AppStories - Ep. 492 - 44 minutes

Email Survival Guide

This week on AppStories, Federico and John talk about the 10+ email apps they’ve used over the years and how their strategies for dealing with recent spikes in email volume has caused them to change their approaches.

On AppStories+, Federico and John update listeners on their summertime agentic coding projects.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 492 - Email Survival Guide

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Safari’s New MCP Server Is Great for Agents →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Saron Yitbarek, writing on the WebKit blog:

In Safari Technology Preview 247, we’re introducing the Safari MCP server — a Model Context Protocol server for web developers that makes your web development and debugging workflow faster and more powerful. We know agents are increasingly integral to the coding process and the Safari MCP server gives your agent the ability to know how your code actually renders in the browser by connecting it to a Safari browser window.

Any MCP-compatible client can connect to the Safari MCP server. By connecting your agent to a Safari browser window, your agent can emulate what your users experience, giving it the information it needs to debug more autonomously, like access to the DOM, network requests, screenshots, and console output.

Importantly:

The Safari MCP server runs entirely on your local machine and makes no network calls of its own. It also does not have access to your personal information in Safari (e.g. AutoFill or other browser activity). When it captures page content, screenshots, or console logs, that data goes directly to the agent you’re running — not to Apple. What happens to that data from there depends on the agent and model you’re using. As with any agent you give access to your browser, only use ones you trust.

For the past few months, I’ve been using Google Chrome on my MacBook Pro and Mac Studio not because I like the browser (in fact, I really dislike Chrome’s text rendering and UI), but simply because it was the best option for agents. In Codex specifically, between Playwright, Chrome Dev Tools, and OpenAI’s own Chrome extension, I could kick off research tasks (such as vacation planning and booking a hotel) that involved a browser directly from my iPhone, letting Codex drive the research on my remote Mac.

Safari in Codex.

Now, thanks to Safari’s new MCP server, I no longer have to use Chrome on desktop and can return to a unified browser setup across all my devices. Even better: it actually looks like Apple shipped the most ergonomic browser MCP for agents to date. The MCP server has dedicated tools for page extraction (including getting webpages as Markdown, based on WebKit’s own conversion pipeline), evaluating JavaScript, DOM interactions (clicking, scrolling, resizing the viewport for mobile screens, etc.), taking screenshots, and more. I set this up immediately in Codex, and I also asked Codex about comparing Safari’s MCP to its own Chrome extension and the older Playwright. The verdict: although Chrome has a richer API with Chrome Dev Tools when it comes to network requests, Codex actually preferred Apple’s leaner, more direct approach for letting an agent drive and debug a browser.

I’m really happy to see folks at Apple embrace agentic tools: between the new MCP capabilities of Xcode and now this, it looks like Apple’s software (on the Mac, of course) is becoming more and more approachable by people who are working in new ways thanks to agents. Whether you’re a web developer or tinkerer, I highly recommend checking out what Apple has released in Safari Technology Preview. More of this, please.

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Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads

By Federico Viticci

My Codex setup.

In the current era of coding agents becoming productivity assistants, iPadOS’ limitations are no longer defined by the lack of desktop-class multitasking or access to external peripherals. A new class of iPadOS shortcomings looms large on the horizon: the iPad’s app sandboxing and the absence of an open filesystem have relegated it to acting as a remote control for agents.

AppStories - Ep. 491 - 44 minutes

Are AI Aggregators Worth It?

Federico

John

This week on AppStories, Federico and John talk about the state of AI aggregator apps and their future prospects before checking in on their current AI app setups for the AppStories+ post-show.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 491 - Are AI Aggregators Worth It?

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43:58

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

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Testing Raycast AI vs. Siri AI on iOS

By Federico Viticci

As I’ve mentioned on AppStories, Connected, and Mastodon over the past week, I haven’t had a great experience with Siri AI yet. I can access Siri AI from Italy thanks to a combination of region settings and my American Apple Account; while I do have the new app, several functionalities are broken for me at...

AppStories - Ep. 490 - 48 minutes

WWDC Debrief

John

Federico

This week on AppStories, John and Federico are back home and reflect on all the WWDC announcements, including Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, design changes, developer tools, and more.

On AppStories+, we check in on our research setups and how they fared at WWDC.

Also available on YouTube here.

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AppStories Episode 490 - WWDC Debrief

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47:37

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This episode is sponsored by:

Decagon: The AI concierge for every customer. Get a personalized demo.
Mercury Weather: Forecasts, beautifully done. Download now for free.

iPadOS Lets You Automate Window Placement with Shortcuts

By Federico Viticci

MultiSwitcher for iPadOS.

Update: An earlier version of this article referred to this feature as having been introduced in iPadOS 27, but it was actually introduced in the iPadOS 26 cycle. I missed it. My apologies.

In iPadOS’ Shortcuts app, the existing ‘Open App’ action was recently updated with the ability to launch an app with a specific window placement parameter. This means you can now automate window positions on iPad by opening a bunch of apps and programmatically selecting where their windows be placed.

Safari for iOS 27: Where’s the Share Button?

By Federico Viticci

In iOS 27, Apple tweaked the design of Safari’s compact tab bar mode (introduced last year) with a subtle change: the bottom-right button is no longer a generic ellipsis menu – it opens your tabs instead. I can’t tell you how happy this change alone makes me. Part of the reason I stopped using compact...

WWDC 2026: Between Seasons

By Federico Viticci

It’s my last day at Apple Park for my seventh in-person WWDC, and as I’m waiting for my final briefing just outside the Steve Jobs Theater – ever so magnificent in its polish, and yet always so strangely calm a place – I keep returning to a thought that’s been circling my head, begging for attention. I’ve never felt so “in between” phases of my career. Physically in this very moment, of course, as I’m literally sitting on an also-polished wooden bench overlooking one side of the ring, watching groups of people climb the hill to the theater and others leave. But more so mentally, insofar as I don’t recall another WWDC that’s made me feel so aware of how much things are changing around me.

At my first WWDC in San Francisco in 2016, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I was a 28-year-old blogger from Italy and somehow found my way to the most important event about the software I loved writing about. It was uncomfortable: what was I even doing there, taking notes on an iPad while folks from The New York Times or Wall Street Journal prepared articles that millions of people would read? But I didn’t mind it. I was in the middle of change; the discomfort fueled me.

10 years later, as an almost 38-year-old blogger from Italy who’s wondering just how, exactly, Apple managed to hide speakers playing music in the bushes outside the Steve Jobs Theater, I look at the content creators who are possibly experiencing their first WWDC, and realize: how am I still here, and still taking notes on an iPad, while these younger folks are shooting videos that millions of people will watch? I’m in between changes again, but I don’t mind it. The challenge still feeds me. I’m more comfortable now, but – miraculously – I don’t feel cynical or jaded. Some people are into that sort of attitude; I’ve always preferred to put in the work to be critical and enthusiastic about the things I like. In a world of complaints, optimism is a skill.

The music is still mysteriously coming from somewhere around the bushes. My friend Myke walks out the theater and tells me I’m going to love the session downstairs about AI on the Mac. “Who would have thought I’d be into that someday”, I think to myself.

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AppStories Episode 492 - Email Survival Guide

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AppStories Episode 491 - Are AI Aggregators Worth It?

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AppStories Episode 490 - WWDC Debrief

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