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MacStories Unwind: Preparing for Downtime and a Roadtrip Audiobook About Dragons

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This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico preps for some serious downtime by planning a mod of his ASUS ROG Ally handheld gaming PC and I listened to Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros on a drive from Philadelphia back to North Carolina.

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Federico’s Season of Sci-Fi and Tech:

John’s Pick:

MacStories Unwind+

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AppStories, Episode 351 – iOS and iPadOS 17: The MacStories Review

This week on AppStories, we dig into Federico’s review of iOS and iPadOS 17.

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On AppStories+, Federico takes listeners behind the scenes of his iOS and iPadOS 17 review with a look at the custom Obsidian plugins he used to produce the review that will be available as an exclusive perk for Club MacStories members.

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iOS and iPadOS 17 Review Extras: eBook, Special Editions of MacStories Weekly and AppStories+, and Two New Obsidian Plugins

Today, Federico published his iOS and iPadOS 17 review. As in past years, we’re releasing a wide variety of perks exclusively for Club MacStories members throughout the week, including an eBook version of the review, a special ‘making of’ edition of MacStories Weekly, a behind-the-scenes AppStories+ segment, and two new Club-exclusive Obsidian plugins.

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MacStories Unwind: Our All-Time Favorite Movies

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On this week’s special AV Club edition of MacStories Unwind, John and Jonathan share their all-time favorite movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Memento.

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  • John’s Pick
    • Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark:
    • Watch the Trailer
    • Watch in the Apple TV App
  • Jonathan’s Pick
    • Memento:
      • Watch the Trailer
      • Watch in the Apple TV App
      • Read Memento Mori (Short Story written by Christopher Nolan’s brother Jonathan, upon which the film was based.)

MacStories Unwind+

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These Are the iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma Features Coming Later This Year

Next week, Apple will begin releasing its new OSes, which are packed with a lot of new features. However, those updates won’t include everything you may have heard about over the summer. For the past few years, OS features that are announced at WWDC have been increasingly released after the fall release of major OS revisions. Sometimes, those later releases are signaled at WWDC, but often they’re not, so we’ve compiled a list of features that won’t be available in Apple’s fall OS updates but have been promised to come in a later release. Unless otherwise indicated, the following features will be coming later to iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma:

  • One of the tentpole features of Messages this year is the ability to create stickers using every OSes’ ability to lift subjects from a photo. The option to share stickers from Messages’ ‘Plus’ menu is already in this fall’s updates, but later, you’ll also be able to send stickers using the Tapback menu, too.
  • Messages will also sync settings, like text message forwarding, SMS filters, and send and receive accounts, via iCloud in a later release.
  • The ‘catch up’ arrow button found now on iOS 17 that takes users to the top of new messages in a busy thread will come to iPadOS 17.
  • The News widget will add playback controls for Apple News podcasts and News+ audio stories on iOS and iPadOS 17.
  • AirDrop will add the ability to finish a file transfer using the Internet if a local peer-to-peer connection drops.
  • A lot of Music’s promised updates are coming later, including:
    • Collaborative playlists that will allow a group to add, rearrange, and remove songs.
    • Emoji reactions to song collaborative playlist song choices in the Now Playing view.
    • A new Favorite Songs playlist, something which I’ve maintained as a smart playlist forever, will be available automatically in your Library and via Siri.
    • Marking items as favorites is expanding to include songs, albums, playlists, and artists. Favorites will automatically be added to your Library, eliminating what is now a two-step process, and will be used to improve your recommendations.
    • Also, Music will add a macOS Sonoma widget to allow users to play or pause a song or album or see a list of top charts and, for Apple Music subscribers, recommendations.
  • Intelligent PDF form detection with enhanced AutoFill will be available systemwide in apps like Files and Mail, as well as for scanned documents.
  • The Fitness app will allow you to prioritize the volume of trainers’ voices or the training session’s music on iOS and iPadOS 17.
  • Proximity sign-in using the particle cloud used by devices like the HomePod and Apple Watch will be expanded to make it easier to use a signed-in, trusted iPhone or iPad to sign in to other devices.
  • Your iPhone will add the ability to tap to unlock Matter-enabled smart locks with a home key or set up a PIN code in the Home app on iOS 17.
  • Finally, there’s no word yet on when Journal, Apple’s journaling app, will make its debut.

Of these features, I’m especially looking forward to the updates to Music, checking what Journal is capable of, and sending stickers using Tapback, which I expect will increase my use of them a lot. There’s no word yet when these features debut, but I expect we’ll see them trickle out starting later this year.


AppStories, Episode 350 – Apple’s Wonderlust Event

This week on AppStories, we are joined by Alex live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community for a special episode covering our initial impressions of Apple’s Wonderlust media event, which introduced new iPhones, Apple Watches, and more.

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On AppStories+, we answer Club MacStories member questions about Apple’s fall media event.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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Apple’s September 2023 Event: All The Small Things

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple covered a lot of ground today, and since the event concluded, more details have emerged about everything announced. We’ve been combing Apple’s product pages, social media, and other sources to learn more about the new iPhones, Apple Watches, and services, which we’ve collected below:

iPhones

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

AirPods Pro

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

  • The new AirPods Pro (2nd generation) include a USB-C port for charging and can be charged by connecting the earbuds directly to an iPhone with a USB-C port
  • The AirPods Pro case is now IP54-rated for added dust protection.
  • The AirPods Pro update supports Lossless Audio at low latency for use with the Apple Vision Pro.
  • An eagle-eyed person on Mastodon spotted an iPod HiFi in the keynote.
  • The AirPods Pro and Apple Watch can be charged by plugging their charger into an iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, or 15 Pro Max phone.

You can follow all of our September 2023 Apple event coverage through our September 2023 Apple event hub or subscribe to the dedicated September 2023 Apple event RSS feed.


Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2: The MacStories Overview

Following the introduction of the Apple Watch Ultra last September, one question that stood out was whether this would be a new addition to the annual Apple Watch lineup, or another device like the Apple Watch SE which was only updated every few years. Two years may not yet make a trend1, but the Ultra 2 signals that the high-end device will be riding the annual update cycle alongside its standard Apple Watch sibling. This is great news for Ultra enthusiasts, even if the update isn’t quite enough to justify a single-year upgrade for most users.

In a similar vein, the Apple Watch Series 9 continues the slow, methodic, inevitable drumbeat of iterative Apple Watch updates. It too offers minimal allure for owners of last year’s Series 8, but looks a bit more intriguing for those with a Series 6 or 7, and downright mouthwatering for any Series 5 holdouts. This, as with every year’s iteration, is a great device.

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Apple’s September 2023 Event: By the Numbers

Today’s Wonderlust event was packed with facts, figures, and statistics throughout the presentation and elsewhere. We’ve pulled together the highlights from the event that was at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California.

The New iPhones

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

  • The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are 19 grams lighter than their predecessors
  • The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus can reach a peak HDR brightness of 1600 nits, which can reach 2000 nits in bright sunlight, which is 2x the iPhone 14’s brightness
  • The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus come in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage capacities
  • The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus have 3 ‘optical-quality’ zoom levels: 0.5x, 1x, and 2x
  • We hoped for Thunderbolt 4, but we got USB 3 as the new connector on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, but it’s still 20x faster than before at 10Gbps
  • iPhones now support Wi-Fi 6E
Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

  • The A17 Pro SoC that powers the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max is built using a 3-nanometer process with 19 billion transistors
  • The A17’s Neural Engine can handle 35 trillion operations per second, has 16 cores, and is up to 2x faster than before
  • The A17 Pro’s GPU is capable of 4x faster ray tracing and is up to 20% faster
  • The iPhone 15 Pro features an improved 48MP sensor that takes 24MP images by default with 24 mm, 28 mm, and 35 mm focal lengths
  • The iPhone 15 Pro Max features a 5x Telephoto lens thanks to the lens’ tetraprism design
  • The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max can shoot ProRes video in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second
  • The image stabilization of the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s camera is capable of 10,000 microadjustments per second
  • The iPhone 15 Pro is available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities.

The New Apple Watches

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

  • The Apple Watch Series 9 can go from 1 nit to 2000 nits of brightness
  • The S9 chip that powers the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Ultra 2 has a 2x faster Neural Engine with 4 cores and a 30% faster GPU
  • The Neural Engine allows for dictation that’s up to 25 percent more accurate
  • The Apple Watch Series 9 is 100% carbon neutral
Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

  • The Apple Watch Ultra has a 3000 nits brightness, which is 50% greater than the original Ultra
  • The Series 9 gets 18 hours of normal battery life and 36 in low-power mode
  • The Ultra 2 gets 36 hours of normal battery life and 72 hours in low-power mode

Services

  • New 6TB and 12TB iCloud+ storage options were introduced by Apple

You can follow all of our September 2023 Apple event coverage through our September 2023 Apple event hub or subscribe to the dedicated September 2023 Apple event RSS feed.