Those who have been reading MacStories for years know that I’ve historically struggled with keeping track of the many things I discover on the Internet. Some folks call them “bookmarks”. I don’t know what to call them, personally. I just know that, as a chronically Very Online individual, there is a sea of random things...
App Debuts
JohnSoloTime If you’re looking for a way to time track and invoice clients, SoloTime is an interesting and polished approach that’s worth checking out. I don’t bill my time, but combining time tracking, expense and mileage logging, and invoicing in a single app for the iPhone and iPad is a neat idea. SoloTime includes...
Interesting Links
Lenovo has done some wild prototypes in the past, but this one is S-tier. Ahead of Mobile World Congress, a combo laptop/handheld gaming device based on Windows has surfaced. I doubt we’ll ever see this released, but it’s a fun experiment. (Link) Figma is betting big on AI. Besides its own AI design products,...
Six Colors’ Apple in 2025 Report Card
For the past 10 years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an “Apple report card” – a survey to assess the current state of Apple “as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple”.
The 2025 edition of the Six Colors Apple Report Card has been published, and you can find a summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for the different categories here.
I’m so grateful that Jason invited me, once again, to participate in the survey and share my thoughts on Apple’s 2025. As you’ll see from my comments – and as you know if you’ve been listening to AppStories or Connected lately – I’ve been focusing on AI agents, hybrid automation, and splitting my work between iPadOS and macOS for the past few months. The LLM takeoff in the productivity space is accelerating on a weekly basis, and modern AI tools are fundamentally changing the way I get work done. Case in point: this article was written before OpenClaw went viral, and the past month alone has seen so many of my habits and automations get upended by this incredible open-source tool. As I noted in my comments, however, one thing is not changing: iPadOS essentially gets no access to any of these modern AI tools, which are increasingly launching as Mac-only apps or features.
I’ve prepared the full text of my responses for the Six Colors report card, which you can find below.
App Intents and the Road to a Smarter Siri
This week, Federico and John revisit App Intents to discuss where it came from, what it can do today, and the challenges Apple faces in integrating it with Apple Intelligence.
On AppStories+, John and Federico migrated their server setups and found themselves playing IT administrator.
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AppStories Episode 473 - App Intents and the Road to a Smarter Siri
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Sponsored By:
- Insta360 – Introducing the Insta360 Wave and the Link 2 Pro.
I Gave OpenClaw Four Different Local AI Models Powered by MLX on My Mac Studio
When I wrote about my OpenClaw setup two weeks ago, I mentioned how I was “considering swapping my Mac mini for my M3 Ultra Mac Studio to give it access to local AI models.” I finally performed that migration earlier this week, and I want to share how it went. The short version is this:...
Pick a Pair: New Apps We’re Using
This week, Federico and John share apps they’re trying for the first time, including a calendar app, a text editor, a snippets utility, and more.
Then on AppStories+, John shares his first impressions of Xcode 26.3.
This episode is sponsored by:
- Claude – Get 50% off Claude Pro, including access to Claude Code.
- Insta360 – Introducing the Insta360 Wave and the Link 2 Pro.
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 Episode 472 - Pick a Pair: New Apps We’re Using
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Claude Code Remote: A Companion Shortcut for Claude Code…Which Was Generated by AI
The Shortcuts Corner section of MacStories Weekly has been a staple of the newsletter for almost a decade at this point. With today’s 500th (!) issue of MacStories Weekly, I thought I’d share a glimpse of what I strongly believe will be the future of automation on Apple devices. It just so happens that it’s...
One Notion: Two Approaches
This week on AppStories, John and Federico share the very different ways they use Notion.
On AppStories+, we follow up on OpenClaw security concerns and explore the ways Federico is using it.
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 Episode 471 - One Notion: Two Approaches
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