The Sentence Returns with iOS 26.4, Sort of

By John Voorhees

Yesterday, Apple released developer beta 1 of iOS 26.4, which among other things adds a feature to the Music app that uses Apple Intelligence to generate a playlist from a short description of what the user wants to hear. That immediately reminded Federico and me of The Sentence, a Beats Music feature that sadly didn’t survive the app’s acquisition by Apple.

The Sentence allowed subscribers to describe the music they wanted to hear based on a Mad Libs-style sentence construction. Every sentence was structured as “I’m [location] & feel like [mood] with [person/group] to [music genre].” The feature was a fantastic innovation that made playlist creation fun and easy. As Federico described it in 2014:

It’s The Sentence, though, that steals the spotlight in how it combines regular, Pandora-like song shuffling with a context/mood-based menu to tell Beats what you want to listen to. The Sentence, as the name implies, lets you construct a sentence using variable tokens for location, mood, user, and music genre. You can request things like “I’m at my computer and feel like dancing with myself to pop”, “I’m in the car and feel like driving with my friends to indie”, or more absurd contexts such as “I’m underpaid and I feel like shoveling snow with my lover to metal”. As reported by Re/code [Ed. note: This is a dead link], Beats explained that “the content, and the filters, are selected and tuned by humans, and an algorithm generates the playlist from your choices”.

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Apple Podcasts Will Combine Video with Audio in Shows

By John Voorhees

Source: Apple.

Apple announced today that beginning with the betas of iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS 26.4, which were released earlier today, the Apple Podcasts app will add video streaming. The feature is based on HTTP Live Streaming, known as HLS, that will allow listeners to switch between an audio-only version of a show and the video version. At launch, the feature will be available via Acast, ART19, Triton’s Omny Studio, and SiriusXM, which includes SiriusXM Media, AdsWizz, and Simplecast, with more to come in the future.

Apple’s HLS implementation will also support dynamic ad insertion. Advertisers will be charged an impression fee by Apple to include their ads. Podcast hosting companies and producers will not be charged to distribute HLS versions of shows through Apple Podcasts. It will be interesting to see if hosting companies charge podcasters a premium to deliver video versions of shows.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, said of the new feature:

By bringing a category-leading video experience to Apple Podcasts, we’re putting creators in full control of their content and how they build their businesses, while making it easier than ever for audiences to listen to or watch podcasts.

I’ve been wondering for a while whether Apple would do more with video podcasts. This is an interesting move, but the launch is limited, applying to a handful of podcast hosting companies. That means the lineup of shows that support the feature will be limited at first, but with time, it could become standard across most podcasts. The move is clearly designed to counter YouTube, which has rapidly grabbed audience share from Apple and others, with its video-centric approach to podcasts.

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Apple Announces a March 4th Press Event →

Linked By John Voorhees

Source: MacRumors.

Apple has invited members of the press to what it’s calling a “special Apple Experience” that will take place on March 4th at 9:00 am Eastern U.S. time in New York, London, and Shanghai, according to MacRumors. There’s no word yet on whether the event will be livestreamed.

With several products rumored to be getting updates in 2026, it’s hard to guess what’s planned, although in the past, Apple has launched or refreshed products like the iPhone 16e, iPads, and the MacBook Air around this time of year. It’s also notable that Apple is planning the event for multiple locations around the world. That certainly makes it more accessible than a single event in Cupertino, which is good to see.

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AppStories - Ep. 472 - 38 minutes

Pick a Pair: New Apps We’re Using

Federico

John

This week, Federico and John share apps they’re trying for the first time, including a calendar app, a text editor, a snippets utility, and more.

Then on AppStories+, John shares his first impressions of Xcode 26.3.

This episode is sponsored by:

Claude – Get 50% off Claude Pro, including access to Claude Code.
Insta360 – Introducing the Insta360 Wave and the Link 2 Pro.

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AppStories Episode 472 - Pick a Pair: New Apps We’re Using

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger Joins OpenAI →

Linked By John Voorhees

Peter Steinberger, the developer behind OpenClaw that was launched and took off barely a month ago and has already had three names, is joining OpenAI. In addition, OpenClaw is moving to a foundation where it will remain an open-source project.

As Steinberger explains on his website:

It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and given the freedom to flourish. Ultimately, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach. The more I talked with the people there, the clearer it became that we both share the same vision.

The community around OpenClaw is something magical and OpenAI has made strong commitments to enable me to dedicate my time to it and already sponsors the project. To get this into a proper structure I’m working on making it a foundation. It will stay a place for thinkers, hackers and people that want a way to own their data, with the goal of supporting even more models and companies.

The AI world has been talking about agents for more than a year, but it wasn’t until Steinberger’s project came along that we got software that put the idea of agents to practical use. OpenClaw may have only been just a few months old, but it captured the imaginations of users, including Federico, who has an uncanny knack for spotting the next big thing very early.

It will be interesting to see where OpenAI’s apps go next. I’ve been impressed with Codex, and with the Sky team and Steinberger on the company’s roster, I have high hopes for what they’ll do next.

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App Debuts

By John Voorhees

Federico

Pladio Pladio is a new Internet radio app that caught my attention thanks to its clever approach to song identification. The app uses audio fingerprinting to automatically recognize tracks playing on radio stations, even when they don’t broadcast metadata. Once a song is identified, you can add it directly to your Apple Music library...

This Week on MacStories Podcasts

By John Voorhees

This week on MacStories podcasts: AppStories This week on AppStories, John and Federico share the very different ways they use Notion. On AppStories+, we follow up on OpenClaw security concerns and explore the ways Federico is using it. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Pocket Casts Castro Spotify YouTube NPC: Next Portable Console This week, we...

MacStories Weekly 500: Thank You for One Step Closer to Forever

By John Voorhees

This year marks the 11th year of MacStories Weekly, and today is our 500th issue. When I started helping out with App Debuts around issue 25, I never imagined I’d be sitting here writing about issue 500. In 2015, when the Club debuted, a paid subscription service with an email newsletter was novel. That’s changed...

Four Ideas for Automating Tasks with AI

By John Voorhees

Tools like Claude Code and Codex are great for automating tasks, but you need to have an idea before you get started. So today, I thought I’d share four relatively simple projects that I built with the help of Claude Code. You may not have the need to implement these yourself, but hopefully they’ll spark...