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
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: Comfort Zone https://youtu.be/AGfhgaDRSxw Niléane is out on assignment, so Chris and Matt hold down the fort, discussing what “pro” tools look like, the most pro Thunderbolt dock you can buy, and how they automated their note-taking. This episode is sponsored by: Ecamm Live – Broadcast Better| www.macstories.net
DEVONthink is a difficult app to review because its flexibility means it can serve a wide variety of purposes. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks as an archive and research companion that houses thousands of plain text files, but the app is capable of effectively replacing your Mac’s file system, storing and| www.macstories.net
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories' family of podcasts: AppStories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBHT9FcpA0c This week, Federico and John reflect on where the iPad fits within their workflows after the announcement of iPadOS 26. Then, on AppStories+, they explore the potential for an Apple automation renaissance built on the features announced at WWDC. NPC: Next Portable Console https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBBFOmH3TGA| MacStories - Apple news, app reviews, and stories by Federico Viticci and fri...
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: AppStories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j2DX4A718A This week, Federico and John catch listeners up on their whirlwind WWDC week, which was chaotic in the best possible way. On AppStories+, Federico and John get excited about what the WWDC announcements say about the direction of automation on Apple’s platforms. This episode| www.macstories.net
Late last Tuesday night, after watching F1: The Movie at the Steve Jobs Theater, I was driving back from dropping Federico off at his hotel when I got a text: Can you pick me up? It was from my son Finn, who had spent the evening nearby and was stalking me in Find My. Of| www.macstories.net
Albums is the player that cares as much about your music library as you do. Made by music-obsessed solo developer Adam Linder, Albums provides the best alternative to the built-in Music app for true music lovers. MacStories readers can redeem an extra-long two-week free trial of Albums Premium. Albums is the infinite, high-tech CD binder or vinyl crate| www.macstories.net
This year’s WWDC was a packed event by most metrics. Apple introduced a new visual style across all of its platforms called Liquid Glass. Not only that, but the company also announced significant multitasking updates to iPadOS, powerful features for Spotlight on macOS, and numerous other upgrades across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.| www.macstories.net
Proxyman is the native, high-performance debugging proxy that makes monitoring and analyzing your app’s network stack almost effortless. Built with Swift and Apple Silicon in mind, it runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, so every member of your team can peek under the hood without wrestling with legacy-era UIs. Proxyman’s toolkit goes far beyond simple packet| www.macstories.net
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts: Comfort Zone https://youtu.be/Z9CXpZl-eEw Comfort Zone has completed its first year! Instead of doing a clip show or something, the gang gets right down to business doing what they do best: complaining about browsers, going down an audiophile rabbit hole, and battling to see who has the| www.macstories.net
From Apple’s Machine Learning Research1 blog: Our foundation models are trained on Apple’s AXLearn framework, an open-source project we released in 2023. It builds on top of JAX and XLA, and allows us to train the models with high efficiency and scalability on various training hardware and cloud platforms, including TPUs and both cloud and| 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
Yesterday, during Gamescom’s opening night ceremonies, Netflix Games released a trailer for Monument Valley 3. The franchise’s sequel from Ustwo Games, which has been in development for five years, will be published exclusively on Apple’s App Store and Android by Netflix Games on December 10th. Monument Valley 1 and 2 are also moving to Netflix| 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
