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Federico Viticci

Editor-in-chief

Mastodon: @viticci@macstories.netEmail: 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.

490 — November 14, 2025

Moving from Spotify to Apple Music

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

More stories for Club members.

Moving from Spotify to Apple Music

This was a long time in the making – and I hinted as much in my iOS 26 review back in September – but after a lot of back and forth and a year of daily usage, I’ve decided to switch back from Spotify to Apple Music. Put simply: despite the CEO’s replacement, I continue to get a bad taste in my mouth from Spotify’s corporate policies and seeming embrace of so-called “AI music”. Yes, Spotify’s algorithm can be amazing for discovery, and I know I’m going to miss it. But every time I’ve used Spotify lately, it felt a little gross.

And no, Apple’s political moves – at least from my perspective – aren’t great, either. However, all things being terrible these days for one reason or another, at least with Apple Music, I get a superior app experience on iPhone and iPad, better sound quality for hi-res lossless playback, and a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients built with MusicKit that do not exist for Spotify. I picked my poison, I suppose.

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490 — November 14, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

SuperWidget

SuperWidget is a utility that lets you build custom widgets using data from Apple’s Shortcuts app or third-party APIs. What makes SuperWidget particularly interesting is how it bridges the gap between Shortcuts automation and data sources from external APIs; you could, for instance, create a widget that displays your website’s visitor count, your smart home’s current temperature, or any other data accessible through a REST API. I’ve always wished that Apple would allow me to design custom widgets powered by Shortcuts data, and this is an interesting third-party take on the idea that reminds me of designing a custom dashboard for the TRMNL as well as Panic’s old Status Board app.

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490 — November 14, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Insta360 has new accessories that add a grip with shutter button and a portable printer to its Ace Pro 2 action camera, which strike me as smart additions that should expand the market for the camera beyond the traditional uses for action cams. (Link)

Samsung is still plugging away at its SmartThings home automation system. Its latest move is adding Siri support, theoretically allowing you to kick off routines with Siri commands. (Link)

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489 — November 7, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Rolling Square’s new inCharge Life is a modular 240W USB-C cable kit that comes with a lifetime replacement program – which sounds too good to be true to me. However, the cables look pretty sweet. (Link)

The team behind the Model Context Protocol spec has approved a “tasks” primitive to enable better handling of long-running operations. Once this gets officially implemented in the shipping version of MCP, expect AI agents to be able to asynchronously kick off tasks on remote connectors that will continue in the background. (Link)

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489 — November 7, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Alive AR Experience

This app is the kind of AR experience that makes the Vision Pro worth showing off to friends and family. Alive brings three environments into your physical space, each populated with different creatures that react to your movements and surroundings. In the Aquarium mode, colorful fish swim around your furniture and between your hands while avoiding a shark; the Cavern fills your room with giant spiders that chase ants up your walls and leap from the ceiling (and apparently react to clapping, which I’m both curious and terrified to test); and the Meadow creates a peaceful scene with butterflies that flutter around your head and can land on your hand. I love this idea, and I kind of wish Apple provided users with a similar demo experience beyond a dinosaur that wants to kill you.

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488 — October 31, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Locally AI

Locally AI is one of the first third-party apps for iPhone and iPad that lets you freely chat with Apple Intelligence’s on-device Foundation model (in addition to other local LLMs), and the app received a nice update earlier this week. Developer Adrien Grondin added a native iPad sidebar to the app, plus integration with the small Qwen-3VL 2B model to the app’s growing collection of offline models. The update also brings proper code and LaTeX support for technical conversations, along with a time remaining indicator in the Downloads view when you’re fetching new models. Also: the app is now Universal and available on macOS, too. I really hope the developer can add an overlay for token generation and other stats next.

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488 — October 31, 2025

Using URL Auto Redirector to Send Email Links to Superhuman in Chrome

TIPS

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

Using URL Auto Redirector to Send Email Links to Superhuman in Chrome

Due to a series of circumstances that involved various web apps that did not work in Safari, I recently found myself having to use Google Chrome as my default browser on my Mac again. Let me be clear: I don’t like this, but I had to pick Chrome for a variety of reasons. Specifically, I needed to use a Chromium-based browser, but I also wanted something that would sync my tabs on iOS and iPadOS and which wouldn’t look terrible in the process. None of the so-called AI browsers support iOS yet, so, for now, I went with Chrome – even though I fundamentally dislike its iPhone app (which lacks extensions) as well as its iPad app (where you can’t even pin the bookmarks bar!). I think I’ll be back on Safari soon enough…unless Comet for iOS finally launches.

In any case, among the many things I’m missing from Safari, I wanted to find a simple extension to redirect specific URLs to slightly different versions of the same URL based on RegEx pattern matching. Perhaps more specifically, I wanted to redirect Superhuman Mail’s deep links that open in the browser directly to the Superhuman Mail app on my Mac.

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488 — October 31, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Vince Gilligan discusses his return to sci-fi with Apple TV’s upcoming Pluribus, explaining how he tailored the lead role for Rhea Seehorn. I honestly can’t wait to be confused by this TV show and read theories about it on Reddit. (Link)

Google has upgraded NotebookLM’s chat capabilities, expanding the context window 8x to 1 million tokens (same as Gemini), increasing conversation memory 6x, and improving response quality by 50%. I don’t use NotebookLM enough, but with Gemini 3.0 on the horizon, I think that may soon change. (Link)

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