This Week's Sponsor:

Copilot Money

The Apple Editor’s Choice Award App for Tracking Your Money. Start Your Free Trial Today

Apple Frames 3.1.1 with Support for Passthrough Mode→

The 'Shortcut Result' variable, used as an image variable in a shortcut that calls Apple Frames.

The ‘Shortcut Result’ variable, used as an image variable in a shortcut that calls Apple Frames.

I just released a small update to Apple Frames 3.1, which came out earlier this week, with a new output command: &passthrough. With this output command for the Apple Frames API, you’ll be able to generate a framed image (from whatever source you like) and simply pass its result to the next action in a shortcut as a native image variable.

I wrote about this as part of my Extension column in MacStories Weekly today, where I also covered the ability to run Apple Frames from the command line on macOS. Here’s the excerpt about version 3.1.1 of Apple Frames and the new passthrough mode:

As I was researching this column for Weekly, I realized there was an obvious candidate for an output command I did not include in Apple Frames 3.1: a passthrough command to, well, pass framed images along as input for the next action of a shortcut.

Here’s what I mean: when you run Apple Frames from a helper shortcut using the ‘Run Shortcut’ action, that action produces an output variable called ‘Shortcut Result’. If you’re running Apple Frames as a function, thus turning it into a feature of another workflow, it can be useful to take the framed images it produces and use them as a native variable in other actions of the shortcut. The problem is that the output commands I launched with Apple Frames 3.1 all involved “storing” the framed images somewhere, whether it was Files or the system clipboard.

This is no longer the case with the &passthrough output command I added to Apple Frames 3.1.1, which you can redownload from the MacStories Shortcuts Archive or directly from this link. If you run the Apple Frames API with this command, framed images will be passed along as native output of the shortcut, which you can reuse as a variable elsewhere in a shortcut that’s invoking Apple Frames.

And:

Any shortcut or longer workflow that involves running Apple Frames in the background and retrieving the screenshots it frames can take advantage of this method, allowing you to bypass the need to store images in the clipboard, even if temporarily. Essentially, passthrough mode turns Apple Frames into a native action of the Shortcuts app that returns a standard image variable as its output.

This is the only change in version 3.1.1 of Apple Frames, and I’m excited to see how people will take advantage of it to chain Apple Frames with other shortcuts on their devices. You can download the updated version of Apple Frames below.

Apple Frames

Add device frames to screenshots for iPhones (11, 8/SE, and 12-13-14 generations in mini/standard/Plus/Pro Max sizes), iPad Pro (11” and 12.9”, 2018-2022 models), iPad Air (10.9”, 2020-2022 models), iPad mini (2021 model), Apple Watch S4/5/6/7/8/Ultra, iMac (24” model, 2021), MacBook Air (2020-2022 models), and MacBook Pro (2021 models). The shortcut supports portrait and landscape orientations, but does not support Display Zoom; on iPadOS and macOS, the shortcut supports Default and More Space resolutions. If multiple screenshots are passed as input, they will be combined in a single image. The shortcut can be run in the Shortcuts app, as a Home Screen widget, as a Finder Quick Action, or via the share sheet. The shortcut also supports an API for automating input images and framed results.

Get the shortcut here.

Permalink

AppStories, Episode 318 – Apple Watch Ultra and The Watch Apps We Use→

This week on AppStories, we compare notes on the Apple Watch Ultra, including what makes it special and what frustrates us, and share the apps we’re using regularly.

Sponsored by:

  • Kolide – Kolide ensures only secure devices can access your cloud apps. It’s Zero Trust tailor-made for Okta. Book a demo today.
  • Squarespace – Make your next move. Enter offer code APPSTORIES at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
[Subscribe here.](https://appstories.net/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, we dig into HomeKit-enabled blinds, shades, and shutters and explain our Nintendo Switch HDMI upscaling experiments.

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.

Permalink

A Final Update to Tweetbot and Twitterrific That Allows Users to Support Tapbots and The Iconfactory

Usually, when a big company shuts down an API, they give customers time to prepare. It’s the right thing to do regardless of what any terms of service say. That’s not how things went down with Twitter. Instead, as I wrote in January, Twitter eliminated access to its API for many third-party apps, including Tweetbot by Tapbots and Twitterrific by The Iconfactory, with no notice at all and then made up an excuse for why they did so after the fact. One moment the apps worked; the next, they didn’t.

The ramifications of Twitter’s actions are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before on the App Store. Tweetbot and Twitterrific were both subscription-based apps. Because they had no notice, neither company had a chance to suspend new subscriptions or take other actions to deal with a change that, under the best of circumstances, would pose massive challenges to their development teams. As a result, both Tapbots and The Iconfactory are faced with refunding the 70-85% of subscription revenues that they received on a pro-rated basis. That’s how the App Store works, and it’s potentially devastating to both companies given how events played out.

To try to mitigate the damage, both Tweetbot and Twitterrific were updated this week with new interfaces. Now, both apps give subscribers the option to indicate that they don’t want a refund. Tweetbot also offers to transfer a user’s Tweetbot subscription to Tapbots’ new Mastodon app, Ivory, which Federico recently reviewed and is excellent. If users do nothing, they’ll receive a refund that will be credited to their App Store account automatically by Apple.

Tapbots and The Iconfactory have played an important part in the Apple developer community for a very long time, and their Twitter clients were two of the best ever created. It’s been hard for us at MacStories to watch as the makers of two of our favorite apps have been treated with such callous disregard by Twitter, which owes no small portion of its past success to both apps.

If you were a subscriber to either or both apps, you’re absolutely entitled to a refund, but we’d ask that you open the app you use and tap the button to decline a refund as a final act of support for their developers instead.

The App Store’s success is built on many things, but its cornerstone is the developers who care enough to make apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific. Many of us have moved on from Twitter, but let’s not leave behind the developers who made it a place where we once enjoyed hanging out.

If you’ve already deleted either app from your devices, both Tweetbot and Twitterrific can still be downloaded from the App Store.

Pedometer 5.0 Update Adds Map-Based Workouts, Live Activities, Accessibility Improvements, and Apple Watch Ultra Integration→

Source: [david-smith.org](https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2023/03/01/pedometer-five/)

Source: david-smith.org

David Smith announced the release of Pedometer++ 5.0 today, and it looks like a big one. Smith says 5.0 has been rewritten from the ground up using SwiftUI and includes:

  • Dynamic Type support
  • Workout tracking, which was previously Watch-only, is now available on the iPhone too
  • Live Activities that display distance and duration data or a map and distance preview are available in multiple styles
  • Map-based routes can be added by transferring GPX files to the iPhone app using the iOS share sheet, which then syncs them to your Apple Watch
  • Saved and favorite routes can be added to the Apple Watch too
  • Once on the Watch, routes can be used in a new maps-based workout tracking mode, which displays them live
  • The Apple Watch Ultra’s Action button can be used to start a walk quickly or to switch between map and metric views in the Watch app

I’m looking forward to giving this update a try. I’ve enjoyed using Footpath’s map integration as I explore North Carolina, and I’m curious to see how the apps compare.

Pedometer++ 5.0 is available as a free download on the App Store. Some features, including workouts, require a subscription.

Permalink

Apple Introduces New Peer Group Benchmarks for Developers→

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple introduced new analytics for app developers designed to reveal how their apps are performing compared to peer apps. The developer site says that:

With data from the entire catalog of apps on the App Store, peer group benchmarks provide accurate, relevant, and privacy-preserving comparisons for apps across categories, business models, and download volumes. Learn how to take advantage of these insights to improve your app’s performance.

Apple defines an app’s peer group by its App Store category, business model, and download volume, providing metrics that shows where a developer’s app falls within the range of similar apps. Data is aggregated and uses differential privacy to ensure that the analytics do not reveal the identity of the apps against which a developer’s app is compared. The developer site also offers suggested actions that developers can take to improve their performance, including product page optimization tests, app events, pricing strategies, and more.

From the examples shared, the new tools look as though they will fit in nicely with existing analytics and other analytics available to developers. Providing insights into how an app is performing compared to its peers should help point developers in the direction of areas where adjustments can have the greatest impact on the success of their apps, saving them time and guesswork.

Permalink

Apple Frames 3.1: Extending Screenshot Automation with the New Apple Frames API

Apple Frames 3.1 comes with a lightweight Apple Frames API to extend its automation capabilities.

Apple Frames 3.1 comes with a lightweight Apple Frames API to extend its automation capabilities.

Update, March 3: Version 3.1.1 of Apple Frames has been released with support for a new passthrough output command. This post has been updated to reflect the changes. You can redownload the updated shortcut at the end of this post.

Today, I’m happy to introduce something I’ve been working on for the past couple of months: Apple Frames – my shortcut to put screenshots captured on Apple devices inside physical device frames – is getting a major upgrade to version 3.1 today. In addition to offering support for more devices that I missed in version 3.0 as well as some bug fixes, Apple Frames 3.1 brings a brand new API that lets you automate and extend the Apple Frames shortcut itself.

By making Apple Frames scriptable, I wanted to allow power users – such as designers and developers who rely on this shortcut to frame hundreds of images each week – to save valuable time without compromising the accessible nature of Apple Frames for other people. This is why all of the new advanced features of Apple Frames are optional and hidden until you go look for them specifically. Furthermore, even if you do want to use the Apple Frames API, you’ll see that I designed it in the spirit of Shortcuts: it does not require any code and it’s entirely powered by simple, visual ‘Text’ actions.

I’m incredibly excited about what Apple Frames can do in version 3.1, so let’s dive in.

Read more

Last Week, on Club MacStories: A Lighter Approach to Focus Modes and the Apple Watch Ultra, an iPhone Home Screen, and Glass Onion

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

MacStories Weekly: Issue 357

Club MacStories+ AV Club Town Hall

  • This month’s AV Club Town Hall in the Club MacStories+ Discord community featured the movie Glass Onion, directed by Rian Johnson.
  • Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members can listen to the event in the Town Hall podcast feed.

Kolide: That Ticking Noise is Your End Users’ Laptops [Sponsor]

Here’s an uncomfortable fact: at most companies, employees can download sensitive company data onto any device, keep it there forever, and never even know that they’re doing something wrong.

Kolide’s new report, The State of Sensitive Data, shines a light on an area of security that is often ignored, but is nevertheless a massive hole in many companies’ Zero Trust fortress.

These findings are particularly alarming given the overall state of device security. IT teams routinely struggle to enforce timely OS updates and patch management, meaning that end users are storing your most sensitive data–things like customer records, confidential IP, and plain-text access credentials–on devices that are vulnerable to attack.

This problem has gone unaddressed because until now there hasn’t been a good solution for it. MDM solutions are too blunt an instrument for dealing with sensitive data, and DLP tools are too extreme and invasive for most companies. After all, you’re not trying to ban downloads together, nor regard every download as suspicious. You’re just trying to make sure employees aren’t keeping data for longer than they need or keeping it on an unmanaged or unsecure device.

Kolide offers a more nuanced approach to setting and enforcing sensitive data policies.

Our premise is simple: if an employee’s device is out of compliance, it can’t access your apps.

Kolide lets admins run queries to detect sensitive data, flag devices that have violated policies, and enforce OS and browser updates so vulnerable devices aren’t accessing data.

Our unique approach makes device compliance part of the authentication process. If a device isn’t compliant, users can’t log in to their cloud apps until they’ve fixed the problem. But instead of creating more work for IT, Kolide provides instructions so users can get unblocked on their own.

To learn more and see our product in action, visit kolide.com.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Nope and GeForce NOW Paired with the Razer Kishi Controller

0:00
21:39

Sponsored By SaneBox – Clean up your inbox today and keep it that way forever with SaneBox

John loves the horror/sci-fi movie Nope from Jordan Peele, and Federico discovers the joys of videogame streaming service GeForce NOW paired with the Razer Kishi iPhone controller.

John’s Pick:

Federico’s Pick: