AV Club Town Hall, The Matrix Movies
AppStories, Episode 260 – Shortcuts Wish List, 2022 Edition→
This week on AppStories, Federico and John revisit their 2021 Shortcuts wishes to see what came true and share a long list of additional ways they’d like to see the app evolve in 2022.
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On AppStories+, John makes the case for a shelf for Universal Control and Federico explains how to update the firmware of an Xbox controller to take advantage of the latest macOS controller features.
Last Week, on Club MacStories: Parsing Shortcuts as XML and JSON, Apps That Extend Apple Apps, Safari Tips, and Developer Interviews
Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings along with a look ahead to what’s next:
MacStories Weekly: Issue 307
- Federico shares how to parse shortcuts as XML and JSON, a technique that’s at the heart of how our popular Shortcuts Archive is created.
- John gets into the Oscar season spirit with his nominees for Best Supporting App, a collection of apps that extend Apple system apps.
- Expanding on John’s collection of obscure Mac shortcuts from Issue 306, we share a set of fantastic Safari keyboard shortcuts from one of our Discord moderators.
- We interviewed:
- Melissa Cash of Pok Pok Playroom
- David Brittain of Concepts
- Kriss Smolka of Funn Media, the makers of WaterMinder, HabitMinder, and FitnessView
- Hidde van der Ploeg of NowPlaying
- Engin Kurutepe of SolarWatch
- Ran Flasterstein of Spark Reading
about App Store In-App Events to see how they’re being used and what developers’ experience with them has been.
- Plus:
- App Debuts
- Highlights from the Club MacStories+ Discord
- Interesting links from around the web
- A sneak peek at what’s next on MacStories’ podcasts
- and more
Up Next
On Wednesday, February 16th, at 11:00 am Eastern US time, Federico, Alex, and I will be joined by Club members to discuss the Matrix movie series during a live audio Town Hall in our Discord community for Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members as part of the community’s A.V. Club channel.
TextSniper: Capture Any Uncopyable Text [Sponsor]
If you’ve ever been frustrated by text you come across that you can’t copy, you need TextSniper, the premier Mac utility for copying the uncopyable.
Whether you’re working with photos, screenshots, apps, videos, or materials from webinars or online meetings that include uncopyable text, TextSniper has you covered. The app is the fastest and easiest way to extract that text no matter where you come across it.
TextSniper runs in the background and can be summoned with a single keystroke, so you can select the area of your display from which you want to extract text. A friendly thumbs-up lets you know that the text has been copied and placed on your Mac’s clipboard, ready for pasting elsewhere. You can use an iPhone or iPad to capture text directly to your Mac too.
The app is fast, accurate, includes customizable keyboard shortcuts, and works with multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Chinese. TexSniper also works with QR codes and barcodes, simplifying the process of accessing URLs, text, and numbers embedded in them. It can even read onscreen text aloud, a big plus for people who are visually impaired, have dyslexia, or prefer listening to reading.
Of course, TextSniper is privacy-focused too. The app doesn’t collect, store, or share any user data. Text recognition happens locally on your Mac and doesn’t require an Internet connection.
If you work with text – and who doesn’t really? – you owe it to yourself to download TextSniper today. The app requires macOS Catalina or later and is fully compatible with Apple silicon Macs.
Also, for a limited time, MacStories readers can purchase TextSniper for 25% off by using the code MACSTORIES at checkout. So, take advantage of this great deal today and start copying the uncopyable with TextSniper.
Our thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacStories this week.
MacStories Weekly: Issue 307
MacStories Unwind: The Video Game History Hour and Playing Classic Games with the Dolphin Emulator
This week, John recommends the Video Game History Hour, a podcast from the Video Game History Foundation, and Federico takes us along on his videogame emulation journey from handeld Windows PCs to the Apple’s M1 Max MacBook Pro.
John’s Pick:
- The Video Game History Hour with Kelsey Lewin and Frank Cifaldi
- Episode 68, Fairchild Channel F with guest Kevin Bunch discussed during Unwind.
Federico’s Pick:
- Dolphin Emulator
- Dolphin M1 Mac Beta
- Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1
- Federico’s Ayaneo 2021
- Screenshots from Federico’s M1 from Luigi’s Mansion], Metroid Prime, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the Nintendo GameCube.
Apple Releases a Statement on Its Efforts to Deter The Misuse of AirTag and the Find My Network
Apple has released a statement about its efforts to prevent unwanted tracking using AirTags. The company’s statement outlines its cooperation with law enforcement to apprehend people who have misused AirTags and details the steps it is taking to improve AirTags and the Find My network, including:
- New privacy warnings when AirTags are set up
- Making it clear when AirPods have caused a Find My network alert
- Expansion of AirTag and Find My network support documentation
- A new Precision Finding feature for the iPhone 11 and later that will make it easier to locate a nearby AirTag
- On-device alerts to accompany audible alerts that an AirTag is with you
- Refinements to the logic used to decide when to alert users of unwanted tracking
- Adjustments to the sounds played by an AirTag traveling with you
It’s good to see Apple open up about the steps it’s taking to address the misuse of AirTags. As I said last month:
This is also a topic where some added transparency about what Apple is doing to address concerns about stalking would help observers decide whether it’s enough instead of having only anecdotal news reports to go on.
Today’s statement is exactly the sort of increased transparency I was hoping we’d see from Apple. I’ll leave it to people with expertise in personal safety to comment on whether these steps go far enough. I’m just glad that those experts’ opinions can now be based on facts instead of speculation.
AppStories, Episode 259 – New Apps We Are Trying or Revisiting (Part 2)→
This week on AppStories, we conclude our tour of new apps we are trying for the first time or revisiting.
On AppStories+, we highlight our favorite changes coming to iOS and iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3, including Face ID With a Mask, Universal Control, and Shortcuts refinements.
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.
Tweetbot 7 Adds Back the App’s Stats View and Includes New Themes
Over three years ago, Tweetbot removed the app’s stats view as a result of Twitter API changes. Today, that view is back in Tweetbot 7 for the iPhone and iPad, thanks to the social media company’s increased willingness to open its platform to third-party developers like Tapbots.
The view includes a graph at the top, followed by statistics detailing your timeline activity for the last week, including Likes, Replies, Tweets, Retweets, Quotes, and Follows. You can swipe across the graph to see each category by day or tap the categories under the graph to jump straight to that view.
Tweetbot 7 also includes new dark themes called hej and bumblebee. Hej features a slate blue background with yellow highlights, while bumblebee has a near-black background with brighter yellow accents.
The pace of Tweetbot updates has picked up significantly in recent months, which is fantastic. I missed the app’s stats view, so it’s nice to see its return. However, with each new feature and refinement to Tweetbot’s iOS and iPadOS apps, the Mac app looks more and more dated. The two versions are badly out of sync in terms of features too. As someone who spends a lot of time on the Mac, that’s disappointing and something that I hope will change soon.
Tweetbot 7 is available as a free update on the App Store for the iPhone and iPad. However, some of the app’s features require a subscription.