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Jonathan Reed

Contributor

Mastodon: @jonathanreed@techhub.socialEmail: jonathan@macstories.net

Jonathan is a graphic designer at DesignStudio. As well as being a long-time Apple user he is a huge film and television aficionado and is very interested in the intersection between the two mediums and technology. He lives in London with his wife and daughter and is writing his bio in the third person.

App Debuts

APP DEBUTS

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

Quick Capture for Obsidian

I’ve been keeping an eye on this Obsidian companion utility for a while now, and I decided to take it for a spin earlier this week. I think it has a lot of potential, with a couple of confusing aspects I’d like the developer to work on. The idea behind Quick Capture – similar to Funnel – is that you can set up multiple capture destinations across your Obsidian vault, create new notes or append text to existing ones, attach voice recordings with transcriptions, scan documents, add images, and even send sketches. Compared to Funnel, I find Quick Capture’s design more polished and intuitive, and I’m a fan of the triple toolbar (seriously!) above the keyboard that contains formatting buttons, attachments, and destinations. However, I found the app’s setup flow for Obsidian sub-folders slightly confusing (I had to set up my Daily Notes sub-folder as a “vault” because, otherwise, the app wouldn’t save changes inside my daily note), and the integration with Todoist never worked for me. I hope the developer continues refining the app, and I’ll continue checking out its future updates.

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Should Apple Change Their Approach to Feature Rollouts?

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

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Should Apple Change Their Approach to Feature Rollouts?

So, something’s rotten in the state of Cupertino, you say?

I’m sure you’ve read a lot of coverage over the past week about how Apple’s promised “more personalized Siri” ended up being a concept video from last year’s WWDC that was essentially vaporware. I’m not going to dunk on Apple even more here – not because they don’t deserve it, but because many other, much smarter people have said everything that needed to be said.

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My Favorite App Icons

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

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My Favorite App Icons

For reasons that will become apparent in the near future, I’ve been talking a lot about app icons this week. Their importance, creativity, and ability to communicate many things to people with just a small number of pixels is always impressive. This inspired me to think about the app icons I’ve seen over the years and run down my favorites.

App icons are used on many platforms and devices, so to simplify matters, I thought I’d stick to iOS icons. I’m also limiting myself to apps’ official icons. There are many incredible icon sets out there, and going through all that incredible work would keep me busy for months.

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Searching For Lofi Delights

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Searching For Lofi Delights

Two weeks ago, Apple released the first beta version of iOS 18.4. Among some smaller updates and additions – including the long-promised Priority Notifications – was the unexpected appearance of a new Ambient Music feature. Accessible via Control Center, Ambient Music includes four different modes that offer a different variation on the theme of ambience: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. While I was trying out this new feature, it became apparent that Apple was aiming for a particular genre of music with it: lofi.

I often listen to lofi music to help me focus or when I don’t know what to listen to while working, so the idea of accessing it quickly and easily from Control Center was intriguing.

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Setting Up My New MacBook Pro from Scratch with the Help of Supercharge

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

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Setting Up My New MacBook Pro from Scratch with the Help of Supercharge

This week, I took delivery of a new MacBook Pro, snatching it from the delivery man perhaps a bit more eagerly than was necessary. It’s been a few years since I’ve spent my own money on a Mac, typically doubling up my work-supplied computer for any personal use. That was very fortunate, as I always got decently specced machines, but since I’m going freelance again, it was time to invest in a Mac that would pack a wallop and last me a few years. After much consideration, I purchased an M4 Max MacBook Pro with the maximum number of cores, 64GB of built-in memory, and a 1TB drive.

I must have been feeling a bit protective of my new companion, because the idea of just transferring all the data from my previous M1 Pro MacBook Pro straight over to my new Mac via Migration Assistant seemed wrong. That Mac had become quite messy. My file-organizing system has always been excellent, if I do say so myself, but there were a number of apps and utilities, as well as their accompanying settings, that were littering my hard drive. A culling of unused apps and settings was past due.

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How Apple Could Meet Us Halfway with Third-Party Watch Faces

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

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How Apple Could Meet Us Halfway with Third-Party Watch Faces

When it comes to Apple’s platforms, there are a few specific features that users have been eagerly clamoring for over the years. Touchscreen Macs are high on that list, along with the ability to download apps from third-party app stores. One feature that seems to have been near the top of people’s wish lists for almost as long as the product has existed is custom third-party watch faces for the Apple Watch. Apple has long rebuffed these requests, with the assumption being that the company doesn’t want to spend time going down the route of developing APIs and tools for such a feature.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently and the way Apple previously offered us a taste of one particularly popular feature before rolling out the fully-powered version. More and more, I think Apple could test the waters of third-party watch faces without breaking too much of a sweat. Here’s why.

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