Your podcast player might say otherwise, but this is the true episode 100! Everyone is back together to do some Q&A, celebrate a birthday and a move to a new house, and offer some help as Chris abandons Safari (finally!).
On Cozy Zone, the gang gets very opinionated on Formula 1 liveries.
This week, Federico and John take listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of how they plan to tackle WWDC and the summertime research and writing season as they look forward to their fall OS reviews.
Alongside Federico’s release of Shortcuts Playground, we have a new and improved Shortcuts Archive page. The design adopts a new modular card system for navigation, search, filtering, and the shortcuts themselves, making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for from among over 400 shortcuts.
With so many shortcuts spread across multiple categories, it was important to design something that is easy to navigate, which is why there are a variety of ways to do so:
Categories lets you jump straight to a collection such as Music, Health, Photos, the Action button, and many more.
By default, the Shortcuts Archive shows you a featured collection followed by an alphabetically organized list of all our shortcuts. However, by clicking Filters in the navigation bar, you can rearrange the archive to display the shortcuts alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order, arrange shortcuts by category, or start with the recently updated shortcuts.
Search is a brand new feature of the Shortcuts Archive, too, allowing you to run keyword searches against the name of the shortcut and its description. The search field helpfully adds a pill indicator beneath the search field if you have a filter applied that will impact your search results.
The Archive also includes a new featured collection. With the release of Shortcuts Playground today, that collection spotlights over 100 shortcuts that were built using Shortcuts Playground and verified by Federico. From here, you can also access our special Shortcuts Playground landing page that includes more details about what it can do and links to the agent plugin, announcement post, and more.
If you have an app or service to promote, the Shortcuts Archive is a great place to do so.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we also have a dedicated callout slot for advertisers at the top of the Shortcuts Archive. The Archive is the second most visited page after the MacStories homepage, which makes it a great place to promote apps and developer tools to a an audience of creative professionals, developers, and app enthusiasts who care deeply about the apps and services they use. Currently, it promotes Club MacStories, but if you have an app or service to promote get in touch. We’re offering exclusive monthly and annual spots.
The Shortcuts Archive represents years of work and is packed with excellent automations that are ready for you to use off the shelf or as inspiration for your next automation project. And, with Shortcuts Playground, it’s never been a better time to try your hand at automation. Enjoy browsing the Archive. We hope you like it.
Apple’s push into immersive sports continues this Friday with the release of Real Madrid: The Weight of Greatness, an immersive documentary centering on the world’s most decorated football club. With a running time of 20 minutes, the short film records the action surrounding the team’s match against Juventus in the 2025 Champions League tournament through a combination of game footage, behind-the-scenes looks, newly spatialized historical photos, and interview with fans and players alike.
The documentary was announced last November by Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services and health, and Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez. Real Madrid has shown a longstanding interest in using emerging technologies to engage fans, with Pérez referencing the idea of an “Infinite Bernabéu,” an immersive digital version of the team’s stadium where fans can experience matches close up in VR. For this project, directors James Marsh and Hector Dockrill and director of photography Xialong Liu outfit the real stadium with over 30 Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive cameras to give viewers a taste of what football fandom could look like in the age of spatial computing.
As someone with very little familiarity with Real Madrid – or, let’s face it, sports in general – I came into this film with very few expectations. What surprised me, though, was how quickly I was swept up in the thrill of it all and found myself on the edge of my seat waiting to find out how this football match (which, again, was played many months ago) would end. Between the storytelling, the music, and the all-encompassing immersion of it all, I got drawn in.
In what I expect will be an overarching theme at WWDC 2026, Apple’s Accessibility group took the wraps off an impressive collection of features coming later this year. The announcement, which is timed to lead into Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Thursday, emphasizes existing features and technologies that the company says will gain deeper capabilities thanks to Apple Intelligence.
For starters, VoiceOver will become more descriptive, allowing a device’s camera to be used to describe the user’s surroundings or a scanned document in greater detail. The feature will also make use of the Action button to trigger the camera and allow users to ask questions and make follow-up inquiries about what’s in the viewfinder. The Magnifier will gain voice controls, too, so users can simply ask it to zoom in, for example.
Source: Apple.
Voice Control will get similar enhancements. Rather than requiring a defined set of commands that need to be memorized to control a device, the feature will allow users to invoke actions with natural language, such as, “Tap the orange folder.”
Accessibility Reader will be able to handle more complex written layouts that include tables, columns, and other traditionally challenging formatting. If there’s one thing that LLMs have become extremely good at, it’s scraping the web and learning how to parse the meaningful parts of a webpage. While I’d have preferred that the web not have been pillaged as fuel for models in the first place, I’m glad at least part of that is going towards making the web and other text more readable for people who need it.
One of my favorite demos that Apple showed off during my briefing was a short video shot on an iPhone that had subtitles added to it on the fly using an on-device model. We’ve grown so accustomed to subtitles being available with the TV shows, movies, and YouTube videos we watch that they feel like they’re missing from the home movies we shoot and share with friends and family. Later this year, though, subtitles will be available for all types of video, generated privately on device.
Vision Pro wheelchair control. Source: Apple.
The Vision Pro uses state-of-the-art eye tracking for interacting with your environment. Apple announced that it is extending that technology to motorized wheelchairs by working with partners TOLT Technologies and LUCI. The system allows a motorized wheelchair to be maneuvered by the user simply looking at controls inside the Vision Pro. The video showing off the feature was impressive and makes perfect sense if you’ve ever used the Vision Pro.
Apple also announced a new accessory with an accessibility angle. You may have seen the Hikawa Grip and Stand collection, a series of colorful accessories designed to make it easier for people to hold an iPhone more securely. Designed late last year by artist Bailey Hikawa, the Hikawa Grip and Stand is being mass-produced by PopSockets and sold in Apple retail stores in 20 markets starting today.
Finally, a bunch of other accessibility features are coming to Apple platforms later this year, including:
Vehicle Motion Cues, face gestures for taps, and eye-select in Dwell Control for visionOS,
Touch Accommodations setup customization,
Improvements to MFi hearing aid pairing and handoff across devices,
Larger Text support in tvOS,
Name Recognition in over 50 languages,
An API for adding human sign language interpreters to FaceTime, and
Support for Sony’s Access game controllers on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
With all the overblown hype surrounding artificial intelligence, it’s refreshing to see Apple putting it to practical use in ways that are meaningful to its users. One thing I’ve learned from following the work of Apple’s Accessibility team over the years is that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to accessibility. The solutions are as unique as the people they serve. Apple has always offered a wide range of APIs and user features to make their hardware and apps available to as many people as possible, but Apple Intelligence promises to take the company’s longstanding commitment and make it more flexible and powerful for more people than ever before.
This week, John and Federico kick off the app swap challenge, with each of them giving the other three apps to use. We’ll be checking in on how it’s going each week with a final roundup of the results of the experiment after WWDC.
On AppStories+, we each pick aspirational apps and OS features that we wish we used more but don’t.
This week, mysterious Valve shipments are heading to the U.S., GameHub hits 6.0, one of us got multiple Steam Controllers, and plastic versus aluminum.
On NPC XL, Brendon, John, and Federico share apps and tips for Android gaming.
It’s just the boys today, as Chris has a slew of updates, while Matt has joined a new cult. They also try their darnedest to understand the appeal of mouse gestures in browsers.
On Cozy Zone, the gang roasts your (yes, your!) old Home Screens.
This week, an Italian movie dubbing controversy, the role of tech in the first-ever sub-two hour marathon, John’s high-tech running shoes, and a jangle-pop EP for your listening pleasure.
AppStories, Episode 484, ‘An App Swap Challenge’ Show Notes
This episode is sponsored by:
Steamclock: We make great apps. Design and development, from demos to details.
An App Swap Challenge: Pick Three Apps for Each Other to Try for a Month and Report Back
NPC XL is a weekly members-only version of NPC with extra content, available exclusively through our new Patreon for $5/month. Each week on NPC XL, Federico, Brendon, and John record a special segment or deep dive about a particular topic that is released alongside the “regular” NPC episodes. You can subscribe here.
Comfort Zone, Episode 100, ‘Don’t Let Tech Companies Electrocute You’ Show Notes
For even more from the Comfort Zone crew, you can subscribe to Cozy Zone. Cozy Zone is a weekly bonus episode of Comfort Zone where Matt, Niléane, and Chris invite listeners to join them in the Cozy Zone where they’ll cover extra topics, invent wilder challenges and games, and share all their great (and not so great) takes on tech. You can subscribe to Cozy Zone for $5 per month here or $50 per year here.
MacStories launched its first podcast in 2017 with AppStories. Since then, the lineup has expanded to include a family of weekly shows that also includes MacStories Unwind, Magic Rays of Light, Comfort Zone, NPC: Next Portable Console, and First, Last, Everything that collectively, cover a broad range of the modern media world from Apple’s streaming service and videogame hardware to apps for a growing audience that appreciates our thoughtful, in-depth approach to media.
If you’re interested in advertising on our shows, you can learn more here or by contacting our Managing Editor, John Voorhees.
Apple announced that beginning today, users on iOS 26.5 will be able to send encrypted RCS messages to Google Messages users who are on the latest version of that app. Apple says that means a message that is intercepted in transit is unreadable. You’ll be able to tell if your messages are encrypted by a lock icon at the top of the screen.
RCS encryption is turned on by default and supported by carriers around the world. I spent some time scrolling through the list of carriers that support RCS encryption, and it’s extensive. You can check if your carrier is on the list at the link above.
This week on Next Portable Console, we finally have RG Rotate specs and prices, get excited for the Steam Controller, update listeners on the latest grips available for the Switch 2, and cover the GameHub for Mac beta.
On NPC XL, we revisit GameNative, and Federico turns his Legion Go 2 into a SteamOS device.
Jonathan is joined by Niléane Dorffer, a French-Réunionnese podcaster, writer, and activist, known for being the co-host of Comfort Zone, her writing at MacStories, and her advocacy for trans rights.
With Chris out getting a puppy, Matt and Niléane hold down the fort, celebrating an app and lamenting a mouse. Then, everyone pretends to be someone else for fun.
On Cozy Zone, the gang compares their Mac Docks, and you won’t believe it, monsters were revealed!
This week, Federico wins the wild kingdom award, John is defending against vultures and has a creepy new show to recommend, and Federico closes with a TV check-in.
Earlier today, Apple profiled the accomplishments of Swift Student Challenge winners. The 350 students who built the winning app playgrounds come from 37 countries and were chosen from the largest pool of participants ever. Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations said of the competition’s entries:
The breadth of creativity we see in the Swift Student Challenge never ceases to amaze us. This year’s winners found remarkable ways to harness the power of Apple platforms, Swift, and AI tools to build app playgrounds that are as technically impressive as they are meaningful. We’re incredibly proud to support their journey and can’t wait to see what they create next.
Of the 350 winners, 50 have been invited to attend WWDC, which kicks off next month.
Apple’s press release spotlights four winners who built app playgrounds. Among those profiled is Gayatri Goundadkar, who built an app called Steady Hands that uses the Apple Pencil’s stabilization technology so people with hand tremors can draw more easily. As Goundadkar says:
When a person draws, my app uses Apple’s PencilKit and Accelerate frameworks to analyze stroke data and recognize tremors. It detects what is intentional and what is not, and removes the tremor component. Every drawing is then displayed in a personal 3D museum, because I wanted them to feel like artists, not patients. When users saw the stabilization working, they felt more confident.
Another winner, Karen-Happuch Peprah Henneh, was inspired by floods in her home country of Ghana to build a real-time pathfinding app called Asuo to help people in flood-prone areas to stay out of harm’s way.
Sign & Say by Courey Jimenez (left) and NodeLab by Aayush Mehrotra (right).
Earlier today, I had a chance to talk to Susan Prescott and two student winners: Courey Jimenez and Aayush Mehrotra. Jimenez drew on her experience working with nonverbal children as a behavioral technician to create an app that combines American Sign Language and Picture Exchange Communication Systems. As Jimenez explained to me:
When you can’t speak your needs, it’s a frustrating thing. So I knew I wanted to build something that was very user friendly and appealing to help mitigate that stress.
Mehrotra, who is just 14, built an app that allows students to explore the complexities of neural networks in a visual and interactive way. He was driven to build something friendly and approachable for students like himself who are interested in machine learning, too.
Every year I’m struck by the creativity of the students who participate in the Swift Student Challenge. Their inspiration is drawn from personal, family, and community experiences and their own passions. And, while their projects vary widely, they all have one thing in common: the excitement of building something and sharing it with others. It’s the same infectious enthusiasm we see over and over in the developers whose apps we cover, which propels the app world forward. Like the students I spoke to today, I can’t wait for WWDC.
