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Kotaku Collects the Beautiful Artwork of Apple TV+’s Foundation→

Source: Kotaku.

Source: Kotaku.

The Apple TV+ show Foundation has been on my mind a lot this week. I’ve really enjoyed the first season so far, and yesterday, we hosted a live audio discussion in the Club MacStories+ Discord community, where we were joined by a few Club members to dig into the show’s first seven episodes. The discussion was part of AV Club, a channel in our Discord community where we pick media to enjoy as a group each month. It was a lively and fun discussion that is available to Club members as a podcast too.

As I was collecting my thoughts on Foundation in preparation for our group conversation, one of the aspects of the show that I kept coming back to was its visuals. It’s a sci-fi epic that doesn’t look like any sci-fi show I’ve watched before. From the elegance of Trantor’s surface, which is home to Empire, to the gritty reality of the planet’s subterranean levels, the inhospitable environment of Terminus, and the watery Synnax, every planet has a unique and authentic feel of its own that creates an immersive experience for viewers.

If you haven’t watched the show before or are a fan already and interested in learning more about Foundation’s unique style, I highly recommend browsing through the gallery of concept art for the show that is collected on Kotaku in a story by Luke Plunkett. The gallery of dozens of images includes costume design, landscapes, spaceships, weaponry, and more. Foundation is a big budget production that has more in common with the scale I’m used to seeing in movies. What the artwork spotlighted by Plunkett shows is that beyond the mountain of money spent on Foundation, an extraordinary amount of care has been taken by a group of incredibly talented artists to bring the story to life.

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AppStories, Episode 247 – Everything New in iOS and iPadOS 15.1

This week on AppStories, we dig into SharePlay and the other changes released last week with iOS and iPadOS 15.1.

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Federico returns to modding iPad accessories for his iPad mini and John wonders whether he should get one of the new MacBook Pros.

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Apple Releases Hooked, an Apple Original Podcast with No Ties to Other Properties→

Benjamin Mayo writing for 9to5Mac reports that Apple has published its first podcast that isn’t tied to a TV+ property or Apple News. The show, called Hooked, is a true-crime story featuring career bank robber Tony Hathaway. As Mayo notes, the show is listed as an ‘Apple Original podcast.’

Perhaps more notable is that there doesn’t seem to be a standard RSS feed associated with the show. Instead, the show’s first four episodes and trailer are available only via the Apple Podcasts app. Of course, a feed could be added, but if one isn’t, this would mark Apple’s first foray into exclusive audio content, something which Spotify has been doing for quite some time.

During an investor call last week that Podnews reported on, Spotify declared itself the number one podcast provider in the US and over 60 other countries based on an Edison Research report. As a result, it would come as no surprise if Apple has begun competing head-to-head with Spotify with its own exclusive audio content in the highly-popular true-crime category. At the same time, though, one of podcasting’s strengths has always been its open nature, and it would be a shame to see that further eroded by Apple, which has been a steward of the format for so long.

Update: Although not indexed and available in all podcast apps yet, Hooked does have a traditional RSS feed, which can be found here.

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Downie: Easily Download Videos From YouTube and Thousands of Different Sites [Sponsor]

Downie for Mac is a simple yet powerful app that allows you to save content from YouTube, Youku, Bilibili, QQ, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Vimeo, and thousands of other sites. Just click on a button in your browser’s toolbar, and Downie will start downloading the content.

Downie can also be set up to extract just the audio, which is ideal for downloading podcasts and other audio material that you listen to when traveling or just commuting.

By default, Downie will take care of most of the workflow for you, selecting the best quality available, sorting downloads by the site they originate from, sorting downloads by playlists, converting the downloaded files into commonly used formats if needed (MP4, MP3), setting the metadata, and more.

But if you are a power user, you will be delighted to know that Downie also has even more powerful features, such as Permute integration, CSV import, an automated mode for uninterrupted downloads while you are not at the computer (or if you run Downie on a server), custom post-processing scripts, custom site integrations via JavaScript, saving extracted metadata into a separate JSON file, and so much more.

Using Transloader by Matthias Gansrigler from Eternal Storms Software, you can also send links from your iOS device to Downie on your Mac.

For a limited time only, MacStories readers can buy Downie with a 25% discount by using on this link or manually entering the discount coupon “MACSTORIES2021” during checkout.

This discount can also be used for the already-discounted Downie + Permute bundle. See Downie’s webpage for more information.

Our thanks to Downie for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: macOS Monterey and iOS and iPadOS 15.1 Are Here, Plus Shortcuts for Mac, and a MacBook Pro Review

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Sponsored by: Daylite – It’s Monterey Ready!

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • A collection of John’s favorite XL widgets
    • Federico on the gap between Apple system apps and their Shortcuts actions
    • An all-new MacStories Unplugged that take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of John’s macOS Monterey review.

AppStories

Unwind

Austin Mann on the M1 MacBook Pros→

Source: [austinmann.com](https://austinmann.com/trek/macbook-pro-m1-max-for-photographers)

Source: austinmann.com

Pro photographer Austin Mann has been testing a new MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB RAM and an 8TB SSD in Arizona. As always, his review includes beautiful images that required substantial computer power to create. After running the highest-end version of the MacBook Pro through its paces, Mann came away impressed by the laptop’s fast charging and power efficiency, as well as its overall performance:

In summary, the most impressive performance from the new MacBook Pro M1 Max wasn’t just speed (it was about twice as fast), but it was insanely efficient in how it managed both its power and heat, which matters as much or more than pure speed.

Mann’s review does an excellent job capturing how the new MacBook Pros work as a package. It’s not just that they are power efficient or fast, but the combination of multiple advances that has enabled such a substantial leap forward over previous models.

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Shortcuts for Mac: 27 of Our Favorite Third-Party Integrations

One of the strengths of Shortcuts on the Mac is that it isn’t limited by the way an app is built. That’s reflected in the first wave of apps I’ve tried that support Shortcuts. There’s an excellent mix of apps built with everything from AppKit and Mac Catalyst, as well as apps available on and off the Mac App Store.

As I explained in my Monterey review, Shortcuts is still rough around the edges, but that’s not to say its unusable. If you go into it with reasonable expectations, start off simple, and are patient, there’s a lot that can be accomplished. That’s especially true now because there is a long list of third-party apps that have added support for Shortcuts on the Mac. Apple added a lot of built-in system actions that it brought over from Automator, with which you can build some interesting shortcuts, but the diversity of options has grown exponentially with the release of updated third-party apps.

To get you started, I’ve rounded up some of the most interesting Shortcuts integrations I’ve found so far. Some of these will be familiar if you’ve used these apps’ counterparts on the iPhone or iPad, but many are brand new to any platform, while others are Mac-exclusive. It’s early days for Shortcuts on the Mac, and I’m sure we’ll see even more of our favorite apps jump on board, which we’ll continue to cover here and for Club MacStories members.

Task Managers

Things:

Things.

Things.

Things offers the same set of four Shortcuts actions that you’ll find on iOS and iPadOS:

  • Add To-Do
  • Run Things URL
  • Show List
  • Show To-Do

The two most notable actions are Add To-Do and Run Things URL. Add To-Do includes parameters to add a task to a particular list, with a start date and deadline, tags, a status, notes, and a checklist. There’s also a toggle to open the task in Things to process it further in-app.

Run Things URL is a fantastic power-user action that takes advantage of Things’ URL scheme, which the action runs in the background. Things’ support website has one of the best explanations of its URL scheme of any app I’ve used, allowing you to fill in a web form to construct the URL you need.

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AppStories, Episode 246 – macOS Monterey: The MacStories Review→

This week on AppStories, we dive into John’s review of macOS Monterey and what it means for users and the future of the platform.

On AppStories+, John explains how he and Silvia helped James Thomson and Jason Snell pull off a prank on Relay FM’s Connected.

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On AppStories+, John explains how he and Silvia helped James Thomson and Jason Snell pull off a prank on Relay FM’s Connected.

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 Releases iOS and iPadOS 15.1 with SharePlay, Safari for iPad Fixes, Shortcuts Improvements, and More

Screen sharing in FaceTime with SharePlay (left) and the updated Safari for iPad.

Screen sharing in FaceTime with SharePlay (left) and the updated Safari for iPad.

Alongside macOS Monterey, Apple today released iOS and iPadOS 15.1 – the first major updates to the operating systems introduced last month. Don’t expect a large collection of changes from this release, though: 15.1 mostly focuses on enabling SharePlay (which was announced at WWDC, then postponed to a later release a few months ago), rolling Safari back to a reasonable design, and bringing a few tweaks for the Camera app and spatial audio. Let’s take a look.

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