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.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Tommertron shared a clever idea to avoid getting lost amongst multiple home screens of apps. (Link)
While writing my review of the Aqara G410 Video Doorbell last week, I found myself browsing through the many third-party HomeKit apps available on the App Store. I was surprised to see a couple of clever new ones, as well as to rediscover significantly updated versions of apps I hadn’t touched in months. Here’s a roundup of the ones worth taking a look at.
If there’s one thing HomeKit users can all empathize with, it’s having accessories disconnect from HomeKit or, worse, from the Wi-Fi network altogether. HomeCare aims to help with these issues by offering diagnostic tools to check the connections, response times, and battery levels of your HomeKit smart devices.
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Castro is now available on the iPad with full iCloud sync across devices. The update adds HTML rendering for better show notes, too. I rarely listen to podcasts on my iPad, but it’s nice to know it’s now an option, especially since this is a feature that many other podcast players have had for a long time.
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an update to one of my favorite apps (at least design-wise), Poolside FM. In talking about it, I marvelled at the minor design details and reminded myself that I need to use more apps whose UI design delights me. Enter Macrowave, the new app from developer Lucas Fischer, who also made the image compression utility Kompressor. Like Kompressor, Macrowave does one particular thing well, surrounded by a fun, visually engaging UI.
The one-sentence pitch for Macrowave would probably be, “What if you could turn your Mac into a private radio station?” It does this by taking the audio from an app of your choosing on your Mac and broadcasting it to other Macrowave users who have your unique URL using peer-to-peer technology. There’s very minimal latency and even a microphone button that allows you to talk over whatever you’re broadcasting.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
T.G. Cid made a funky new keyboard. (Link)
More stories for Club members.
With macOS Tahoe, Apple will introduce a new UI design in line with its other OSes: Liquid Glass. Along with the new UI come updates to the way app icons are presented. While the changes aren’t too dramatic on iOS and iPadOS, icons on macOS will undergo some significant modifications. Most notably, Apple will soon force developers to create app icons that fit the company’s “squircle” format.
Apple has had to do the same with many of its own app icons. As with any change in this vein, there are plenty of examples at both the good and bad ends of the spectrum. So this week, I’m going to evaluate ten of the most notable icon changes coming in macOS Tahoe. Red pens at the ready!
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Inspired by a request from Evan, members discussed the best ways to get low latency with a mouse. (Link)
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
It must be said that I don’t drink wine too often, certainly not enough to log the bottles I drink. Nevertheless, if I did, I could see myself getting a lot of use out of Uncorked. This new wine tracking app has a lovely, clean design and allows you to log the wines you drink alongside your thoughts on them. However, that’s not the only purpose of Uncorked, as it includes journal-like features and encourages you to save photos from the moment you uncorked that $200 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, making it about more than just the wine.
Highlights of the latest Club MacStories+ happenings.
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord:
Nicolas found an Anthropic server in the wild. (Link)
Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.
Something that has been bothering me recently is the idea of “good enough”. By that, I mean the acquiescence we have for something being “fine” for its purpose, even though we very well know that it could be better.
Generative AI is the area where I find it most prevalent. The fact that a computer has generated something is often the reason people use it, not because it’s any good. I know many people had fun with the Studio Ghibli-inspired image generation trend a few months back, but the reason people enjoyed them was the novelty that they were generated by a computer that could make them quickly according to the prompt it had been given. When set side by side with some genuine Studio Ghibli art, the results are objectively bad. But on their own, the vague, handwaving similarities to the real art were “good enough” for a large majority of the meme-sharing public.
