can­celled. Restrictions and other terms ap­ply.

New sub­scribers only. Education Savings Plan au­to­mat­i­cally re­news at $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year based on plan se­lected un­til can­celled. Offer good for col­lege stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors only and does not ex­tend to a Family Sharing group. Verification re­quired. Terms ap­ply. Limited-time of­fer; of­fer may end at any time.

Copy text

* Apple Creator Studio will be avail­able be­gin­ning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 (U.S.) per month or $129 (U.S.) per year. 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,13 cus­tomers can re­ceive three months of Apple Creator Studio for free.14

* Education sav­ings are avail­able for col­lege stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors15 for $2.99 (U.S.) per month or $29.99 (U.S.) per year.

* Apple Creator Studio is avail­able to down­load on the App Store as a uni­ver­sal pur­chase.

* Up to six fam­ily mem­bers can share all of the apps and con­tent in­cluded in Apple Creator Studio with Family Sharing.

* 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.

* Free ver­sions of Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform con­tinue to be avail­able and are in­cluded with every new iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

* The Apple Creator Studio ver­sion of Final Cut Pro for Mac will be com­pat­i­ble with Mac mod­els with Intel or Apple sil­i­con chips run­ning ma­cOS 15.6 or later. Some fea­tures re­quire Apple sil­i­con. Final Cut Pro for iPad will be com­pat­i­ble with iPad mod­els with the A16, A17 Pro, or M1 chip or later run­ning iPa­dOS 18.6 or later.

...

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3 417 shares, 40 trendiness

'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams dies at 68 after prostate cancer battle

Scott Adams, the au­thor and car­toon­ist whose Dilbert” comic strip sat­i­rized cor­po­rate life to wide ac­claim be­fore racist com­ments he made side­lined him, has died fol­low­ing a bat­tle with can­cer. He was 68.

Adams’ ex-wife, Shelly Miles, con­firmed Adams’ death dur­ing a livestream on the Real Coffee with Scott Adams” show on Tuesday, Jan. 13.

Hi, every­one. Unfortunately, this is­n’t good news,” Miles said. Of course, he waited til just be­fore the show started, but he’s not with us any­more.”

Adams shared in May that he was di­ag­nosed with prostate can­cer that had spread to his bones. During a New Year’s Day broad­cast of Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” Adams re­vealed that his health out­look had wors­ened, telling fans that his chances of re­cov­ery were essentially zero.”

USA TODAY has reached out to rep­re­sen­ta­tives for Adams for com­ment.

Following the an­nounce­ment of Adams’ death, Miles read a final mes­sage” from the car­toon­ist, which he wrote on New Year’s Day.

If you are read­ing this, things did not go well for me,” Adams wrote. I have a few things to say be­fore I go. My body failed be­fore my brain. … If you won­der about any of my choices for my es­tate or any­thing else, please know I’m free of any crazen or any in­ap­pro­pri­ate in­flu­ence of any sort, I promise.”

Adams also re­vealed in the open let­ter that he was ded­i­cat­ing his life to Jesus Christ at the per­sua­sion of his Christian friends (Adams de­scribed him­self as not a be­liever”).

I ac­cept Jesus Christ as my lord and sav­ior and look for­ward to spend­ing an eter­nity with him,” Adams wrote. The part about me not be­ing a be­liever should be quickly re­solved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more con­vinc­ing than that. I hope I’m still qual­i­fied for en­try.”

Miles said that Adams predicted” his death dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on Monday, ex­plain­ing, He knew it was a dif­fer­ent feel­ing than how he had been feel­ing be­fore.”

Adams’ for­mer spouse added that the car­toon­ist’s death was peaceful” and that he was sur­rounded by loved ones.

Adams’ comic strip Dilbert,” which cen­tered on an en­gi­neer named Dilbert and his white-col­lar of­fice, was first pub­lished in 1989. The strip’s cor­po­rate cul­ture back­drop was in­spired by Adams’ real-life ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing at the Pacific Bell Telephone Company (aka AT&T).

Over the next decade, the ob­ser­va­tional com­edy car­toon would earn Adams ac­claim, with the il­lus­tra­tor re­ceiv­ing the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award in 1997.

By 2013, the se­ries was re­port­edly fea­tured in 2,000 news­pa­pers in 65 coun­tries and trans­lated into 25 lan­guages.

However, the pop cul­tural legacy of Dilbert” screeched to a halt in 2023 af­ter nu­mer­ous news­pa­pers, in­clud­ing the USA TODAY Network, announced they would stop run­ning the strip be­cause of racist com­ments made by Adams, who said that white peo­ple should get the hell away from Black peo­ple.” Adams said at the time that his com­ments were meant to be hy­per­bolic.

The comic strip was later re­launched as a we­b­comic on Locals un­der the name Daily Dilbert Reborn.”

In ad­di­tion to Dilbert,” Adams pub­lished sev­eral books, in­clud­ing God’s Debris” (2001), The Religion War” (2004), How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” (2013), Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America” (2019) and Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success” (2023).

I had an amaz­ing life,” Adams wrote in his New Year’s Day let­ter. I gave it every­thing I had. If I got any ben­e­fits from my work, I’m ask­ing that you pay it for­ward as best as you can. That’s the legacy I want: be use­ful. And please know, I loved you all to the very end.”

...

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5 359 shares, 29 trendiness

OPINION: Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to Home

Democracy rarely col­lapses in a sin­gle dra­matic mo­ment. Lately, how­ever, it can feel as though those type of mo­ments are ar­riv­ing faster and more fre­quently, pil­ing up in ways that leave peo­ple dis­ori­ented and un­sure where to look. What of­ten gets lost in that rush is not con­cern, but ori­en­ta­tion — a shared sense of where we are, what mat­ters, and how any of it con­nects.

Long be­fore laws are tested or elec­tions con­tested, some­thing more ba­sic starts to fray: the every­day un­der­stand­ing of how our com­mu­ni­ties work and who is ac­count­able to whom.

I’ve found my­self ask­ing a sim­ple ques­tion more of­ten lately: Where do peo­ple ac­tu­ally see them­selves in­side pub­lic life any­more?

That ques­tion keeps lead­ing me back to lo­cal jour­nal­ism and to why its de­cline should con­cern any­one who cares about democ­racy.

Democracy does­n’t live only in Washington or Harrisburg. It lives in school board meet­ings, zon­ing de­ci­sions, mu­nic­i­pal bud­gets, lo­cal courts, and elec­tions that rarely make na­tional head­lines. It lives where pol­icy meets daily life. Local jour­nal­ism is how those places stay vis­i­ble.

The @buckscountybeacon.com Looks Back at 2025 | Editor @cmychalejko.bsky.social re­views 10 sto­ries that he re­ally ap­pre­ci­ated from this past year. What story or sto­ries did you ap­pre­ci­ate this year? And what would you like us to re­port more on in 2026? Please leave a com­ment.

— Bucks County Beacon (@buckscountybeacon.com) 2025-12-30T12:38:18.282Z

When lo­cal re­porters at­tend meet­ings most of us can’t, sift through pub­lic records, and fol­low is­sues over time, they make pub­lic life leg­i­ble. They help cit­i­zens see not just what hap­pened, but why it mat­ters, who made the de­ci­sion, and what the con­se­quences may be. Without that work, power does­n’t dis­ap­pear — it sim­ply op­er­ates out of view.

National me­dia plays an im­por­tant role, but it works at a dis­tance.  Democracy, how­ever, is prac­ticed close to home. I’ve no­ticed that when lo­cal re­port­ing weak­ens, peo­ple don’t just lose in­for­ma­tion — they lose ori­en­ta­tion.  It be­comes harder to tell where in­flu­ence ac­tu­ally lives, or how in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion con­nects to out­comes.

What of­ten gets la­beled as ap­a­thy looks dif­fer­ent up close. Many peo­ple I speak with aren’t in­dif­fer­ent; they’re re­signed. They’ve ab­sorbed the sense that noth­ing they do mat­ters, or that no one is re­ally lis­ten­ing. When that hap­pens, pub­lic life shrinks.  Engagement gives way to spec­ta­tor­ship, and frus­tra­tion seeks ex­pres­sion through out­rage or griev­ance rather than re­spon­si­bil­ity.

Local jour­nal­ism qui­etly coun­ters that drift by do­ing some­thing de­cep­tively sim­ple: it keeps the pub­lic in the room.

INTERVIEW: Solidarity Journalism Can Help the Mainstream Media Restore Public Trust and Strengthen Democracy, with Dr. Anita Varma

It con­nects de­ci­sions to real peo­ple. It shows pat­terns rather than iso­lated mo­ments. It re­minds us that our com­mu­ni­ties are not ab­stract — that they are shaped by named in­di­vid­u­als, con­crete choices, and shared con­se­quences. In that way, lo­cal jour­nal­ism does­n’t just re­port on democ­racy; it helps sus­tain it.

This is also why at­tacks on jour­nal­ism, es­pe­cially lo­cal jour­nal­ism,  feel so con­se­quen­tial. Undermining trust in re­porters, starv­ing news­rooms of re­sources, or dis­miss­ing lo­cal cov­er­age as ir­rel­e­vant all serve the same end: weak­en­ing the con­nec­tive tis­sue that al­lows a com­mu­nity to hold it­self ac­count­able.

At the same time, I don’t think the re­spon­si­bil­ity for pre­serv­ing lo­cal jour­nal­ism rests with jour­nal­ists alone.

Supporting lo­cal jour­nal­ism is­n’t char­ity. It’s civic par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Did a quick Q&A about the im­mi­nent clo­sure of my home­town news­pa­per for the @us.theconversation.com

— Victor Pickard (@victorpickard.bsky.social) 2026-01-09T14:00:31.573Z

I’ve come to see lo­cal news out­lets less as con­tent providers and more as pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture — as es­sen­tial to de­mo­c­ra­tic func­tion­ing as schools, courts, or roads. Subscribing, do­nat­ing, and shar­ing cred­i­ble re­port­ing are prac­ti­cal ways cit­i­zens in­vest in the health of their com­mu­ni­ties.

Engagement mat­ters, too. Read­ing be­yond head­lines. Re­spond­ing thought­fully rather than re­ac­tively.  Of­fer­ing tips, con­text, and lived ex­pe­ri­ence that strengthen re­port­ing rather than dis­tort it.

These are small acts, but they shape the qual­ity of the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion we’re all part of.

Publications like Bucks County Beacon model what this can look like: care­ful re­port­ing, trans­parency about sources, and a com­mit­ment to clar­ity over sen­sa­tion­al­ism. In a me­dia en­vi­ron­ment dri­ven by speed and out­rage, that kind of work feels both grounded and rare.

I don’t see democ­racy as some­thing we in­herit once and for all. I see it as some­thing we prac­tice — in how we speak, what we sup­port, and whether we stay en­gaged when the work feels slow or im­per­fect.

At a mo­ment when de­mo­c­ra­tic norms feel in­creas­ingly frag­ile, lo­cal jour­nal­ism of­fers some­thing qui­etly pow­er­ful: a shared, grounded un­der­stand­ing of our com­mon life. Defending it may be one of the most prac­ti­cal and hope­ful choices cit­i­zens can make.

...

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6 355 shares, 33 trendiness

Anthropic has made a large contribution to the Python Software Foundation and open source security

Hi all - I wanted to share here some ex­cit­ing news we shared on our blog this morn­ing: Anthropic has do­nated $1.5 mil­lion over two years to the PSF! Their land­mark gift is fo­cused on sup­port­ing our se­cu­rity work.

Here’s what we shared on so­cial me­dia:

Big news: Anthropic is in­vest­ing $1.5 mil­lion in the Python Software Foundation, fo­cused on Python ecosys­tem se­cu­rity. This gift will make an enor­mous im­pact on the PSF and the safety and se­cu­rity of mil­lions of Python and PyPI users.

Anthropic’s funds will en­able the PSF to make progress on our se­cu­rity roadmap, in­clud­ing work de­signed to pro­tect mil­lions of PyPI users from at­tempted sup­ply-chain at­tacks. Anthropic’s sup­port will also go to­wards the PSFs core work, in­clud­ing the Developer in Residence pro­gram dri­ving con­tri­bu­tions to CPython, com­mu­nity sup­port through grants and other pro­grams, run­ning core in­fra­struc­ture such as PyPI, and more.

We could­n’t be more grate­ful for Anthropic’s re­mark­able sup­port, and we hope you will join us in thank­ing them for their land­mark in­vest­ment in the PSF and the Python com­mu­nity.

...

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7 326 shares, 39 trendiness

Influencers and OnlyFans models are increasingly requesting O-1 visas

Content cre­ators and in­flu­encers in the US are now in­creas­ingly ap­ply­ing for O-1 work visas. Astoundingly, the num­ber of O-1 visas granted each year in­creased by 50% be­tween 2014 and 2024, as noted by re­cent re­port­ing in the Financial Times.

These visas al­low non-im­mi­grants to work tem­porar­ily in the US. The O-1 cat­e­gory in­cludes the O-1A, which is des­ig­nated for in­di­vid­u­als with ex­tra­or­di­nary abil­ity in the sci­ences, ed­u­ca­tion, busi­ness or ath­let­ics and the O-1B, re­served for those with extraordinary abil­ity or achieve­ment”.

The Guardian spoke with some in­flu­encers who have had suc­cess in ob­tain­ing or are still try­ing to ob­tain the cov­eted O-1 visa and talked about what was in­volved in their process.

Julia Ain de­cided to post some videos of her­self on so­cial me­dia at the height of the Covid-19 lock­down, when she was a stu­dent at McGill University.

I was bored dur­ing the pan­demic — like every­one else — and started post­ing on TikTok,” she told the Guardian. I started livestream­ing, and I grew a fan­base kind of quickly.”

Five years later, the 25-year-old Canadian con­tent cre­ator now has 1.3 mil­lion fol­low­ers com­bined across var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms. Her in­flu­encer suc­cess led her to an O-1 visa.

It be­came re­ally ob­vi­ous that you could make a lot of money do­ing this in a short pe­riod of time,” she said. It felt like a very time-sen­si­tive thing. Nobody knows how long this is go­ing to last for.”

Ain posts pho­tos and videos across Instagram, TikTok, X and Snapchat, some­times in col­lab­o­ra­tion with other cre­ators. Of her brand, she says: My whole thing is be­ing the funny Jewish girl with big boobs.” The ma­jor­ity of Ain’s in­come is from Fanfix, a safe-for-work sub­scrip­tion based plat­form for in­flu­encers to mon­e­tize their con­tent. She first ap­plied for the O-1B Visa af­ter launch­ing on the plat­form in August 2023, and the com­pany ended up spon­sor­ing her ap­pli­ca­tion. She now says she makes five fig­ures per month on the plat­form.

Luca Mornet also be­gan mak­ing con­tent dur­ing the pan­demic while he was a stu­dent at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Mornet, who is from France, re­al­ized soon that his F-1 stu­dent visa was hold­ing him back from mak­ing money as an in­flu­encer.

I be­came friends with so many [other in­flu­encers], and I would al­ways see them work with so many peo­ple and brands and agen­cies. And I al­ways was so an­noyed that I could­n’t be­cause I was a stu­dent,” he said.

He ap­plied for the O-1B Visa shortly af­ter grad­u­at­ing, dur­ing which he could fi­nally make money from in­flu­enc­ing while on his OPT, a 12-month work au­tho­riza­tion for in­ter­na­tional stu­dents post-grad­u­a­tion.

The O-1B visa, once re­served for Hollywood ti­tans and su­per­star mu­si­cians, has evolved over the years.

We started do­ing [O-1 visa ap­pli­ca­tions] for kids who are e-sport play­ers and in­flu­encers and the OnlyFans crew,” said Michael Wildes, an im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney and man­ag­ing part­ner of Wildes & Weinberg. It’s the new, sexy medium for peo­ple to be a part of.”

Wildes has worked with the likes of mu­si­cian Sinéad O’Connor, soc­cer star Pelé, and restau­ra­teur Jean-Georges Vongerichten. His fa­ther, Leon Wildes, who started the firm in 1960, de­fended John Lennon and Yoko Ono against de­por­ta­tion dur­ing the Nixon ad­min­is­tra­tion, and helped fa­cil­i­tate the cre­ation of the O-1B visa, which was es­tab­lished by the Immigration Act of 1990. Wildes’s client ros­ter now in­cludes so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers and Twitch stream­ers.

To qual­ify for an O-1B visa, ap­pli­cants must sub­mit ev­i­dence of at least three of the six reg­u­la­tory cri­te­ria, which in­clude per­form­ing in a dis­tin­guished pro­duc­tion or event, na­tional or in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion for achieve­ments, and a record of com­mer­cial or crit­i­cally ac­claimed suc­cesses. In 2026, though, these cri­te­ria are be­ing stretched to en­com­pass the ac­co­lades of an in­flu­encer.

In Ain’s ap­pli­ca­tion, she high­lighted her siz­able in­come and so­cial me­dia met­rics.

Part of my ap­pli­ca­tion was: I have 200,000 fol­low­ers on this app, 300,000 fol­low­ers on this app, 10 mil­lion peo­ple watch me here every month,’” she said. This is­n’t just, Oh, you had one vi­ral video and peo­ple watched that.’ No, you’ve got a fol­low­ing now that are not only watch­ing you, but also pay­ing for your con­tent ac­tively month af­ter month.”

Social me­dia was an in­te­gral part of the O-1B visa ap­pli­ca­tion of Dina Belenkaya, a Russian Israeli chess player and con­tent cre­ator — which was ap­proved in December 2023.

My fol­low­ings on Instagram (1.2 mil­lion), Twitch (108,000) and YouTube (799,000) were in­cluded as part of my pro­file, and I listed my fol­lower counts on each plat­form,” she said. After her visa ap­proval, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina — widely con­sid­ered the chess cap­i­tal of the United States.

While a cer­tain num­ber of fol­low­ers may not be an au­to­matic ticket to the US, one vi­ral mu­sic group has been try­ing their luck. Boy Throb, com­pris­ing Anthony Key, Evan Papier, Zachary Sobania and Darshan Magdum, spent the past few months cam­paign­ing to reach 1 mil­lion fol­low­ers on TikTok so that Magdum could use the stat on his O-1 visa ap­pli­ca­tion. Clad in match­ing pink jump­suits, the three US-based band­mates danced to­gether on screen to par­ody lyrics of hit songs, while Magdum was edited in from India.

Within a month of their first post, Boy Throb reached their goal of 1 mil­lion fol­low­ers. Whether it will help Magdum get a visa re­mains un­clear.

Honestly, the en­tire im­mi­gra­tion process has been so com­pli­cated and there have been so many peo­ple who don’t be­lieve us when we say we’re do­ing every­thing in our power to get Darshan here,” the group said.

We’re not sure how much longer we want to keep go­ing with­out Darshan here and the process has been re­ally ex­pen­sive,” they added. In to­tal, the band has spent more than $10,000 in le­gal and pro­cess­ing fees.

The rise in con­tent cre­ators ap­ply­ing for visas given out on the ba­sis of extraordinary abil­ity” has gar­nered a va­ri­ety of re­ac­tions. Dominic Michael Tripi, a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and writer, posted on X that the trend was in­dica­tive of end-stage em­pire con­di­tions. It’s sad.” Legal pro­fes­sion­als like Wildes, how­ever, ar­gue that the cre­ator econ­omy is the next fron­tier of American ex­cep­tion­al­ism.

Influencers are fill­ing a large gap in the re­tail and com­mer­cial in­ter­ests of the world,” he said. They’re mov­ing con­tent and pur­chases like no other. Immigration has to keep up with this.”

Ain also takes is­sue with the crit­i­cism of in­flu­encers ap­ply­ing for O-1 visas, as well as the no­tion that in­flu­enc­ing is not a le­git­i­mate pro­fes­sion.

I don’t think [people] re­al­ize how much work ac­tu­ally goes into it,” she said. You might not agree with the way the money is be­ing made, or what peo­ple are watch­ing, but peo­ple are still watch­ing and pay­ing for it.”

She con­tin­ued: Maybe 50 years ago, this is­n’t what peo­ple imag­ined the American dream would look like. But this is what the American dream is now.”

...

Read the original on www.theguardian.com »

8 315 shares, 25 trendiness

'Signal' President and VP warn agentic AI is insecure, unreliable, and a surveillance nightmare

With agen­tic AI em­bed­ded at the OS level, data­bases stor­ing en­tire dig­i­tal lives ac­ces­si­ble to mal­ware, tasks whose re­li­a­bil­ity quickly breaks down at each step, and be­ing opted-in with­out con­sent, Signal lead­er­ship is sound­ing the alarm for the in­dus­try to pull back un­til threats can be mit­i­gated.

At the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) in Hamburg, Germany, Signal President Meredith Whittaker and VP of Strategy and Global Affairs Udbhav Tiwari gave a pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled AI Agent, AI Spy. In it, they shared the many vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and con­cerns they have about how agen­tic AI is be­ing im­ple­mented, the very real threat it’s bring­ing to en­ter­prise com­pa­nies, and how they rec­om­mend the in­dus­try change to mit­i­gate a dis­as­ter in the mak­ing.

A key com­po­nent of AI agents is that they must know enough about you and have ac­cess to sen­si­tive data so that they can au­tonomously take ac­tions on your be­half, such as mak­ing pur­chases, sched­ul­ing events, and re­spond­ing to mes­sages. However, the way AI agents are be­ing im­ple­mented is mak­ing them in­se­cure, un­re­li­able, and open to sur­veil­lance.

Microsoft is try­ing to bring agen­tic AI to its Windows 11 users via Recall. Recall takes a screen­shot of your screen every few sec­onds, OCRs the text, and does se­man­tic analy­sis of the con­text and ac­tions. It then cre­ates a foren­sic dossier of every­thing you do into a sin­gle data­base on your com­puter. The data­base in­cludes a pre­cise time­line of ac­tions, full raw text (via OCR), dwell time, and fo­cus on spe­cific apps and ac­tions. Additionally, it as­signs top­ics to spe­cific ac­tiv­i­ties.

Tiwari says the prob­lem with this ap­proach is that it does­n’t mit­i­gate the threat of mal­ware (via on­line at­tacks) and in­di­rect (hidden) prompt in­jec­tion at­tacks, which can all gain ac­cess to the data­base. These vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties sub­se­quently cir­cum­vent end-to-end en­cryp­tion (E2EE), prompt­ing Signal to add a flag in its app to pre­vent its screen from be­ing recorded, but Tiwari says that’s not a re­li­able or long-term so­lu­tion.

Whittaker em­pha­sized that agen­tic AI is­n’t just in­tru­sive and vul­ner­a­ble to threats; it’s also un­re­li­able. She said AI agents are prob­a­bilis­tic, not de­ter­min­is­tic, and that each step they take in a task de­grades their ac­cu­racy and the fi­nal ac­tion.

She said if an AI agent could per­form each step with 95% ac­cu­racy–which cur­rently is­n’t pos­si­ble–a 10-step task would yield an ac­tion with a ~59.9% suc­cess rate. And if you had a 30-step task, the suc­cess rate would be ~21.4%. Furthermore, if we used a more re­al­is­tic ac­cu­racy rate of 90%, then a 30-step task would drop down to a suc­cess rate of 4.2%. She added that the best agent mod­els failed 70% of the time.

Whittaker said there cur­rently is­n’t a so­lu­tion for mak­ing AI agents pre­serve pri­vacy, se­cu­rity, and con­trol; there’s only triage, but com­pa­nies can take steps now to mit­i­gate it.

Stop the reck­less de­ploy­ment of AI agents to avoid plain-text data­base ac­cess to mal­ware.

Make opt­ing out the de­fault, with manda­tory de­vel­oper opt-ins.

AI com­pa­nies must pro­vide rad­i­cal (or any) trans­parency about how every­thing works and make it au­ditable at the gran­u­lar level.

If the in­dus­try does­n’t heed Whittaker’s and Tiwari’s warn­ings, the age of agen­tic AI could be in jeop­ardy, pri­mar­ily be­cause con­sumers could quickly lose their trust in a tech­nol­ogy that is al­ready over­hyped and over-in­vested in.

Jon Henshaw is the founder of Coywolf and an in­dus­try vet­eran with al­most three decades of , dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, and web tech­nolo­gies ex­pe­ri­ence. Follow @jon@hen­shaw.so­cial

...

Read the original on coywolf.com »

9 299 shares, 13 trendiness

Network of Scottish X accounts go dark amid Iran blackout

Industry pub­li­ca­tion UK Defence Journal, which has tracked the ac­counts for months, said that mul­ti­ple X ac­counts claim­ing to be sup­port­ers of Scottish in­de­pen­dence have ceased ac­tiv­ity.

One such ac­count, known as Fiona’, has not posted since Thursday.

The ac­counts went silent af­ter the in­ter­net was cut amid protests in Iran. (Image: PA)

The ac­count, which de­scribes it­self as a proud Scottish lass” and passionate about Scotland’s in­de­pen­dence & our right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion”, is based in Europe (according to X’s lo­ca­tion data).

However, this is likely due to the use of a VPN which ob­scures the coun­try or re­gion the ac­count is lo­cated in.

Other ac­counts, known as Jake’ and Lucy’, have also been quiet since the black­out be­gan.

The ac­counts, which have thou­sands of fol­low­ers, in­creas­ingly shared ex­treme con­tent in the days prior to go­ing dark.

Jake’ claimed that a top BBC an­chor re­signed on air and was im­me­di­ately de­tained by se­cu­rity ser­vices” and that crowds have sur­rounded the res­i­dence of the newly ap­pointed Governor General’ im­posed by London”.

Meanwhile, Fiona’ said that protesters have seized Balmoral Estate” and International mar­kets are dump­ing UK as­sets as im­ages of tanks in Edinburgh go vi­ral”.

Lucy’ claimed that farmers have used trac­tors to block the A1 at the English bor­der”, while an­other ac­count called Kelly’ said that army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile. Soldiers in fa­tigues are guard­ing the Scottish Parliament”.

Previously, a group of pseu­do­ny­mous ac­counts ex­press­ing sup­port for Scottish in­de­pen­dence went dark im­me­di­ately af­ter the in­ter­net in Iran col­lapsed amid Israeli and US strikes in June 2025.

At the time, dis­in­for­ma­tion analy­sis firm Cyabra claimed that as much as 26% of pro­files dis­cussing Scottish in­de­pen­dence were fake”.

Similarly, a 2024 study by re­searchers at Clemson University has es­ti­mated that 4% of con­tent re­lat­ing to in­de­pen­dence were linked to one Iranian-backed bot net­work of around 80 ac­counts.

According to the study, the ac­counts in this net­work all have false per­sona which pur­port to be cit­i­zens of the United Kingdom.

They post mes­sages which sup­port left lean­ing po­lit­i­cal views and at­tack con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians, cham­pion Scottish in­de­pen­dence and back the Scottish National Party (SNP) and de­nounce Israel and its be­hav­ior in the on­go­ing war in Gaza.”

...

Read the original on www.heraldscotland.com »

10 275 shares, 15 trendiness

Text-based web browsers

Before I start, let me get two things out of the way:

In this ar­ti­cle I’m not go­ing to in­clude the ad­mit­tedly cool browsh, be­cause it only works by uti­liz­ing Firefox un­der the hood. When I say text-based, I’m talk­ing about old-school browsers like ELinks, Lynx or w3m. These are also the three browsers I’ve used to test every­thing de­scribed be­low.

The whole ar­ti­cle ended up be­ing a rant about how text-based browsers deal with fea­tures that got added to HTML. Or more like, how they ne­glect deal­ing with said fea­tures.

Well, I won’t be the judge of that. I like them, I have them in­stalled, and I test every pro­ject I cre­ate in them. But they are not what I use to surf the web.

Speaking of test­ing your cre­ations, here’s the good news: If your pro­ject has a solid HTML foun­da­tion that you then pro­gres­sively en­hance with CSS and JS, you are off to a great start.

How did HTML evolve in re­cent years?

While CSS is the star of the show when it comes to new fea­tures, HTML ain’t stale ei­ther. If we put the long-awaited styleable se­lects and Apple’s take on tog­gle switches aside, there’s a lot read­ily avail­able cross-browser.

But here’s the thing: Whenever we say cross-browser, we usu­ally look at the big ones, never at text-based browsers. So in this ar­ti­cle I wanna shed some light on how they han­dle the fol­low­ing re­cent ad­di­tions.

When view­ing a web page in a text-based browser, you es­sen­tially get plain HTML, no CSS, no JS. There is some styling”, a re­sult of the el­e­ments’ se­man­tics, but don’t ex­pect any­thing fancy, we are down to col­ors, in­den­ta­tion, and cen­tered text.

It re­minds me of what the browsers we are used to give us when they show un­styled HTML—well, HTML with the browser de­fault styles, to be ex­act. That in turn re­minds me of CSS Naked Day.

Text-based browsers work well with good old HTML. Said re­cent ad­di­tions how­ever are a bit more nu­anced (e.g. in­ter­ac­tive), so let’s talk about them in­di­vid­u­ally.

Disclosure wid­gets are sim­ple in­ter­ac­tive el­e­ments we no longer need JS for. When are closed, only their is shown.

Text-based browsers have no clue what dis­clo­sure wid­gets are, so they al­ways show the whole con­tent, mean­ing you al­ways get the open state. This way things can get ver­bose, but in essence it’s okay.

Data lists can be used to add sug­gested val­ues to an in­put field. In my tests they have been ig­nored en­tirely, Lynx even men­tions that it en­coun­tered bad HTML, prob­a­bly be­cause it ex­pects only in a par­ent. At least no browser ren­dered the op­tions on the screen, they sim­ply fall back to a plain field, which is bet­ter than noth­ing. Side note: I’ve been told data lists have ac­ces­si­bil­ity is­sues, so …

Yes, HTML can do modal and non-modal di­alogs, and even alert di­alogs, all thanks to the el­e­ment. Initially we needed JS to tog­gle their vis­i­bil­ity, but with the help of the Popover API (see next chap­ter) we can now even get most of it done in plain HTML.

Alas, once again there is no sup­port in text-based browsers, so you’ll end up see­ing all di­a­log con­tent, as if they had their open at­tribute set. Consequently, there’s no aware­ness of a for­m’s method=“di­a­log” nor a sub­mit but­ton’s for­m­method=“di­a­log”, so in both cases the form ac­tion is trig­gered.

The Popover API is prob­a­bly my fa­vorite new fea­ture, but only if you stick to reg­u­lar web browsers.

Given that di­alogs are a type of popover, it’s no sur­prise that noth­ing works, and once again all popover con­tent gets dumped onto the screen.

By now I think you get the idea, so I won’t even talk about the Invoker Commands API at this point.

A modal di­a­log makes the rest of the page in­ert, so we don’t have to do it. But with the global in­ert at­tribute we can do this man­u­ally too, if we need to make cer­tain parts of the DOM un­reach­able.

Sure enough, text-based browsers will hap­pily let you ac­cess in­ter­ac­tive el­e­ments in­side an in­ert con­tent area.

We’re now ap­proach­ing some­thing that is not new at all, the global hid­den at­tribute has been sup­ported for over a decade. It al­lows us to hide con­tent in the same way as dis­play: none, but di­rectly in HTML.

Adding sup­port in text-based browsers has been dis­cussed back in the day, but got re­jected, hence it was never im­ple­mented. You’ll end up see­ing all con­tent marked as hid­den. This is the pri­mary rea­son why I started writ­ing this ar­ti­cle, and what en­rages me the most. If I de­cide to hide con­tent in HTML in­stead of CSS, I must have a very good rea­son, thus hid­den con­tent should not be vis­i­ble in any browser! Certain pro­gres­sive en­hance­ment tech­niques work by hid­ing con­tent in HTML and then mak­ing it vis­i­ble via CSS or JS. That pos­si­bil­ity goes out the win­dow in text-based browsers.

Just kid­ding, there’s still no na­tive way in HTML to hide con­tent vi­su­ally, so we con­tinue to rely on class names like .visually-hidden or .sr-only. No mat­ter how they are named, they need to sum­mon quite a few of lines of CSS to get things done. Whether there should be a na­tive way is up for de­bate. Personally I would wel­come a one-liner to achieve this, but it should re­main in the do­main of CSS.

However, if we had a way in HTML, text-based browsers would dis­play such vi­su­ally hid­den con­tent any­way, that is cer­tain.

Now what? What now?

Text-based browsers and mod­ern HTML, no suc­cess story in sight. Given the progress we see in web tech­nolo­gies, the gap will only widen, so much so that w3m and its friends might fall into obliv­ion.

...

Read the original on cssence.com »

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