For the past week, I’ve been testing the Belkin Stage PowerGrip. It’s an iPhone accessory that adds a DSLR-like grip to your iPhone while simultaneously charging it. Belkin isn’t the first company to make an accessory like this, but the Stage PowerGrip delivers a bigger battery at a more affordable price than its competitors. That’s why it initially caught my eye. However, what I didn’t expect was for the device to make a compelling case to become part of my everyday on-the-go setup, which it absolutely has. Here’s why.
The Potential and Limits of the M5 iPad Pro
FedericoThis week, Federico and John consider whether Apple made the case for running local LLMs and gaming on the M5 iPad Pro and discusss who should consider buying it.
On AppStories+, we explain how Claude Skills work and why they are one of Anthropic’s most exciting features in a while.
Also available on YouTube here.
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AppStories Episode 458 - The Potential and Limits of the M5 iPad Pro
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Interesting Links
This week’s AWS outage was a headache for a lot of people, including me, and revealed a fundamental weakness in the structure of the Internet, as Lily Hay Newman explains in this story for Wired. (Link) Writing for 9to5Mac, Benjamin Mayo explains how Apple One subscribers can get in on the Apple TV/Peacock bundle...
The Sky’s the Limit: Apple’s Loss Is OpenAI’s Gain
Earlier this week, OpenAI acquired Software Applications Incorporated, the makers of Sky, an AI-powered automation tool for the Mac that Federico previewed in May. I’m still running Sky on my Mac and using it daily, although I expect that will come to an end sooner rather than later, given OpenAI’s promise of “more updates as...
Finding the Best Sleep Tracker→
Earlier this year, Andrej Karpathy wrote an in-depth analysis of four sleep tracking methods that Federico recently recommended I read. I’m glad he did, Karpathy, an AI researcher who has worked at OpenAI and Tesla, took the kind of nerdy, data-driven approach that I love.
Over the course of two months, Karpathy plotted sleep tracking results from:
- an Oura ring
- a Whoop fitness band
- an 8Sleep Pod 4 Ultra smart mattress cover
- the Apple Watch running the app AutoSleep
Karpathy got the best results from the Whoop band and Oura ring, but just as interesting were how the data correlated to how he felt after a good night’s sleep:
…my sleep scores correlate strongly with the quality of work I am able to do that day. When my score is low, I lack agency, I lack courage, I lack creativity, I’m simply tired. When my sleep score is high, I can power through anything. On my best days, I can sit down and work through 14 hours and barely notice the passage of time. It’s not subtle.
I recommend reading the entire post for all the details of how each tracking method compared on variety of metrics. I’ve long been intrigued by the Whoop band and Oura ring as a companion to the Apple Watch. There’s overlap between the devices, but Karpathy has planted a seed in my brain that may lead to my own multi-device experiments.
Sky Acquired by OpenAI
Sky, the AI automation app that Federico previewed for MacStories readers in May, has been acquired by OpenAI.
Nick Turley, OpenAI’s Vice President & Head of ChatGPT said of the deal in an OpenAI press release:
We’re building a future where ChatGPT doesn’t just respond to your prompts, it helps you get things done. Sky’s deep integration with the Mac accelerates our vision of bringing AI directly into the tools people use every day.
I’m not surprised by this development at all. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity have all been developing features similar to what Sky could do for a while now. In addition, Sam Altman was an investor in Software Applications Incorporated, the company behind Sky.
Ari Weinstein of Software Applications Incorporated, who was one of the co-founders of Workflow, which was later acquired by Apple and became Shortcuts, said of the acquisition:
We’ve always wanted computers to be more empowering, customizable, and intuitive. With LLMs, we can finally put the pieces together. That’s why we built Sky, an AI experience that floats over your desktop to help you think and create. We’re thrilled to join OpenAI to bring that vision to hundreds of millions of people.
It’s not entirely clear what will become of Sky at this point. OpenAI’s press release simply states that the company will be working on integrating Sky’s capabilities.
Claude Adds Screenshot and Voice Shortcuts to Its Mac App
Anthropic introduced a couple of new features in its Claude Mac app today that lower the friction of working with the chatbot.
First, after giving screenshot and accessibility permissions to Claude, you can double tap the Option button to activate the app’s chat field as an overlay at the bottom of your screen. The shortcut simultaneously triggers crosshairs for dragging out a rectangle on your Mac’s screen. Once you do, the app takes a screenshot and the chat field moves to the side of the area you selected with the screenshot attached. Type your query, and it and the screenshot are sent together to Claude, switching you to Claude and kicking off your request automatically.
Instead of double-tapping the Option key, you can also set the keyboard shortcut to Option + Space, or a custom key combination. That’s nice because not all automation systems support two modifier keys as a shortcut. For example, Logitech’s Creative Console cannot record a double tap of the Option button as a shortcut.
I send a lot of screenshots to Claude, especially when I’m debugging scripts. This new shortcut will greatly accelerate that process simply by switching me back to Claude for my answer. It’s a small thing, but I expect it will add up over time.
My only complaint is that the experience has been inconsistent across my Macs. On my M1 Max Mac Studio with 64GB of memory, it takes 3-5 seconds for Claude to attach the screenshot to its chat field whereas on the M4 Max MacBook Pro I’ve been testing, the process is almost instant. The MacBook Pro is a much faster Mac than my Mac Studio, but I was surprised at the difference since it occurs at the screenshot phase of the interaction. My guess is that another app or system process is interfering with Claude.
The other new feature of Claude is that you can set the Caps Lock button to trigger voice input. Once you trigger voice input, an orange cloud appears at the bottom of your screen indicating that your microphone is active. The visual is a little over-the-top, but the feature is handy. Tap the Caps Lock button again to finish the recording, which is then transcribed into a Claude chat field at the bottom of your screen. Just hit return to upload your query, and you’re switched back to the Claude app for a response.
One of the greatest strengths of modern AI chatbots is their multi-modality. What Anthropic has done with these new Claude features is made two of those modes – images and audio – a little bit easier, which gets you from input to a response a little faster, which I appreciate. I highly recommend giving both features a try.
Remess Visualizes Your Life in Texts
Text messages are a chronicle of our lives. But by the same token, those conversations remain locked away in Messages. The app’s search has improved with macOS Tahoe, which I appreciate, but finding past snippets of a chat log doesn’t allow you to understand the full arc of conversations across your entire family and friend group.
That’s where Remess by Fahmi Omer comes in. It’s a Mac app that accesses your Messages and Contacts databases locally to paint a picture of your life in text messages.
To run Remess, which is an open source project that you can inspect on GitHub, you need to run a Terminal command that bypasses Apple’s Gatekeeper protection and give it both full disk access and access to your contacts. The developer says the app only accesses your information locally, but there’s an element of trust there that’s worth considering before you take the plunge. That said, if you go for it like I did, Remess is a lot of fun.
Let’s take a look.
The app starts out very high level with the total number of messages sent and received:
Then, it digs into the details. This is what writing at MacStories for nearly a decade looks like:
From all-time numbers, Remess digs into what a typical day of texting looks like for you:
The app also calculates the year you sent the most messages and how many people you’ve exchanged texts. After this brief tour of your life in texts, Remess lands on a dashboard with additional data, a graph of your texting totals, a word cloud of most frequently-used words, and a ranking of your contacts and groups ranked by texting totals.
You can filter texting totals by year, too, which is an interesting way to spot patterns in your messaging habits.
The word cloud should probably filter out common words, but the rest is about what you’d expect from me: Mac, app, shortcuts.
I’m not sure I learned anything about my texting habits from Remess that I didn’t already have a sense of based on my day-to-day messaging. Still, it’s interesting and fun to see the magnitude of the number of texts and the way they’ve accumulated over time.
Remess is available as a free download directly from its developer.
Apple’s Intelligence Quest: Beyond Smart Siri
This week, Federico and John discuss what might be next for Apple Intelligence and how it fits into the broader AI market.
On AppStories+, Federico and John cover the fallout from the Sora app and why AI can’t replace human creativity.
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To learn more about an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.
AppStories Episode 457 - Apple’s Intelligence Quest: Beyond Smart Siri
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This episode is sponsored by:
- Claude: Get 50% off Claude Pro, including access to Claude Code.