MacStories Weekly: Issue 356

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MacStories Unwind: Metroid Prime Remastered and Shrinking

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico’s dream comes true with the release of Metroid Prime Remastered, and John has fallen hard for Shrinking, an Apple TV+ comedy from the makers of Ted Lasso.

Federico’s Pick:

John’s Pick:

iOS and iPadOS 16.4 Betas Are Out with New Emoji, Loads of Safari Updates, Apple Podcasts Enhancements, Shortcuts Actions, and More

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple has released betas of iOS and iPadOS 16.4 with new features and its version of new emoji approved by the Unicode Consortium last summer.

Some of the biggest changes coming to iOS and iPadOS later this spring will be to Safari. Many of the biggest user-facing features relate to web apps. Apple has supported saving web apps to the iPhone and iPad’s Home Screen since the earliest days of those devices, but today’s announcements put web apps on a more even footing with native apps than before.

According to a post by Brady Eidson and Jen Simmons on WebKit.org:

  • Safari will support Web Push with iOS and iPadOS 16.4, which will work like other notifications on the system. Once a user authorizes a web app to send notifications, they will be sent and managed just like notifications from native apps.
  • Users will be able to associate notifications from web apps with Focus modes, too, allowing or filtering them out based on the options picked when setting up a Focus mode.
  • Web app icons on your Home Screen will gain the ability to display badges.
  • Third-party browsers will be able to add web apps to the Home Screen for the first time from the share sheet.
  • Multiple web apps can be added to the Home Screen and renamed by users allowing them to be part of different Focus filters.

There are many other interesting additions and changes to the WebKit framework for developers that they can check out on the WebKit site.

Last summer, the Unicode Consortium announced its draft candidates for new emoji. The betas of iOS and iPadOS 16.4 include Apple’s renderings of those emoji, a handful of which are in the image at the beginning of this story. Included among the new emoji are a shaking face, three new colors of hearts, left and right pushing hands in multiple skin tones, a moose, a donkey, a blackbird, a goose, ginger, a hair pick, a flute, peas, and more.

Apple Podcasts includes changes in the betas too. Channels are Apple Podcasts’ collections of shows from a single publisher. In iOS and iPadOS 16.4, Channels will be included in the library, allowing users to access the ones they follow and subscribe to more easily. Up Next is adding the ability to resume episodes, start saved episodes, and remove any you want to skip. Plus, episodes you’re listening to in the app that you don’t follow or subscribe to will live in Up Next until you finish or remove them. Users will also be able to access their Up Next and Recently Played queues from CarPlay, which should add a lot more flexibility than before. For more detail on these changes, which are also coming to the Mac, check out Apple’s post on the Apple Podcasts for Creators website.

Wallet's new package tracking widget.

Wallet’s new package tracking widget.

There are a bunch of other smaller changes coming too:

Primate Labs Updates Geekbench on All Platforms→

Yesterday, Primate Labs released Geekbench 6, the suite of benchmarking tools for Apple and other vendors’ hardware. According to the company:

Geekbench tests have always been grounded in real-world use cases and use modern. With Geekbench 6, we’ve taken this to the next level by updating existing workloads and designing several new workloads, including workloads that:

  • Blur backgrounds in video conferencing streams
  • Filter and adjust images for social media sites
  • Automatically remove unwanted objects from photos
  • Detect and tag objects in photos using machine learning models
  • Analyse, process, and convert text using scripting languages

In addition to updating benchmark workflows, Primate Labs says Geekbench includes modern file types and file sizes that reflect current computing tasks on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and other devices. The company also changed its multi-core benchmark to include tasks that span multiple cores to align the tests with how modern devices typically tackle a job.

My time with the new benchmark apps has been limited, but running them on my Mac and iPhone went smoothly. It’s worth noting that the apps are significantly larger, and it take longer than before due to the changes made to the underlying benchmark tests. However, it’s great to see Primate Labs working to make its tests reflect modern usage patterns and hardware.

Geekbench 6 for Mac is available as a direct download from Primate Labs. The iOS and iPadOS versions of the app are available on the App Store.

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AppStories, Episode 316 – Artificial Intelligence and Apps (Part 1)→

This week on AppStories, we begin a new series on the impact of artificial intelligence on apps and the world around us. This week’s episode sets the stage with a look at chatbots, image-generation tools, and issues and opportunities they raise.

Sponsored by:

  • Sofa – Be more intentional with your downtime.
  • Daylite – Not just another CRM, the small business app that grow your business and Mac users love!
  • Squarespace – Make your next move. Enter offer code APPSTORIES at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
[Subscribe here.](https://www.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, we share our experiments with Whisper, OpenAI’s audio to text engine, and their very different approaches to it.

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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Last Week, on Club MacStories: Sonos Speakers and Shortcuts, Plus a Text Replacement Utility for Mac

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

MacStories Weekly: Issue 355

Backblaze: Astonishingly Easy And Unlimited Cloud Backup [Sponsor]

Backblaze offers unlimited computer backup for Macs and PCs for just $7 a month. Backblaze will backup your music, photos, videos, drawings, projects, and all the other data you have, so it’s safe and secure.

If you need to restore a file, that’s simple too. You can restore files from anywhere by downloading them directly from the web or Backblaze’s excellent mobile apps for iOS and Android. You can even have a backup shipped to you on a hard drive or flash key.

Backblaze offers a Restore Return Refund Program too. Buy a hard drive to restore your data, send the hard drive back to Backblaze within 30 days, and get a full refund on the drive’s price. It’s the perfect solution for restoring large sets of data.

If you’ve ever worried about deleting a version of an important project file, Backblaze has you covered. For just $2/month more, Backblaze will extend your file retention history to a full year. If you need to roll back to a previous version of a file, Backblaze makes it as easy as picking a date in the calendar.

Listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under BLZE, Backblaze is committed more than ever to bringing easy and affordable data storage that you can trust. Over the years, the company has restored over 55 billion files for customers and is recommended by The New York Times, Inc, Macworld, PCWorld, Lifewire, Wired, Tom’s Guide, 9to5mac, and more, so you can rest assured that Backblaze has you covered.

Start a fully-featured free 15-day Backblaze trial with no credit card required today by going to Backblaze.com/macstories. Once you give it a try, you’ll see why so many users swear by Backblaze to protect their data.

Our thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring MacStories this week.