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John Voorhees

Managing Editor

Mastodon: @johnvoorhees@macstories.netEmail: voorhees@macstories.net

John, MacStories’ Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015. He also co-hosts MacStories’ podcasts, including AppStories, which explores of the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, a weekly recap of everything MacStories and more, and MacStories Unplugged, a behind-the-scenes, anything-goes show exclusively for Club MacStories members.

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

Have Subscriptions Spoiled the Fun of Trying New Apps?

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Have Subscriptions Spoiled the Fun of Trying New Apps?

I’ve been trying a lot of new apps and web services lately, and it’s gotten me thinking about subscriptions again. In particular, I’ve been thinking about how subscriptions change my behavior as a consumer when I see something I’d like to try. What I’ve concluded is that many developers could do a better job with subscriptions than they currently do.

Before I go any further, I want to stress that I am not against subscriptions. That’s not to say that I have infinite tolerance or budget for subscriptions. My tolerance may be higher than others’, but I make the same judgments about an app’s value that anyone does. However, I don’t get angry because a subscription is more than I want to pay.

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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

Kicking the Tires of Notion

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Kicking the Tires of Notion

I’ll admit, I’m a little self-conscious about using Notion. I’ve always recognized that it’s a good tool for a lot of tasks, but it never clicked with me – partially because I found it very hard to adapt to a block-based system after years of plain text and partially because I love the customizability of apps like Obsidian.

However, I’ve also found myself juggling more data than I can adequately manage in plain text and a little tired of Obsidian after using it for five years. That’s a long time for me, and while there are ways to accomplish much of what I’m doing in Notion with Obsidian, Notion is hard to beat for data-heavy tasks. It’s like the offspring of a spreadsheet and a database, allowing someone like me, who deals with a lot of non-numerical data and doesn’t need formulas much, to harness the power of a spreadsheet crossed with a database that’s friendlier to use than an app like Airtable.

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488 — October 31, 2025

Town Hall Archive

Town Hall Archive

A while back, we shifted our approach to Club Town Halls, rolling them into other existing podcasts. That left us with an archive of Town Hall events without a home – until now. Starting today, if you want to revisit our AV Club discussions of movies, TV shows, and other media or Town Halls from past Apple events, you can download the MP3s directly from the Club Downloads page here.

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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

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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Monthly Log — October 31, 2025

Ads in Maps: Are We on the Precipice of Ads Across All Apple Services?

Ads in Maps: Are We on the Precipice of Ads Across All Apple Services?

Last weekend, Mark Gurman reported that Apple is going to put advertising in its Maps app. Like many people, my reaction to the news was pretty negative. That’s not an unusual response, but on balance, I’m forgiving of ads in many contexts. As the person who sells the ads at MacStories, I understand the economics of the web all too well and recognize advertising’s role in making media affordable to more people. But there are ads, and then there are ads. Some ads and some contexts just don’t work as well as others, which I think is worth exploring when it comes to Maps.

Apple has been creeping deeper and deeper into advertising for years, stretching all the way back to 2010 with iAd. The company said those ads would be different, that they’d be tasteful and fit in nicely with iOS 4’s interface. According to Steve Jobs:

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