John Voorhees

5209 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.
voorhees@macstories.net

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New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba

Coming Soon: What’s Next on Apple TV and Apple Arcade in December 2025

This month is a relatively quiet one for Apple TV, but there are a few gems coming soon, and Apple Arcade has a bunch of new games that are out tomorrow, so let’s dig into the highlights of both.

Apple Arcade Games (December 4)

SpongeBob Patty Pursuit 2

SpongeBob Patty Pursuit 2

Apple Arcade is kicking things off this month with four new games:

SpongeBob Patty Pursuit 2

This sequel to the popular platformer SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit is filled with the same colorful mayhem as its predecessor.

PowerWash Simulator

I was pretty excited to see PowerWash Simulator coming to Apple Arcade. I know a lot of people find these types of simulator games relaxing, but I’ve never tried one, so I think I’ll dip into PowerWash over the holidays.

Cult of the Lamb Arcade Edition

Cult of the Lamb is a great roguelite from Massive Monster that was originally published by Devolver Digital in 2022 and is coming to Apple Arcade. According to Apple’s press release:

This version includes exclusive content, including new follower forms, decorations, and outfits, along with all existing content updates and paid packs.

If you haven’t played it yet, be sure to check out Cult of the Lamb. It’s a game I have returned to several times since its initial release, and I expect it will do well on Apple platforms.

Subway Surfers+

Subway Surfers is an App Store classic that remains popular more than a decade after its original release. With the plus version on Arcade, subscribers can enjoy the game uninterrupted by ads or in-app purchases.

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM+

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM+ originally debuted on the Sony PS3 and was later ported to other platforms including mobile phones. On iOS, the 3D arena fighting game that’s based on a manga and anime series was available as a paid upfront game. With the plus version, there’s no upfront cost beyond a subscription to Apple Arcade, and the game adds new characters and a new stage.

The First Snow of Fraggle Rock (December 5)

The holiday season is upon us, and Apple TV is kicking things off on Friday with The First Snow of Fraggle Rock, featuring the characters from the Apple TV series.

Add to your Calendar:

F1: The Movie (December 12)

The biggest event of December for Apple TV is the streaming debut of F1: The Movie. The film has been available to buy or rent for a while after playing in theaters last summer, and now it will be available to stream as part of an Apple TV subscription, too. I haven’t seen F1 since WWDC in June, so I’m looking forward to rewatching it with my family over the holidays.

Add to your Calendar:

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Bloomberg Reports That Alan Dye Is Leaving Apple

Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg, reports that Alan Dye, Apple vice president of Human Interface Design, is leaving the company to head up Meta’s design team. Dye’s departure was confirmed by Apple to Bloomberg, with Apple CEO Tim Cook telling the publication that Steve Lemay will take over Dye’s role:

Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999. He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity.

Dye, who led the rollout of Apple’s Liquid Glass design language across all of its OSes, will be in charge of hardware, software, and AI across Meta’s product lines. Billy Sorrentino, who worked with Dye, is also leaving Apple’s design group for Meta.

Dye’s departure comes at an interesting moment for Apple and Meta. Meta, which has seen some success with its Ray-Ban smart glasses, has struggled with other consumer product projects but clearly wants to do more with AI-infused hardware. Meanwhile, Apple has had trouble infusing its software and hardware lineup with AI and has experienced a rash of departures among its AI team and retirements within its executive ranks. 2026 is shaping up to be a year of change across much of Apple.

Apple Music’s Replay 2025 Is Live→

Apple Music has released its annual Apple Music Replay overview of subscribers’ listening statistics for 2025 along with top charts for 2025. The recap can be accessed on https://replay.music.apple.com, where you’ll find details about the music you listened to throughout the year, including your top albums, songs, artists, playlists, and genres.

Replay includes statistics about your listening habits.

Replay includes statistics about your listening habits.

As with past years, Replay ‘25 begins with an animated highlights reel of your year in music set to the songs you enjoyed throughout the year. Replay also spotlights listening milestones like the total number of minutes listened and the number of artists and songs played. Subscribers can browse through their statistics by month, too. Your Replay ‘25 playlist, which includes your 100 most listened-to songs is available from the Replay website and Apple’s Music app. In addition to Replay ‘25 Apple Music released top charts for countries around the world and genres.

Apple Music's top charts.

Apple Music’s top charts.

The timing of Replay ‘25 is opportune for me, since Federico and I are beginning to assemble our lists of favorite music of 2025 for an upcoming episode of MacStories Unwind. Most of all though, I just enjoy using Replay ‘25 as a way to revisit my favorite music of the year.

To view your own Replay 2025 statistics, visit music.apple.com/replay.

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John Giannandrea’s Retirement From Apple Announced

Today Apple announced the retirement of John Giannandrea, the company’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy. Giannandrea will remain at Apple as an advisor until next spring.

News of Giannandrea’s retirement was paired with an announcement that Apple has hired Amar Subramanya as vice president of AI. Subramanya, who worked at Microsoft since this past summer, previously worked at Google for 16 years on projects including the company’s Gemini Assistant. Subramanya will take the lead on Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation, while other areas of Giannandrea’s work will be inherited by Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue.

Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea for his tenure at the company:

We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users. AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.

Given the troubled history of Apple’s AI efforts, the retirement of Giannandrea isn’t surprising. It will be interesting to see if Subramanya settles into his new role given the frequency with which top AI talent tends to turn over in the tech industry.

AppStories, Ep. 463 - 26 minutes

Designing for Liquid Glass: Outstanding Indie Apps

FedericoJohn

This week, Federico and John dig into some of their favorite apps that have adopted Apple’s Liquid Glass design language.

On AppStories+, it’s John’s 10th anniversary at MacStories, so he and Federico look back at the last decade.

Also available on YouTube here.

[Subscribe here.](https://www.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/plans)

Subscribe here.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 463 - Designing for Liquid Glass: Outstanding Indie Apps

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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Black Friday 2025 App Deals

There’s more than just gadgets on sale this Black Friday. There are also hundreds of excellent app deals from collections and bundles to one-off sales. We’ve gathered some of our favorites for you here, which are generally available through Monday, December 1, but check for details on the websites linked below:

The biggest collection I’ve seen is from Indie App Sales with ouver 475 app deals. Indie App Sales has been curating a list of apps from indie developers for years now, and there are always a bunch of gems on this list. Be sure to check it out for deals on apps like:

There are hundreds more deals in the Indie App Sale, so be sure to visit the site to browse through them all.

There are other great sales happening elsewhere too, including the following:

Happy deal hunting!

Just the Best: MacStories’ Black Friday 2025 Picks

Black Friday deals started very early this year, and we’ve covered a lot of ground on the MacStories Deals Mastodon and Bluesky accounts since publishing our Early Black Friday Picks. A lot of those deals are ongoing, so it’s worth revisiting that story as you start your holiday shopping in earnest.

However, today, I wanted to hit the highlights of what we’ve covered over the past week on MacStories Deals and add some new deals to the mix that you probably haven’t seen yet, so buckle up, it’s time to go shopping.

MacStories Pixel Icons

All three MacStories Pixel Icon sets are 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Two of the icon sets are specially-designed for Shortcuts. We’ve all been there. You work hard on a shortcut and want to give it the perfect icon, only to realize that Apple doesn’t offer what you want in the Shortcuts app. The MacStories Pixel Icons fill that gap with an extensive set of painstakingly hand-crafted icons with multiple color options created by MacStories’ long-time designer, Silvia Gatta. We also offer a set of Perspective icons that are perfect for OmniFocus Pro and other uses.

Visit our dedicated MacStories Pixel page today to preview all three icon sets and purchase them for 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Apple Hardware

There are a lot of Black Friday deals on Apple hardware, but most of them are good, not great. I’m picky, so I’m only going to focus on just the great deals.

One of the best deals on Apple hardware during Black Friday is the M4 13” MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. If you want more memory or storage than that, you’ll have to settle for a smaller percentage discount, but even with more memory and more storage, you’re still doing better than any other deal this year. The 15” M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD is a good deal, too.

Among the many iPad deals, the best is on the 128GB iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip. I’ve had a mini since they were released and love it. The size makes it an excellent reading and video-watching device.

AirPods 4 are also heavily discounted for Black Friday. Apple’s most affordable wireless earbuds come with active noise cancellation and without. The model with no active noise cancellation slightly edges out the model with ANC as far as the discounts are concerned, but both models are a bargain.

However, the very best deals available from Apple in terms of the percentage discount are a 4-pack of AirTags and the Apple Pencil Pro. If you need either, now is the perfect time to buy them.

Smart Home

The holiday season is a great time to catch up on projects and start new ones. For me, that’s often tuning up my smart home setup and setting up some new devices thanks to Black Friday sales. Here are the best ones I’ve seen:

Aqara already makes some of the most affordable smart home devices out there, so you really can’t go wrong with their Black Friday deals. One of my favorites is the FP2 Presence Sensor. It’s far more sophisticated than a simple motion sensor. To start with, it can tell when you’ve left a room, which motion sensors can’t do. I’ve used an FP2 Sensor in my office to control lighting for a couple of years, wrote about it for Club members, and have been really happy with it.

Other great deals from Aqara include its U100 Smart Lock that works with Apple Home Key and HomeKit, the Aqara M3 Home Hub that I recently set up at home and love, and 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro, an outdoor HomeKit camera that I reviewed earlier this year.

My Aqara 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro is paired with an Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell, which is also on sale for Black Friday. I’ve used various Ecobee smart home products for years and have never been disappointed. The same goes for its smart doorbell. I’ve had it installed for over a year, and it’s been reliable despite facing the sun on some very hot summer days.

Black Friday is also a great time to buy a robot vacuum and mop. There are lots of deals, but the model I’ve tested for the past couple of months and love is the Narwal Freo X10 Pro. It handles vacuuming and mopping, navigating via LiDAR and does an excellent job compared to other robot vacuums I’ve tried. I’ll be reviewing the Freo X10 Pro about it soon, but now’s the time to get it at a steep discount.

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Ten

Ten years ago this Sunday, I published my first article on MacStories. I’ve told the story of how I got started before, so today, I thought I’d see if I could come up with 10 things I’ve learned over the past decade. Carve Your Own Path. Success comes in many shapes and often has as...

Festivitas Brings Fresh Whimsy to Your Mac, iPhone, and iPad for the Holiday Season

Last year, Simon Støvring released Festivitas, a Mac app that lets you string holiday lights from your menu bar and across the top of your Dock. This year, Simon is back with an update to the Mac app and a new version for the iPhone and iPad.

The default set of lights consists of traditional multi-colored bulbs that blink on and off as you use your Mac. That’s the set I use the most, but Festivitas offers many more options. You can control the lights’ opacity, whether they appear along both the menu bar and the Dock or just one of them, and the colors of the lights and the cable from which they hang. You also have more than a dozen light styles to choose from, including round holiday lights, bats, clovers, eggs, stars, hearts, snowflakes, cocktail glasses, beer mugs, “2026,” “WWDC,” and more, covering a wide variety of holidays and festive events. Plus, you can control how the lights blink. It’s a lot, but it’s also just plain fun to tweak everything to suit your tastes.

This year, the Mac app adds a virtual snowstorm that you can start from the app’s settings or menu bar item. It’s a great addition that looks amazing against a dark backdrop like the Obsidian theme I often use to write. A fun touch is that the snowflakes avoid your pointer, and you can adjust the sensitivity of this feature in settings. You can also use your pointer to push around the lights hanging from the menu bar, which is handy for those times when they obscure Safari’s menu bar or other content.

The snow is lovely. I highly recommend pairing it with the Animal Crossing Snowy Day soundtrack on Nintendo Music. It’s an incredibly peaceful and relaxing combination.

Festivitas supports Shortcuts, too. Simon has created some fun example automations that you’ll find in the app’s settings to do things like turning on the snowstorm when snow is forecast and activating your lights when you play music.

Festivitas on iPhone.

Festivitas on iPhone.

New this year is a Festivitas app for the iPhone and iPad. The app lets you build small, medium, and large widgets to place on your Home Screen. You can either frame a photo with twinkling lights or create a transparent-style widget so the lights frame an element of your Home Screen. I love that the lights framing the photos are animated, an effect I know isn’t easy to do with a widget. You can also add text and make other adjustments to each widget.

Festivitas isn’t going to help you get more done. In fact, it might even slow you down a little bit, and maybe that’s the point. Taking a moment to enjoy the app’s lights and be mesmerized by the falling snow is a good reminder to slow down a little and have some fun.

Festivitas for the Mac is available directly from the app’s website for any price you want to name between $3.99 and $9.99. The iPhone and iPad version is a free download on the App Store with a range of in-app purchases from $3.99 to $9.99 to create a similar name-your-price system.