On the next episode of AppStories, John and I will cover our Obsidian setups in depth with a conversation about our favorite themes, plugins, and organization systems for notes in the app. Something that I won’t cover in the episode is my workflow for templates, which I’ve implemented over the past few weeks and wanted...
Emulators Will Change the App Store Forever→
Writing at his personal blog, Brendon Bigley explains why the Delta emulator launching on the App Store is a big deal for retrogaming fans who also love native iOS apps:
AltStore for me (and many) was just a way to get access to Delta, which is the best emulator on iOS by a pretty shocking margin. While there are admittedly more feature-rich apps like RetroArch out there, no other app feels made for iPhone in the way Delta does. With a slick iOS-friendly user interface, custom themes and designs to reskin your experience, and the ability to grab game files from iCloud, Delta always represented what’s possible what a talented app developer could do if the App Store was even slightly more open. It’s in this possibility space where I likely never switch to Android again.
I posted this on Threads and Mastodon, but I was able to start playing old save files from my own copies of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Pokémon Ruby in 30 seconds thanks to Delta.
Years ago, one of my (many) lockdown projects involved ripping my own Game Boy Advance game collection using a GB Operator. I did that and saved all my games and associated save files in iCloud Drive, thinking they’d be useful someday. Today, because Delta is a great iOS citizen that integrates with the Files picker, I just had to select multiple .gba files in iCloud Drive to add them to Delta. Then, since Delta also supports context menus, I long-pressed each game to import my own save files, previously ripped by the GB Operator. And that’s how I can now continue playing games from 20 years ago…on my iPhone. And those are just two aspects of the all-encompassing Delta experience, which includes Dropbox sync, controller support, haptic feedback, and lots more.
Brendon also wraps up the story with a question I’m pondering myself:
How does Nintendo react to the news that despite their desire to fight game preservation at all costs, people are nonetheless still enjoying the very games that built their business in the first place?
I’ll never get over the fact that Nintendo turned the glorious Virtual Console into a subscription service that is randomly updated and not available on mobile devices at all. I’m curious to see if Nintendo will have any sort of response to emulators on iOS; personally, I know that Delta is going to be my new default for all Game Boy/DS emulation needs going forward.
A Classic Mac Pick 2
John
Three Mac Tips I Recently Implemented in My MacPad Workflow
As I continue using the MacPad as my main convertible computer and further cementing my belief that I created the best Apple device the company never officially made, I regularly run across new apps and strategies that I want to incorporate in my workflow. This week, I’m going to run down a few things I...
Are We Entering a Post-App World?
Getting the Name of the Frontmost App on macOS Using Shortcuts
I was recently debugging one of my old shortcuts that integrated with macOS to get the name of the frontmost app using AppleScript and noticed that, at some point over the past two years, that script had stopped working. I tried fixing the AppleScript myself, but after five minutes spent trying random and outdated code...
ActiveTask: A Shortcut to Turn an Obsidian Document into a Deep-Linked Task in Things
Earlier this week, we released version 1.1 of Obsidian Shortcut Launcher, our free plugin that lets you trigger shortcuts in Apple’s Shortcuts app using Obsidian commands and input data from the document you’re working on. If you missed the announcement, check out the details and examples on MacStories, which I won’t rehash here. In the...
Obsidian Shortcut Launcher 1.1 Brings Support for File Properties and Backlinks
Two years ago, we released Obsidian Shortcut Launcher, a free plugin to trigger shortcuts from Obsidian with the ability to pass input text to Apple’s automation app. In case you missed it in January 2022, here’s how I described the plugin:
With Obsidian Shortcut Launcher (or ‘OSL’), you’ll be able to trigger any shortcut you want from Obsidian, passing along values such as the text of the document you’re working on, its name, text selection, and more. Obsidian Shortcut Launcher is free to use and works on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Obsidian Shortcut Launcher is the result of weeks of planning and work from me and Finn Voorhees, and it has created an entirely new dimension in how I use Obsidian and Shortcuts on a daily basis.
I’ve been using Obsidian Shortcut Launcher every day for the past two years, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to integrate my favorite text editor and note-taking app with Shortcuts. I’ve built launchers to publish articles to WordPress, upload images, perform backups of my iOS reviews, and a lot more. You can read more about my examples and find a usage guide for the plugin in the original story.
Today, I’m pleased to announce that we’re releasing version 1.1 of Obsidian Shortcut Launcher with two new integrations: properties and backlinks.
A First Look at AltStore in the EU→
Callum Booth, writing for The Verge, was able to try a pre-release version of the app marketplace flavor of AltStore, which – pending Apple’s approval – should be one of the first third-party marketplaces under the new DMA regulation. The installation process, as expected, is not exactly straightforward:
It goes like this: you begin by clicking a browser-based link to load the alternative store. From there, you receive a pop-up informing you that your installation settings don’t allow marketplaces from that developer. Then, you head into Settings, enable the marketplace, return to your browser, click the download link again, and receive another prompt asking you to confirm the install. Finally, you can open the store and browse the available apps.
Make sure to check out the screenshots in the story to see what the installation flow looks like in practice. Besides Delta, the Nintendo emulator created by the AltStore developers that has long been available as part of AltStore’s other (non-jailbreak) installation method, Booth tested Clip. This one is interesting since it’s a clipboard manager that can monitor changes to the clipboard in the background – something that is not allowed under traditional App Store rules:
Regarding the app itself, the version of Clip I tried differs from similar software offered on Apple’s App Store in that it constantly runs in the background. Normally, clipboard managers on iOS have to use a variety of workarounds to achieve comparable functionality. For example, Paste requires you to open the app each time you want to add something you’ve copied to the clipboard.
This is where Clip thrives, by comparison. When you copy something, you immediately receive a notification and can swipe down to save it to your clipboard. This means you have the option to add it if it’s something useful — like an address — or dismiss the notification if it’s something you don’t want logged, like a password. I found saving your copied items like this into a centralized location to be incredibly useful, as it makes sharing and reusing these snippets painless.
I’m very curious to see how Apple will go about notarizing apps that rely on native APIs to perform “unexpected” tasks; in this case, it sounds like Clip will integrate with MapKit to let the app stay active in the background and monitor changes to the system clipboard. (Remember when Pastebot for iOS implemented a silent audio track to run in the background? Some things never change.) Regardless, I’m keen to play around with these marketplaces as soon as I can, and I will report back.1
- Here’s a fun problem for me at the moment: I live in Italy, haven’t left the country in months, and I use a dual Apple ID setup with an Italian iCloud account and a U.S. App Store account. Despite my geographic location, iOS 17.4 (and the 17.5 beta) won’t let me access any of the new EU-only features yet. For example, the browser selection screen never came up for me after updating to iOS 17.4, and when I tried to install a beta version of AltStore that Riley Testut sent to me, iOS told me that my device isn’t “eligible” to install the app. I have to wonder: will iOS eventually understand that I’m an Italian citizen with a U.S. Apple ID? Or am I living in some kind of weird edge case that will never be fixed? We know that there’s a grace period for users who leave the EU, but what about the other way around? ↩
