Substack, Email, and Data Portability 
This week, Federico and John explore the popularity of Substack among writers leaving big media companies, rethink their email workflows after leaving Hey, and consider data portability and the tradeoffs of proprietary app systems.
Importing Old Emails into Apple Mail via .mbox Files and Smart Mailboxes Earlier this week, following the announcement of Basecamp’s terrible policy of silencing political and societal discussions internally within the company, we decided we could no longer align MacStories’ values with Hey, the email service developed by Basecamp we’d been using since the fall of 2020. We really liked Hey the service, but as a...
Unifying My Desktop Keyboard Setup with the Satechi Slim X1 Ever since I reviewed the Kensington StudioDock for iPad Pro last month, I’ve been trying to simplify my desk setup by getting rid of additional hardware. My girlfriend and I live in a small apartment, and until we find a bigger place, I have to accept the reality that my “office” consists of a...
As announced by Spotify earlier today, the company is rolling out a redesigned ‘Your Library’ page in its iOS and Android apps that should make it easier to browse your music collection and podcast episodes with a new grid view, better filters and sorting options, and more. From the Spotify Newsroom:
Your collection of music and podcasts is a representation of you—and it’s something deeply personal. But with 5,000+ hours of content released globally every day on Spotify and hundreds of those saved in Your Library, we know it’s crucial to be able to quickly find what you’re looking for, jump back into your latest discovery, or rediscover a beloved track you saved years ago.
Starting today, we are rolling out a new version of Your Library to all Spotify mobile users. Now, you’ll have a more streamlined way to easily explore your collection and find your saved music and podcasts faster. Your Library’s updated design and added features will enable you to spend less time looking for content and organizing your collection, and more time rediscovering the music and podcasts you’ve loved over the years. And as always, keep adding even more content for a library that grows alongside you into the future.
I’m particularly intrigued by grid view and the new filters to switch between music and podcasts. I’m also curious to see if this new design applies to the iPad app (which continues to pale in comparison to Apple Music’s solid iPad client) or not.
Beautifully animated video by Apple on App Tracking Transparency, which launched today alongside iOS 14.5.
See also: Joanna Stern’s interview for The Wall Street Journal with Apple’s Craig Federighi.
Apple today released version 14.5 of iOS and iPadOS, a substantial update to the operating system for iPhone and iPad that debuted in September and introduced features such as Home Screen widgets, multi-column app layouts on iPad, compact UI, a redesigned Music app, and more.
Version 14.5 is the biggest – or, at the very least, most interesting – update to iOS and iPadOS we’ve seen in the 14.0 release cycle to date. That’s not to say previous iterations of iOS and iPadOS 14 were low on new features and refinements – it’s quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps the pandemic and Apple’s work-from-home setup played a role in the company spreading new iOS functionalities across multiple releases throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021, but, regardless of the underlying reason, iOS and iPadOS 14 have evolved considerably since their public launch six months ago.
With iOS 14.2, Apple shipped the traditional “emoji update”, but was also able to include a redesigned AirPlay interface, face detection in AR, and a brand new Shazam integration in Control Center; with iOS 14.3, the company rolled out its new ProRAW photography API alongside support for the Fitness+ service, App Clip codes, and the ability to launch apps directly from Home Screen shortcuts; version 14.4, released earlier this year, saw the arrival of proximity-based music handoff for iPhone and HomePod mini alongside new options for Bluetooth settings and other performance improvements.
It’s difficult to tell whether some of these features were originally planned for a September release and got delayed because of the pandemic1, or how many of these are Apple’s response to user feedback following the release of iOS and iPadOS 14, but one thing’s for sure: Apple hasn’t stood still over the past few months, and today’s iOS and iPadOS 14.5 are continuing the trend of major iOS and iPadOS updates released ahead of WWDC.
Let’s dive in.
iOS and iPadOS 14.5 In Depth
This week, Federico and John take an in-depth look at everything coming later this week with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, which will be the subject of a comprehensive review by Federico on MacStories.
Mailbrew For the past couple months, I’ve been using a service called Mailbrew to catch up at the end of each day with my favorite newsletters, YouTube channels, and, more importantly for my news consumption habits, interesting tweets from my timeline. Given that I’ve religiously checked my personalized Mailbrew digest every night for nearly two...
Jason Snell, writing for Macworld about the new iPad Pro’s software limitations compared to its powerful hardware:
With the announcement of USB 4/Thunderbolt support on these new iPad Pro models, I’m thrown back to the past. In 2018, when Apple released the first iPad Pro with a USB-C port on the bottom, it didn’t update the software to read the entire contents of a thumb drive when you plugged it in. The hardware was willing, but the software was weak.
And here we are again. Thunderbolt adds even speedier connectivity, but for what? Faster photo and video imports? Okay, though once again, I’m reminded that Apple’s bread-and-butter pro media apps won’t run on these iPads.
Thunderbolt is great, but it’s difficult to take full advantage of it.
How about external display support? The new iPad Pros can drive even larger external displays, including Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Third-party video apps can take advantage of this to display high-resolution video and even some analytical displays. Which is great, but if you want to display the iPad interface itself, it’ll just be a pillarboxed mirror of what’s on the iPad’s own screen.
The last time a new iPad Pro’s hardware was so obviously more capable than its software demanded, we saw the debut of iPadOS seven months later. The 2021 iPad Pro’s hardware has created new low-hanging fruit for its software; I’d be really surprised if the second half of this story isn’t dropping in six weeks.
John