This week, Apple finally launches its long-rumoured Creator Studio subscription, and the reaction is already split. Instapaper makes a change that will affect how some of you read long-form articles on your Kindles. We’ve got an ambitious new colour E Ink tablet from Bigme, and Amazon adds a little colour to the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft … but still no sign of a UK release date.
Apple Creator Studio is finally here
The headline news this week is Apple’s release of Creator Studio, and early feedback from people who’ve jumped in is noticeably mixed.
Creator Studio is a new subscription costing £12.99 a month or £129 a year. It bundles Apple’s pro creative apps — Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and a brand-new Pixelmator Pro for iPad — into a single plan. On the Mac, you can still buy these apps outright if you prefer. On the iPad, however, subscription is now the only way in.
The bundle also includes Apple’s wider pro toolset on the Mac, like Motion, Compressor, and MainStage, and it unlocks AI-powered features inside Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Freeform.
On the positive side, early hands-on impressions suggest the apps themselves are solid. Reviewers who’ve spent time with the suite on iPad say Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro all work well, and that having them bundled together represents strong value — especially when compared with Adobe Creative Cloud.
At £12.99 a month (or the same in dollars), Apple undercuts Adobe by a fair margin. For many creators, that alone makes this appealing. The student and educator tier at £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year is also being widely described as an excellent deal.
Pixelmator Pro on iPad, in particular, has received very positive early feedback. Reviewers say its touch-first design and Apple Pencil support feel natural and responsive, rather than like a desktop app awkwardly squeezed into a tablet. That matters, because this is the first time Pixelmator Pro has been available on iPad at all — and early impressions suggest it’s one of the strongest parts of the bundle.
Logic Pro is also being well received. People using it across iPad and Mac report that round-trip editing is genuinely smooth, and that newer AI-assisted tools like session players and stem splitting add useful creative help without taking control away from the user.
Final Cut Pro has earned praise too, particularly for features like transcript search, which reviewers say works quickly and accurately, making it easier to locate clips and sound bites in larger projects.
But it’s not all positive.
A recurring criticism — and not an unexpected one — is the subscription model itself. Because Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on iPad now require Creator Studio, some users fear Apple is actively closing the door on standalone creative apps on iPad.
There’s frustration from people who only want one app, say Final Cut Pro, but are forced to subscribe to the entire suite. There’s also scepticism about whether Apple will maintain full feature parity between subscription users and those who bought the Mac apps outright. Even though Apple says one-time purchases remain supported on the Mac, some users worry future updates could increasingly favour subscribers.
A few reviewers have described Creator Studio as a slightly “bittersweet bundle”. The inclusion of productivity apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote under the same subscription feels awkward to some creators and arguably dilutes the ‘studio’ focus. And while Pixelmator Pro is praised overall, comparisons with Adobe still point out gaps in more advanced areas like high-end retouching.
The early picture feels fairly clear. Creator Studio offers a capable and compelling set of tools, especially for creators who want professional-grade software across iPad and Mac and don’t mind a subscription. But there’s already pushback around how it’s packaged — and what it signals about the future of creative software on iPad.
It’ll be interesting to see how Apple adds value, rolls out updates, and responds to subscription fatigue once the honeymoon is over.
Have you already subscribed, either on the one-month free trial or the three-month trial that comes with a new device? Let me know what you think in the comments. I’ve yet to get hands-on myself, but when I do, I’ll be making a video about it over on my YouTube review channel, The Spark.
Instapaper will make you pay
Now for something that’s a bit more niche, but significant if you use it.
Instapaper — one of the most popular ‘read it later’ apps — has confirmed that its Send to Kindle feature is moving behind a paywall.
Until now, this has been a free and extremely useful way to save articles on your phone and have them delivered neatly to your Kindle, formatted and ready to read. That matters, because Kindles are obviously brilliant at reading … and not brilliant at web browsing.
Instapaper filled that gap by doing all the heavy lifting in the background.
According to Instapaper’s lead engineer, the process is far from simple. Every time you send a digest to your Kindle, their servers process the text, pull in images, store the data, convert everything into a Kindle-friendly EPUB file, and then email it to your device. With many thousands of people using the feature — most of them on free accounts — Instapaper says it’s been running this service at a loss.
From the 19th of February, you’ll need an Instapaper Premiumsubscription to keep using Send to Kindle wirelessly. That costs $6 a month or $60 a year. Premium, however, also includes extras like full-text search, unlimited notes, and a permanent archive of saved articles.
There is a bit of good news, depending on what e-reader you use. Kobo owners aren’t affected, because Kobo’s Instapaper integration uses an API rather than Amazon’s email-based system. That remains free.
And if you don’t want to pay at all, there are still workarounds. You can manually transfer files to your Kindle using a USB cable, or use Amazon’s own Send to Kindle browser extension. Both still work — but neither is quite as smooth or automatic as Instapaper’s original setup.
So this isn’t the end of reading long-form articles on your Kindle. It isthe end of doing it effortlessly and for free, at least if you’re deep in the Amazon ecosystem.
Bigme B10: their first colour E-Ink tablet for 2026
Chinese company Bigme has announced a new colour E-Ink tablet for 2026, the Bigme B10.
It features a 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 colour E-Ink display, with 300 PPI for black-and-white text (which is what really matters for reading) and 150 PPI in colour — about as good as colour E-Ink gets right now. There’s also a 36-level adjustable front light with warm and cool tones, which is pretty much expected at this point.
Where the B10 tries to stand out is hardware and connectivity.
It runs Android 14 with full Google Play Store access, powered by an octa-core processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage, plus a microSD card slot. You also get 4G LTE with a SIM slot, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, stereo speakers, a fingerprint sensor, and — unusually for an E Ink device — a 20 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera.
It supports a stylus with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, leaning heavily into a pen-on-paper experience for sketching, annotation, and long-form writing. There’s also support for a keyboard cover, turning it into more of a lightweight productivity device rather than just a reader or notetaker.
Because it’s full Android, you’re not locked into a single ecosystem for notes, files, or apps. That openness will appeal to some people, especially if you like choosing your own tools rather than being funnelled into one platform.
That said, the usual E Ink caveats still apply. Colour E-Ink is slower than LCD or OLED. Animations are limited, despite Bigme talking up its ‘smooth refresh’ mode. And many Android apps simply aren’t designed with E-Ink in mind.
This isn’t an iPad, and it’s not trying to be. If your priorities are reading, writing, note-taking, battery life, and openness — rather than speed and colour accuracy — this could be worth a look.
The Bigme B10 is available for pre-order now, with discounted pricing at around £430 for the standard bundle or £485 with the keyboard cover, down from roughly £600.
Kindle Scribe Colorsoft now comes in Fig
Finally, while we still can’t buy the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft in the UK, Amazon has begun shipping the new fig colour variant to customers in the United States.
This becomes the second colour option alongside the original graphite finish. The fig version is best described as a deep, rich red — closer to merlot than anything bright — and it costs exactly the same as the graphite model.
Hardware-wise, nothing else has changed.
The Scribe Colorsoft features an 11-inch Kaleido 3 colour E-Ink display, with 300 PPI for black-and-white text and 150 PPI in colour. The screen is flush with the bezel and protected by glass. The device measures 7.4 by 9.6 inches and weighs just over 400 grams.
Inside, Amazon has fitted a new custom chip and increased memory compared to earlier Scribe models. One of the more interesting technical details is the display panel itself. Amazon has licensed Sharp’s oxide backplane technology, developed in partnership with E-Ink. In theory, this allows better control over pigment movement, slightly faster refresh behaviour, and more accurate colour reproduction — which lines up with what many early reviews have said.
Amazon has also reworked the front-light system, using miniaturised LEDs placed closer to the display. This allows for a slimmer bezel and more even lighting. There’s a textured glass surface to add friction for the pen, reducing that slippery glass-on-glass feel, and parallax has been reduced so writing feels closer to pen on paper.
The Scribe Colorsoft supports Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, making it easier to import documents for markup and export annotated PDFs. Notes and notebooks can also sync with OneNote, which is particularly useful if you move between devices. Amazon says this integration is coming to older Scribe models too.
That’s all folks!
Apple’s Creator Studio lands with plenty of promise and a fair bit of scepticism. Instapaper puts one of its most useful features behind a paywall. Bigme continues to push colour E-Ink into more capable territory. And Amazon keeps iterating the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft — even if UK buyers are still stuck watching from the sidelines.
If you’ve spotted any E Ink, Kindle, or iPad stories I’ve missed, feel free to drop them in the comments or email me directly at markfromthespark@gmail.com, and I’ll take a look for next week.
And as always, if you’d like to support my online endeavours you can either become a paid Substack subscriber or buy me a digital coffee – link below:
Connect with me: X | Instagram | Threads
Subscribe to my YouTube channels: The Spark
Buy stuff: Affiliate Page
