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469 — June 6, 2025

A Pair of Bonus Apple Wishes: Beyond the OSes

John

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

A Pair of Bonus Apple Wishes: Beyond the OSes

John

I keep a running note of all the things I’d like to see changed or added in Apple’s OSes that serves as the starting point for the annual wish list episodes we just concluded on AppStories. Having spent the past several weeks digging through those notes and recording those episodes, I’ve had wishes on my mind a lot, so I figured, “Why stop?” Today, I thought it would be fun to go broader and longer term with my wishes.

Build a World-Class Videogame Studio

Anyone who follows the videogame industry knows it’s in crisis. Studios are closing, people are losing their jobs, and promising projects are being canceled nearly every day. It’s not a good situation, but it is a business opportunity for a company like Apple that has a lot of cash.

469 — June 6, 2025

Interesting Links

INTERESTING LINKS

Great reads and links from around the web.

John

Steven Levy at Wired interviewed Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, about AI and where it’s heading. (Link)

Rolling Stone’s Christopher Cruz interviewed Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki about the challenges of producing an open world racing game that’s accessible to a wide audience. (Link)

469 — June 6, 2025

WWDC Week Is Nearly Here

John

WWDC Week Is Nearly Here

Next week is a big week here at MacStories. WWDC is always a lot of fun, and as always, we’ll have a lot of coverage on MacStories.

Because Federico and I will be traveling to Cupertino for the event, we’ve shifted the schedule around a little. First, next week, we’ll publish MacStories Weekly on Saturday instead of Friday to give us a little time to catch our breath and reflect on the events of the week. Second, there will be no MacStories Unwind next week because there’s simply no spare time to record it in California and we’ll be traveling the second half of the week.

469 — June 6, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

John

GamingBuddy

GamingBuddy added an iPad version this week. It’s a great addition to an already excellent app for managing your collection of videogames, keeping up with new releases, finding reviews, and more. On the iPad, there’s more room for artwork and all the app’s other content. Everything syncs with the iPhone version over iCloud, and you can now create custom tags for your games, too.

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Monthly Log — May 31, 2025

Building "The Daily Star" with Claude Sonnet and Opus 4.0

John

Building "The Daily Star" with Claude Sonnet and Opus 4.0

John

Last week was exhausting, so going into a long holiday weekend, I wanted to unwind. Naturally, I turned to automation. Weird, I know, but getting lost in automating things is the kind of absorbing task that gets my mind off of other things and doesn’t feel like work.

The timing was right because I’d been playing around with Sky, which Federico covered on MacStories this week. It’s a remarkable app that’s fundamentally different from other automation tools.

468 — May 30, 2025

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

John

Guided Meditation & Sleep

Guided Meditation & Sleep is a new meditation and sleep app for the iPhone with an extensive library of content. You can download the app for free to try a selection of its 200+ meditation programs that range in length from a few minutes to 45 minutes. A subscription unlocks the full library. The app’s programs include breathing exercises, affirmations, and visualizations, plus there are over 300 music tracks and sounds that are designed to help you fall asleep. It’s a very deep library with a lot more content that’s worth checking out if you’re looking for a meditation app with plenty of variety.

468 — May 30, 2025

First Look: Obsidian Bases

John

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

First Look: Obsidian Bases

John

Bases is a brand new Obsidian feature that’s currently only available as part of the app’s early access program. However, I’ve been playing around with it this week, and the beta documentation is available to anyone, so I thought I’d share how it works for anyone who already has access and hasn’t tried it as well as for those who will be getting it soon.

If you’ve ever tried the third-party DB Folder or Dataview plugins, Bases is similar. But it’s a new core plugin that ships with the default Obsidian configuration, so you don’t have to hunt for it. At its core, Bases is a way to turn notes into databases, which are perfect for organizing large collections of similar notes, whether that’s something like a list of books you’ve read, entries in a journal, or a series of meeting notes.