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Last Week, on Club MacStories: Things Shortcuts Tips, App Pricing Complexity, and New and Updated Apps

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 368

SugarBot: Health Insights Through Sugar and Nutrition Tracking [Sponsor]

SugarBot is an easy-to-use way to maintain a healthy diet by tracking sugar intake and other nutritional data from the maker of CardioBot. With SugarBot for the iPhone and Apple Watch, you can track your data and gain insights into trends from its in-depth graphs and recommendations to form healthier habits.

Getting started with SugarBot’s elegantly designed interface couldn’t be easier. The app comes with an extensive database of foods. Log your meals, and SugarBot does the rest, recording sugar and other information, including protein, carbohydrates, fiber, and fat for each meal. Everything tracked is measured against your goals, which can be set up in the app’s Settings. You can set up SugarBot according to a Keto diet or to lose, maintain, or gain weight. Individual nutrient goals can be set as well.

Each data point logged is immediately accessible from the app’s main screen giving you a quick view of today’s nutritional intake and the option to navigate back to prior days. There’s also an ‘All nutrients’ view for daily tracking your nutritional intake by category.

For longer-term trend analysis, SugarBot has a dedicated Insights tab that displays graphs of your intake of nutrients over time. It’s a fantastic way to ensure you’re on track with your goals and understand how your food consumption affects other areas of your health.

Download SugarBot today to start your journey to better health through tracking what you eat.

Our thanks to SugarBot for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: First Impressions: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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In this special episode of Unwind, Federico, who received The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom one day earlier than most people, shares his first impressions of the game, which has received rave reviews from critics.

First Impressions: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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AppStories, Episode 328 – Our iPadOS 17 Wishes

This week on AppStories, we continue our wish list series with our wishes for iPadOS 17.

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On AppStories+, stand-up lawn mowers and my struggles with social media.

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Raycast Introduces a Pro Subscription with New AI, Sync, Theming, and Clipboard Functionality

Raycast, the keyboard-driven launcher for the Mac, introduced a new subscription service today called Raycast Pro that adds AI, syncing, templating, and extended clipboard functionality to the app.

Raycast Pro, which is $8 per month when billed annually and is also included in Team plans, includes three artificial intelligence features:

  • Quick AI, which is meant to provide one-off answers that can be copied and pasted into whatever you’re working on
  • AI Chat, a chatbot window that floats onscreen, allowing for back-and-forth interaction
  • AI Commands, which include built-in commands for things like spelling and grammar checking, along with customizable commands

According to Raycast’s FAQs, the app uses OpenAI’s GPT 3 and GPT 3.5-Turbo large language models “as well as some other models” for their AI features and does not offer an option to use your own OpenAI API key.

If you use Raycast on multiple Macs, a Pro subscription will allow you to flip a toggle to sync items like Extensions, Quicklinks, Snippets, and Hotkeys. Subscribers can customize Raycast with themes and build their own sharable themes in the app’s Theme Studio too. Finally, a subscription adds an unlimited clipboard history that is stored locally on your Mac and not synced as part of the app’s new sync features for security reasons. Free users are limited to a maximum of three months of clipboard history.

For anyone who relies heavily on AI for their work or has complex Raycast setups that they find hard to maintain across multiple Macs, a Raycast Pro subscription should be attractive. For everyone else, you can still take advantage of the free features, which haven’t changed. I’ve relied on Raycast for more than a year now and don’t need the Pro features myself, but I’m glad to see Raycast expanding its offerings and ways users can support the app’s continued development.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Using Dropover with Shortcuts, Mona Tips, an Apple Podcasts Experiment, and Giveaway

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:

MacStories Weekly: Issue 367

Sending images to Shortcuts using Dropover.

Sending images to Shortcuts using Dropover.

Apple Announces Pride Edition Sports Band, Watch Face, and iPhone Wallpaper

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple also announced its annual Pride Edition Apple Watch band, along with a similarly-designed watch face and iPhone wallpaper.

The band is a Sports Band model that Apple says is:

Inspired by the strength and beauty of the LGBTQ+ community, the new Sport Band design showcases the original pride flag rainbow colors and five others — black and brown symbolize Black and Latin communities, in addition to those who have passed away from or are living with HIV/AIDS, while light blue, pink, and white represent transgender and nonbinary individuals.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The watch face compliments the band using the same graphical elements around the edges of an analog clock. The iPhone wallpaper takes a slightly different approach blending the colorful elements of the watch band into a river-like stream of color.

The Pride Edition Sports Band will be available at Apple Stores and online beginning May 23rd for $49 for 41mm and 45mm Apple Watches. The watch face and iPhone wallpaper will be released next week, presumably with an update to watchOS and iOS.

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro Are Coming to the iPad on May 23rd

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

At long last, Apple has announced Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the iPad. Ever since the introduction of the iPad Pro, iPad power users have wondered where the ‘pro’ apps were. Third parties released pro-level creative tools, but Apple’s lineup of apps was conspicuously absent. That looks like it’s changing with today’s announcement that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are coming as subscription-based apps on Tuesday, May 23rd.

According to Apple’s press release:

Final Cut Pro for iPad introduces an all-new touch interface and intuitive tools — unlocking new workflows for video creators. A new jog wheel makes the editing process easier than ever and enables users to interact with content in completely new ways. They can navigate the Magnetic Timeline, move clips, and make fast frame-accurate edits with just the tap of a finger, and with the immediacy and intuitiveness of Multi-Touch gestures, push their creativity to new heights.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple says users with an M2 iPad Pro will be able to skim and preview footage using the Apple Pencil’s hover functionality. The app will also support keyboard shortcuts when connected to a Magic Keyboard.

According to Apple’s press release, Final Cut Pro will support single-device field recording, with the M2 iPad Pro supporting ProRes video. The app will also support multicam editing, which can be automatically synced together.

Auto-cropping of the subject of a video will be possible thanks to machine learning. The app will also use machine learning to assist users with cropping to common video sizes and isolating recorded voices.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple also says the app will come with a “vast library” of professional graphics, effects, audio, and animation that can be automatically adjusted to the length of a video. Finally, Final Cut Pro will be able to import from the Files and Photos app and supports iMovie projects. Plus, it will be able to export to Final Cut Projects that are compatible with the Mac version of the app.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple says that Logic Pro will take advantage of Multi-Touch gestures for manipulating a project as well as Plug-in Tiles that will provide convenient access to certain controls. The iPad’s microphones will also be available as an audio source.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The app will also debut a sound browser:

The sound browser displays all available instrument patches, audio patches, plug‑in presets, samples, and loops in a single location, and users can tap to audition any sound before loading it into a project to save time and stay in their creative flow.

Also included in the app are over 100 instruments and effects, synths, including one called Sample Alchemy for manipulating audio samples, and an extensive set of tools for creating beats. Logic Pro for iPad will work with compatible third-party hardware like microphones, instruments, and MIDI controllers too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

When it’s time to mix your creation, Apple says:

Multi-Touch enables creators to mix intuitively and move multiple faders at once, and the mixer meter bridge lets them quickly navigate an overview of track levels, all from iPad.

Finally, Logic Pro will support round-tripping to the Mac version of the app, GarageBand for iOS projects, and exporting in a variety of compressed and lossless formats or as individual track stems.

According to Apple:

Final Cut Pro is compatible with M1 chip iPad models or later, and Logic Pro will be available on A12 Bionic chip iPad models or later. Final Cut Pro for iPad and Logic Pro for iPad require iPadOS 16.4.

I’m glad to see Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro finally coming to the iPad. It remains to be seen how each stands up in comparison to their Mac siblings, but from Apple’s press release alone, these will clearly be more powerful and capable apps than either iMovie or GarageBand.

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad will be available on the App Store beginning on Tuesday, May 23rd as subscriptions for $4.99/month or $49/year after a one-month free trial.

MusicSmart 2.0: Dig Into Music Discovery

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Marcos Tanaka’s music apps at MacStories. MusicHarbor makes keeping up with new and upcoming releases a breeze, and MusicBox ensures you won’t lose track of music that you don’t have time to enjoy until later. The apps are indispensable for music fans who follow a long list of artists.

MusicSmart, which is available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, is a little different than Tanaka’s other apps. Instead of casting a broad net to track the entire range of your musical tastes, the app is about digging deeper into individual songs, albums, or artists’ catalogs. But follow the threads offered by MusicSmart, and the narrow focus that sets it apart from Tanaka’s other apps will paradoxically lead to new musical discoveries and, ultimately, broaden your tastes.

As Federico explained in his review of MusicSmart’s debut:

Whether by design or as a byproduct of our new habits, metadata and credits don’t play a big role in modern music streaming services. We’re frustrated when a service gets the title of a song wrong or reports the incorrect track sequence in an album, but we don’t consider the fact that there’s a world of context and additional information hidden behind the songs and albums we listen to every day. That context is entirely invisible to us because it’s not mass-market enough for a music streaming service. There have been small updates on this front lately, but by and large, credits and additional track information are still very much ignored by the streaming industry. And if you ask me, that’s a shame.

Despite stiff competition among music streaming services, the state of liner notes hasn’t improved since Federico wrote that. Fortunately, though, MusicSmart has only gotten better, adding new data sources, better organization, and more polish with each release. However, version 2.0 of the app combines its existing strengths with new features and an improved design in a way that transcends earlier versions, making this version 2.0 of MusicSmart feel more fully realized than ever before.

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