John Voorhees

5426 posts on MacStories since November 2015

John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico. John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
@[email protected]
@johnvoorhees.macstories.net
voorhees@macstories.net

MacStories Is on Mastodon with Its Own Server

As of today, MacStories is officially on Mastodon with its own server for each of its properties and team members. You can find us here:

The new MacStories Mastodon account.

The new MacStories Mastodon account.

We’re not closing down our Twitter accounts (yet), but as you may have noticed, they haven’t been active lately and won’t be going forward. That’s because we’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the company is heading. If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, I highly recommend Casey Newton’s recent piece on Platformer. Casey’s perspective and reasons for winding down his personal and business presence on Twitter are very close to our own.

Although I’ll miss what Twitter was at its best and always remember what it’s meant to me professionally, I’m excited to be moving on too. I don’t know if Mastodon will be the next big thing, but it doesn’t have to be. It gives us a place to experiment and expand the places we connect with the MacStories audience, which we’re eager to do.

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AppStories, Episode 309 – Gone but Not Forgotten: The Third-Party Apps (Part 1)→

This week on AppStories, we extend last week’s ‘Gone but Not Forgotten’ theme to third-party apps, including Dropbox text editors, Twitter apps, email clients, and more.

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On AppStories+, I have a gripe about TV app sports notifications, and Federico experiments with Siri and wonders if he should set up a second home in his garage.

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Freeform Leverages the Freedom and Flexibility of a Blank Canvas

Freeform is a brand new iPhone, iPad, and Mac app from Apple that lets users create multimedia boards on an infinite canvas that include text, images, drawings, links, files, and more. It’s an ambitious entry into a crowded category of apps that take overlapping approaches, emphasizing everything from note-taking to collaborative design to whiteboarding.

As is so often the case with Apple’s system apps, Freeform falls squarely in the middle of the landscape of existing apps. Freeform isn’t going to replace apps that are deeply focused on a narrow segment of apps in the blank canvas category. Instead, Freeform is targeted at a broader audience, many of whom have probably never even considered using this sort of app. For them, and for anyone who has felt constrained by more linear, text-based ways of exploring ideas, Freeform is a perfect solution.

At first blush, Freeform’s spare interface may give the impression that it’s a bare-bones 1.0 release, but that’s not the case. The app is easy to use and impressively feature-rich for a new release. So, let’s dig into the details to see what it can do.

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Last Week, on Club MacStories: Calendar Apps, AV Club Returns, Plus Movies, TV Shows, Apps, and More

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings along with a look at what’s coming up next:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 348

AppStories - Ep. 309 - 39 minutes

Gone but Not Forgotten: The Third-Party Apps (Part 1)

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 309 - Gone but Not Forgotten: The Third-Party Apps (Part 1)

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39:13

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John extend last week’s ‘Gone but Not Forgotten’ theme to third-party apps, including Dropbox text editors, Twitter apps, email clients, and more.

Read more