This Week's Sponsor:

BetterTouchTool

Introducing Floating Menus

The Latest from Comfort Zone, Magic Rays of Light, and MacStories Unwind

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

Niléane has taken to the skies in Flight Simulator, Chris wants to talk about yet another Mac, and the gang all looks for the best open source app (or web app!) they can find.

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon preview the new features coming in tvOS 18.2. Then, they recap the first German-language Apple Original series, Where’s Wanda?, and Spanish-language medical drama series Midnight Family.

MacStories Unwind

This week on MacStories Unwind, we kick off the first of our annual ‘best of’ Unwind recaps with the best music releases of 2024.

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A Fun Way to Add Holiday Cheer to Your Mac→

If you’re looking to add a little holiday cheer to your Mac, be sure to check out Festivitas by developer Simon Støvring. The app lives in your Mac’s menu bar where you can switch between displaying colorful blinking holiday lights along your menu bar, dock, or both.

The app requires access to accessibility permission to tell where your Mac’s dock is, which it will ask permission for when you first start it. Once that’s out of the way, you can turn the lights on and off from the menu bar, where you can also access settings to customize things like the size of the lights, their spacing, and the thickness of the wire that connects them.

The app is available via Gumroad for 4 euros.

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The Latest from NPC: Next Portable Console and AppStories

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, Federico and I consider the differences between assistive and generative AI and cover the sort of automation tasks for which assistive AI is useful.

On AppStories+, I share my skepticism about the utility of Apple’s rumored home hub device.

NPC: Next Portable Console

Tencent and Intel announce a huge handheld, Sony is taking its time, reviewers share early hands-on testing of the Ayn Odin Portal, the Miyoo Mini Flip is spotted across the Internet, Samsung files an intriguing portable gaming patent, and a new eGPU is on the way. Plus, Brendon revisits the Anbernic RG35XXSP, Federico has a mini-surprise, and Federico and I share oue first impressions of the Retroid Pocket 5.

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Apple Music Replay 2024 is Live→

Apple has released its annual Apple Music Replay overview of subscribers’ listening statistics for 2024. The recap can be accessed on the music.apple.com/replay, where you’ll find details about the music to which you listened throughout the year, including your top albums, songs, artists, playlists, and genres. If you’d rather browse Replay in the Music app, you can do that too, with the ‘Open’ in Music button that appears at the top of the webpage and opens the same content as a popup over your Apple Music library.

At the beginning of Replay, there’s an animated recap with highlights of your year in music set to the songs you enjoyed throughout the year. Replay also calls out listening milestones like the total number of minutes listened and the number of artists and songs played. Plus, subscribers can browse through their statistics by month. Also, at the bottom of Replay, you’ll also find a link to your Replay ‘24 playlist, with the top 100 songs you listened to in 2024.

The timing of Replay ‘24 is perfect. I’ve begun preparing my list of favorite albums of 2024 for this week’s MacStories Unwind, which will be out Thursday for Club MacStories members and for everyone else on Friday, and as my Replay playlist makes abundandly clear, 2024 has been a great year for music.

To view your own Replay 2024 statistics, visit music.apple.com/replay.

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Wallace and Gromit Video Shot on iPhone and Projected onto Battersea Power Station→

If you were around London’s Battersea Power Station – home to Apple’s UK headquarters – over the weekend, you might have spotted plasticine heroes Wallace and Gromit projected onto the station’s two 101-meter-high chimneys. While this could be dismissed as some giant-sized promotion for the duo’s new film, set to be broadcast on the BBC this Christmas (and Netflix outside of the UK), the story behind it is more interesting.

These short animations were created by Aardman Animation using the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Apple shared the details in a press release:

iPhone 16 Pro Max was mounted on motorised heads on set to capture two angles of the Christmas trees, shooting a total of 6,000 frames. Eight iPhone 16 Pro Max devices used the 5x Telephoto camera to shoot super-high-resolution images in ProRAW, which were then assembled frame by frame to produce a stunning 6K video.

Apple even created a special page on its website featuring a behind-the-scenes video (also available on YouTube), details of how to visit Battersea Power Station, and another video with quick tips for making your own stop-motion video using Aardman’s app.

Additionally, the director of the short, Gavin Strange, will be giving a talk at Apple’s Regent Street store on Thursday, December 12.

The projection will be on display every night from 5:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. until New Year’s Eve. It follows artist David Hockney’s Christmas display from last year, which was created on an iPad and similarly projected onto the Battersea Power Station.

It’s lovely to see Apple commission projects that highlight artists’ talents, with the use of Apple devices serving as the thread between them rather than the focus.

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BetterTouchTool: Introducing Floating Menus [Sponsor]

BetterTouchTool is a powerful macOS application that enables users to completely customize their various input devices such as Keyboards, the (Magic) Mouse and Magic Trackpad, the Touch Bar, the Siri Remote or even things like the Stream Deck.

Today let’s have a look at a new feature that has recently been integrated into BetterTouchTool and is getting more powerful with every update: Floating Menus / Widgets.

Imagine them as highly flexible, widget-like menus that you can place virtually anywhere on your screen. You can attach them to specific positions in specific windows, to specific screens, the current mouse position and many more. You can specify whether they float on top, stick them to your desktop or have them behave like normal windows (and more). 
They can always be visible, expand on mouse hover or be shown/hidden via any trigger in BTT.

You can find various Floating Menu examples on https://share.folivora.ai. For example have a look at the Notch menu, which is invisible by default but expands from your Macbook’s Notch on hover.  Another nice example is the “Mini Emoji Menu” preset, it places a little transparent dot on the left edge of the focused window. When hovered it shows multiple custom emoji which you can insert by clicking.

The documentation for this new feature is available here and you can always visit our community page to discuss or request features.

Try BetterTouchTool now (45 day free trial) or go and purchase a license with this 20% coupon code: MACSTORIESBTT2023 at https://folivora.ai. BetterTouchTool is also included a Setapp subscription.

Our thanks to BetterTouchTool for sponsoring MacStories this week.

The Latest from Comfort Zone, Magic Rays of Light, and MacStories Unwind

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

“The gang has so much to be thankful for, including you, dear listeners. ❤️

Oh yeah, and they find new ways to listen to music before being revealing their absolute favorite Apple app.”

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon discuss Steve McQueen’s Blitz, new Apple Original documentary Bread & Roses, and the first episode of Concert for One featuring an immersive performance by RAYE.

MacStories Unwind

This week, a Thanksgiving guessing game, neighborly pies, NotebookLM, the Infamous Cousin Dave’s emoji habits, and getting started with retro gaming.

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HomePass 2 Brings a New Design, Maintenance Features, and a Freemium Model

Back in 2020, John opened his review of HomePass 1.7 in this way:

My HomeKit setup started out simple enough with a few Hue bulbs, but over time, it has grown to include security cameras, door sensors, electrical outlets, and more. As the number of accessories connected to my network grew, so did the hassle of managing them.

I know this is the case for many people, myself included. There seems to be an ever-growing selection of third-party apps for HomeKit, and developer Aaron Pearce has released some of the best. Where other apps add more functionality and, thus, complexity, Pearce has focused on simplicity and pure utility. The best example of that approach has always been HomePass.

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Over 400 Indie Apps On Sale From Black Friday Through Cyber Monday→

It’s almost Black Friday, and Matt Corey gathered indie developers to organize an app sale that runs from November 29 to December 3rd, 2023. Corey, the maker of Bills to Budget, Signals for HomeKit, and other apps that are part of the sale, has put together a collection of over 400 apps that will be offered at a discount tomorrow and Wednesday. The list is too long to publish here but includes many we’ve covered here on MacStories and on Club MacStories in the past, including:

There are a lot of great deals, and many more than what’s listed above, so be sure to visit Indie App Sales for all the details and support these great indie apps.

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