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Apple Creator Studio to Add MotionVFX, AI Assistants, and MCP Support in November

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

In November, Apple Creator Studio will get its biggest update since its release in January. There’s a lot here, so let’s break it down by app.

Final Cut Pro and Motion

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Back in March, Apple acquired MotionVFX, a highly regarded plug-in maker for Final Cut Pro. The upcoming update to Final Cut Pro will bring MotionVFX’s tools directly into the app for the first time. According to Apple’s press release, the update adds thousands of new elements to Final Cut Pro “including templates with unique themes, stylish graphics, titles, and transitions, as well as tools for rotoscoping, tracking, and color grading.” That will add a lot of value to Final Cut Pro that creators historically paid for separately. The update also adds new content to the suite’s Content Hub like stock videos, images, and backgrounds.

Final Cut Pro will also be integrated more tightly with Pixelmator Pro, allowing images in a video timeline to be edited in Pixelmator Pro without exporting and reimporting the image. The update also includes finer control over animation and 23 new transcription languages for captioning video.

Motion will also gain MotionVFX plug-ins, integration with Pixelmator Pro, and more.

Pixelmator Pro

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

A new Generate Fill feature will be added to Pixelmator Pro. Users circle where they want an edit or use one of the app’s selection tools, describe it, and the app generates the edit. Generated elements will also work with the existing Super Resolution tool and can be merged into a layer or be inserted as a separate layer.

Logic Pro

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Logic Pro is getting a Liquid Glass redesign, which looks great in Apple’s press release images. For musicians, there will be a new beta chatbot assistant on the Mac that uses Apple and OpenAI models. The app’s Browser is being updated on the Mac, too. It will consolidate loops, instruments, and more, organizing them using music understanding to make finding what you want easier. In addition, Logic’s Stem Splitter will gain the ability to separate drums, and a new Producer Pack from Grammy-winning salsa producer Sergio George is coming too.

Keynote, Pages, and Numbers

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

All three productivity tools will add a beta AI assistant powered by Apple and OpenAI models. Assistants understand the context of documents, helping build slides, write documents, and refine spreadsheets. The apps will also add MCP support on the Mac, allowing users to connect them to external AI agents for the first time. Content Hub will also add stock video footage that can be used in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, and Keynote will gain a new Keynote Interchange Format that is based on JSON, which should make it more accessible to AI workflows.

Freeform

Freeform will add text styles that can be applied in one step across multiple boards, along with custom and preset background colors. Then in December, Freeform will integrate with Pixelmator Pro for image editing.

I’m glad to see MotionVFX coming to Creator Studio. I also appreciate that an MCP server will be added to Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, something that is sorely missing compared to similar apps from companies like Google. I’m intrigued by the AI assistants coming to Logic Pro, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, too. I’ve used Codex a lot to help me learn new tricks in those apps and having an assistant like Codex built in has the potential to reduce the distraction of switching between apps.

Existing subscribers will have access to these new features beginning in November. Creator Studio, which supports Family Sharing, is $12.99/month or $129/year, with a one-month free trial or three months free when you buy a new Mac or qualifying iPad. College students and educators can get it for $2.99/month or $29.99/year.

Apple Updates the Entry-Level 14-Inch MacBook Pro with the M6

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple also introduced a new 14-inch MacBook Pro today featuring the M6 chipset.

This entry-level MacBook Pro retains the design of the current M5 MacBook Pros, so the changes are all under the hood. Starting at $1,999, the updated MacBook Pro bumps the chipset from M5 to M6, with two additional CPU and GPU cores.

The M6 MacBook Pro’s baseline configuration includes 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of SSD storage, which can be upgraded to as high as 32GB of memory and 4TB of storage. Like the M6 iMac, the new MacBook Pro can sustain up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth if you buy the 24 or 32GB configurations, which facilitates things like LLM token processing. The 16GB model has 153GB/s of memory throughput.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple is rumored to be introducing the first touchscreen OLED MacBook Pros tomorrow, but for this entry-level MacBook, the screen is a Liquid Retina XDR non-OLED display. It’s still a great display with up to 1600 nits of peak brightness and an optional nano-texture treatment that I personally love, but check back here tomorrow if you’re waiting on OLED.

The updated MacBook Pro also features a 12MP Center Stage camera, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, MagSafe 3, an SDXC card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple also says the M6 MacBook Pro can last up to 24 hours on a single battery charge, and can charge to 50% in just 30 minutes when you use Apple’s 96W power adapter instead of the 70W adapter that’s in the box.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

As for speed, Apple says the M6 MacBook Pro is 30% faster on graphics workloads and 25% faster on on-device AI tasks than the M5 model. The Neural Engine is also 1.9x faster than the M5.

Overall, this is a very straightforward update to the existing entry-level MacBook Pro. That’s not terribly exciting for those who want to live at the bleeding edge of Apple hardware, but it’s a great way to get a fast laptop with a fantastic display. We’ll have to wait to see how it performs in practice, but with its active cooling, the new M6 MacBook Pro should be a very capable laptop.

The M6 MacBook Pro will be available for preorder starting tomorrow, October 28, with deliveries beginning November 6.

Apple Updates the iMac with the M6, Starting at $1,499

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple’s daily hardware drops continued today with a refresh to the iMac. The new iMac upgrades from an M4 to an M6 chip, with the base model starting at $1,499 and available in blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver. There are two M6 configurations. The first has a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, and the second has a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, with the option of a nano-texture display. Memory starts at 16GB with a 24GB option for the 10-core iMac and an additional 32GB option for the 12-core model. All memory options feature 170GB/s bandwidth. Storage starts at 256GB and can be configured as high as 2TB on the 12-core model.

The new iMac also includes Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and two or four Thunderbolt 4 ports depending on the model you choose. There is also an option for 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet on the 12-core iMac, up from 1 Gigabit on the M4 iMac. As in the past, the Magic Keyboard is color-matched with the iMac

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The display, which measures 23.5 inches diagonally, has a resolution of 4.5K with 500 nits of brightness and P3 wide color support. You can also connect up to two external 6K displays to the M6 iMac.

The new iMac also includes a 12MP Center Stage camera that supports Desk View for simulated top-down video, a pair of force-cancelling woofers, and two tweeters. Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos audio are supported and a three-microphone array is built into the iMac, too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

According to Apple, the new iMac is 18x faster than Apple’s most popular Intel-based iMac, which is not surprising given how long it’s been since the introduction of Apple silicon. That said, I’m sure that a lot of households and businesses are still running those aging Intel iMacs and would benefit greatly from this update.

Apple also says that the graphics performance is 3.3x better than an M1 iMac and 2x better than the most recent M4 model. On-device AI prompt processing in LM Studio is also 12x faster than the M1 iMac and 5x faster than the M4 model.

The M6 has already proven to be a very capable addition to Apple silicon and will undoubtedly make this the best iMac yet. It’s an excellent choice for anyone who wants an elegant, space-saving Mac and doesn’t need the horsepower of Apple’s pro line of Macs.

The M6 iMac is available for preorder starting tomorrow with deliveries beginning November 6.

Apple Releases iOS and iPadOS 27.2 with Apple Pencil Support for iPhone Duo and Smarter Siri

The iPhone Duo now supports the Apple Pencil (USB-C).

The iPhone Duo now supports the Apple Pencil (USB-C).

It’s been just six weeks since iOS and iPadOS 27 were released, but Apple just introduced version 27.2, which packs a surprisingly long list of new features, some of which were first announced back in June at WWDC, while others support the iPhone Duo. Let’s take a look at the highlights.

The iPhone Duo already has a couple of great updates. The first is support for the Apple Pencil (USB-C). That’s the model that reveals a USB-C port when you pull on the end of it. I played around with the Duo’s Apple Pencil support over the weekend and think a lot of people are going to love it. The Duo feels so much like a tiny notebook already that writing with the Pencil is very natural whether you’re using Apple’s Notes or Freeform, or one of the many new skeuomorphic note-taking apps that have been released for the Duo.

Excluding apps from Siri AI.

Excluding apps from Siri AI.

The Duo also gained support for Edge Light, which frames your Duo’s screen in a faux ring light, illuminating your face when you’re on a video call or filming yourself with the front-facing camera.

One of the limitations of the initial beta release of Siri AI was its lack of access to past conversations. With iOS and iPadOS 27.2, Siri can recall past conversations (English only), which is great, especially if you use Siri a lot. Siri has added new data sources too, like images attached in the Messages app, voicemail, and Calendar event attendees, along with better browsing history and Reading List results. Siri AI has also added a centralized setting for excluding apps from its results, along with beta support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Recalling past Siri conversations.

Recalling past Siri conversations.

FaceTime has added new features too. Dual Capture, which streams the front and rear cameras of recent iPhones at the same time, now works in Group FaceTime calls. Third-party sign language interpreters or live captioners can be added to a call too, an accessibility feature that I first saw demoed back in May.

Messages has added suggested actions, like adding an event to Calendar, that draw on the context of your conversation. The feature showed up over the summer during the public beta but didn’t make the final release of iOS 27. It’s not a feature I use a lot, but for quickly capturing information in other apps when you’re pressed for time, it can really be handy.

Other iOS and iPadOS 27.2 updates include:

  • Shared Albums in Photos include reminders before they expire, so you can save photos and videos before the deadline. The feature also adds caption and comment editing.
  • Podcasts’ Up Next section has been organized into New Episodes and Continue Playing, to help differentiate active from untouched episodes.
  • Games has added context on friend suggestions and now shows what friends are playing on their player pages.
  • Apple TV’s Multiview has expanded to the iPhone, allowing you to watch four Apple TV sporting events at once, an especially nice option for the iPhone Duo.

Of these, I expect that I’ll use the Apple Pencil support for the iPhone Duo and Apple Podcasts’ Up Next categories the most, but given the variety of the release, I suspect there’s a little something for most users here.

Today’s updates are available by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update.

Today on AppStories: iPhone Duo First Impressions and Apps→

Today on AppStories, Federico and I share our first impressions of the iPhone Duo and share our experiences in New York and London, where we learned more about the Duo and met with developers for demos and conversations about their apps. It’s an excellent episode and just the start of a lot of iPhone Duo coverage we have planned for the coming weeks.

Preorder chaos, lines at Apple Stores, strong opinions for and against the Duo, and of course, a huge number of new apps tailored to the device all point to one thing: This is Apple’s most interesting devices in a while. There’s a lot to take in and this episode of AppStories is just the start. We’ll have more on the Duo hardware soon, as well as ongoing coverage of the over 500 Duo apps we’re working our way through. So keep an eye out for more on MacStories this week and in the coming weeks.

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The New iPad mini Adds OLED with a Larger 8.5-Inch Display

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple today announced an update to the iPad mini, one of my favorite iPads. The new mini features an 8.5-inch OLED display, a landscape Center Stage camera, and many other updates throughout. This is a big update, so let’s dig into the details.

The revised iPad mini has a similar, but slightly smaller, overall footprint at 5.4mm thin, but the bezels around the screen are 24% thinner, allowing for the larger 8.5-inch Super Retina XDR screen. That enables a peak brightness of 1200 nits with 600 nits full-screen brightness, which is brigher than the model it replaces. The display is also capable of as little as 1 nit of brightness, supports P3 wide color, and can be ordered with an optional nano-texture finish on the 256GB and 512GB models. However, the new mini’s display is not a 120Hz ProMotion display.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The chip that drives the new mini is from the A20 Pro line, which is the same chip family that powers the iPhone 18 Pro. The mini also has an N1 networking chip that supports Wi-Fi 7 and a C2 modem chip for users who order the cellular model. The mini also features up to six CPU cores, a 7-core GPU with Neural Accelerators for each core, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine in the 512GB model.

The 12MP Center Stage front-facing camera is on the long edge of the iPad mini. The rear camera is a 12MP Wide camera that includes Smart HDR 4 and Adaptive True Tone flash and can shoot 4K video at up to 60 fps.

Other details include IP67 water and dust resistance, a new TechWoven Smart Folio case, and continued support for both the Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C).

Among Apple’s speed claims are:

  • up to 4.5x faster AI performance,
  • up to 2.7x faster graphics performance,
  • up to 60% faster multithreaded CPU performance,
  • 2x Neural Engine processing power on the 512GB model,
  • more than a 2x increase in unified memory bandwidth,
  • up to 50% faster cellular data speeds, and
  • more than 2x higher peak brightness.

The new iPad mini comes in Midnight and Starlight colors (fewer than before) and starts at $699, which is less than some rumors suggested, and can be configured up to $1,249 before accessories. Apple also packs a polishing cloth in the box for the polishing fans out there.

This looks like an excellent update. I’m a huge fan of the iPad mini for writing, other lightweight productivity tasks, reading, watching videos, and playing games. Based on the specs, the new mini should be more capable than ever. I’m looking forward to trying it myself.

Goodnotes: Take Your Architectural Ideas from Desk to Job Site [Sponsor]

Goodnotes architectural plans, site photos, and annotations on iPad and iPhone

Goodnotes architectural plans, site photos, and annotations on iPad and iPhone

Many architects still think best with a pencil in hand. A floor plan starts as a sketch, an elevation changes after a client meeting, and tricky details get worked out during site visits. Goodnotes gives architects the freedom of pencil and paper, with every project on one device.

Begin a floor plan or elevation on a grid template, or import an existing drawing and mark it up with your Apple Pencil. The page scrolls without changing scale, so you can work on a large drawing that will still fit on your iPad. Adjust the pencil’s line weight as you go, and double-tap Apple Pencil to switch between drawing and erasing.

Then, when a design changes, you can continue without missing a beat. Simply select a wall and drag it somewhere else instead of redrawing the whole page. That makes it incredibly easy to try different layouts before committing to them.

Goodnotes keeps all of the context behind those decisions in the same place, too. Add photos from the job site right next to your plans, circle the area that needs attention, and jot down what happens next. With drawings, photos, and handwritten notes all on one page, it’s easy to return to a project later and understand its history and evolution.

When it’s time to work on site, Goodnotes also means you can leave rolls of plans behind. Every project lives on your device, and Goodnotes works offline, which is key to working on the go. Once you’re connected again, all of your changes sync across iPad, desktop, and the web, so the office, your clients, and the construction site can all work from the latest version of your plans.

The same workflow carries through the entire build. Engineers use Goodnotes to work up calculations on reusable templates and mark up details live in meetings, while site teams keep blueprints, annotated photos, and daily logs together and synced for those back in the office.

To see the workflow in action, watch architect Steve Giannetti sketch a house in Goodnotes:

Give your next project room to grow, from the first pencil stroke to the last site visit. Try Goodnotes for free.

Our thanks to Goodnotes for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Investigating Options for Extending Web Content Under iPhone Duo’s Safari Controls→

Jen Simmons, writing at the official WebKit blog:

Safari 27.1 does bring one change to users. Now, when someone holds iPhone Duo partially folded like a book while looking at a PDF on the web, Safari 27.1 automatically shows PDFs as two pages side by side. When they open the screen flat or close it fully, Safari switches back to one page.

I didn’t know about that, likely because I prefer saving and reading PDFs offline. The most interesting tidbit from this otherwise (very) technical blog post, however, is the fact that Apple is actively looking into ways to let web developers extend their websites’ content underneath the Safari controls shown on the right side of the iPhone Duo’s screen:

You might have noticed the outer display of iPhone Duo is wider and shorter than other iPhone displays. To give content more vertical space, iOS moves controls to the side.

In Safari 27.1, web content does not currently extend to fill the space behind these controls. Just like on other platforms, Safari looks at the web page and extends its background color to fill the space.

We would like to give web designers and developers the ability to design and use that space in more creative ways. Perhaps you want to extend your header background across the full width of the display, for example. It might seem like there’s just one obvious way to make this possible, but really there are many possibilities.

Since getting my iPhone Duo review unit yesterday, this is what has annoyed me the most. I dislike how all kinds of websites are simply cut off on the right side of Safari on the outer display. You can see this in action on MacStories itself: while we have fully updated our website to take advantage of the iPhone Duo’s new viewport sizes, there’s nothing we can do to extend the toolbar and other elements under Safari’s controls on the right side of the display. The result looks like a poor implementation on our end, but it isn’t.

MacStories on the iPhone Duo's outer display.

MacStories on the iPhone Duo’s outer display.

I hope Apple’s Safari and WebKit teams can figure this out; once they do, we’ll update MacStories for the iPhone Duo again.

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