John Voorhees

5620 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.
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Pixelmator Pro 3.2 Moves into Video Editing

Pixelmator Pro 3.2 adds a new dimension to the Pixelmator team’s flagship app: video. I have yet to spend much time with the app’s new video features yet, but anyone familiar with Pixelmator Pro should feel right at home because working with video works a lot like editing still images.

Pixelmator Pro adds new video templates.

Pixelmator Pro adds new video templates.

To get you started, Pixelmator Pro includes templates, a feature that was added in version 3.0. There are templates for a movie title clip, a YouTube thumbnail, YouTube channel art, and story-style vertical video. Only some templates incorporate placeholder video clips, but those that do are a great way to get a better feel of the video features added to the app.

Pixelmator Pro's editing controls.

Pixelmator Pro’s editing controls.

Editing a video isn’t much different from working with still images, except you’ll notice playback controls at the bottom of the clip you’re editing for controlling sound and playing back the clip. Also, a three-dot ‘more’ button reveals a scrubber with clip trimming controls and other advanced options when clicked. Other than that, video layers work just like other layers. You can adjust brightness, exposure, colors, and other aspects of a clip, apply filters, crop your video, overlay text, and more.

Video can be exported as MP4 files, QuickTime movies, animated GIFs, or PNGs. The Pixelmator team also says it has improved support for Motion projects.

Pixelmator Pro isn’t a replacement for a timeline-based video editor that lets you build a video from multiple clips. However, for clips like title segments and short-form social media posts, Pixelmator Pro strikes me as a far simpler solution than a more complex video editor like Final Cut Pro.

Pixelmator Pro 3.2 is available on the Mac App Store and is a free update to existing users. New users can purchase currently purchase Pixelmator Pro for $19.99, a 50% discount of its usual price.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Anybox, Music Tips, A Universal and VNC Desk Setup, and Lessons Learned From Going Indie

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 347

Anybox.

Anybox.

The Monthly Log, November 2022

AppStories - Ep. 308 - 47 minutes

Gone but Not Forgotten

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 308 - Gone but Not Forgotten

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47:13

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John explore the Apple apps and features that have disappeared from its platforms in recent years.

Read more

Scrobbling, Shell Scripts, Emoji, Password Managers, and Themes

Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week: Niléane had a great recommendation for Club members who want to use Apple’s Music app but scrobble their tracks to Last.fm in the background. akido shared two shell scripts that can be used with Shortcuts to save and retrieve bits of text. FlohGro had...

Anybox

John

Anybox is a link, note, image, and file organizer, with read-later functionality, many ways to get items in and out of the app, and a simple, modern design. Few apps have grabbed me as quickly as Anybox has. Two things caught my eye. First, Anybox’s design makes navigating extensive collections of items easy. More...

App Debuts

John

Pixel Pals Christian Selig’s Pixel Pals app that adds pixelated creatures to your Home Screen widgets and the Dynamic Island has added some new pals. The existing animals in the app’s collection were joined this week by a tiger, panda, and platypus. The app’s widgets have been updated too. The Pixel Pals still roam...

MacStories Unwind: The Best Music of 2022

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week on MacStories Unwind, we kick off the first of our annual ‘best of’ Unwind recaps with the best music releases of 2022.

The Best Music of 2022

Federico’s Pick:

John’s Pick:

Stable Diffusion Optimizations Are Coming to iOS and iPadOS 16.2 and macOS 13.1 Via Core ML→

Today, Apple announced on its Machine Learning Research website that iOS and iPadOS 16.2 and macOS 13.1 will gain optimizations to its Core ML framework for Stable Diffusion, the model that powers a wide variety of tools that allow users to do things like generate an image from text prompts and more. The post explains the advantages of running Stable Diffusion locally on Apple silicon devices:

One of the key questions for Stable Diffusion in any app is where the model is running. There are a number of reasons why on-device deployment of Stable Diffusion in an app is preferable to a server-based approach. First, the privacy of the end user is protected because any data the user provided as input to the model stays on the user’s device. Second, after initial download, users don’t require an internet connection to use the model. Finally, locally deploying this model enables developers to reduce or eliminate their server-related costs.

The optimizations to the Core ML framework are designed to simplify the process of incorporating Stable Diffusion into developers’ apps:

Optimizing Core ML for Stable Diffusion and simplifying model conversion makes it easier for developers to incorporate this technology in their apps in a privacy-preserving and economically feasible way, while getting the best performance on Apple Silicon.

The development of Stable Diffusion’s has been rapid since it became publicly available in August. I expect the optimizations to Core ML will only accelerate that trend in the Apple community and have the added benefit to Apple of enticing more developers to try Core ML.

If you want to take a look at the Core ML optimizations, they’re available on GitHub here and include “a Python package for converting Stable Diffusion models from PyTorch to Core ML using diffusers and coremltools, as well as a Swift package to deploy the models.”

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