Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:
This week, Federico and John cover the iPhone and iPad Mastodon apps they’ve been testing and share what they like and don’t about each.
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Yesterday, I reviewed the new Shortcuts actions introduced by Things 3.17. It’s a fantastic release that greatly expands the ways you can control the app with Shortcuts. I shared three shortcuts as part of the review, but I have a couple more to add today: Recurring Tasks Ticci Talk Recurring Tasks is my workaround...
Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week:
Roman kicked off an excellent conversation about touchscreen Macs. Anticipation for an Apple AR/VR headset was stoked this week by Mark Gurman’s latest reporting for Bloomberg, with Zereta kicking the discussion off last weekend. FlohGro shared some beautiful winter photography the Club’s always-active...
Linea Sketch The Iconfactory’s sketching app for the iPhone and iPad was updated this week with a beautiful new feature called Organic Ink. The new pen stroke creates a rougher, more organic look that is pressure- and tilt-sensitive. The update also expands import and export options allowing for multiple file imports at once, support...
FlohGro has shared some useful shortcuts to import highlights from Readwise Reader and share them with other apps in Markdown. I’m going to use these myself. (Link) The lighter, faster Mac Catalyst version of WhatsApp for Mac is now available for everyone to download. (Link) Mate Marschalko figured out a clever workaround to integrate...
[[unplugged_artwork]] This month, John takes Federico back to his pre-podcast days behind a microphone as a DJ at WXDU, and Federico shares a trio of apps he’s been testing recently. John DJs WXDU Apparently, WXDU’s studio has gotten a big upgrade since John was a DJ More on WXDU Duke’s East Campus...
This week on MacStories Unwind, John takes listeners to the coast of Ireland for The Banshees of Inisherin, and Federico adds some song and dance to everyone’s day with Matilda the Musical.
Links and Show Notes
John’s Pick:
Federico’s Pick:
Things 3.17 is out for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with greatly expanded support for Shortcuts. That opens up a much wider variety of possible automations than ever before. It’s a lot to take in at once, but I’ve been playing with these actions since the end of last year, so I thought I’d highlight what each does and share a few shortcuts that I’ve built with them.
At the highest level, these are the kind of Shortcuts actions I like best. They work across all of Apple’s platforms and include parameters and predicate filtering, which allow users to build fine-tuned shortcuts that either weren’t possible before those features were added to Shortcuts or would have required users to jump through many more hoops to achieve.
When you start exploring Things’ Shortcuts actions keep in mind that they operate on more than just tasks. When you see ‘items’ referred to in the actions, that could any of the primary components of the app, including projects, headings, tasks, areas, or checklists. Not all actions support all item types, and each item has a unique set of properties that can be accessed depending on the action, so it’s worth experimenting to understand everything that can be accomplished.
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Federico
