In last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly, I explained how it’s possible to extract the underlying XML and JSON code of shortcuts, inspect the syntax, and use the technique to scrape information out of shortcuts. In my case, this experiment started because I wanted to figure out a way to programmatically extract the first ‘Comment’...
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...
Shortcuts Wish List, 2022 Edition
John
Parsing Shortcuts as XML or JSON and Extracting Comments From Them
Nearly three years ago in MacStories Weekly, I wrote about an advanced technique I was using to assemble the MacStories Shortcuts Archive. As I wrote at the time, the Shortcuts Archive is itself generated by a shortcut that collects information from hundreds of text files (one for each shortcut) that contain metadata such as title,...
A Shortcuts Tip for Working with Time Periods and Recording Videos While Audio Is Playing in the Music App
Here are the highlights from the Club MacStories Discord this week: In the Automation Academy channel, I shared a simple technique to run actions in a shortcut only if the current time is between two specific moments of the day. This is the kind of approach you can reuse in many different automations. Fran shared...
Parsing Shortcuts as XML or JSON and Extracting Comments From Them
Nearly three years ago in MacStories Weekly, I wrote about an advanced technique I was using to assemble the MacStories Shortcuts Archive. As I wrote at the time, the Shortcuts Archive is itself generated by a shortcut that collects information from hundreds of text files (one for each shortcut) that contain metadata such as title,...
Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2021’ Report Card
For the past seven years, Six Colors’ Jason Snell has put together an ‘Apple report card’ – a survey that aims 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 2021 installment of the Six Colors report card is now out, and you can find an excellent summary of all the submitted comments along with charts featuring average scores for different categories on Six Colors.
I wasn’t able to participate in last year’s report card, but I’m happy Jason invited me back to share some thoughts and comments on what Apple did in 2021. As it turns out…I had a lot of opinions I wanted to share this year, particularly about the Mac. This may be surprising coming from me – a longtime iPad Pro user – but I’m incredibly fascinated by Apple’s new direction with the Mac platform and how it’s changed thanks to Apple silicon.
I’ll have much more to share about macOS and the M1 Max MacBook Pro I’ve been testing in the near future. In the meantime, I’ve prepared the full text of my answers to the Six Colors report card, which you can find below. Once again, I recommend reading the whole thing on Six Colors to get the broader context of all the participants in the survey.
New Apps We Are Trying or Revisiting (Part 2)
A Wordle Super Share Shortcut, Bypassing Shortcuts’ Permission Prompts, and a Technique for Overwriting Files with Quick Action Shortcuts
It was a busy week on the Club MacStories+ Discord, and I’ve tried my best to collect highlights from the community below. There isn’t a Discord URL scheme to reopen these links in the Discord app directly; my preferred approach for these is to view them as separate tabs in Safari for iPad or Mac....