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.

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464 — May 2, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Jonathan

Simple Color Palette

Prolific app developer Sindre Sorhus is back with a simple app to create and edit color palettes in an open-source, JSON-based file format called Simple Color Palette. This app speaks directly to my heart. Not only can you use it to create and edit color palettes, but you can also open Adobe’s proprietary ASE-formatted color palettes. This opens up the format to many people who don’t use Adobe products but are sent design resources containing ASE files. The app itself is easy to use (par for the course for Sindre’s apps), it syncs across iPhone, iPad, and Mac via iCloud, and best of all, it’s free.

Federico

Lately

Lately is a new utility designed to get you back on schedule if you’re the type of person who’s always late for stuff. The app relies on live countdowns in the Dynamic Island/Live Activities to show exactly when you need to leave, sends you notifications, and even has an Apple Watch companion app so you can’t miss those alerts. With a Lately Premium subscription, you can unlock recurring timers for routines you’re having trouble sticking with. I know a couple of people in my life I can send this to.

464 — May 2, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Federico

Pocket Casts has introduced Generated Transcripts for Plus and Patron subscribers, allowing users to read along, search for specific phrases, and find key moments in podcast episodes without having to scrub through the entire audio. Not for me, but cool! (Link)

Google has expanded NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews to support more than 50 languages. The service is also getting a native iOS and Android app when Google I/O begins later this month. (Link)

464 — May 2, 2025

GPT-4.1 Talker: A Proof of Concept to Enable Stateful Conversations with GPT-4.1 in Shortcuts

Federico

SHORTCUTS CORNER

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

Shortcuts Essentials

GPT-4.1 Talker: A Proof of Concept to Enable Stateful Conversations with GPT-4.1 in Shortcuts

Federico

I’m in the process of updating some of our internal shortcuts to use OpenAI’s API-only GPT-4.1 model instead of Claude, and in doing that, I realized that it was a good opportunity to finally learn the new Responses API. Announced by OpenAI a couple months back, the Responses API will eventually replace the old Chat Completions API (if you recall, the one I used for S-GPT) and offers more options such as tool calling and, most importantly, conversation states. One of the biggest challenges of the old API was, in fact, keeping track of the back and forth between the user and ChatGPT by having to manually track and reconstruct the entire flow of a conversation every time you wanted to ask a follow-up question. With the Responses API, OpenAI’s servers can manage the state of a conversation for you and track individual IDs assigned to each message in a conversation.

With that in mind, it seemed about time I learned the new API and start transitioning some of my shortcuts to it. Today, I want to share a proof-of-concept shortcut that you can use and learn to build your own conversational workflows with GPT-4.1 or any other model available on OpenAI. This shortcut, which I’m calling GPT-4.1 Talker, has two key characteristics: it uses the Responses API, and it relies on an advanced technique to loop on itself and enable “stateful” conversations.

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463 — April 25, 2025

The Current State of Major LLMs and Their Shortcuts Integrations

Federico

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

The Current State of Major LLMs and Their Shortcuts Integrations

Federico

Earlier this week, I decided to do some research about the current state of major LLM apps and their implementations of Shortcuts actions. While millions of people are interacting with chatbots on a daily basis using their respective websites and dedicated mobile apps, I thought it’d be interesting to see how these popular services are integrating with Apple’s ecosystem via Shortcuts actions and App Intents. Spoiler: there’s a lot of work for them to do still, but early signs seem encouraging.

I started with Google Gemini, which has seen some notable developments lately with the release of its 2.5 Pro model that I’m using for heavy-duty tasks like transcribing long YouTube videos and audio recordings. When it comes to supporting App Intents and Shortcuts, the Gemini app is – unsurprisingly, given Google’s slow approach on iOS – the one that needs the most work out of all the apps I evaluated.

463 — April 25, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

John

I love a good screen, but all I want on my appliances is a start button. Samsung is betting I’m an outlier according to this story by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge. (Link)

This AI newsroom, covered by Matthew Gault for 404 Media and created by Henry Blodget (formerly of Business Insider), is equal parts offensive to writers and a leading contender for some kind of creepiness award. (Link)

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462 — April 18, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Federico

Long Ago: Habit & Life Tracker

Long Ago, the habit and life tracker by Oscar Bazaldua, received a big update this week with version 1.3, adding a fully native Apple Watch app so you can log activities and follow progress right from your wrist. The new watch complications mean your activity stats are always a glance away, and the new chart widgets let you keep an eye on your habits from the Home Screen. The update is definitely worth another try if you first tested the app when it came out late last year.

462 — April 18, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

Federico

Geoffrey Litt shows how they built a simple but effective (and very polite!) personal AI assistant called “Stevens” using just a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs. I wish I had the dev skills to also pull this off. (Link)

Anders Thoresson writes about using LLMs for “vibe monitoring,” a new approach to media monitoring that relies on LLM intuition rather than classic keyword filters. Fascinating project. (Link)