John Voorhees

5638 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.

Introducing MacStories Unwind: A Weekly Podcast Review of Everything MacStories and More

We’re excited to announce Unwind, a new MacStories podcast recapping everything happening at MacStories and more. Every Friday, the new show will run down the stories, reviews, and other posts published on MacStories, the topics covered on AppStories, and what’s new with Club MacStories, plus a couple of media picks for unwinding over the weekend.

You can subscribe to Unwind in all the usual places using the buttons below and listen to the trailer introducing the show right here:

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MacStories Unwind Trailer

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Unwind

We publish a lot every week between the site, our podcasts, and the Club, and we know that sometimes it can be hard to keep up. With Unwind, you’ll get a short, fun guide to everything going on at MacStories, along with links, so it’s easy to jump to what interests you most.

Each week, we’ll also highlight the media we’re enjoying when we take time to unwind ourselves. Every episode will feature a couple of picks including the movies, TV shows, albums, books, articles, and video games we love. Especially with so many readers and listeners stuck at home, now felt like the perfect time to share more of how we spend our downtime.

Of course, we have a new page dedicated to Unwind on MacStories, and you can always access the full catalog of episodes at MacStories.net/tag/unwind.

Helping MacStories’ Sponsors During Uncertain Times

Sponsorships are a big part of what allows us to continue to produce MacStories and each of its properties. We’re fortunate to work with top-notch companies that make terrific products that we’re delighted to promote to readers and listeners.

We plan to offer Unwind as a separately-sponsored podcast like AppStories eventually. However, as we developed Unwind, it didn’t feel appropriate to ask companies already facing uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic to take a chance on a new show too. So, for the time being, Unwind will be part of the MacStories homepage sponsorship at no additional cost. Our hope is that including Unwind will help the companies that have been so good to MacStories over the years by providing them with additional exposure.


Working with sponsors to promote products to our readers and listeners in a manner that doesn’t ruin the reading or listening experience and allows us to continue to produce the content you love and the quality you expect has always been of utmost importance to us. To the sponsors with whom we’ve worked in the past and will work with in the future, we hope Unwind adds some value to a MacStories sponsorship that helps make these uncertain times a little less difficult. To our readers and listeners, we hope you enjoy the new show.

– Federico and John



Utility Apps Revisited

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 160 - Utility Apps Revisited

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This week, Federico and John dig into the utility grab bag to cover eight more of their favorite iOS and iPadOS utility apps.

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App Debuts

Paste Paste, a clipboard manager available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac and featuring iCloud sync, was updated earlier this week with new Shortcuts actions. Powered by iOS 13’s parameters, the new Shortcuts actions let you save data into a specific pinboard in the background as well as retrieve items from Paste without launching the...


Darkroom 4.6 Adds Video to Its Excellent Photo Editing Workflow

Darkroom is a terrific photo editor for the iPhone and iPad that leverages iCloud Photos with a robust set of editing tools and filters. With the release of version 4.6 today, Darkroom adds video to the mix. What’s impressive about the update is that it manages to apply the same set of tools and filters available for photos to video in real-time, which results in a fast, efficient editing workflow.

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AppStories, Episode 159 – The Evolution of Clipboard and Shelf Apps

This week on AppStories, we look back at the origins of clipboard apps on iOS, how they’ve evolved, and the apps we’re currently using on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac to save snippets of information for use elsewhere.

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 159 - The Evolution of Clipboard and Shelf Apps

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Apple Maps’ Look Around Feature Expands to Chicago

Apple has updated the Look Around feature of the Maps app to include Chicago, and as always, Justin O’Beirne has all the details.

According to O’Beirne, Chicago, which is the tenth US city to be added to Look Around, is the biggest expansion of the feature by land area to date. Not only is the city included, but so are many of the surrounding suburbs. The feature still covers only about 0.3% of the land area of the US, but by covering eight of the country’s ten largest US cities, Look Around accounts for nearly 14% of the US population.

For more details on the update, including fantastic animated GIFs that visualize the expansion of Look Around to Chicago and previous cities, be sure to read O’Beirne’s full story.

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Apple to Host Interactive Accessibility Event Online as Possible Warm-Up for WWDC

As noted by Steve Troughton-Smith on Twitter and reported by 9to5Mac, Apple has invited developers to attend an online event to learn about the accessibility features of its devices. According to an email message sent to developers, the event will include opportunities to ask questions during and after the presentation and schedule individual consultations.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1252397243421716481

Last month, Apple announced that WWDC will be online-only this June for the first time. As Troughton-Smith suggested in his tweet, it’s not hard to imagine that Apple is using this week’s accessibility event to test systems that it will use to move WWDC online.

Apple periodically holds events for developers outside the annual WWDC cycle, but this event is a little different, especially the interactive component. I’m curious to see how the accessibility event goes and the mechanics Apple uses to implement developer participation.


The Evolution of Clipboard and Shelf Apps

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 159 - The Evolution of Clipboard and Shelf Apps

0:00
36:00

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John look back at the origins of clipboard apps on iOS, how they’ve evolved, and the apps they’re currently using on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac to save snippets of information for use elsewhere.

Read more