This week on AppStories, we share our wishes for macOS 14.
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On AppStories+, my corrupt Mac user account and changes to our workflows that we’re considering in advance of WWDC.
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Chance Miller published an excellent exposé on the downfall of Brydge, an iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface accessory maker. The company got its start with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012, and for a time, its keyboard accessories were a popular choice among iPad users, including me.
However, as Chance explains, Brydge’s fortunes took a turn for the worse as it was forced to compete head-on with Apple’s Magic Keyboard, later spiraling out of control as its cash flow ran out:
Brydge, a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products, is ceasing operations. According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac, Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions.
As it stands today, Brydge employees have not been paid salaries since January. Customers who pre-ordered the company’s most recent product have been left in the dark since then as well. Its website went completely offline earlier this year, and its social media accounts have been silent since then as well.
From what former employees told 9to5Mac, it appears that a number of factors contributed to its downfall, but the saddest part of the story is how Brydge treated its employees, keeping them in the dark and, in many cases, unpaid to this day.
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Source: Basic Apple Guy.
This week on AppStories, we covered our wishes for iOS 17. One of Federico’s wishes was for Split View on the iPhone. Split View is not the sort of feature that I think would work with every app, but the iPhone is powerful enough to handle it, developers are already experimenting with in-app versions of it, and you know what? It’s useful.
To get an idea of what an OS-level Split View would be like on the iPhone, check out Basic Apple Guy’s mockups. Home Screen landscape mode never really got much traction when it debuted in 2014, but with Apple’s renewed emphasis on sidebar-based design for iPad apps, I think Split View could translate nicely to the iPhone and has a shot at better adoption if it returned whether as part of a Home Screen redesign or not.
Be sure to check out the full post for additional mockups on how landscape mode would work with widgets, the Dynamic Island, and other Home Screen elements.
This week on AppStories, we kick off our annual OS wishes series with a long list of rapid-fire wishes for iOS 17.
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On AppStories+, Federico and I share our thoughts on AI-generated music and my struggles with managing 200 betas in TestFlight.
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This week on AppStories, Federico explains his return to the Mac, including his hardware setup and the apps he’s using, and I recommend some apps he should try.
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appstories at checkout.On AppStories+, we discuss the advantages of Raindrop.io over alternative bookmarking services, and I share a story from the past about the pitfalls of sharing shortcuts in the early days of Workflow.
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This week on AppStories, we dig into third-party apps with excellent shortcuts support.
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On AppStories+, My Mac Studio is in the shop, so Federico and I are both using MacBook Airs.
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Yesterday, Craig Hockenberry announced a free Apple TV app he created called Blank. The app blanks out your TV screen until you press a button on the Apple TV remote. That way, you can listen to music or a podcast through an Apple TV without also watching the album art or screensavers.
Blank is a clever solution to something that’s been a problem ever since the second-generation Apple TV, which ditched its dedicated audio out port in favor of HDMI. How do I know that? Well, I tackled the same problem myself in 2016 in a far hackier way than Hockenberry, which I shared more than 300 issues ago in MacStories Weekly 25. As I said then, when the Apple TV’s flyover screensavers, and even HDMI, were brand new:
I enjoy the new flyover screensavers on the Apple TV, but whether you have a current generation Apple TV and use those, or use a different screensaver with any model of the Apple TV, the screensavers are a distraction when you throw a party and want to use the Apple TV for music. In my experience, people are drawn to the screensaver like moths, focusing on it instead of socializing.
My solution? Create a Photos album with a single 1080p image of a black rectangle and use it with the Apple TV’s ‘Sliding Panels’ screensaver. Blank is a far more elegant solution and even offers an inspirational quote that appears onscreen before the screen goes blank.
I just released a small bug fix update for S-GPT, my shortcut to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language model with the Shortcuts app on all Apple platforms.
Version 1.0.1 of S-GPT is a relatively minor update that comes with an initial round of improvements based on early feedback I’ve received for the shortcut, including:
Additionally, I also realized that the usage tips that S-GPT was displaying every time it asked you to enter some text may have been nice the first three times you used the shortcut, but became annoying very quickly. That was especially true when using S-GPT with Siri in a voice context since they would be read aloud every time. For these reasons, I removed tips and simplified the shortcut’s questions to “What do you want to ask?” and “Want to follow up?”.
In case you missed my introduction of S-GPT earlier this week, you can read the original story here and find out more about how the shortcut works and what it does. I updated the links to the S-GPT and S-GPT Encoder shortcuts in the story to the latest version; you can also find the updated shortcuts in MacStories Shortcuts Archive.
I just released a small bug fix update for S-GPT, my shortcut to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language model with the Shortcuts app on all Apple platforms.
Version 1.0.1 of S-GPT is a relatively minor update that comes with an initial round of improvements based on early feedback I’ve received for the shortcut, including:
Additionally, I also realized that the usage tips that S-GPT was displaying every time it asked you to enter some text may have been nice the first three times you used the shortcut, but became annoying very quickly. That was especially true when using S-GPT with Siri in a voice context since they would be read aloud every time. For these reasons, I removed tips and simplified the shortcut’s questions to “What do you want to ask?” and “Want to follow up?”.
In case you missed my introduction of S-GPT earlier this week, you can read the original story here and find out more about how the shortcut works and what it does. I updated the links to the S-GPT and S-GPT Encoder shortcuts in the story to the latest version; you can also find the updated shortcuts in MacStories Shortcuts Archive.
S-GPT is a shortcut to have conversations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The shortcut supports both text conversations as well as voice interactions when used inside Siri. S-GPT comes with native system integrations on Apple platforms including the ability to process text from your clipboard, summarize text found in photos, export conversations to Files and Finder, and even create playlists in the Music app. The shortcut requires an OpenAI API token and a helper shortcut called S-GPT Encoder that needs to be downloaded separately.
This is a helper shortcut for S-GPT that needs to be downloaded and installed separately. Without this shortcut, S-GPT won’t work.
Jack Wellborn, one of our Automation April Shortcuts Contest judges, has a great post on his website that’s perfect for Automation April.
As Jack explains, apps built for a general audience require some features to make way for the ones that most people use. While the approach is understandable from a design standpoint, it can be frustrating if any of those semi-hidden features are ones you rely on. However, as Jack explains, there’s a solution:
This is where personal automation comes in. Personal automation gives individuals the ability to choose which of their features should be most easily accessed. I used Shortcuts and AppleScript to elevate star ratings using dedicated keys on my Stream Deck. Now I can rate songs regardless of what app I am currently using, and in one step instead of five. Using personal automation, I have also changed how Time Machine works, streamlined pasting links from Safari, and made joining Zoom meetings practically effortless.
Personal automation doesn’t need to involve expensive third party hardware, or require scripting. It can be something as simple as customizing keyboard shortcuts or defining text replacement macros. Apple’s Shortcuts app is completely drag-and-drop, and makes building personal automation easy enough for even basic users. On top of the many automation apps and features included with Apple’s platforms, there are also a slew of great third party apps that unlock even more possibilities.
I love Jack’s perspective on automation. He was the winner of our Best Overall Shortcut in last year’s Automation April Shortcut Contest. It wasn’t the most complex shortcut we received, but it had the perfect combination of originality, thoughtful design, and everyday utility that our judges look for. As Jack points out, personal automation is about making your devices work for you and not the other way around, which is what Automation April is all about.
To learn more about how to submit a shortcut to the Automation April Shortcuts Contest, be sure to check out my story with all the details that was published on MacStories yesterday.
You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.
