Remote, Mouse & Keyboard Exclusively for Club MacStories members, we have 50 copies of Remote, Mouse & Keyboard, agreat app for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch that lets you control your Mac remotely. This giveaway is first-come, first-serve, so don’t delay because the codes will go quickly. Happy Holidays! Click Here for a Chance...
Interesting Links
Apple Arcade quietly added a new $49.99 annual subscription option this week, granting a $10 discount if you pay for a year at a time. (Link) Adobe has launched the first feature update for Photoshop for iPad, introducing Select Subject which intelligently identifies your image’s subject and enables editing it in isolation from the rest...
Up Next on MacStories’ Podcasts
Federico and John will be taking two weeks off fromAppStoriesduring the holidays. The show will return with an all-new episode on Monday, January 6th. [[dialog_artwork]] We want to let you in on a little secret. Season 2 ofDialogis in the works.We haven’t set a launch date yet, which depends on guest availability and a...
The MacStories Weekly Holiday Hiatus
Long-time Club MacStories members may recall that every year we take a couple weeks off around Christmas and New Year’s Day to spend time with friends and family and recharge. This year is no different, and to close the year out on a high note, we’ve got a big issue for you today with Federico’s...
MacStories Selects 2019: Recognizing the Best Apps of the Year
John: The process of picking the MacStories Selects awards is simple. During the past year as we used and reviewed hundreds of apps, Federico, Ryan, and I kept a shared note in Apple Notes with a list of the apps that struck us as potential candidates for one of our 2019 awards. Not long ago, each of us revisited that list and refined it. Then, we convened in the MacStories Slack and hashed out the winners and runners up.
Today, we are pleased to announce the winners of the second annual MacStories Selects awards. As we explained when we introduced the inaugural Selects awards, we expected that we would expand and evolve them in 2019, which is precisely what we’ve done.
This year, the Selects Awards feature four new awards:
- Best New Feature
- Best Watch App
- Best Mac App
- Readers’ Choice Award
Best New Feature recognizes a new app feature that stands out for its impact. We also added an award for the Best New Watch app; in a year that saw Watch apps gain independence from the iPhone, this is an award that felt like an obvious and natural addition to Selects. With Apple’s renewed focus on Mac hardware and apps, we also wanted to recognize the 2019 Mac app that we feel represents the best that macOS has to offer.
Finally, for 2019 we are debuting a Readers’ Choice award selected by members of Club MacStories. All of our readers care about the apps they use, or they wouldn’t be reading MacStories in the first place. However, Club members’ interest and dedication to discovering and using the very best apps available rises to an entirely different level, so we felt it would be fitting to tap into their refined tastes with this special award.
When we looked back on our 2018 Selects picks, we couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. The awards were well-received by readers and developers alike, but they lacked a sense of permanence and concreteness found in other awards ceremonies. So, we’re very pleased and excited to announce that this year, we have commissioned custom, hand-made awards that we will be sending to each Selects award recipient later this week. From New Zealand to Texas and many points in between, each of the eight MacStories Selects awards will be in the hands of winners soon.
Congratulations from the entire MacStories team to the winners and runners up this year. Every one of these apps represents the best the App Stores have to offer. Thanks too to the developers of all the apps we use and love; your hard work doesn’t go unseen. 2019 has been a fantastic year for apps, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with in 2020. Also, thanks to the Club MacStories members who participated in the Readers’ Choice award voting. The Club is an important part of MacStories, so it was great to find a way to involve its members.
With that, let’s get on with the 2019 MacStories Selects awards.
PowerPhotos: The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac [Sponsor]
PowerPhotos is the perfect Mac utility to help you manage multiple photo libraries. As technology marches forward, digital cameras produce larger and larger image files, which makes it easy to create huge, unmanageable Photos libraries of tens of thousands of images that quickly fill valuable storage space on your Mac.
PowerPhotos allows you to create and manage multiple libraries, so you can break up your massive library into multiple manageable libraries. You can store photo libraries on external or networked drives and copy photos while maintaining and preserving albums, edits, and related metadata like keywords, titles, dates, locations, and descriptions. PowerPhotos also makes it easy to track down duplicate images and can even merge libraries together.
One of the app’s most powerful features is the ability to search across multiple libraries simultaneously. It’s a great feature that allows you to search as though all you photos were in one library. PowerPhotos can help with migrating multiple iPhoto or Aperture libraries to Photos too.
The holiday season is a great time to rethink the way your photos are organized, especially because for a limited time Fat Cat Software is offering a special discount on PowerPhotos just for MacStories readers. Use the coupon code MACSTORIES19 at checkout for 20% off. This is a limited-time deal, so don’t delay, download the free trial of PowerPhotos today and then take advantage of this special 20% discount to make wrangling the thousands of photos on your Mac a breeze.
Our thanks to PowerPhotos for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Interesting Links
Fast Company has started a new series called The Design of Y2K that looks back at the products that shaped late 90s and early 2000s. The first installment looks at the history of the hugely popular Motorola Razr. (Link As the decade comes to a close, there have been some interesting looks back at the...
Previously, On MacStories
Hands-On with Clips 2.1: Memoji and Animoji Support, Plus New Sticker Face Tracking and More Procreate 5 Review: A Rebuilt Graphics Engine Drives Fantastic Animation, Color, and Brush Tools in an Art App Perfectly Tailored to the iPad Mac Power Users, Episode 513 – Catalyst Apps on the Mac, with John Voorhees Linea Sketch Adopting...
Up Next on MacStories’ Podcasts
Next Wednesday, December 18th on AppStories, Federico and John dig into the 2019 MacStories Selects Awards from the MacStories home office in Rome....