John Voorhees

5685 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.
@[email protected]
@johnvoorhees.macstories.net
voorhees@macstories.net

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AppStories - Ep. 492 - 44 minutes

Email Survival Guide

JohnFederico

This week on AppStories, Federico and John talk about the 10+ email apps they’ve used over the years and how their strategies for dealing with recent spikes in email volume has caused them to change their approaches.

On AppStories+, Federico and John update listeners on their summertime agentic coding projects.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 492 - Email Survival Guide

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This Week on MacStories Podcasts

This week on MacStories podcasts: AppStories This week, Federico and John talk about the state of AI aggregator apps and their future prospects before checking in on their current AI app setups for the AppStories+ post-show. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Pocket Casts Castro Spotify YouTube NPC: Next Portable Console This week, Federico, Brendon, and...

Interesting Links

John

A good example of the mischief that LLMs can unleash is this story of a researcher who found a way to issue tickets to virtually any music festival for free using Claude Opus 4.7. (Link) Hacker houses are a weird San Francisco phenomenon that I’m glad someone finally wrote about. (Link) A new motor...

App Debuts

John

Framéd Framéd is a new Mac utility for taking screenshots with a specific aspect ratio. This is something I hit every year with my macOS review. I want consistency from screenshot to screenshot, but with varying window sizes, that can be tough. With Framéd, the aspect ratio is locked to 16:9 or any of...

A System for Surviving Email

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about email, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. As Federico and I will cover on the next episode of AppStories, we’ve tried at least ten different email apps and services over the years, but nothing seems to work for very long. So instead of trying to...

Previously, On MacStories

Safari’s New MCP Server Is Great for Agents Snazzy Labs Puts the Mac’s Upcoming Game Porting Toolkit 4 Through Its Paces Apple Updates Creator Studio Apps Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads...

Snazzy Labs Puts the Mac’s Upcoming Game Porting Toolkit 4 Through Its Paces→

Over at Snazzy Labs, Quinn Nelson has a great in-depth look at the changes coming to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit with macOS 27 this fall. Paired with Metal 4, it’s a real leap over what’s possible today, and Nelson showcases the difference well.

Thanks to the upcoming update, Nelson was able to use CrossOver, a Windows-to-Mac compatibility layer that allows PC games to be played on a Mac, to spotlight some impressive numbers on games ranging from Red Dead Redemption to the recently released 007 First Light.

Not all games Nelson tried showed the same leap in performance, but that’s true on compatibility layers like Proton on the Steam Deck, too. What’s remarkable is that it’s all done in software and as Nelson points out, the advent of coding agents like Codex and Claude may help bring more PC games to Mac using the Game Porting Toolkit by reducing the porting costs.

Nelson also makes a pitch for an Apple gaming device. I agree with him that more than ever, the pieces, right down to a hardware-focused incoming CEO, are all there for such a device, and I remain optimistic. However, I’ve made the case for such a device for years now to no avail. Still, whether or not Apple builds gaming hardware itself, watch the full video above. It’s a fantastic view of how far the Mac has come as a potential gaming platform since the advent of Apple silicon.

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What’s the Matter with Hue?

The cursed Hue Bridge Pro.

The cursed Hue Bridge Pro.

A couple of months ago, I sat down to make sense of my smart home devices with the help of Claude Code. I’ll have more on the process soon. By and large, it’s been a good experience, and adding an agent to the process has been truly useful. However, last week, I hit a wall,...

Apple Updates Creator Studio Apps

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple released an update to its Creator Studio subscription with new features across many of the suite’s apps.

Pixelmator Pro now integrates more deeply with Creator Studio’s other apps. While working in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, you can open an image directly in Pixelmator Pro, edit it, and save the changes back to the source app’s document. On the Mac, Final Cut Pro can now send individual frames to Pixelmator Pro, making thumbnail creation simpler.

Final Cut Pro is also adding a set of Creator Themes with multiple aspect ratios, dynamic titles, and customizable backgrounds. Plus, users now have more control over the design of captions generated on-device using AI. On the Mac, Auto Mask lets you isolate certain parts of footage for editing, and Match Color reproduces colors more accurately.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

For Logic Pro users, today’s update includes improvements to Chord ID, a new Producer Project from Khris Riddick-Tynes, a new sound pack, and an expansion of Beat Breaker.

Final Cut Camera for the iPhone and iPad has been updated with support for Clean HDMI Out, more flexible ProRes support, and disabling of digital zoom. Motion now supports vector graphics, and Compressor gains Vision Pro features, while Freeform gains shape creation, opening images in Pixelmator Pro, a Dark Mode, folders, and drawing on the Mac. Plus, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers each added a handful of new features.

Creator Studio debuted just six months ago, so it’s good to see it already being updated with meaningful features. Creator Studio costs $12.99/month or $129/year. More information is available in Apple’s press release here.