Wireless charging is great, but historically it’s been slow. That’s starting to change for the iPhone with Qi 2.2, the latest wireless charging standard that the iPhone 16 and 17 series phones support. With Qi 2.2, a compatible iPhone charges wirelessly at 25W. By comparison Qi 1 charged at 5–7.5W and Qi 2.0 and the original MagSafe charged at 15W. So far, though, there have been precious few chargers, besides Apple’s MagSafe puck charger, that support Qi 2.2’s faster charging, whic...| MacStories
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: Comfort Zone With Matt on Safari, Chris brings a brick, Niléane does an AMA, and the two have a listening party with some groovy tunes. In the Cozy Zone, Matt and Chris quiz Niléane on U.S. geography. MacStories Unwind This week, weekend outings and the chores we wish robots could do for us, plus Federico shares an anti-pick, and John is hooked on a gritty crime drama. Comfort Zone, Episode 71, ‘Macaroon’ Show Notes Main T...| MacStories
Apple announced today that it will be the exclusive U.S. broadcaster for Formula 1 racing. The five-year deal begins next year and will also include integrations with Apple News, Maps, Music, and Fitness+. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, said of the deal: We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Formula 1 and offer Apple TV subscribers in the U.S. front-row access to one of the most exciting and fastest-growing sports on the planet. 2026 marks a transformative n...| MacStories
Earlier today, Anthropic released Haiku 4.5, a new version of their “small and fast” model that matches Sonnet 4 performance from five months ago at a fraction of the cost and twice the speed. From their announcement: What was recently at the frontier is now cheaper and faster. Five months ago, Claude Sonnet 4 was a state-of-the-art model. Today, Claude Haiku 4.5 gives you similar levels of coding performance but at one-third the cost and more than twice the speed. And: Claude Sonnet 4.5,...| MacStories
Source: Apple. The MacBook Pro wasn’t the only Apple computer to receive an M5 update today. Both the 11” and 13” iPad Pros were updated with the company’s latest chip, too. As you’d expect, the performance boosts to the iPad Pro line closely resemble the enhancements to the 14” MacBook Pro, with up to 3.5× performance gains on AI workflows compared to the M4 iPad Pro and 5.6× the performance of an M1 iPad Pro, which is slightly less than the bump from an M1 Mac to the M5 MacBoo...| MacStories
Source: Apple. Today, Apple debuted the new 14” MacBook Pro with its latest M5 chip, which is available for purchase now alongside the existing M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro models. According to John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering: MacBook Pro continues to be the world’s best pro laptop, and today, the 14-inch MacBook Pro gets even better with the arrival of the M5 chip. M5 marks the next big leap in AI for the Mac, and delivers a huge boost in graphics pe...| MacStories
Today, Apple announced the first revision to the Vision Pro, the company’s mixed reality headset. The updated device sports an M5 chip and the new Dual Knit Band for improved comfort. The M5 chip is making its debut in the Vision Pro alongside the new MacBook Pro and iPad Pro. It features a 10-core CPU, a 16-core Neural Engine that’s up to 50% faster than the M2, and a 10-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading. The M5 allows the Vision Pro to render 10 percent mor...| MacStories
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: AppStories This week, with rumors of more products in the pipeline, Federico and John share what they want most from Apple before the end of the year. On AppStories+, Federico experiments with lightning fast inference and iteration using Cerebras for scripting. NPC: Next Portable Console This week, we wonder who the Lenovo Legion Go 2 is for, get excited about the AYN Thor reviews, discuss Digital Foundry’s iPhone 17 Pro gamin...| MacStories
One of the unsung benefits of modern LLMs – especially those with MCP support or proprietary app integrations – is their inherent ability to facilitate data transfer between apps and services that use different data formats. This is something I’ve been pondering for the past few months, and the latest episode of Cortex – where Myke wished it was possible to move between task managers like you can with email clients – was the push I needed to write something up. I’ve personally tak...| MacStories
Daft Music asks a question that’s been on my mind for a long while: what if Apple Music started over with a new Mac app? As a service, I love Apple Music. I’ve been a subscriber since day one. But I’m less enamored with the Music app, especially on the Mac. Music on the Mac has a long history dating back nearly 25 years to Apple’s acquisition of SoundJam MP, which became iTunes, an app for organizing your music collection, syncing it to your iPod, and, later, buying music. Over the ye...| MacStories
Setapp is the easy way to get the right Mac and iPhone apps – 250+ curated tools under one subscription so you can work smarter and finish on time. Hand-picked, worthy apps only Faster picks, smoother routine One predictable monthly fee MacStories Special: An extended 30-day free trial – Start your free 30-day Setapp trial| www.macstories.net
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: Comfort Zone Chris tries to sell us some new Logitech gear, Matt tries to sell some old challenges, and both of them try to sell Niléane on something from IKEA. In the Cozy Zone, the gang review their charging habits. And let’s just say, one dad likes to over-engineer everything, while the other dad is in desperate need of a new USB-C cable. MacStories Unwind This week, John stumbles upon a restaurant with a thing for the Ita...| MacStories
Brad Linder, writing for Liliputing: Earlier this year Synology announced that you’d need to use Synology-branded hard drives in its 2025 line of “Plus” branded network-attached storage devices if you wanted full functionality. While you could theoretically use a non-Synology drive with the Synology DiskStation DS225+, DS425+, DS925+ and other models, you’d be unable to create data storage pools, or use volume deduplication. As Linder reports, six months later, Synology has reversed...| MacStories
Liquid Glass is the sort of change that takes some getting used to from the perspective of both users and developers. The design language shifted a lot over the course of the summer beta season, which made developers’ lives tougher than in some years. This has resulted in a variety of Liquid Glass implementations across our favorite apps, which is a fascinating study in the range of designs Liquid Glass encompasses. Today, we wanted to share some of our favorite implementations of Liquid Gl...| MacStories
Well, that didn’t take long. In yesterday’s second developer beta of iPadOS 26.1, Apple restored the Slide Over functionality that was removed with the debut of the new windowing system in iPadOS 26.0 last month. Well…they sort of restored Slide Over, at least. In my review of iPadOS 26, I wrote: So in iPadOS 26, Apple decided to scrap Split View and Slide Over altogether, leaving users the choice between full-screen apps, a revamped Stage Manager, and the brand new windowed mode. At so...| MacStories
Gamery is the ultimate video game library app for iPhone and iPad—designed to look and feel right at home on Apple platforms. With a simple, stunning design now refreshed for iOS 26 and a beautiful new app icon, Gamery makes managing your games as sleek and enjoyable as playing them. Everything is thoughtfully built to| www.macstories.net
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: AppStories This week, Federico and John follow up after a week with new Apple hardware and dig into watchOS and visionOS 26. On AppStories+, John is mixing up his link and data organization systems - again. This episode is sponsored by: Claude – Get 50% off| www.macstories.net
Old and new through the liquid glass.| www.macstories.net
Earlier today, Apple published a press release highlighting some of the apps that are taking advantage of its new Foundation Models framework. As you’d expect, indie developers and small teams are well-represented among the apps promoted in the press release. Among them are: Smart Gym Stoic Journal Motivation CellWalk VLLO Detail Signeasy Essayist Agenda OmniFocus| www.macstories.net
Matt Birchler makes a great utility for the iPhone and iPad called Quick Subtitles that generates transcripts from a wide variety of audio and video files, something I do a lot. Sometimes it’s for adding subtitles to a podcast’s YouTube video and other times, I just want to recall a bit of information from a| www.macstories.net
Last Friday, just before midday, my new iPhone 17 Pro Max arrived at my home – a Deep Blue model with 512 GB of storage. Since then, it’s dropped neatly into my daily iPhone routine. In many ways, it’s not that different from the iPhone 16 Pro Max that I’ll be trading in. I’ve been on| www.macstories.net
Professional photographer Austin Mann published his annual tests of the new iPhone’s cameras. This year, Mann traveled to the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy to bike and photograph the mountain landscapes. It’s probably not surprising that the 17 Pro’s telephoto cameras were a perfect match with the Dolomites: After extensively testing the iPhone 17 Pro| www.macstories.net
I was as surprised as anyone when Apple announced that Logic Pro was coming to the iPad. I was excited too. Logic Pro is an app I use every week to produce MacStories’ podcasts, and I’d wanted the freedom to do that work on the iPad for a very long time. However, my excitement was| www.macstories.net
Today, Apple released Final Cut Pro for iPad alongside Logic Pro. I’ve been testing the app for about a week with sample projects from Apple and some drone footage I shot with one of my kids during the winter holidays. Like Logic Pro for iPad, Apple has packed a lot of sophisticated features into Final| www.macstories.net
The promise of portable dual monitors has always been compelling, but the execution has consistently fallen short, until now. JSAUX’s FlipGo 16” Dual Touchscreen Monitor breaks new productivity ground for Mac users. Unlike some alternatives, the FlipGo Pro leverages both DisplayLink technology and native connectivity to deliver true dual-screen functionality on Apple silicon Macs with| www.macstories.net
Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.| www.macstories.net
Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.| www.macstories.net
Apple released the first public betas of iOS and iPadOS 26 last week, and I’m going to cut to the chase with this story: although I’m still wrapping my head around Liquid Glass and trying to understand where this new design language will land, iPadOS 26 has fundamentally revolutionized my workflow in just a little| www.macstories.net
Longplay by Adrian Schönig is an excellent album-oriented music app that integrates with Apple Music. The app started on iOS and iPadOS, then later added support for visionOS. With today’s update, Longplay is available on macOS, too, where it adds unique automation features. If you aren’t familiar with Longplay, be sure to check out my| www.macstories.net
I never expected my game controller obsession to pay automation dividends, but it did last week in the form of the tiny 16-button 8BitDo Micro. For the past week, I’ve used the Micro to dictate on my Mac, interact with AI chatbots, and record and edit podcasts. While the setup won’t replace a Stream Deck| www.macstories.net
We’re days away from WWDC, and I’m excited. As much as I enjoy a good Apple hardware event, it’s WWDC’s focus on software that I truly love. But what WWDC means to me runs much deeper than the OS updates we’ll hear about next week. Of course, Apple’s announcements are a big part of what| www.macstories.net
DeepSeek released an updated version of their popular R1 reasoning model (version 0528) with – according to the company – increased benchmark performance, reduced hallucinations, and native support for function calling and JSON output. Early tests from Artificial Analysis report a nice bump in performance, putting it behind OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini-high in their Intelligence| www.macstories.net
Over the course of my career, I’ve had three distinct moments in which I saw a brand-new app and immediately felt it was going to change how I used my computer – and they were all about empowering people to do more with their devices. I had that feeling the first time I tried Editorial,| www.macstories.net
It all started because I wanted a better keyboard for my Vision Pro. I had no idea that, in looking for one, I’d accidentally create the hybrid Apple computer of my dreams. As I quickly discovered after working on the Vision Pro daily, you can get by without an external trackpad, but a keyboard is| www.macstories.net
In working with my iPad Pro over the past few months, I’ve realized something that might have seemed absurd just a few years ago: some of the best apps I’m using – the ones with truly desktop-class layouts and experiences – aren’t native iPad apps. They’re web apps. Before I continue and share some examples,| www.macstories.net
Yesterday, it was reported that Apple had resumed advertising on X (formerly Twitter). The company ceased advertising on the site without comment in November 2023, but earlier this week, ads for a Safari privacy feature and the Apple TV+ show Severance began appearing on X. Apple has not commented on why the change was made.| www.macstories.net
Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.| www.macstories.net
John: The process of picking the MacStories Selects awards is simple. During the past year as we used and reviewed hundreds of apps, Federico, Ryan, and I kept a shared note in Apple Notes with a list of the apps that struck us as potential candidates for one of our 2019 awards. Not long ago,| www.macstories.net
John: 2024 was a big year for apps, but it was also different from most. More often than not, app innovation is driven by new Apple APIs; that wasn’t the case this year. Instead, it was other trends that shaped the apps we love. Artificial intelligence played a big role, with some apps adopting it| www.macstories.net
The headline may be a little provocative, but this article by Matt Birchler encapsulates a lot of the feelings I shared on the latest episode of Connected following Apple’s decisions regarding the Patreon iOS app. Part of this is that Apple is no longer the underdog, they’re the biggest fish in the sea. It’s simply| www.macstories.net
Today, Patreon alerted creators who use its platform that Patreon must begin using Apple’s In-App Purchases system in its iOS app or face the app’s removal from the store. According to Patreon: This has two major consequences for creators: Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon| www.macstories.net
Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and friends.| www.macstories.net
Let me cut to the chase: sadly, I don’t have a new iPad Pro to review today on MacStories. I was able to try one in London last week, and, as I wrote, I came away impressed with the hardware. However, I didn’t get a chance to use a new iPad Pro over the past| www.macstories.net
I just came back to my hotel from the media event Apple held earlier today in London at their Battersea Power Station headquarters. I had high expectations for the new generation of iPad Pros that Apple unveiled today – some of which were exceeded by reality (hardware), and others that were, regrettably but unsurprisingly, faced| www.macstories.net
Last year at this time, I beta-tested Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. I was impressed with both and found editing podcasts in Logic Pro for iPad surprisingly easy. That said, both apps were still limited compared to what their sibling versions could do on the Mac. With today’s update, Apple appears to| www.macstories.net
The big news for the new iPad Air is that it comes in two sizes now: 11” and a new 13” model. The Air has also upgraded from the M1 to the M2 chip and moved the front-facing camera to the landscape side of the tablet, and it has higher storage configurations, works with the| www.macstories.net
At its Let Loose video event today, Apple introduced new 11” and 13” iPad Pros. Both models come in Silver and Space Black and feature OLED displays, the M4 chip, and more. Based on the specs Apple shared, both iPad Pro models appear to be significant upgrades over the existing M2 models. The Design Apple| www.macstories.net
Today, the European Union announced that it has added iPadOS to the products and services subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The designation gives Apple six months to comply with the DMA. In a press release, the European Commission said: The Commission’s investigation found that Apple presents the features of a gatekeeper in relation| www.macstories.net
What a week. When it began to look like Apple would announce how it planned to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), I expected small changes at the margins that wouldn’t significantly move the needle in the EU or anywhere else. Boy, I was wrong. Instead, we got a far-reaching, complex response that| www.macstories.net
Just ahead of the macOS High Sierra update, Bjango released iStats Menus 6, an update to its comprehensive suite of tools that sit in your Mac’s menu bar and monitor its systems and now, even the weather. With highly customizable notifications, iStat Menus is an excellent way to know what’s going on with your Mac| www.macstories.net
