The 2022 MacStories OS Preview Series: Maps and CarPlay

I recently moved from Illinois to North Carolina, and I don’t know the area at all. As a result, I’ve been using Maps and CarPlay a lot since I got here. The new features coming this fall to each aren’t as extensive as they’ve been in past years, but there are several small changes that represent the kind of incremental, ‘quality of life’ improvements that I expect users will appreciate.

Maps

Because so much of Apple Maps relies on methodically mapping the world bit by bit, many users are stuck waiting for Maps’ underlying data to catch up with the app’s features. The more detailed maps and 3D models of landmarks introduced last year are good examples. Both came with asterisks because they were only available in certain cities or countries at launch.

This year is a little different. Apple announced new countries and cities where you’ll find the company’s more detailed maps, 3D landmarks, and other changes, but this year, multi-stop routes and tweaks to Maps’ routing UI will be available to everyone at the same time. It’s a nice mix of brand-new features and incremental improvements that includes something for everyone.

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AppStories, Episode 288 – 2022 OS Preview: The System Apps (Part 2)→

This week on AppStories, we conclude our in-depth look at changes coming to Apple’s system apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including Home, Notes, Reminders, and Shortcuts.

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On AppStories+, I discover that I’m hooked on Stage Manager for Mac.

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Explore Four Historic Apple Stores with The Apple Store Time Machine

Yesterday, Michael Steeber released The Apple Store Time Machine, a Mac app built with the Unity game engine that recreates four historically significant Apple Stores:

  • Tysons Corner, the first ever Apple Store
  • Sanford Shopping Center, a mini version of the Apple Store
  • Fifth Avenue, Apple’s flagship New York store
  • Infinite Loop, Apple’s on-campus store featuring exclusive merchandise

As Steeber explains, the free app, which also accepts user donations:

…is a celebration of the places and products that have shaped our lives for more than twenty years. This interactive experience recreates memorable moments in Apple history with painstaking detail and historical accuracy.

The detail of each of the stores in the app is really quite remarkable. Clearly, a lot of work went into getting the details just right.

The Apple Store Time Machine is available to download on Steeber’s website.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Retro Gaming on iOS and Managing RSS with Multiple Services

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

MacStories Weekly: Issue 330

Remote Mouse & Keyboard: Control your Mac with All Your Devices [Sponsor]

[Download](https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id629019487?pt=2028706&ct=MacStories&mt=8)

Download

Remote Mouse & Keyboard is the perfect solution for controlling your Mac from other devices on your home network. The app works with the iPhone, iPad, another Mac, the Apple Watch, and even the Apple TV, enabling a wide variety of new uses for your Mac. Whether you’re running a Mac as a media center, want to launch or quit apps remotely, or control your Mac’s system settings while doing something else, Remote Control for Mac can handle it all.

Remote Mouse & Keyboard works with AirPlay for screen and sound mirroring and Siri so that you can control your Mac with your voice from anywhere on your network. The app’s AirPlay controls are a fantastic way to integrate your Mac with an Apple TV without having to sit down at your Mac to AirPlay its screen or audio. Instead, with Remote Mouse & Keyboard, you can use whichever device is available to you.

What’s more, Remote Mouse & Keyboard’s customizable keypads and keypad store let you benefit from its huge collection of keypads for controlling the most popular apps and make your own keypads. Paired with the app’s Shortcuts integration, the opportunities for automating your smart home and controlling and leveraging the power of your Mac alongside your other devices in new and unique ways are virtually limitless.

Remote Mouse & Keyboard has a special giveaway just for MacStories readers. The first 100 readers who visit this link will get a free copy of the app.

Take control of your Mac today. Download Remote Mouse & Keyboard from the App Store now.

Our thanks to Remote Mouse & Keyboard for sponsoring MacStories this week.

HiRise 3: Twelve South’s Space-Saving, Three-in-One Charging Solution

Source: Twelve South.

Source: Twelve South.

Not long ago, Twelve South introduced a new 3-in-1 charger for the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods Pro called the HiRise 3. I’ve used a Belkin 3-in-1 charger on my desk for a few years and love it, but it takes up quite a bit of space. So, when Twelve South recently offered to send me the HiRise 3 to test, I jumped at the chance to check out its more compact design. After using the HiRise 3 for the past few weeks, I’m happy with it overall and think it’s a great choice for most users, but it comes with a couple of limitations that you’ll want to consider before buying one yourself.

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AppStories, Episode 287 – 2022 OS Preview: The System Apps (Part 1)

This week on AppStories, we continue the MacStories Summer OS Preview Series with part one of our in-depth look at changes coming to Apple’s system apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including Weather, Clock, Safari, Mail, Messages, and Photos.

Sponsored by:

  • Concepts - Infinite, Flexible Sketching.
  • RevenueCat – Subscription management built for mobile apps.
  • Sourcegraph – Universal Code Search. Move fast, even in big codebases. Try it now.
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On AppStories+, John reports on his Stage Manager and Sidecar experiments on the Mac, Stage Manager’s bugginess on the iPad, Federico is itching to try Ventura, and a discussion of third-party iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets.

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Generating Markdown Links to Mail Messages with Shortcuts and AppleScript

One of the system app updates we covered on AppStories this week that I’m most excited about is Mail. The app will finally introduce several advanced features this fall, including:

  • Undo send, allowing you to recall a message for 10 seconds after sending a message
  • Message scheduling with suggested and fully-customizable future delivery times and dates
  • Follow Up, which surfaces requests you’ve made in messages for which you haven’t received a response
  • Remind Me, a snooze-like feature for scheduling messages to reappear in your inbox later
  • Missing recipient and attachment alerts
  • Improved search

For the first time in quite a while, that list makes Mail a much more attractive alternative to third-party apps. Mail won’t match every feature offered by third parties, but my needs for advanced email client features are fairly modest, which I expect puts me squarely in the demographic that Apple is targeting.

Mimestream offers Gmail's excellent search and other features in a native Mac package.

Mimestream offers Gmail’s excellent search and other features in a native Mac package.

Until recently, my email use was split between Mimestream, which is only available on the Mac, and Spark on iOS and iPadOS. The split wasn’t ideal, but because I handle most of my email on my Mac, I tolerated it.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using Mail exclusively on all of my devices, which has been a refreshing change of pace. Still, it’s not perfect. Of the features I use most in third-party mail clients, the single biggest shortcoming of Mail is its clunky implementation of deep linking.

I drop links to email messages in my notes and tasks all the time as a way to quickly access important contextual information. Mimestream offers Gmail URLs, and Spark can create its own app-specific and web URLs right within those apps’ UIs.

I like the way drag and drop on the iPhone and iPad links a message to its subject, but having to use drag and drop is clunky.

I like the way drag and drop on the iPhone and iPad links a message to its subject, but having to use drag and drop is clunky.

In contrast, on iOS and iPadOS, you can only link to a Mail message by dragging it out of Mail into another app’s text field. I’ll take it, but I’d prefer if I could quickly generate a link from the share sheet or with Shortcuts instead. The situation on the Mac isn’t much better, requiring users to resort to AppleScript to construct a URL that links back to a Mail message.

With weeks of Ventura testing ahead of me, I decided to see what I could do to improve the situation. The result isn’t perfect: I still have no choice on iOS and iPadOS but to drag and drop messages. However, I’ve improved the experience on the Mac using a combination of AppleScript and a shortcut that I trigger using Raycast to link the subject of a Mail message to its URL. For added context, my shortcut adds the sender’s name too.

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