2023 MacStories Selects Awards: Lifetime Achievement Award

By John Voorhees

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of the Pixelmator Team’s image editing apps at MacStories. A lot of our coverage in recent years has focused on Pixelmator Pro and Photomator, but long before those apps ever hit the App Store, there was just plain Pixelmator, an app that’s still available on the iPhone and iPad, and I still use regularly.

Pixelmator debuted on the Mac in the fall of 2007. Here’s how the Pixelmator Team described the release on its blog:

Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator 1.0, GPU-powered image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images.

Built from the ground up on a combination of open source and Mac OS X technologies, Pixelmator features powerful selection, painting, retouching, navigation, and color correction tools, and layers-based image editing, GPU-powered image processing, color management, automation, and transparent HUD user interface for work with images.

It’s fun to look back at the app’s launch page with its focus on the iSight camera, iPhoto, and the latest Mac OS X technologies like Core Image and Open GL. It feels dated now, but the fundamentals that made Pixelmator an exciting new app in 2007 are just as important for the app and the Pixelmator Team’s other apps today as they were then.

Backups of Backups

By John Voorhees

Ever since a nearby lightning strike fried my Mac Studio’s logic board, I’ve been thinking about backups. Thankfully, I lost no data in that mishap, but it was a close call. I had Time Machine and Backblaze backups, but after two moves in under a year, my setup had changed a lot, so it felt...

Interesting Links

By John Voorhees

John

This week’s release candidate revealed that Qi2 wireless charging is coming to the iPhone 13 and 14. (Link) Instapaper doubled its Premium subscription pricing this week, adding permanent offline storage of saved articles. (Link) Apple Podcasts picked Wiser Than Me with Julia Louise-Dreyfus as the Show of the Year for 2023. (Link) ExpressVPN launched...

App Debuts

By John Voorhees

John

Ivory Tapbots’ mastodon client added a new hashtag tab this week that allows you to follow hashtags, saving them for easy access. The new feature allows you to edit the tags associated with your profile too. Readwise Reader With AI rapidly improving text-to-speech engines, I expect we’ll see a lot of updates and new...

MacStories Unwind: The Best Music of 2023

By John Voorhees

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week on MacStories Unwind, kick off the first of our annual ‘best of’ Unwind recaps with the best music releases of 2023.

Links and Show Notes

Federico’s Top 5:

the record by boygenius
So Much for Stardust by Fallout Boy
One More Time by Blink 182
The Maine by The Maine
Lobes by We are Scientists

Federico’s Album of the Year

the record by boygenius

Federico’s Honorable Mentions:

Guts by Olivia Rodrigo
This is Why by Paramore
Certified Depressant by Taylor Acorn

John’s Top 5:

the record by boygenius
Be Still My Heart by Babygirl
One More Time by Blink 182
Guts by Olivia Rodrigo
First Two Pages of Frankenstein by The National

John’s Album of the Year

First Two Pages of Frankenstein by The National

John’s Honorable Mentions:

My Soft Machine by Arlo Parks
Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams
Memento Mori by Depeche Mode
Knebworth 22 (Live) by Liam Gallagher
Saviors by Green Day

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Screens 5: An Updated Design, Improved User Experience, and New Business Model

By John Voorhees

Screens 5.

Screens, the remote screen-sharing app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac by Luc Vandal of Edovia is one of those apps that I feel like I’ve always used. It’s installed on all of my devices, letting me lazily check on the Mac in my office from my couch or grab a file that I forgot to put on my laptop when I’m working remotely. It’s also the app that makes working with my headless Mac mini server that’s humming away in a closet feel like it was sitting right on my desk.

The last time I reviewed Screens was in 2017 when version 4 was released. In the years since, the app has received regular updates, refining the workflow of connecting to remote computers and keeping up with the latest changes to Apple’s OSes. However, as an app that’s designed to be a window to another system, the UI hasn’t seen a lot of change until today’s update to version 5, which adds a bunch of refinements to how connections are organized and makes significant improvements to the app’s toolbar.

First Look: Stray for Mac

By John Voorhees

Source: Annapurna Interactive.

Stray, a high-profile and well-regarded videogame that debuted in 2022, is now available on the Mac. Initially launched on PlayStation and Windows, followed by an Xbox version this past August, today’s Mac release is available on both the Mac App Store and Steam.

The game, created by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive, is set in a neon-lit, post-apocalyptic cityscape where you play as a cat. Thrown into an unfamiliar environment, your goal is to solve the mysteries of a dangerous rundown city aided by a flying robot named B-12.

Stray was generally well-received by reviewers, who appreciated how BlueTwelve imbued its cat protagonist with personality and captured life-like cat movement and behavior. As a result, it’s unsurprising that the number of systems on which you can enjoy Stray’s feline adventures has continued to expand.

I played Stray when it debuted on the PlayStation 5 and enjoyed it. The game’s controls are relatively simple, and the story isn’t terribly long, but the puzzles are challenging, and the cyberpunk visuals are stunning. It’s been a while since I last dipped into Stray, but the game was one of my favorites of 2022, so when I got the chance to play it a day before the launch, I jumped at the opportunity.

I’ve only had time to play Stray on the Mac for a few hours, navigating through the introductory scene and the early part of the game, so this isn’t a review. However, as someone familiar with the console version, I thought I’d share my early impressions playing on my M1 Max Mac Studio and my M1 MacBook Air.