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Building Calliope: A Technical Journey Through MacStories’ Big Software Project

Last week the MacStories team launched Project Calliope, an enormous new software project that we’ve been working on tirelessly for the last year. If you’ve been following along, you’ve heard us describe Calliope as a CMS; but from a software-engineering perspective, it’s actually a whole lot more. While we introduced Calliope as the foundation of our all-new Club MacStories and AppStories websites, we have much bigger plans for the new platform going forward. This is the foundation for the next generation of MacStories, from the website itself to many special projects in the future.

We’re extremely proud of what we’ve created here, and as the sole developer of Calliope, this post will be my deep dive into the more technical side of the project. Fair warning: this will be easier to follow if you’re a software developer (particularly a web or back-end developer), but I’ll be doing my best to give understandable explanations of the technologies involved. I also just want to talk about the journey we took to get here, the challenges we faced along the way, and the factors that drove us to this particular set of solutions.

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AppStories, Episode 238 – The Complexity of Defining Great Modern Mac Apps→

This week on AppStories, we explore the many ways Mac apps can be made today and how the frameworks, along with design choices and other factors are redefining the landscape of apps on the Mac and what constitutes a great Mac app.

[Subscribe here](https://appstories.net/plans).

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, John teaches Federico about the Arnold Palmer, a thank you to AppStories+ subscribers, plus Federico explains an ingenious collaborative editing workflow he created around Quick Note.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate a day 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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Relay FM’s Third Annual Fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Is Underway

Recently, Relay FM, which was founded by our close friends Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley, kicked off their annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help combat childhood cancer. This year’s third annual fundraiser has already raised over $70,000 with a goal of $333,333.33, and we’d love it if MacStories readers would join us in supporting this cause.

You can make a donation by visiting here.

If you’re a MacStories reader, there’s a good chance you have listened to one of the shows Federico co-hosts on the network or have another favorite, in which case you may have already contributed. However, if not, please do consider donating.

St. Jude plays an important role in the fight against childhood cancer, treating kids and doing research with other medical facilities around the world. Your donations help ensure that families aren’t charged for treatment, travel, housing, or meals, so their sole focus is helping their child get better.

Relay FM will be raising money for St. Jude through the end of September with the highlight of the drive being Podcastathon, an eight-hour extravaganza featuring special guests from your favorite Relay FM shows. Mark your calendar for Friday September 17, 2021 from Noon to 8 pm Eastern US time to watch Podcastathon, which will be streamed at twitch.tv/relay.fm.

Thanks in advance for checking out Relay FM’s fundraiser for St. Jude and to all who donate.

Tinderbox 9: The Tool For Notes. Visualize, Analyze, and Share Your Ideas [Sponsor]

Tinderbox is a powerful Mac app that stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas, bringing order and insight to the vast amounts of information collected when you’re working on a big project. Whether that’s writing a book, creating course materials, planning a wedding, or just managing your day-to-day life, Tinderbox helps impose structure on your data to keep you organized and productive.

And now with Tinderbox 9, the app offers over 150 new features including a flexible command bar, smarter artificial intelligence, a built-in gallery for saving views, improved visualizations of your data, and a whole lot more. Tinderbox has unparalleled power to analyze, visualize, and understand your notes. The app is a favorite of researchers, writers, investigators, product managers, and teachers. That’s because Tinderbox acts as a personal content assistant helping you discover connections and relationships between your notes that you might otherwise miss.

It’s easy to get started by dragging connections between notes or use Tinderbox’s wiki-like Ziplinks to link notes and ideas together. There are multiple ways to visualize your notes, too, including mind maps, outlines, word clouds, timelines, and dashboards. Each is a powerful way to gain new perspectives on your ideas.

Tinderbox also has agents and rules and employs powerful AI tools to automatically identify names and places, look up addresses, and even suggest links. Of course, the app integrates with DEVONthink, Scrivener, Bookends, Apple Notes, and more.

It has also never been easier to get started with Tinderbox. With more than 50 tutorial videos, ranging from “Creating your first notes” to “Organizing background research for architectural history” there’s a wealth of video content available. Tinderbox has a vibrant, active community, too, which includes regular meetups that offer hands-on problem-solving for new and experienced users alike. You can learn more on the Tinderbox forum or watch past meetups on Vimeo.

So, download Tinderbox 9 today to try it for free, for the best way to visualize, analyze, and share your ideas.

Our thanks to Tinderbox for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Club Announcements, Custom Domains for Email, and TestFlight for Mac

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Sponsored by: Hubstaff – The All-In-One Work Time Tracker For Managing Field or Remote Teams

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico has a Quick Note templating tip
    • John collects a variety ways to take advantage of the Club’s new web app
    • Why we built Calliope
    • An Interview with Tempo developer Rahul Matta
  • MacStories Unplugged – Viva L’Umarell

AppStories

Unwind

TestFlight for Mac Has Finally Arrived

I’ve waited seemingly forever for TestFlight for Mac, so I’m pleased to report that a beta is finally available. The app was released late yesterday, so first thing this morning, I downloaded it and started testing.

Here’s what Apple’s developer news site has to say about its beta for testing betas:

Use the beta version of TestFlight for Mac to test your Mac apps. You can invite registered Apple developers to download this beta version and use it to test your apps on macOS Monterey beta 5. We’d also appreciate your feedback on TestFlight for Mac, which you can provide through Feedback Assistant.

I haven’t had a lot of time to spend with TestFlight for Mac yet, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was already populated with a long list of betas. I downloaded a couple of iPhone and iPad apps that are compatible with Apple’s M1 Macs, and the process was as simple and straightforward as using TestFlight on iOS or iPadOS. That said, this is still clearly a beta. The sidebar lists every single TestFlight beta in which I’ve ever been enrolled regardless of whether it has expired or is compatible with my Mac. Also, there’s no way to sort or search through betas. Instead, the order of the sidebar list appears to be random.

Still, this is an excellent beta 1. The app works for installing betas and provides a quick and easy way to send feedback to developers. I expect TestFlight for Mac to be adopted quickly because it’s a much better way to manage a large group of testers and to distribute builds to reviewers.

If you have a developer account, you can download TestFlight for Mac from the Applications section of the Beta Software Downloads page.

Setting Up a Custom Domain for iCloud Email

Custom domains in iCloud Mail.

Custom domains in iCloud Mail.

Following a tip by one of our members in the Club MacStories+ Discord server last night (if you haven’t joined yet, now’s a great time to do so), I came across the settings page on the beta.icloud.com website to configure a custom domain and email address with iCloud Mail. This is the direct link to the settings page; it was working last night, but it seems to be having some issues today.

Custom domains in iCloud Mail is a feature Apple announced for the “rebranded” iCloud+ service at WWDC, which I’ve been curious to try for two reasons: I have a personal domain laying around I can use to test this, and iCloud Mail – unlike Gmail – supports proper push notifications on iOS. Given the beta nature of this feature, I am not recommending you try this with your primary email address right now; I set it up with a secondary email address I barely used before.

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Automation Academy and The Macintosh Desktop Experience: Exclusive Monthly Features for Club MacStories+ and Club Premier Members

MacStories’ roots are in writing, so it’s only natural that Club MacStories+ and Club Premier are expanding beyond our weekly and monthly newsletters to offer two new exclusive features: Automation Academy and The Macintosh Desktop Experience. Freed of the constraint of an email newsletter, Federico and I will be tailoring our columns to take advantage of the new features made possible by Calliope, the web app that powers the new Club website.

Let’s take a look at what members can expect.

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