One of the primary ways I discover new music is through Apple Music playlists. Sometimes it’s Friday’s New Music Mix, but it’s just as likely to be something from one of Apple’s curated Indie or Alternative playlists. When I come across an artist or album that I like but have never heard before, I’m torn....
App Debuts
MenuBot MenuBot is a clever combination of Shortcuts and a menu bar app that makes it simple to add and update bits of data in your Mac’s menu bar. The app makes use of SF Symbols to provide a single icon per shortcut, providing a style that works perfectly with other menu bar icons....
Interesting Links
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy writing for The Verge reviews the Level Lock Plus, which includes support for Apple’s Home Keys feature. (Link) Rewind promises to make finding things on your Mac easier by recording everything you do and storing it locally, which may nonetheless raise privacy concerns among many users. (Link) Aqara, the maker low-cost...
MacStories Unwind: Apple TV 4K, the TV App, and Midnights by Taylor Swift
This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and John talk about the new Apple TV 4K, changes to the TV app, and Taylor Swift’s latest album, Midnights.
Links and Show Notes
Last Week, on Club MacStories: A Third-Party Twitter Client, Game Controllers, and Time Tracking
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 342
- Federico dove into the highly-customizable Twitter client Spring
- I shared a tip on navigating Apple devices with a game controller
- I also wrote a column on time tracking and how it has helped me meet tight deadlines
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Plus:
- App Debuts
- Interesting links from around the web
- A sneak peek at what’s next on MacStories’ podcasts
- and more
Timery 1.5 Update Released with Lock Screen Widgets, Live Activities, New Shortcuts Actions, and More
Timery has been updated with a long list of new features and improvements that fans of the app are going to love.
Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities
First off, Timery has added iOS 16 Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities. The Lock Screen widgets can display your current time entry, the total amount of time tracked today, or start a new timer. Each widget type includes circular and rectangular variants when added beneath the Lock Screen’s time, as well as a narrow in-line version that can be added to the top of the screen. The widgets can be configured to start a specific saved timer or show a list of timers and optionally show the app’s edit view for tweaking the details of the timer you start. It’s worth noting that Timery’s editing view now supports ‘@’ as a way to quickly search and add projects and ‘#’ for adding tags.
Live Activities display the current time entry on the iPhone 14 Pro line’s Dynamic Island and the Lock Screen. Long-pressing either reveals additional information about the current project, task, and total time tracked for the day.
I’m a big fan of Timery’s new widgets and Live Activities because they offer the sort of glanceable details that weren’t possible before unless you were using the Mac version of the app and enabled its menu bar app. Now, I don’t have to unlock my iPhone or iPad to check on a timer, which allows me to get the information I want without getting distracted by other things on either device.
Sebastiaan de With’s iPhone 14 Pro Max Camera Review→
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Photo: Sebatiaan de With
Sebastiaan de With, part of the team behind the excellent camera app Halide, has published his annual iPhone camera review, this year putting the iPhone 14 Pro Max through its paces in and around San Francisco, Bhutan, and Tokyo. de With’s review is packed with details about every lens and Apple’s computational photography pipeline, taking readers behind the scenes in ways that Apple simply doesn’t.
Regarding the front-facing camera de With says:
In our testing, the iPhone 14 Pro achieved far sharper shots with vastly — and we mean vastly — superior dynamic range and detail.
The ultra wide camera was substantially improved too:
…with iPhone 14 Pro’s ultra-wide camera comes a much larger sensor, a new lens design and higher ISO sensitivity. While the aperture took a small step back, the larger sensor handily offsets this.
However, it’s the 48MP main lens that impressed de With the most:
While arguably, a quad-bayer sensor should not give true 48-megapixel sensor resolution as one might get from, say, a comparable ‘proper’ digital camera, the results out of the iPhone 14 Pro gave me chills. I have simply never gotten image quality like this out of a phone. There’s more here than just resolution; the way the new 48 megapixel sensor renders the image is unique and simply tremendously different than what I’ve seen before.
Overall, the advances made to Apple’s Pro-line cameras are impressive this year. With new shooting modes and changes across all of the cameras, I’m looking forward to spending more time experimenting with what the iPhone 14 can now do.
Be sure to check out the full review for de With’s stunning photography and details on the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s other lenses, as well as what’s improved and what hasn’t when it comes to Apple’s Photonic Engine processing pipeline.
Stage Manager: A Problem of Perspective
Federico and I have talked about Stage Manager a lot over the past couple of weeks, and after comparing our experiences, I’m convinced the problems with the feature on the iPad and Mac won’t be easy to fix, not because of technical issues but because from Apple’s perspective nothing is broken. Stage Manager works as...
Five macOS Ventura Tips and Tricks
In every macOS release, there are a lot of little tips buried in my long review. Instead of having to hunt for them yourself, I thought I’d share a few of my favorites and elaborate a little on how I’m using them. 1. Group Smart Lists in Reminders for Custom Task Views Reminders has more...