Listen to Articles as Podcasts
This week on Ruminate, we start with some very old follow up, I have a story about Dominos, we both have a near-miss on being April-fooled, then into a discussion about webmentions, plus a little bit about Arc.
Mastodon Webmentions and Privacy • Robb Knight
Neatnik Notes · A Fediverse, if you can keep it
A simple explainer on federation, and what it means for Threads users
I like trains. I like them so much that, despite being 27 years old now, I still don’t have a driving license. I travel by train and use public transit exclusively to get around in my daily life. The island where I grew up had none of that, and it has made the car a fundamental necessity for most inhabitants there. But I’m fortunate enough to live in continental France now, in a city where I can get anywhere pretty quickly by hopping on a bus, tram, train, or even a high-speed train.
The result is that I spend a lot of time on my phone on a daily basis looking up transit itineraries and glancing at waiting times. Like in most places in the world where public transit is a thing, you can use the transit authority’s first-party application or website to do this. There is a universal truth about those apps and sites, though: they are almost always really bad. They’re slow, confusing, and often bloated with useless information. This is why, for so many years now – since I first arrived in France in 2014 – I’ve been a huge fan of Transit.
Transit is an amazing app that lets you look up transit itineraries and will even guide you along as you travel to your destination. The app has been around for a long time, but my mission today is simple: I want to tell you why I believe Transit is still the best-designed transit app available on the iPhone right now.
Let’s get into it.
Apple has added Spatial Personas to the Personas beta for all Vision Pro users running visionOS 1.1, the latest public release of the OS.
Spatial Personas are available in FaceTime where users can collaborate using SharePlay. That means you can work with colleagues on a presentation, watch TV with friends and family, play games, and more. According to Apple, Spatial Personas allow you to move around and interact with digital content, providing a greater sense of presence.
Apple says that each user can reposition content to accommodate their own surroundings without affecting the others participating in a SharePlay session. Spatial Personas are available to developers. The Spatial Personas feature also integrates with Spatial Audio, so audio tracks with the position of the other people participating in your FaceTime call.
If you have visionOS 1.1 installed, you may need to reboot your Vision Pro to see a new Spatial Personas button in the FaceTime app, although we’ve tried and don’t see the feature yet. Tapping on a Persona tile during a FaceTime call will also allow you to switch the Spatial Persona of the person you’re calling. Returning to a Persona from a Spatial Persona can be accomplished from the Vision Pro’s Control Center. There’s also a limit of five Spatial Personas per FaceTime call.
This week on AppStories, we explain what’s going on with the US Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple that claims the iPhone-maker is monopolizing the smartphone market.
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On AppStories+, I explain the research and writing workflow I developed for big projects like covering the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple.
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I’ve been using Copilot for over a year and the reason I’ve stuck with it for monitoring my finances is that it takes so little effort but provides so many valuable insights. That’s been critical to staying on top of my spending because even when I’m busy, I can find a minute or two to check on my latest purchases and make adjustments, keeping my spending under control and monitoring my overall financial health.
Their native iPhone and Mac apps can do it all: you can track your spending, budget, investments, and net worth all in one place, allowing you to drill into the details without losing sight of the big picture.
The secret to Copilot is how easy it is to track everything in your financial life. The app connects securely to your bank and other financial accounts and then reports back whenever a new transaction is detected.
New transactions are listed on Copilot’s Dashboard which analyzes them suggesting AI-powered categories for each. That makes reviewing transactions and applying them to a budget simple. With just a few taps or clicks, you can review everything and update your spending. Copilot’s Dashboard also reports where your spending stands compared to your budget and provides an overview of your budget by category, upcoming recurring expenses, and income.
For a more detailed look at your finances, Copilot includes a detailed Categories tab, more information on recurring expenses, such as subscriptions, and a chronological list of all transactions. The app also tracks the performance of your investments and the balance of each of your bank, investment, credit, and other accounts. With a recent update, Copilot is among the first apps to track Apple Card transactions too.
If you’ve ever struggled with tracking your finances, give Copilot a try today for free. And, for a limited time, MacStories readers can get an extra month as part of their Copilot free trial by using the code MACSTORIES when signing up. Visit their website to learn more and download Copilot from the App Store to get started today.
Our thanks to Copilot for sponsoring MacStories this week.
This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and John are joined by Jonathan Reed to discuss Christopher Nolan’s film, Memento and our weekly On Deck picks.
Thanks to everyone who suggested films to Federico after last week’s episode of MacStories Unwind. If you’d still like to recommend a movie to him please get in touch on Mastodon or Threads.
What we’re watching, playing, reading, or listening to soon:
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When Major League Soccer’s season began last month, Apple announced that it would release a highlights film of the 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs that was captured in Apple Immersive Video. Well, Apple now says that the film, called 2023 MLS Cup Highlights, will be available later today on the Vision Pro. The film should be available at around 9 PM Eastern US time.
I’m excited to watch the film. I’m not an MLS fan, but I haven’t had a chance to see what it’s like to experience sports in an immersive environment yet. Sports and music concerts are areas I expect we’ll see a lot more of on the Vision Pro in the coming months.
 I'm using.](https://cdn.macstories.net/img_0872-1711623741629.jpeg)
My custom Vision Pro setup. This is the stand I’m using.
Vision Pro Chronicles is a MacStories series about our journeys with the Vision Pro. In this series, we’ll explore the potential of visionOS as a brand new platform in our workflows and personal lives, share how we’re using the Vision Pro on a daily basis, and cover interesting apps and accessories for the device.
You’ll be shocked to learn that I’m not using the Vision Pro in any of the default Apple configurations.
After two months spent testing a variety of different options for bands, straps, and other “mounting” solutions, I’ve found my ideal setup. It looks somewhat ridiculous at a glance, and it’s not for everyone, but it allows me to use the Vision Pro for longer sessions.
Most importantly, it helps me enjoy the Vision Pro more.
A few weeks ago on AppStories, Federico and I surveyed recent Apple system app updates to get a sense of where the design of iOS is heading. Part of the inspiration for that episode was a thread that Lickability posted on Mastodon, breaking down Apple’s recently-released Sports app.
Yesterday, Lickability’s Sam Gold expanded on that thread with a post on the company’s blog that’s a must-read for anyone interested in iOS design trends because, as Sam says:
We once heard someone say, “design your app for the current iOS version + 1.” So with that lens, we’ve been looking at what the design of Apple Sports can tell us about iOS 18.
That’s good advice, and there’s a lot to learn from Sports, such as how it continues a recent trend of using gradients in the nav bar:
Gradients are used a LOT in this app. This nav bar gradient effect is becoming pretty common throughout first-party apps as well — first with the iOS 17 Health app, then Journal, and now Sports. watchOS 10 is also full of gradients.
There are many other things going on in Sports besides gradients, including Metal shaders applied to textures and interesting uses of animation and typography.
I fully expect that when I sit down to watch the announcements at WWDC, much of what Lickability has highlighted in Sports will be apparent across many more of Apple’s apps.
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