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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.

449 — January 18, 2025

My Digital Wife Tried to Take Over My Digital Life

MACSTORIES EXTRAS

More stories for Club members.

My Digital Wife Tried to Take Over My Digital Life

I’m sure anyone who has gotten married, been to a wedding, or listened to The Spice Girls will be familiar with the concept of “two become one”. By this, I mean a romantic couple who are now so close in their relationship that they are “as one”. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a nice sentiment, but while I love my wife 3,000, share a bank account with her, and have an amazing child with her, we are still very individual. We certainly would not consider ourselves “one”.

But tell that to the digital version of my wife, who recently went on a heist across two platforms, trying to take over my life – or, at the very least, absorb herself into mine. It started a few weeks back when my wife (let’s call her Lucía because, well, that’s her name) asked me to fix some preferences on her YouTube account. She allowed me to sign in on my Mac, and I made the changes. Subsequently, whenever I visited YouTube or used Google Search, the active profile was always Lucía’s. I knew that could be easily fixed, so I signed out of her account, keeping mine active.

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448 — January 11, 2025

My Apple Watch Wish List for 2025

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

My Apple Watch Wish List for 2025

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you all had a great break. I certainly did, working on a few side projects and thinking about my workflows. I also spent some time considering where the Apple Watch and watchOS stand going into 2025.

Last year, I wrote my first watchOS review for watchOS 11. It was a great experience, but it certainly revealed a few of the platform’s shortcomings and gave me ideas for how the OS could be improved. So this week, let’s dive into the additions and changes I would like to see come to the Apple Watch in 2025.

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447 — December 21, 2024

My Favorites of the Year in Threes

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

My Favorites of the Year in Threes

It’s almost the end of 2024, and there are lots of best-of lists floating around. It’s part of the predictable yearly news cycle. I’m nothing if not predictable, so here are some of my favorites of 2024, in multiples of three, each with a slight twist.

Tech Stories

There have been so many big tech news stories this year, but rather than recap the same ones covered elsewhere so well, I’m going to take a slightly different angle. Optimistic, life-affirming tech stories seem hard to find sometimes, so here are my favorite stories that made me smile this year.

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446 — December 14, 2024

Albums, Albums, and Albums

SPOTLIGHT ON CLUB MACSTORIES+

Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.

Albums, Albums, and Albums

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)

Want to join the Club MacStories+ Discord? Upgrade to Club MacStories+ or Club Premier, then visit the Account page.

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446 — December 14, 2024

I’m Going to Compliment Apple’s AI Efforts

THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

I’m Going to Compliment Apple’s AI Efforts

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.

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445 — December 7, 2024

Alcove: An Excellent Notch Utility with Beautiful Animations →

MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS

Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.

Alcove: An Excellent Notch Utility with Beautiful Animations

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.

Maximum Customization

You can even tweak the padding.

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.

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