Federico Viticci

Editor-in-chief

Twitter: @viticciEmail: viticci@macstories.net

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, and Dialog, a show where creativity meets technology.

He can also be found on his two other podcasts on Relay FM – Connected and Remaster.

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371 — June 2, 2023

Our WWDC iPhone Setups: Federico and John

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Our WWDC iPhone Setups: Federico and John

Federico

My Travel Home Screen for WWDC

I’m leaving for WWDC tomorrow – I have some long flights ahead of me – and, as always, I’ve been stressing over all the little things I may need for the trip. As part of this process, I’ve set up a dedicated Home Screen page on my iPhone that includes some key apps and widgets I may need while I’m in Cupertino for the conference. This page is not replacing my main Home Screen and the “family” page I set up for things I share with Silvia: it’s a third page for quick access to relevant information and apps that I know I’m going to use during WWDC week.

Let’s start with the page itself:

Monthly Log — May 31, 2023

How Apple Could Fix Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 and Make Me Happy

Federico

How Apple Could Fix Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 and Make Me Happy

Federico

I’m leaving for WWDC in a couple of days, and along with some computers and surprises, I’m bringing with me a lot of excitement for the upcoming headset announcement and – as you can imagine – hope that Apple has listened to criticism about Stage Manager and iterated upon the feature introduced last year.

Perhaps this hope is misplaced. When Apple has introduced new multitasking paradigms in years past, they haven’t touched them again for a couple of years, choosing to let them sit there without updates. I want to believe that Stage Manager will be different, whether because it’s going to be the multitasking foundation of the headset, or because I’m wish-casting, or simply because not wasting the feature’s potential is the right thing to do.

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370 — May 26, 2023

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Federico

Albums

Albums by Adam Bell is quickly becoming the best way to create music widgets on iPhone and iPad. With version 1.2, the app’s settings sync with iCloud, allowing you to have a consistent experience with widget creation across platforms. The app can now import albums from a local music library not synced with iCloud, and it also supports the share sheet so you can import albums by simply sharing links from Spotify or Apple Music with the Albums extension. Additionally, the app now comes with an option to set a default style for all widgets, which can be retro-actively applied to all existing launchers.

370 — May 26, 2023

Fixing Multi-Device Pairing and Wrist Pain with the Logitech MX Keys Mini and Lift Mouse

Federico

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

Fixing Multi-Device Pairing and Wrist Pain with the Logitech MX Keys Mini and Lift Mouse

Federico

As Club MacStories members know, I’ve spent a lot of time and resources over the past few months trying to figure out my ideal work setup and the computers I want to use on a daily basis. I ended up with a hybrid setup in which I primarily get work done from a MacBook Air, but I also have a gaming PC and an iPad Pro. All of these devices connect to the same USB hub (the Microsoft Audio Dock) and I’m using a USB-C switch hidden under my desk (this one) to switch video output between Apple computers (Mac and iPad) and my PC. All of them ultimately connect to a Studio Display, which I use to get work done and play PC games. I’ve been using this system for nearly two months at this point, and I have no complaints.

The one aspect that took me longer to figure out was mouse and keyboard input. When I wrote about my Universal Control approach last year, my setup was different: I was using a Mac mini at my desk and I was constantly switching between that device and the iPad Pro; I didn’t have a gaming PC underneath my desk that I also had to control with a mouse and keyboard. (At the time, the gaming PC was hidden in a cabinet in the living room, under the TV; we eventually needed that space for other things, so I moved the PC to my office.) With a third device in the mix, I had to find another solution to move between different computers while also not cluttering my desk in the process.

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369 — May 19, 2023

SafariThings: A Simple Web Clipper for Things to Turn Webpages into Tasks

Federico

SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Shortcuts Essentials

SafariThings: A Simple Web Clipper for Things to Turn Webpages into Tasks

Federico

I’m continuing my experiment with Things as my task manager on all Apple platforms (in case you missed it last week: John is to blame here, but in a good way since I’m really enjoying the app) and something I realized this week is that I was missing a nice web clipper to turn webpages from Safari into tasks with useful metadata in Things. The app does have a share extension that you can use from Safari, but this is all it does:

As you can see, the extension lets you create tasks with a specific title and note, and it lets you assign them to projects, but you can’t give them a due date from the extension, which I think is an odd limitation. That, combined with my desire to embed more metadata in the note field of a task, convinced me to make my own Things web clipper by taking advantage of the app’s excellent Shortcuts actions. As it turns out, these actions are the gift that keeps on giving: they allowed me to put together exactly what I wanted in just a few minutes.

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368 — May 12, 2023

Using Things' Shortcuts Actions for Quick Entry and Task Selection on iPadOS

Federico

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Using Things' Shortcuts Actions for Quick Entry and Task Selection on iPadOS

Federico

Something you should know about me is that there’s a dedicated area of my brain I refer to as the “John told me to try this” area. I think you know what I mean. John and I share very similar tastes in terms of hardware and apps, and he’s well known for keeping a large collection of apps installed on his devices. As John tries something and tells me I’d probably like it too, I add it to my mental list, and, eventually, I sit down and check out his recommendations. More often than not, he’s spot-on.

(Yes, I have considered making a specific ‘John’ section in my Dashboard note, and, yes, I think I will.)