Later this year the team at Niantic will launch a new game based on a very popular IP: Harry Potter. The game's full title is Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and it will come to both iOS and Android as an AR-centered gaming experience in the vein of Pokémon GO, Niantic's biggest hit … | Continue reading
Today Apple announced a special event at the Steve Jobs Theater for March 25, 2019, at 10:00 am Pacific time. Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch posted an image of the press invitation to Twitter: Please join us for an Apple special eventat the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. March … | Continue reading
Editor’s NoteThe following story was originally published in Issue 163 of the MacStories Weekly newsletter on February 15, 2019. We wanted to share it as an example of the type of longform stories exclusive to Club MacStories members. Every year, we publish around 60 issues of Ma … | Continue reading
Strike is a beautifully-designed, modern writing app for the Mac and iOS that brings together all the tools you need whether you’re working by yourself or with colleagues. Strike streamlines the process of writing allowing you to get ideas down quickly with its Smart Markdown sys … | Continue reading
When a productivity app feels like it's reached maturity, it's in a dangerous position: if active development is neglected, the app will start to stagnate amidst a changing world, but on the other hand, if change is pursued for its own sake, the app can easily become bloated and … | Continue reading
If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you’re probably familiar with its playlist artwork styles. Some work well to tie together collections of related playlists like Decades, Essentials, and Deep Cuts. The trouble is though, that has also bred a certain sameness across Apple Music … | Continue reading
One of our favorite third-party podcast clients, Castro, was updated today with improvements aimed at offering a better discovery experience. Through curated podcast collections, new buttons to add podcasts to your library, and instant search, Castro's development team has brough … | Continue reading
In a bit of unexpected gaming news, Sony has released PS4 Remote Play, an iOS app that allows PS4 owners to play the console’s games on an iPhone or iPad over WiFi. Although it’s a surprising development this late in the lifecycle of the PS4, it’s great to see Sony continuing to … | Continue reading
Federico talks about the new MacStories Shortcuts Archive and the guys check in with iOS 12 halfway through its lifecycle. On this week's episode of Connected, we reassess the impact of iOS 12's major new features. You can listen here. Sponsored by: ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure … | Continue reading
After several months of work, I'm pleased to announce the MacStories Shortcuts Archive – the official repository for shortcuts I've created over the years (including when they used to be called | Continue reading
Today in an update to its iOS and Mac apps, the email client Spark has introduced new rich text formatting options to enable greater flexibility in styling your messages. Spark already included the expected bold, italics, and underline options, and its macOS version previously al … | Continue reading
On this week's episode of AppStories, we discuss our iOS 13 wishes for the Files app and iPad home screen. Sponsored by: DEVONthink – Information management reinvented: Save, organize, and recall all your documents whenever you need them. Use the link above or the code: promo-app … | Continue reading
When you visit a website, few things are more frustrating than when your browser doesn’t work as expected because the site has disabled common interface features. StopTheMadness is a Safari and Firefox extension that prevents sites from modifying how your browser works when you v … | Continue reading
A week from tomorrow is International Women’s Day. To mark the day, Apple has announced a series of events throughout the month of March. In the US, Apple is partnering with Girls Can Code to bring programming to more girls and young women. The program includes Swift training for … | Continue reading
Soor, a third-party client for Apple Music created by indie developer Tanmay Sonawane, is based upon a fascinating premise: unlike other standalone music players for iPhone, Soor works with Apple's native MusicKit API, enabling direct integration with Apple Music; unlike Apple's … | Continue reading
After skipping follow-up, Myke and Federico try to explain the new USB branding, discuss fingerprint sensors and the merits of Evernote in 2019, and wish for apps that don’t exist (but should). On this week's episode of Connected, I share more details about my Evernote experiment … | Continue reading
Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors about the latest rebrand in USB spec land: The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), this week announced a rebranding of the USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 specifications, under the USB 3.2 specification. As outlined by Tom's Hardware, USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 will … | Continue reading
What should a wrist computer ideally do for you? Telling the time is a given, and activity tracking has become another default inclusion for that category of gadget. But we're talking about a computer here, not a simple watch with built-in pedometer. The device should present the … | Continue reading
On this week's episode of AppStories, we discuss some of the trends we expect will drive app development on iOS and the Mac this year and into the future. Sponsored by: MacStadium – Private clouds and dedicated Macs for developers and teams doing iOS/Mac app development. Start a … | Continue reading
Every few months, I like to use Twitter's official app for iPhone and iPad for a while and reassess its advantages over third-party clients, as well as its shortcomings. This is something I've been doing for several years now. While I've often come away unimpressed with Twitter's … | Continue reading
I’ve used Grocery on and off for a long time, but what finally made it stick in a way that it never did in the app’s early days was the addition of a HomePod in my living room/kitchen area. The app is built on top of Apple Reminders, which means that even from the earliest […] | Continue reading
Apple's Home app is great when it comes to controlling your smart home accessories. But once you start adding automations to your home, you quickly encounter the limits of the Home app. HomeKit is much more capable and flexible than what Apple has to offer. There is another Home … | Continue reading
Molly McHugh writing for The Ringer: The saturation of iOS and Mac products means more and more people own Apple devices—which means more and more people need help using them. Each iOS and MacOS release reveals a new suite of tools and capabilities, but also new challenges and co … | Continue reading
Mitchel Broussard of MacRumors recently published an in-depth look at the problems classical music fans have with Apple Music's approach to that expansive genre. Unlike many other common genres, such as hip-hop, pop, and country, the range of music deemed 'classical' bears its ow … | Continue reading
Jason Snell writing about a recent Apple hire for Macworld: This past week we learned that the company has hired a new head of home products, which makes me ask the question: What exactly does Apple expect Sam Jadallah to do? Is his job to make deals with HomeKit partners and mak … | Continue reading
I last covered Eventail in April 2018, when its developer Jozef Legeny brought support for the iPhone X and new color schemes to his compact calendar widget for iPhone and iPad. With version 3.1 released today, Eventail (which over the past year also gained support for overdue re … | Continue reading
The boys dive into a sea of rumors after Federico explores San Jose's municipal websites, Myke gives everyone a gift and Stephen returns from a journey. On this week's episode of Connected, we discuss the latest Marzipan rumors and consider the implications of a 6K display made b … | Continue reading
A week ago, Apple sent an email to developers announcing that it would require two-factor authentication for all developer accounts beginning February 27, 2019. The message linked to an Apple two-factor authentication support page that applies to all Apple IDs. The trouble was, t … | Continue reading
Jason Snell's podcasting setup is similar to mine – he wants to hear his own voice, record his local audio track, and have a conversation with multiple people on Skype, who also need to hear his voice coming from an external microphone. And he wants to use one computer to do it a … | Continue reading
iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed. After several years without updates to a product that, somewhat oddly, | Continue reading
Apple shared five new videos on its YouTube channel today, all of which center around working on an iPad Pro. Each video covers a different iPad workflow, as described by the following titles: A new way to host your own podcast A new way to create a presentation A new way to go p … | Continue reading
Evgeny Cherpak’s iOS app, Remote Control for Mac, has been updated with Siri shortcut support, which opens up some interesting ways to control a Mac with shortcuts. I’ve been using the app’s new Siri shortcuts for about a week and, as I covered on AppStories today, the shortcuts … | Continue reading
When Spotify was my music streaming service of choice, one of the features I really liked was its personalized Wrapped report generated at the end of the year. I've always been a fan of geeky annual reports and stats about the usage of any given web service – be it Spotify, Pocke … | Continue reading
In a first among TV manufacturers, Samsung has announced that its 2019 TVs will ship with an iTunes Movies and TV Shows app in over 100 countries as well as AirPlay 2 support in 190 countries. 2018 models will receive the same support via a firmware update. With the Consumer Elec … | Continue reading
Last year when I wrote about my must-have Mac apps, I was coming off a tumultuous year that started with a daily commute into Chicago for my old job and ended with me working from home. As the year came to a close, I was exploring what that meant for the way I work on […] | Continue reading
Putting together my annual list of Must-Have iOS Apps is an exercise in analyzing the trends of the year and considering which ones had the biggest impact on how I use my iPhone and iPad. Two years ago, it was web services and open APIs; last year, I focused on collaboration with … | Continue reading
iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed. One of my favorite aspects of working on the iPad is the flexibility granted by its extensible form factor. At its very essenc … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Brussels. Cook, who has stated many times that Apple believes privacy is a fundamental human right, called for federal privacy legislation. As transcribed in Ars … | Continue reading
In the summer of 2017, Panic released Transmit 5, a top-to-bottom update to the company’s excellent file transfer app for the Mac. At the same time, Panic left the Mac App Store like many Mac apps have in recent years. Panic’s Cabel Sasser explained that the company wanted the ab … | Continue reading
Apple has just published its financial results for Q4 2018. The company posted revenue of $62.9 billion. Apple sold 9.7 million iPads, 46.9 million iPhones, and 5.3 million Macs during the quarter. We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutiv … | Continue reading
Since it was announced at WWDC over the summer, the lion’s share of conversation around shortcuts has been about getting things done quickly and efficiently. Apple’s marketing message focuses on how shortcuts in iOS 12 help “streamline the things you do often” using Siri and/or t … | Continue reading
The iPhone XR won't show up on your doorstep or at your local Apple Store until Friday, but today the embargo on reviews for the device was lifted. The common refrain from reviewers is that the XR is more similar to the XS than different. So similar that Nicole Nguyen of Buzzfeed … | Continue reading
Last week we linked to Marco Arment’s article critiquing Apple’s watch faces and calling for Apple to open up watch face design and development to third parties. By the next day, Steve Troughton-Smith had an Xcode project up and running that uses SpriteKit to simulate custom watc … | Continue reading
In a post on Marco.org, Overcast developer Marco Arment critiques the design of many of the current Apple Watch faces. Using a variety of analog watches as references, Arment highlights the design elements that make them legible, few of which are followed by Apple’s faces: Across … | Continue reading
Yoink is the app I use on my Mac every day as a temporary spot to park files, snippets of text, images, and URLs. By itself, Yoink for Mac has been a fantastic time-saver. The latest updates to Yoink for iOS and the Mac, however, have been transformative. There's more that can be … | Continue reading
MacStories readers may be familiar with the way I like to present iPhone screenshots in app reviews and other stories – particularly for | Continue reading
watchOS had a bumpy first few years. Some poor decisions and perhaps a premature initial launch forced significant design changes to be in order right away. It wasn't until last year's watchOS 4 release that it finally felt like the waters had calmed. Apple seemed to have solidif … | Continue reading