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.
Great reads and links from around the web.
Windows 95 Crocs are second only to Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs. (Link)
Adobe Premiere is available for the iPhone and iPad. I’m looking forward to trying this to see how it stacks up to Final Cut Pro on the iPad. (Link)
Yesterday I saw on Mastodon that The Iconfactory had sold its app BitcCm app to Héliographe. I had completely forgotten about BitCam, which sent me down the path of exploring other retro style camera apps. There are a lot of them on the App Store, but the good ones are few and far between. Here are three that I like a lot.
BitCam debuted in 2016 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Iconfactory. As Federico wrote when it debuted:
Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.
It all started as procrasti-work. It was mid-August, and I probably should have been writing my macOS Tahoe review. Instead, I was watching TV, thinking about my next week’s MacStories Unwind pick, and messing around with Shortcuts and AI tools, when an idea popped into my head, demanding my attention.
Federico and I have been doing MacStories Unwind for about five years. I love doing the show because the format is so informal, and it gives us both an outlet to share things we love beyond our typical MacStories coverage. The show has played an important role as an idea lab for what led to NPC: Next Portable Console and the relaunch of the MacStories Deals social accounts.
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Rogue Words brings roguelikes to word games. Although this Editor’s Choice game isn’t exactly new, it’s new to me, and I was impressed with how often it is updated. The game features word-building puzzles that incorporate the aspects of Scrabble combined with deck-building-like elements from roguelikes that result in a uniquely fun game.
A week ago, an article in the Harvard Business Review by Kate Niederhoffer, Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, Angela Lee, Alex Liebscher, Kristina Rapuano, and Jeffrey T. Hancock got a lot of press for coining the term “workslop” to define a particular type of generative AI found in the workplace. The authors came up with the term as part of a quest to solve a mystery:
A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools: while workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value. Consider, for instance, that the number of companies with fully AI-led processes nearly doubled last year, while AI use has likewise doubled at work since 2023. Yet a recent report from the MIT Media Lab found that 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these technologies. So much activity, so much enthusiasm, so little return. Why?
Great reads and links from around the web.
Apple has documented all the changes that have arrived in Safari 26.0, which include anchor positioning and scroll-driven animations for CSS, HDR image support, the new HTML <model> element for 3D content, immersive video support on visionOS, and more. (Link)
Simon Støvring posted a tutorial on how to restore macOS’ classic oddly-shaped app icons in macOS 26 Tahoe. Spoiler: you’ll want to save backups of existing .icns files first. (Link)
More stories for Club members.
It’s been three years since I bought my Apple Watch Ultra, so I was excited to try the Ultra 3 this fall. I updated my watch primarily because its battery health was at 84%. That’s not terrible, but charging had become a daily chore, and if I recorded multiple walks or other exercises, I occasionally found myself waking up in the morning with a depleted battery. I was also intrigued by features like the pinch and wrist flick gestures that Apple Watches have gained, along with the hypertension monitoring. So today, I thought I’d take a closer look at what the first week of the transition has been like.
In many ways, there’s been no transition from the Ultra 1 to the 3 at all. Once I transferred my data to the new watch, everything looked the same. But of course, there are differences, too.
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Working Copy, the powerful Git client for iPhone and iPad that I’ve been using for a long time to share and edit drafts of all my articles, received a major update this week that brings full compatibility with iOS and iPadOS 26. The app now sports a fresh Liquid Glass design language and, on the iPad, a native menu bar that makes app commands easier to discover and access. The update introduces several other improvements, including the ability to open files directly in other apps from the context menu without going through the share sheet, and – thanks to Apple Intelligence’s on-device Foundation model – filename suggestions when creating text files from the clipboard.
