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.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
It was a quiet week on Discord, but Jarrod did make a very useful Raindrop collection including platform-agnostic links to all the best albums of 2024 that John and Federico shared on Unwind last week. (Link)
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Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.
Yes, I really am. But first…
This week saw the release of the .2 updates to all of Apple’s OSes and, with them, the introduction of a significant number of Apple Intelligence features. Federico shared an excellent write-up of them on MacStories, but it’s fair to say that none of the features are mind-blowing. Even the ChatGPT integration, which could have been very impactful, is only accessible through Siri, and even then, it feels like you’re jumping through a few hoops to get there.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
The Browser Company announced plans for a new AI browser this week, and members had some thoughts. (Link)
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
Utilities for the notch on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro screens seem to be having a resurgence of late. Niléane covered a couple of interesting ones a few months back, and I’ve seen some more pop up recently. One of those is an app called Alcove, and after using it for just over a week, I can confidently say I’m in love. Visually, it’s a delight, and as a utility, it’s clever and well thought out. Here’s what makes this app special to me.
First, let’s address these visuals: the UI animations are buttery smooth. The Dynamic Island on the iPhone has some of the best animations of any UI across Apple’s entire ecosystem, but Alcove comes very close, which is saying something.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Omzig42 linked to a helpful video showing how to fix a broken first-generation HomePod. I’ll certainly be tucking this away for when mine inevitably fail. (Link)
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
I wrote a few weeks ago about how I’m dealing with my tech anxiety by changing my approach to tech news. The following week, after the U.S. election, I applied that same philosophy to world news. A downside of this change is that there are a few stories that I feel have passed me by or that I haven’t discovered until days after they occurred. Now, a new service from Tyler Fisher called Sill might be able to help me keep up with the stories being discussed by people I know and trust.
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
I’m sure many of you have experienced this: you spend hours sweating over a problem only for someone to come along with an easy solution that takes a fraction of the time and significantly fewer tools. Well, it happened to me this past week. If you’ll remember, a couple of issues ago, I wrote about how I’d managed to obtain my wife’s TV Time data from the company with a GDPR request and used a Python script to – one-by-one – add each entry to her Trakt account. This allowed her to sync with Sequel and continue her TV tracking with a much more pleasant app.
If only I’d waited a week. Last Friday, Trakt introduced a tool for importing all of your tracking history from a wide range of sources. IMDB, Letterboxd, JSON files, and, yes, TV Time, are all supported. So the purpose of this first part of my column this week is to say, “Don’t do what I did!” Instead, head over to the Trakt website to use their very simple tool.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Our Black Friday channel has launched for the year. Head there to share or find some great tech deals.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Federico went to the farm!
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
After several years of non-interactivity, widgets became interactive again last year in iOS 17. What we mostly saw emerge were widgets with buttons – either huge, chunky buttons like on the Shortcuts widget or small buttons like on the Reminders widget. Those are great and all, but some developers decided to push those boundaries.
The first and most noticeable app to do so was, unsurprisingly, Widgetsmith. Its Music Collection Flow widget allows you to browse through your music collection in much the same way you could on iTunes back in the day. Other widgets from the likes of Widgetpod also offer a great deal of utility. That said, the one that I’ve been waiting for is a fully interactive weather widget.
