What happens if you try to shrink the Mac mini to fit into a much smaller form factor while keeping its thermal performance intact? Quinn Nelson tried to find out, and the results are amazing. (Link) Apple released the first trailer of its upcoming series WeCrashed, which is based on the rise and fall...
Syncing Dolphin Between Windows and macOS with Dropbox and Symbolic Links
A couple of weeks ago on MacStories Unwind, I talked about my experiments with Dolphin, an amazing emulator for Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii that is available on a wide variety of platforms, including Windows and macOS. As I explained, one of the best features of Dolphin is its ability to upscale the resolution of...
Tweetbot 7.1 Adds Background Notifications for Follows, Quotes, and User Tweets→
A tweet notification from Tweetbot. This one took about four minutes to arrive – not too bad considering they’re not based on push notifications.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Tapbots’ rapid development pace for Tweetbot on iPhone and iPad over the past few months (we gave Tweetbot 6 a MacStories Selects award in December), and I continue to be impressed by how Tweetbot is growing and adding new features thanks to its new business model and Twitter’s new API.
In today’s 7.1 update, Tweetbot has gained support for background notifications. These notifications, unlike push notifications, are managed by iOS/iPadOS’ background app refresh system, which comes with some benefits and limitations that Tapbots has outlined here. In terms of why this matters for users, background notifications alllow Tweetbot to support notifications for more types of activities: you can now enable notifications for new followers, people who quote one of your tweets, and – my favorite – new tweets from a specific user. The latter can be enabled on a user’s profile page (pictured below) or by long-pressing someone’s profile picture in the timeline.
Being notified when a specific user tweets was one of the features I was missing from the official Twitter app, so I’m glad Tapbots figured out a way to add it to Tweetbot. Since Tapbots’ system is based on Apple’s background app refresh technology and they can’t control the timing of notifications, Tweetbot’s version of these alerts won’t likely be as immediate as the Twitter app, but that’s fine as long as I get a list of new tweets from specific users.
I look forward to testing these notifications over the next few days. Tweetbot 7.1 is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad; hopefully, we won’t have to wait much longer for Tweetbot 7 to arrive on macOS too.
2022 Apple Hardware Predictions
John
A Prepend to Dashboard Shortcut, A New Way to Get Matter’s API Token, and an Advanced Template Script for Obsidian
Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week. Our members have been having fun with Obsidian lately: Following a request by a member, I created a simplified version of my Append to Dashboard shortcut that always inserts text at the beginning of a specific section of a note in Obsidian, without displaying...
Preventing Accidental Lock Screen Activations by Disabling Tap to Wake
Picture this: I was at the pharmacy a few days ago to buy some COVID self-test kits. As I was entering my debit card’s PIN code at the counter to confirm my payment, I hear my mom’s voice coming out of my iPhone, which I was holding in my left hand. “Federico….?” That was quite...
Shortcuts Code Injection and 10 Innovations Apple Should Adopt from Third-Party Apps
AppStories Episode 261 - Shortcuts Code Injection and 10 Innovations Apple Should Adopt from Third-Party Apps
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This week, Federico explains his experiments with injecting code into shortcuts before he and John cover ten innovations from third-party apps that they would like to see Apple adopt in its system apps and OSes.
Automating Email and Things to Do in Rome
Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week: Member Greg posted an in-depth look at his email setup and different automations he uses. It’s an incredible read with tons of examples and links to check out. Over in the off-topic channel, we shared some recommendations for places to visit and restaurants in...