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Tim Cook Delivers Keynote Speech to Privacy Group

Today at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Global Privacy Summit, Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered a keynote speech on privacy. The IAPP’s mission is to act as a resource for privacy professionals to help them in their efforts to manage information privacy risks and protect data for their organizations.

Cook’s speech, which was livestreamed on the IAPP’s YouTube channel, began with a recap of Apple’s efforts to protect user privacy, including App Tracking Transparency, alluding to the “A Day in the Life of Your Data” white paper the company published early last year.

Cook told the assembled crowd that Apple supports privacy regulation, including GDPR in the EU and privacy laws in the US. However, Cook also expressed concern about unintended consequences that laws being considered in the US and elsewhere might cause, calling out sideloading proposals in particular. Cook said that although Apple supports competition, alternate app stores and sideloading are not the solution because they would open devices up to apps that sidestep the company’s tracking protections and can expose users introduce malware.

Concluding his remarks, Cook called on tech companies and governments to work together to fashion policies that don’t undermine user privacy. Ending on an optimistic note, Cook told the gathering that although the world is at a pivotal moment for privacy, the end of privacy as we know it is not inevitable.


Pixelmator Pro 2.4 Adds New Color Adjustment and Effects Layers, Plus 200+ Vector Images

Source: Pixelmator.

Source: Pixelmator.

Pixelmator Pro 2.4, the photo and image editor for Mac, was released today with two new layer types, a redesigned layers sidebar, and over 200 built-in vector images.

Today’s addition of color adjustment and effects layers adds new flexibility to Pixelmator Pro that should simplify the creation of more complex layered projects. According to Simonas Bastys, lead developer at the Pixelmator Team:

One of the things that users love most about Pixelmator Pro is how it makes advanced layer-based image editing incredibly easy. And with the addition of color adjustments and effects layers, layer-based editing in Pixelmator Pro becomes even more powerful, enabling all-new workflows, such as advanced selective editing of photos.

I haven’t had a need for Pixelmator Pro’s new layers yet, but the possibilities are intriguing and something I plan to spend some time experimenting with more in the weeks ahead.

Adding new layer types to an image.

Adding new layer types to an image.

Pixelmator Pro has expanded well beyond photo editing to become a full-blown design tool. With today’s update, the app adds over 200 vector images designed by artists that can be incorporated into design projects using the app’s Shapes tool. The collection includes all sorts of shapes and symbols, along with categories like science and activities.

M1 Mac optimization isn’t a new feature of Pixelmator Pro, but the Pixelmator team reports that thanks to the app’s M1 tuning, machine learning tasks like ML Super Resolution and background removal run up to 1.7 times faster on Apple’s latest M1 Ultra chip. So, if you’ve got a new M1 Ultra-based Mac Studio, all of those computationally-intensive tasks should be faster than ever.

Pixelmator Pro is available on the Mac App Store as a free update to existing customers and is $39.99 for new users.


Best Everyday Shortcut: A New Automation April Shortcuts Contest Category

One of our top goals with Automation April is to encourage the participation of Shortcuts users of every level. That’s why the Automation April Shortcuts Contest judges won’t just be looking for the most complex shortcuts with the most actions. They’ll be looking at factors like originality, performance, design, user experience, and usefulness, which are all applicable to simple shortcuts too.

To drive home the message that the contest isn’t just for experts, we’ve added a new category: Best Everyday Shortcut. The category will be judged like the others, but with an emphasis on clever uses of actions to create a shortcut that does one thing particularly well, from which a broad cross-section of users can benefit.

Entries for all categories are being accepted through April 20, 2022 at shortcuts.macstories.net. Full details are available in our Automation April Shortcuts Contest announcement post from last week.

We’ve been incredibly pleased with the response to the contest so far. The MacStories audience has already submitted a lot of shortcuts, many of which are in the running for the new Best Everyday Shortcut category, but we’d love to see more. So, if you’ve got a shortcut that you rely on every day and think would benefit others, we’d love it if you would submit it for consideration.

And remember, we’ve got some terrific prizes for the top shortcuts in each category:

Best Overall Shortcut

  • A 3-year subscription (or membership upgrade and/or extension for existing Club members) to Club Premier
  • An Elgato Stream Deck XL
  • An Analogue Pocket
  • A special Discord contest winner role
  • Induction into the Automation April Hall of Fame

Best Everyday Shortcut, Best HomeKit Shortcut, Best Productivity Shortcut, Best Media Shortcut, and Best Mac-specific Shortcut

  • A 1-year subscription to Club Premier (or membership upgrade and/or extension for existing Club members)
  • A special Discord category winner role
  • Induction into the Automation April Category Hall of Fame

So, whether you have a simple shortcut that you rely on every day or one that’s more complex, visit shortcuts.macstories.net to enter the contest before the April 20, 2022 deadline.


You can also follow MacStories’ Automation April coverage through our dedicated hub, or subscribe to its RSS feed.


Last Week, on Club MacStories: Discord App Giveaways, an Obsidian Listen and Read Later Setup, and Automating Note Management

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings along with a look at what’s coming up next:

Club MacStories+ Discord Community Giveaways

Last week, we kicked off Automation April app giveaways on Discord for Downie, Permute, Bear, and Streaks, with more to come this week and throughout the month.

MacStories Weekly: Issue 315

Federico's Obsidian and Dataview-based Listen Later setup

Federico’s Obsidian and Dataview-based Listen Later setup


Kolide: Endpoint Security for Teams That Slack - Try Kolide for Free Today! [Sponsor]

At Kolide, we believe the supposedly Average Person is the key to unlocking a new class of security detection, compliance, and threat remediation. So do the hundreds of organizations that send important security notifications to employees from Kolide’s Slack app.  

Collectively, we know that organizations can dramatically lower the actual risks they will likely face with a structured, message-based approach. More importantly, they’ll be able to engage end-users to fix nuanced problems that can’t be automated.

Try Kolide for 14 days free; no credit card required.

Honest.Security is one part guide and another-part manifesto that defines a user-first approach to security and IT compliance. It’s not just Kolide’s north star but also an aspirational roadmap. It’s our positive contribution to counterbalance the worrying upward trend of human-hostile cyber security, device management, and workplace surveillance philosophies that we’ve seen reach a fever pitch as organizations adapt to the long-term term prospects of remote work.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Automation April: Interviews with the Developers Behind Pushcut and Working Copy

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 269 - Automation April: Interviews with the Developers Behind Pushcut and Working Copy

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John interview Rodrigo and Victor Araújo, about the many-layered ways that Pushcut extends the utility of Shortcuts and Anders Borum, the creator of the iOS and iPadOS Git client Working Copy, about the app’s use of Shortcuts.

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MacStories Weekly: Issue 315

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MacStories Unwind: Never Let Me Go by Placebo, Magic Rays of Light, and Slow Horses

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


This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico provides a detailed look behind the making of Placebo’s latest album, Never Let Me Go, and John recommends the podcast Magic Rays of Light and the Apple TV+ show Slow Horses.

Kolide: Endpoint security for teams that Slack. Try Kolide for 14 days free; no credit card required.


This Week on MacStories Unwind

Automation April Update

Federico’s Pick:

John’s Picks:


Automation April: A Three-Part Shortcuts Workflow for Syncing Timestamped Research Notes with Videos

Whenever I review notes I’ve taken on a video, I inevitably want to go back to rewatch parts of it. However, finding the right segment is a slow, cumbersome chore, which is why I’ve created Timestamped Notes, a trio of shortcuts that are optimized for the Mac, but adaptable to iPadOS, to automate the process of creating timestamped notes without interrupting your typing.

There are two scenarios where I use or plan to use these shortcuts a lot. The first is during Apple events when I’m under time pressure to get stories out and don’t have the luxury of scanning through large sections of a presentation as I write. Timestamped Notes got its first real-world test with Apple’s March event and passed with flying colors.

The second scenario where I’ll use Timestamped Notes a lot is during WWDC. I take lots of notes as I watch recorded presentations, but I often don’t revisit the notes I take for days or weeks later. If I need to refresh my memory of what was said during the session by skipping back through the session, Timestamped Notes will be what I use. No matter what kind of video or audio you take notes on, though, if there’s a chance you’ll want to go back to the source material, Timestamped Notes makes finding what you took notes on much easier.

Part of the inspiration for this shortcut came from a series of articles by Jason Snell and Dan Moren on Six Colors. They built a Stream Deck-powered shortcut for taking timestamped notes to highlight portions of podcast audio that needed editing. I built a similar shortcut at the time but abandoned it because it didn’t fit with the way I edit podcasts. However, the experience got me thinking about other ways to use timestamped notes that might fit better in other scenarios, which is what led to Timestamped Notes.

Timestamped Notes addresses three problems:

  • Creating a clean starting point, so your timestamped notes line up properly with the start of the video you watched
  • Providing a simple and fast way to create a timestamp that doesn’t interrupt the note-taking process
  • Converting clock-based timestamps, so they line up with a video’s timeline, which starts at 00:00:00.

The solution was to create three separate shortcuts, which I’ll cover in turn.

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