180: Apple Launches AirTag 2 and Apple Creator Studio

Welcome back to The MacRumors Show. Quick vibe check to start the week: are you finding what you need or still misplacing things?

AirTag 2 dropped quietly. It tracks from about fifty percent farther, plays a louder chime, has upgraded Bluetooth, and still costs twenty-nine dollars or ninety-nine for four. Good, not wild. How are you feeling about it?

Nice to finally see it, but it’s more of a tidy refresh than a true second-gen. No redesign, no rechargeable battery, and precision finding still really kicks in at close range, though the better Bluetooth should help the Find My network pick it up more often in the wild.

I bought a four‑pack because my old ones died and vanished on me. If we’re dreaming, what would make an AirTag 3 worth it?

Lose the coin cell and make it rechargeable, ideally on an Apple Watch puck. Give us a card‑shaped model with precision finding for wallets, and add a simple keyring hole so we don’t need to buy a holder for the most common use case.

Also wild that Apple’s MagSafe wallet still lacks precision finding. And why can’t we buy those clean Apple Store MagSafe stands? Third‑party gear is great, but Apple’s own versions would be hits.

MagSafe never blossomed into the big accessory world Apple teased, and first‑party stands would pair well with standby mode. Apple often leaves that space to partners like Belkin, but a few focused designs from Apple would land.

Don’t expect a flurry of drops this week, but my inbox says MacBooks are close. If you’re shopping, maybe wait a bit.

Apple Creator Studio is out. If you own the one‑time apps, you’ll still get updates, but subscription tiers gate the AI and premium content libraries. Pricing is twelve ninety‑nine a month or one hundred twenty‑nine a year, with a great student deal at two ninety‑nine monthly or twenty‑nine yearly.

What new tools in Final Cut actually helped you?

Three hits on Mac: searchable transcripts, visual search, and beat detection. Pro tip: import via the menu and enable transcribe and visual search, not drag‑and‑drop, or they won’t show. Beat detection is lovely for snapping cuts and looping sections cleanly without diving into Logic.

So these speed up the job rather than change what you can make. That’s the right balance for pro workflows.

Exactly. I still want text‑based editing and stronger AI audio cleanup built in. With a subscription, Apple should ship features more often, not once or twice a year.

Even Pages, Keynote, and Numbers picked up AI touches, which is interesting given how broad their audience is.

Keynote can spin a full deck from an outline, and there are more presets and a content hub. That’s a big time saver for students and meetings.

There’s a slide “cleanup” that tidies layouts, plus super resolution borrowed from Pixelmator across the suite. It can look odd on some images, but when it works it’s a handy rescue.

Magic Fill in Numbers is still a mystery for us. I’ll dig in after the show.

On iPad, Pixelmator feels great with Apple Pencil, and Final Cut now supports external monitors, background rendering, and live activities. The sore spot is round‑trip: Logic does it, Pixelmator syncs via cloud, but Final Cut iPad still can’t go Mac to iPad and back.

Final Cut’s project structure and plugins make that tricky, but a consistent file format would help pros bounce between devices when traveling.

Final Cut libraries can balloon fast. I’ve moved to one library per project to keep sizes sane, but Apple really needs to modernize this, especially with rivals pushing cloud workflows.

Before we go, those new app icons stirred people up. Do you think this is the post‑Dye look or a blip?

Hopefully a blip, because these skew so flat they lose meaning. Liquid glass needs refinement at WWDC to restore clarity without over‑simplifying.

Some of them read like a trash‑can lid or unfinished shapes. If you didn’t already know the apps, you wouldn’t guess what they do. Send your takes—kindly—to [email protected]. There’s a train rolling by, so we’re calling it here. See you next week.