Apple Watch Ultra and the Watch Apps We Use 
This week, Federico and John compare notes on the Apple Watch Ultra, including what makes it special and what frustrates them, and share the apps they’re using regularly.
Interesting Links Hot on the heels of our AV Club Town Hall discussing Glass Onion, Netflix released a director’s commentary track for the whodunit movie. (Link) Victoria Song offers tips on automating your personal finances to make keeping on top of your bills and other financial responsibilities less painful. (Link) Mac launcher app Raycast is beta...
App Debuts MusicHarbor Marcos Tanaka’s amazing utility for keeping track of new music releases has been updated with a feature I publicly wished for just a few weeks ago: MusicHarbor can now automatically add singles from upcoming albums to a specific playlist. I’ve always dreamed of this functionality: before a new album from one of my...
AI and Art, Videogame Streaming, and Glass Onion Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week:
I loved these comments on AI, art, and the role of human artists that were posted by member MadMax in response to our AI discussion on AppStories.
Dillon and others shared their thoughts on videogame streaming and the Mac’s chances at becoming...
Home Screen: John Not long ago, I ran across an old screenshot of my Home Screen and realized that it’s changed quite a bit, so I thought I’d share my current setup with Club members. There was a time when apps for getting work done dominated my iPhone’s Home Screen. My train commuting days are over,...
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John loves the horror/sci-fi movie Nope from Jordan Peele, and Federico discovers the joys of videogame streaming service GeForce NOW paired with the Razer Kishi iPhone controller.
John’s Pick:
Federico’s Pick:
Gentler Streak, the fitness app for the Apple Watch and iPhone that takes a holistic approach to training and recovery, has been updated to version 3.0 to incorporate additional health metrics, so users can get a broader picture of their overall wellbeing. I’ve had less than a day to test-drive the new features, but what I’ve seen so far looks promising.
Gentler Streak uses trend analysis to help guide your workouts. Your daily and 10-day activity trends are plotted within a band of intensity to help guide whether you should work harder or rest. The app also tracks individual workouts, your activity over time compared to previous periods, and includes insights and tips for maintaining a healthy life.
With today’s update, Gentler Streak is adding a new tab to the iPhone that tracks seven health metrics: sleeping heart rate or resting heart rate when SHR is unavailable, sleep duration, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, and wrist temperature. The app then uses that data to help guide your workout plans. For example, I didn’t get as much sleep as usual last night, so Gentler Streak suggested I take a break from working out today.
Each statistic in the Wellbeing tab is presented as a card-like widget that includes the current data, a 10-day trendline, and an indicator of whether the measurement is within normal ranges. Tapping on a card expands it for a bigger view that offers more information about what’s being measured and your results.
I’ve been using Gentler Streak for about a month and have found that its approach has kept me more motivated than closing my Fitness app Activity rings has. I still track those, too, but Gentler Streak is where I go to ensure I’m on track with my fitness goals while remembering to give myself a break now and then. It’s too soon to say what the Wellbeing tab will mean to my overall experience with the app, but I like what I’ve seen so far and plan to write more about Gentler Streak soon.
Gentler Streak is free to download from the App Store but requires a subscription to unlock some features.
Angry Birds was a defining game of the first decade of the App Store, so fans and game preservationists applauded Rovio in 2021 when it announced that it was rebuilding the 2012 version of the game and relaunching it on the App Store and Android as Angry Birds Classic.
The game was relaunched last spring, after a three-year absence from the App Store with an emphasis on the game preservation angle:
“While we were rebuilding Angry Birds, we took great care to preserve the feeling of the original Angry Birds game,” says executive producer, Sami Ronkainen. “We know our fans are a discerning bunch and will be able to pick out even small differences. Matching the gameplay, and appearance of the game next to the original was crucial.”
Now less than a year later, it’s hard to read that as anything more than empty marketing copy in light of Rovio’s tweeted announcement yesterday in which it said:
We have reviewed the business case of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, and due to the game’s impact on our wider games portfolio, we have decided that Rovio Classics: Angry Birds will be unlisted from the Google Play Store on Thursday, February 23. Additionally, the game will be renamed to Red’s First Flight in the App Store pending further review. Rovio Classics: Angry Birds will remain playable on devices on which the game has been downloaded, even after it has been unlisted.
We understand that this is sad news for many fans, as well as the team that has worked hard to make Rovio Classics: Angry Birds a reality. We are extremely grateful to the Angry Birds fans who have shown their love of the brand and this game from the beginning. We hope those fans can continue to bring that passion to our live Angry Birds slingshot games such as Angry Birds 2, Angry Birds Friends, and Angry Birds Journey, where our goal every day is to craft the best possible experience for players.
It’s not clear what Rovio means by Angry Birds Classic’s impact on its other platforms. If I had to guess, though, I’d bet that the $0.99 price of Classic was cannibalizing sales of more recent versions built around In-App Purchases. But why not pull the iOS version completely instead of changing its name? By removing ‘Angry Birds’ from the name of the game, it will be harder to find on the App Store but remains available, which may have been deemed necessary politically given Rovio’s involvement with Apple Arcade. Speculation aside, though, it’s a shame to see a culturally important mobile game pulled from one platform and hidden on the other.
I’ve seen the future of Mac gaming, and it’s not Metal 3 or Apple silicon. It’s a PC sitting in a Dallas data center with an NVIDIA 4080 GPU. That’s the data center my Mac connects to when I log into GeForce NOW Ultimate, the top tier of NVIDIA’s videogame streaming service. NVIDIA has data centers like it across the US and in Europe, streaming the latest, most demanding titles to a wide range of devices, including the Mac.
GeForce NOW is a technological marvel that turns traditional computing expectations on their head, offering Mac users a world where your Internet connection and display are more important than the computing power of the device on which a game is played. For Mac users, GeForce NOW is an opportunity to finally play the most advanced games available on the computer they love, which is exciting. However, for Apple, which has begun to market Macs as capable of playing modern games, GeForce NOW and services like it may end its AAA gaming ambitions before they leave the gate.
Federico
