Folio: A Promising Read-Later App with a Strong Foundation

By John Voorhees

I’ve been using read-it-later apps since before I had an iPhone. For those of us who were Wi-Fi-only iPod touch users before owning iPhones, apps like Instapaper were great for reading on the go.

Like in those early days, the read-later universe is once again hyper-competitive, with a lot of relatively new entrants such as Matter and Readwise Reader. That’s led to other apps shutting down. ElevenLabs bought and closed Omnivore, and most recently, Pocket, which debuted ages ago as Read It Later and was eventually acquired by Mozilla, shuttered.

In the wake of Pocket’s demise, Nick Chapman, who used to work on Pocket, and the team at Less is Better debuted Folio, a new read-later app for the iPhone, the iPad, Android, and the web that they say is designed to capture the essence of Pocket. I used Pocket on and off over the years but always considered it a step behind alternatives, so my expectations for Folio weren’t high.

Still, I was curious to see what Folio had to offer, especially because it must have been put together very quickly in order to be launched as Pocket shut down. Despite my initial reservations and some gaps in the app’s functionality, the Folio team has laid a great foundation with an excellent reading experience that’s worth keeping an eye on.

Apple’s Manufacturing Academy Is Set to Open in Detroit on August 19th

By John Voorhees

First announced in February, Apple said today that its Detroit Manufacturing Academy will open on August 19th. The academy is a collaboration with Michigan State University and according to Apple’s press release will:

host small and medium-sized businesses from across the country in Detroit for various workshops with Apple experts. The courses are designed to help American companies transition to advanced manufacturing by implementing artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing techniques.

Apple says the academy will also offer virtual programming led by its engineers later this year.

Apple is under a lot of political pressure to move its hardware manufacturing to the US. That’s not the kind of thing that can happen overnight but programs like this are a good first step to developing the sort of local expertise necessary to build components for Apple’s gadgets.

AppleCare One Unifies Device Coverage Into a Single Monthly Plan

By John Voorhees

Apple announced today that it is consolidating its AppleCare+ plans into one program dubbed AppleCare One that will be available starting tomorrow. The new program is $19.99/month which covers three products. Additional products can be added for $5.99/month for each device added.

Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, had this to say of the new plan:

At Apple, we’re focused on creating and delivering exceptional experiences. Built on the trusted foundation of AppleCare+, AppleCare One extends that same reliability and makes it easier than ever to protect the products you love and depend on like iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, combining simplicity and exceptional value.

Apple says that AppleCare One includes all of the features of AppleCare+ and expands the theft and loss protection from the iPhone to the iPad and Apple Watch. The company says that enrolling an iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch under the new program will save users up to $11/month compared to buying AppleCare+ for each device separately. Customers can also add existing devices to the new program that are up to four years old (or one year for headphones) if they are in good condition. That’s a big change from the usual 60 days from the date of purchase that customers have had to purchase AppleCare in the past.

If you’re someone juggling multiple AppleCare accounts for a variety of devices, AppleCare one certainly sounds like a simpler, more flexible approach, as well as an opportunity to cover older devices.

Reuters Reports that Apple’s New EU Developer Terms May Avoid Further Penalties →

Linked By John Voorhees

Reuters reports that Apple is on the brink of satisfying EU regulators with the changes the company has made to its developer program in the EU:

Apple’s changes to its App Store rules and fees will likely secure the green light from EU antitrust regulators, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that would stave off potentially hefty daily fines for the iPhone maker.

Reuters estimates that those fines, which would be on top of the 500 million euro fine already levied against Apple, could be as much as 50 million euros per day.

No deal is finished until it’s formally announced, but if Reuters’ sources are correct, we should see an announcement from the European Commission in the coming weeks.

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New Emoji Announced for World Emoji Day →

Linked By John Voorhees

Source: Unicode Consortium.

Every year, the Unicode Consortium announces new emoji that will be added in the fall and incorporated in iOS and other OSes in the months that follow. The latest batch that were announced today to coincide with World Emoji Day will be part of Unicode 17 and include:

Trombone
Treasure Chest
Distorted Face
Apple Core
Fight Cloud
Ballet Dancers
Hairy Creature
Orca

As usual, it’s an eclectic mix that rounds out certain categories and includes other emoji that are just plain fun. I look forward to Federico trying to guess these on Connected. There’s an almost one-to-one overlap between the ones I know I’ll use the most and those that I think Federico will never guess.

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Ars Technica Takes CarPlay Ultra for a Spin →

Linked By John Voorhees

Michael Teo Van Runkle, writing for Ars Technica, spent eight days testing CarPlay Ultra in an Aston Martin DB12 Volante. Van Runkle walks readers through the setup process, covers the themes available, and describes the experience of monitoring and controlling the car’s systems using Apple’s next-generation version of CarPlay.

By and large, Van Runkle’s experience was positive:

Ultra’s biggest improvements over preceding CarPlay generations are in the center console infotainment integration. Being able to access climate controls, drive modes, and traction settings without leaving the intuitive suite of CarPlay makes life much easier. In fact, changing between drive modes and turning traction control off or down via Aston’s nifty adjustable system caused less latency and lagging in the displays in Ultra. And for climate, Ultra actually brings up a much better screen after spinning the physical rotaries on the center console than you get through Aston’s UI—plus, I found a way to make the ventilated seats blow stronger, which I never located through the innate UI despite purposefully searching for a similar menu page.

That said, it was not without glitches and hiccups along the way, some of which were difficult to pin on CarPlay Ultra versus Aston Martin’s systems.

Precious few auto makers have signed on to offer CarPlay Ultra, but Kia and Porsche have said they will, too, which is a start. I remember when CarPlay debuted in 2014 with a similarly small lineup composed mostly of luxury brands like Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz. So, it’s not surprising Ultra is debuting in a car that starts at $265,000. It took years before the original CarPlay trickled down to ordinary, everyday cars. But they did, and now, with a few notable exceptions, like Tesla, Rivian, and GM EVs, you can find CarPlay in most makes and models.

I hope CarPlay Ultra follows a similar trajectory. It looks great, and I’d love to have it in my next car, which I can confidently predict now will not be an Aston Martin.

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CD PROJEKT RED Publishes Mac System Requirements for Cyberpunk 2077 →

Linked By John Voorhees

Yesterday, I wrote about the upcoming release of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on the Mac. Today, CD PROJEKT RED published a support document, listing the game’s Mac system requirements. As I wrote yesterday, the company says the game will work on all Apple silicon Macs; however, the beefier your CPU and memory, the better.

As reported by Tom Warren at The Verge today, the support document summarizes the game’s system requirements in four categories: Minimum, Recommended, High Fidelity, and Very High Fidelity. It’s worth checking out the support document and Warren’s coverage before buying Cyberpunk 2077, which still hasn’t shown up on the Mac App Store for pre-order, because if you want the Very High Fidelity experience, you’ll need at least an M3 Ultra or M4 Max with at least 36 GB of memory.

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Longplay for Mac Launches with Powerful AI and Shortcuts Integration

By John Voorhees

Longplay by Adrian Schönig is an excellent album-oriented music app that integrates with Apple Music. The app started on iOS and iPadOS, then later added support for visionOS. With today’s update, Longplay is available on macOS, too, where it adds unique automation features.

If you aren’t familiar with Longplay, be sure to check out my reviews of version 2.0 for iOS and iPadOS and the app’s debut on the Vision Pro. I love the app’s album art-forward design, collection and queuing systems for navigating and organizing large music libraries, and many other ways to sort, filter, and rediscover your favorite albums. Here’s how Adrian describes Longplay in a post introducing the Mac version:

It filters out the albums where you only have a handful of tracks, and focusses on those complete or nearly complete albums in your library instead. It analyses your album stats to help you rediscover forgotten favourites and explore your library in different ways. You can organise your albums into collections, including smart ones. And you can go deep with automation support.

With the introduction of Longplay for Mac, the app is now available everywhere, with feature parity across all versions. Plus, Longplay syncs across all devices, so your Collections and Smart Collections are available on every platform.

Cyberpunk 2077 for Mac Arrives Thursday

By John Voorhees

Source: CD PROJEKT RED.

Last fall, alongside the announcement of the M4 MacBook Pro, Apple and CD PROJEKT RED said that Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to the Mac in early 2025. But when WWDC rolled around last month with no more news about when the game would come to the Mac, I thought it might slip to the fall when macOS Tahoe is expected to be released with Metal 4 and other game-friendly features.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which includes the Phantom Liberty DLC, will be out this Thursday on the Mac App Store, as well as on GOG.com, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Cyberpunk, a notoriously demanding game when it comes to system resources, will run on any Apple silicon Mac with 16GB of memory that is running macOS Sequoia (or the Tahoe developer beta).

Source: CD PROJEKT RED.

To support every 16GB Apple silicon Mac since the M1 MacBook Air, Cyberpunk relies on the latest Metal technologies, including Tile-Based Deferred Rendering and tools like Metal’s C++ interface and the Metal Shader Converter, to optimize for Apple GPUs. The game also takes advantage of Apple’s MetalFX Upscaling.

CD PROJEKT RED has gone all out with other compatibility features to make its game feel at home on the Mac, too, including:

“For This Mac” graphics presets that are optimized for the Apple silicon hardware running the game, which promises to take the guess work out of configuring graphics settings;
AMD FSR upscaling and frame generation optimized for Apple silicon Macs;
Support for Spatial Audio and head tracking for those playing with AirPods;
HDR support that is dynamically optimized for Apple’s XDR displays and HDR output for calibrated external displays;
Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and controller support; and
Cross-progression across all platforms.

In the fall, Apple says Cyberpunk will get a boost from the videogame technologies announced at WWDC 2025. Those include MetalFX Frame Interpolation to increase and stabilize frame rates, which Apple says will allow the game to hit 120 fps using the game’s Ultra settings when combined with MetalFX Upscaling. Cyberpunk will utilize MetalFX Frame Denoising to clean up the noise produced by its path-tracing renderer, too.

Source: CD PROJEKT RED.

I’m looking forward to trying Cyberpunk on the Mac. I already own it on Steam and have played it on the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch 2, both of which should be excellent points of comparison to the wide range of Macs that Apple says will run Cyberpunk 2077.

The Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077 will debut this Thursday, July 17. There is no additional charge for the Mac version if you already purchased the game from one of the stores that offers it. Alternatively, you can purchase the game from the Mac App Store, where Cyberpunk 2077 is making its debut.

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