Vision Pro App Spotlight: Shortcut Buttons Turns Your Shortcuts into Spatial Launchers

By Federico Viticci

Shortcut Buttons for visionOS.

I received my Apple Vision Pro yesterday (for the full story of how it eventually found its way to Italy, you don’t want to miss the next episode of AppStories), and, as you can imagine, I’ve been busy downloading all the apps, learning my way around visionOS and – just today – using the extended Mac display mode. The first 24 hours with a Vision Pro are a whirlwind of curiosity and genuine nerd excitement, but despite my attention being pulled to a hundred different places, I’ve found the time to test one app in particular: Shortcut Buttons by Finn Voorhees.

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“Wherever You Get Your Podcasts” Is a Radical Statement →

Linked By Federico Viticci

I thoroughly enjoyed this story by Anil Dash on how the openness of podcasting (a topic I’ve covered before) has proven so resilient over the years and is, in fact, more relevant than ever in the era of federated social networks:

But here’s the thing: being able to say, “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.

Side note: this is the first post I’m writing and publishing on MacStories directly from the Vision Pro, which I received this morning. A lot more to follow soon – including wherever you get our podcasts.

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How I Prepared for the Vision Pro

By Federico Viticci

As I’m typing this, the box containing my Apple Vision Pro and related accessories finally left a shipping facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is – hopefully – on the last leg of its journey, on its way to Italy. (AppStories and Connected listeners will know that I was able to acquire one thanks to John,...

AppStories - Ep. 369 - 41 minutes

Digging into the DMA

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 369 - Digging into the DMA

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41:06

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John consider how Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act will change the world of apps for developers and users in the EU.

The iPhone Settings I Always Enable First

By Federico Viticci

Due to a series of unforeseen circumstances that involved upgrading to the iOS 17.4 beta and wanting to downgrade back to iOS 17.3, I recently found myself losing access to my iPhone’s iCloud backup and having to set up my iPhone 15 Pro Max from scratch again. I eventually “fixed” the issue by giving up...

On Vision Pro’s Spatial Computing →

Linked By Federico Viticci

There’s no tech commentator better equipped to talk about the history of spatial interfaces in Apple operating systems than John Siracusa, and I enjoyed his latest, thought-provoking column on where visionOS and the Vision Pro’s gesture system fit in the spatial computing world:

Where Vision Pro may stumble is in its interface to the deep, spatial world it provides. We all know how to reach out and “directly manipulate” objects in the real world, but that’s not what Vision Pro asks us to do. Instead, Vision Pro requires us to first look at the thing we want to manipulate, and then perform an “indirect” gesture with our hands to operate on it.

Is this look-then-gesture interaction any different than using a mouse to “indirectly” manipulate a pointer? Does it leverage our innate spatial abilities to the same extent? Time will tell. But I feel comfortable saying that, in some ways, this kind of Vision Pro interaction is less “direct” than the iPhone’s touch interface, where we see a thing on a screen and then literally place our fingers on it. Will there be any interaction on the Vision Pro that’s as intuitive, efficient, and satisfying as flick-scrolling on an iPhone screen? It’s a high bar to clear, that’s for sure.

In yesterday’s review on The Verge, Nilay Patel shared a similar idea: it’s a strange feeling to use a computer that requires you to look at what you want to control at all times. I don’t know what to think about this yet since I don’t have a Vision Pro, but I’m curious to learn how this interaction method will scale over time as we start using this new platform on a daily basis. It’s quite fitting, however, that visionOS is based on the one Apple platform that supports both kinds of manipulation with a pointer and touch.

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Arc Search Review: My New Default iPhone Browser

By Federico Viticci

Arc Search for iPhone.

Every once in a while, I come across a new app whose design, feature set, or combination of the two redefines my expectations for a particular category of software. The new Arc Search app for iPhone, which is launching today on the App Store as a separate app from The Browser Company’s previous Arc Companion utility, is one of those experiences.

From the first moment I tried Arc Search for iOS, I knew I wanted to use it as my default iPhone browser. And the reason isn’t because Arc Search does more than Safari (there’s actually a long list of missing features that I’ll cover below), but because despite offering less functionality, the essence of how Arc Search rethinks one-handed web browsing on a phone is so refined and thoughtful, going back to another browser feels like a downgrade.

Arc Search has a long way to go to become a full-featured, mature browser for iOS, and it doesn’t even come with an iPad counterpart yet. But, at the same time, it’s the best take on mobile web browsing I’ve seen in years.

Join

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed for every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

AppStories - Ep. 368 - 31 minutes

Workflow Experiments

Federico

John

AppStories Episode 368 - Workflow Experiments

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31:08

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John Federico and John explore workflows they’ve been trying in a variety of apps.

Add Timestamp Links to Apple Podcasts Next →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Matthew Cassinelli:

Yesterday, Apple began adding transcripts to Apple Podcasts, detailing the change on the Apple Podcast for Creators site and making them available for in iOS 17.4 developer beta 1.

This change is a huge win for accessibility, will surely improve searching in the Podcasts app, and makes quoting your favorite podcast an easy task by letting you copy and paste the text out – something I’ll definitely have to turn into a shortcut soon.

All these benefits are great in their own way and will make podcasts more shareable as a whole, allowing us to unlock so many people’s great ideas that are currently stored within hours of audio files and obscured behind URLs that point only to the show or episode as a whole.

However, I think Apple needs to go one step further in their next step and add timestamps to Apple Podcasts, a long-overdue feature that’d enable users to share links to individual moments within a podcast, directly to a specific point in the transcript.

I couldn’t agree more. From sharing to personal note-taking and research purposes, there several use cases I can think of to take advantage of timestamp links for podcast episodes – especially now that they have transcripts. (Pocket Casts, my favorite third-party podcast player, goes even further: it lets you share timestamp links and save private, time-synced bookmarks for specific parts of any episode.)

I like Matthew’s suggestions for how Apple could implement this feature, and I’ll add: Apple has already built this system for the Music app. When the company added shareable lyrics to the Music app in iOS 14.5, they did so with the ability to share selected lyrics as a special “snippet” on iMessage that is actually an interactive, timestamped song preview based on a special URL. Here’s what I wrote:

Besides Apple’s custom implementation of lyrics selection in the share sheet, what’s also interesting about this is the method the company is using to share Apple Music lyrics URLs. Unlike regular music.apple.com links that reopen a particular song or album in the Music app or play a generic preview snippet in iMessage, lyrics URLs are timestamped: in iMessage, the lyrics card has a play button that will preview the lyrics you shared inline within a conversation; if you tap the link in iMessage and the same song is already paused in the Music app, the Now Playing screen will automatically advance to the section highlighted in shared lyrics.

I’m assuming that Apple is aware of this missing feature from the Podcasts app in iOS 17.4 beta 1; I have to believe their future implementation will be very similar to what already exists in Music.

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