I’ve been thinking about app scalability a lot lately – most recently in the context of TestFlight, which I find is incredibly frustrating to use, at best, and, on the Mac, often unusable. This isn’t a new problem for me, but I haven’t mentioned it much in the past because I’ve suspected that my experience is colored by the fact that I’m an outlier. But, outlier or not, the app deserves more attention than it’s been given.
TestFlight’s Inability to Handle Large Beta Collections Needs to Be Fixed
MacStories Unwind Expands to Club MacStories with Unwind+
MacStories Unwind began as an experiment that sprung from the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. It started as a recap of the week at MacStories paired with a couple of quick media picks for listeners who were stuck at home. Early last year, we refocused the show on the media picks, which has proven popular with listeners, so today, we’re pleased to announce an expansion of the show for both existing listeners and Club MacStories members.
If you’re already a listener, Unwind will continue to feature weekly media picks and be about a half-hour long. What we’re adding is a little more conversation and personality, which has been missing from the show. As is the case now, Unwind will also remain free to download on Fridays and be supported by ads and promotions for other things we’re doing at MacStories.
Listen to Unwind:
The bigger change is that today we’re also introducing MacStories Unwind+, an exclusive perk for Club MacStories members. Unwind+ will be released every week a day early on Thursdays, without ads, and in high bitrate audio. Both versions of the show also feature brand new artwork by our own Silvia Gatta.
With the expansion of Unwind, we’re also simplifying the Club MacStories podcast lineup, consolidating the monthly MacStories Unplugged and AV Club Town Halls into Unwind. The fun, quirky stories and explorations of the differences between Italian and American culture that Unplugged was known for will become a regular segment on Unwind.
Also, AV Club is continuing, but instead of being limited to the Club MacStories+ and Club Premier Town Hall feed, the monthly event will become an episode of Unwind for all Club members. Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members will still help pick the media for AV Club in our Discord community and have the chance to listen live during recording. We’re reorganizing and adding to the channels in the community Discord to make it easier for members to find and discuss the media they love too.
We’re excited to bring you this new edition of MacStories Unwind beginning this week. There was a lot of overlap among Unwind, Unplugged, and our AV Club podcast episodes, and by rolling all of our media picks together with the free-form, casual vibe of Unplugged, we hope you join us for what we think will be the best version of Unwind yet.
If you already listen to Unwind, there’s nothing you need to do to enjoy the new format because the podcast feed isn’t changing. The same goes for Club members who were subscribed to MacStories Unplugged. Unwind+ will replace Unplugged in that feed, so the next time you download an episode, you’ll see Unwind instead.
If you’re not listening to Unwind, we’d love it if you’d give it a try. You’ll find great recommendations for TV shows, movies, videogames, and music, along with the occasional book, podcast, and even media-related hardware. Plus, if you’ve never listened to Unplugged, you’re in for a treat with stories about things like acid-spewing vultures, retirees spectating at construction sites, and southern cooking. Yes, it’s a little weird, but it’s fun too.
Listen to Unwind:
If you want to level up your Unwind experience, we’d love it if you’d consider a Club MacStories membership. We offer three tiers of membership with perks like our active Discord community, exclusive discounts, special columns, and now, Unwind+. And, with Club Premier, you also get AppStories+, the extended, ad-free version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered a day early most weeks in high-bitrate audio. You can learn more about our Club plans using the buttons below.
Join Club Premier here:
To compare every Club MacStories plan we offer, visit our Club plans page.
So, starting today, all members of Club MacStories will have access to MacStories Unwind+ weekly. And, to participate in deciding what we cover for on the monthly AV Club episodes and the live recordings of those episodes, join Club MacStories+ or Club Premier, which each come with a long list of other perks. We hope you enjoy the new format.
The support of Club members is the foundation of MacStories’ future, which is why we’re actively working on growing membership. The Club will celebrate its eighth anniversary this year, and by growing it deliberately each year since 2015, we’ve maintained the free ad-supported stories and podcasts we offer while giving readers and listeners an option that isn’t just ad-free but extends what we’re able to offer across every facet of MacStories.
We’ve got many plans for MacStories that have been in the works for a long time now, which we expect to be able to start sharing soon. We’re excited to share it all with you and would love it if you’d join the Club to help us make those plans a reality.
AppStories, Episode 326 – Return to macOS→
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.
Sponsored by:
- Dropshare – The most flexible file-sharing solution for macOS and iOS that just works with your trusted file storage provider. 15% off for AppStories listeners with the code
appstoriesat checkout. - Hit The Island – Funn Media’s innovative, fun, and deceptively simple game for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
- Factor – Healthy, fully-prepared food delivered to your door. Get 50% off your first box.
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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.
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.
Last Week, on Club MacStories: An Obsidian Shortcut, the Benefits of Utility Shortcuts, and Two Special Club Podcast Episodes
Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:
MacStories Weekly: Issue 365
Federico’s Dashboard note in Obsidian includes an ‘On My Mind’ section that he prepends notes to using Shortcuts.
- Moving windows on the Mac with a three-finger drag.
- Using Shortcuts to prepend text to a section of an Obsidian note.
- The benefits of breaking shortcuts up into smaller utility functions.
- Plus:
- A Tally giveaway
- App Debuts
- Highlights from the Club MacStories+ Discord
- Interesting links from around the web
- A sneak peek at what’s next on MacStories’ podcasts
- and more
Club MacStories+ AV Club Town Hall
Last week, Federico and I were joined by Jonathan Reed to discuss the debut albums of Coldplay and Oasis live in the Club Discord. Club MacStories+ Discord members picked Coldplay’s Parachutes, and Federico picked Oasis’ Definitely Maybe in honor of MacStories’ anniversary last week. Club MacStories+ and Premier members can listen to the event in the Town Hall podcast feed.
Club MacStories+ Automation April Shortcuts Workshop, Part 2
We threw a second live Automation April Shortcuts workshop in Discord last week with special guest Rosemary Orchard where we explained our approaches to building new shortcuts, when to build utility functions called from other shortcuts, our recent shortcuts experiments, and projects. The event is also available in the Town Hall podcast feed.
Streaks: The to-Do List That Helps You Form Good Habits [Sponsor]
Streaks is one of the best-known habit-tracking apps on the App Store. In addition to linking to the Health app to help improve your health and wellbeing, you can use it for anything! Work, hobbies, exercise, timers, and more - it’s extremely customizable.
We’ve just released Streaks 9 with some great new features:
- Screen Time tasks that automatically monitor your device usage
- An all-new Apple Watch app, now written in SwiftUI
- You can now record daily notes with your tasks
- New great-looking neon themes
Streaks has now been in the App Store for 8 years - if you haven’t tried it before, or it’s been a while since you used it, we hope you can check it out!
Our thanks to Streaks for sponsoring MacStories this week.
MacStories Unwind: How I Met Your Father, Pokémon Scarlet, and Rabbit Hole
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This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico started watching How I Met Your Father, season 2, on Hulu, which in itself is a minor miracle from Italy, and picked up Pokémon Scarlet again, while I stumbled across Rabbit Hole, an action/thriller/conspiracy show on Paramount+ starring Keifer Sutherland.
Federico’s Picks:
- How I Met Your Father, Season 2
- Pokémon Scarlet
John’s Pick:
Automation April: Hyperduck Leverages the Power of URL Schemes to Control Your Mac from an iPhone or iPad
Hyperduck is a recent utility from Sindre Sorhus for sending URLs from an iPhone or iPad to your Mac that has some very interesting applications. Hyperduck hasn’t replaced my use of AirDrop, Handoff, and other Apple technologies that move data between devices, but it has extended those features in meaningful ways and has quickly worked its way into my everyday computing life.
Hyperduck does just one thing very well. It sends URLs from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac using iCloud. That’s different than how AirDrop works, which has some advantages.
AppStories, Episode 325 – Automation April: Third-Party Apps with Great Shortcuts Support→
This week on AppStories, we dig into third-party apps with excellent shortcuts support.
Sponsored by:
- Viso – Beautiful minimal image viewer for macOS.
On AppStories+, My Mac Studio is in the shop, so Federico and I are both using MacBook Airs.
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.
Automation April: Mac Outliner Bike Adds Shortcuts Support
Last spring, I reviewed Bike, Jesse Grosjean of Hog Bay Software’s excellent outlining app for the Mac. The app’s simple, elegant design keeps the focus on the outline you’re creating, while its rich, keyboard-driven set of features enable ideas to be organized quickly and efficiently. Advanced features, like versioning, linking and grouping rows, and a long list of ways to view, navigate and edit your outlines, make Bike one of the best ways to create outlines on the Mac.
Bike’s focus on efficiency and extensive support for keyboard shortcuts and AppleScript make it the perfect candidate for Shortcuts support, which was added to the app today. Version 1.11 of Bike adds 14 Shortcuts actions to the app:
- Create Outline
- Open Outline
- Open Row
- Get Rows
- Fold Rows
- Focus Row
- Edit Rows
- Import Rows
- Export Rows
- Find Rows
- Create Row
- Delete Rows
- Move Rows
- Get Selection
The actions cover a lot of the functionality of Bike with a focus on outlines, text and row selections, and rows. Outlines can be created from scratch or existing ones opened, and Get Selection returns any selected text and its outline row.
The remainder of Bike’s Shortcuts actions apply to rows, the building blocks of outlines. Rows can be opened in-app or retrieved in a variety of ways, such as by their root, row ID, focus, selection, ancestor rows, child rows, and descendant rows by using the Get Rows action. There’s also a Find Rows action that uses predicate filtering to allow rows matching multiple criteria to be located and sorted. Rows can be imported and exported in Bike, OPML, and plain text formats too.
Rows can also be created, edited, deleted, and moved within an outline with precision, thanks to a detailed set of action parameters. Actions for focusing on particular rows and folding and unfolding rows round out the available actions by allowing users to use Shortcuts to prepare their outline work environment automatically.
I’ve only just begun experimenting with Bike’s new Shortcuts integration, but it’s clear that thanks to extensive parameter and predicate filtering, the automation opportunities are extensive. Especially if you work with big outlines that require frequent, repetitive edits, Bike’s new Shortcuts integration could save you a lot of time.
Bike 1.11 is available on the App Store and directly from Hog Bay Software as a free download. Some features, including Shortcuts support, require a $2.99/month or $19.99/year subscription from the App Store or a one-time license purchase directly from Hog Bay Software, which comes with one year of updates.
You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.