Jacob Krol, reporting for Techradar:

While Verizon had a good few months, with the last major outage occurring in October 2024, it seems that the popular United States wireless carrier is having some issues. So, if you’re on Verizon and seeing ‘SOS’ in place of network bars, you’re not alone.

Countless users have taken to social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Threads to shout issues, but reported problems with Verizon have spiked on Down Detector to over 46,000.

This outage matters, because I’m on Verizon and my phone hasn’t had a signal for two hours.

T-Mobile, on Twitter/X:

T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected. However due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time.

AT&T, in such a hurry to pile on that their punctuation was slapdash:

Our network? Solid. If you’re experiencing issues, it’s not us.....it’s the other guys. Some things are just out of our hands! - BUT if you’re interested in giving us a try — https://att.com/wireless/free-trial/

Full point awarded to T-Mobile for the better, colder, burn.

Update: Service returned for me around 5pm, but the outage wasn’t completely resolved until 10pm ET. Yikes.

The letter speaks for itself, and is very much worth reading in full. I’ll quote only from the conclusion, which rhetorically feels very Bill:

Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it.

Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are signing away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history.

Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.

The New York Times also published a copy of the legal letter the Clintons’ lawyers (two law firms, actually) sent to Comer. It’s not as good a read as their personal letter.

I’ll just add, revisiting a recent topic, that the legal letter from the Clintons’ lawyers was set in Times New Roman. That’s unremarkable, which is Times New Roman’s calling card. The Clintons’ personal letter, on very nice joint stationery, was set in Courier New, an interesting but disappointing choice. The intention is to evoke the effect of a typewriter — to add a personal touch. The letter is very clearly, from the first word to the last, a personal message from Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves. I suspect they jointly crafted every single word of it themselves. It’s not a short letter, but it’s not long, either. Not a word is wasted. But it would have looked so much better in Courier than Courier New (or, even better, the best version of Courier ever made, Courier Prime). The worst aspect of Courier New is that it’s inexplicably thin and wispy. It looks like it should be called Courier Thin, but there’s no good reason for there to exist a thin variant of Courier. The second worst aspect of Courier New is that a handful of punctuation glyphs are inexplicably not thin, and thus stand out excessively, grating on the eyes. Take note of how the commas and apostrophes appear almost bold in the Clintons’ personal letter. I gripe about Arial more frequently, but Courier New is a worse crime against typography. (Both crimes, of course, were set loose upon the world by Microsoft.)

Daniele Lepido and Antonio Vanuzzo, reporting for Bloomberg (paywalled, alas):

Meta Platforms Inc. and EssilorLuxottica SA are discussing potentially doubling production capacity for AI-powered smart glasses by the end of this year, in a bid to capture growing demand and head off rivals, according to people familiar with the matter.

With sales of Ray-Ban Meta frames taking hold, Facebook-owner Meta has suggested increasing annual capacity to 20 million units or more by the end of 2026, said the people, asking not to be named because the deliberations are private.

20 million units is a real number. But building the capacity for 20 million units isn’t the same as selling 20 million units, and, to my knowledge, actual sales of Meta Glasses are only Bezos Numbers. And for historical context, 20 million units annually would put Meta Glasses somewhere between the second and third years of iPhone sales. If they’re really on pace for 20 million sales per year that’s a real thing. But in 2009 I was seeing a lot of iPhones out and about in the world. I’ve only noticed one guy wearing Meta Ray-Bans in the last few months. That’s personal anecdata, for sure, and it’s possible I’m walking past more people wearing these than I realize because they’re supposed to look like regular Ray-Bans. I don’t think they’re on anything even close to the astounding growth pattern of the early iPhone, but Meta is trying hard to create the perception that they are, and that they’re locking in a first-mover advantage.

And again, leaking that they’re “discussing potentially doubling production capacity” is as different from actually selling 20 million annual units as “going all in” on the metaverse is from laying off another thousand-plus employees from the metaverse division three years later.

Apple Newsroom:

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. [...]

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.

One-time purchase pricing, from the footnotes:

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.

I’ll have more to say later today, but my first observation is that with the exception of the new version of Pixelmator, the user interfaces of these apps completely ignore Liquid Glass. That could be a statement from the design teams for these apps, or could be a factor only of version requirements:

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 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.

My hope is that the UI shown today for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and MainStage is a flat-out rejection of Liquid Glass for “serious” apps. My fear is that it’s only a result of their continued support for MacOS 15 Sequoia. (But I think they need to continue supporting MacOS 15 Sequoia because so many pro users are rejecting MacOS 26 Tahoe.)

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch:

“We’ve structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully, long-running enterprise, but not a startup,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. [...]

“I want a companion to my phone, rather than a replacement for my phone. I want it to be more like a Swatch than a Rolex. I want it to be a little bit more fun, casual, playful, and plasticky.” Plus, he added, with the reboot of Pebble, he’s now okay with a watch that doesn’t try to do it all.

“I’m okay with a limited vision and a limited scope of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Migicovsky said.

Under the new company, Core Devices, the team has announced the Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, a round-faced Pebble Round 2, and a $75 AI smart ring, called the Index 01.

What a great profile from Perez. I think she captured the current moment for Core Devices. I personally don’t want their new watches, and I don’t see the appeal (especially ergonomically, given that it needs to be on your index finger) of the Index 01 ring, but I can see why some people might. And I’m delighted to see a small company trying these things. Better to make things a few people might love than to try to make something zillions might like.