MacStories Weekly: Issue 250
MacStories Unwind: Big Sur Widgets, Our Big Icon Sale, a MacStories Weekly Milestone, Plus Bonus Unwind Picks
Sponsored by: Permute: Quick Image, Audio, and Video Conversion
This week on MacStories Unwind:
MacStories
- MacStories Shortcuts Icons and Perspective Icons: 40% Off from Black Friday to Cyber Monday
- macOS Big Sur: Widget Roundup
Club MacStories
- MacStories Weekly
- John’s Holiday Gift Guide
- Reading DRM-Free EPUBs in MarginNote for iPad
- Tips for Remote Tech Support
- Mac Dictation and Big Sur beta tips
- MacStories Unplugged: The Year in Music, 2020 Edition
- Federico and John share their Apple Music playlists, collecting their favorite songs of 2020, pick their albums of the year, second-guess the Grammy nominations, and each chooses five bands that define their tastes in music.
AppStories
Unwind
- Federico’s Picks:
- Hades
- All You’re Dreaming Of by Liam Gallagher
- John’s Picks:
- folklore: the long pond studio sessions by Taylor Swift
- The 10-Year Hunt for the Lost McDonald’s DS Game by Nick Robinson
MacStories Shortcuts Icons and Perspective Icons: 40% Off from Black Friday to Cyber Monday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us, and we’ve prepared something truly special to celebrate the occasion at MacStories: starting today through Monday, November 30, MacStories Shortcuts Icons and Perspective Icons are available at 40% off their regular price.
To purchase MacStories Shortcuts Icons at $17.99 rather than the usual $29.99, click the ‘Buy’ button below:
Similarly, to purchase our Perspective Icons at $14.99 rather than the usual $24.99, click the ‘Buy’ button below:
macOS Big Sur: Widget Roundup
Developer adoption of new macOS features is often a little slower than it is on iOS and iPadOS. However, that hasn’t been the case with Big Sur widgets. Apple wisely took the same SwiftUI-based system used for creating widgets on the iPhone and iPad and implemented it on the Mac, providing a relatively simple approach for developers to bring their existing widgets to the Mac. The result has been an immediate explosion of widget options for Mac users.
Over the course of the summer and fall, I tried several different widgets as I ran the Big Sur betas. A few of those widgets — which have been in development the longest and were highlighted in my Big Sur review — remain some of my favorites and are recapped below. However, many more terrific widgets have been released since and deserve consideration as well, so let’s dig in.
AppStories, Episode 195 – App Store Changes and Apple’s Evolving Relationship with Developers→
Permute: Quick Image, Audio, and Video Conversion [Sponsor]
When you want to convert a photo, video, or audio file from one format to another, it’s far too easy to get bogged down in settings, unable to make heads or tails of technical jargon. Permute saves you from that trouble by taking care of the details and converting files incredibly fast.
To start a file conversion, drag a file into Permute’s main window or onto its dock icon, click Start, and you’re all set. Permute is faster than ever too. The app supports an incredibly long list of file formats and has hardware acceleration for MP4 and HEVC files. The app also has presets for a long list of Apple hardware so you can match your results to the devices you use. You can even modify images and videos, adjusting their size and rotating and flipping them.
But that’s not all. Permute 3 can also:
- Convert individual files or groups of files
- Stitch multiple images, videos, or audio files together
- Create DVDs
- Convert uncommon file formats like WebP and SVG
- Schedule conversions for later
- Add converted files to iTunes
Permute has a special limited-time deal just for MacStories readers. If you use this link, you can purchase Permute for 20% off. There’s a free trial available too if you want to try the app first.
Visit Permute’s website today to learn more and take advantage of the special 20%-off deal before it expires.
Our thanks to Permute for sponsoring MacStories this week.
MacStories Unwind: The App Store Small Business Program, M1 Macs, Music Awards, Photography, and Home Screen Shortcuts
Sponsored by Downie – Easily Download Videos From YouTube and Thousands of Different Sites
This week on MacStories Unwind:
MacStories
- This Holiday Season, Give the Gift of Club MacStories
- Apple Reduces App Store Commissions to 15% for Small Businesses Starting Next Year
- Apple M1 Mac Review Roundup: Big Performance and Battery Gains
- Apple Launches an Embeddable Web Players for Podcasts
- Winners of the Second Annual Apple Music Awards Announced
- GitHub Reinstates youtube-dl, Commits to New Policies for Protecting Developers
- Sebastiaan de With Reviews the iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera
- Custom Shortcut Icons No Longer Open the Shortcuts App First in iOS 14.3 Beta 2
- iOS 14.2, JIT, and Emulation at Full Performance
Club MacStories
- MacStories Weekly
- Crossy Road
- Today ReScheduler shortcut updated to take advantage of ‘native’ edit reminder action
- Big Sur widget tips (John)
- What the M1 means to the native vs. web app debate
AppStories
Unwind
- Federico’s Picks:
- John’s Pick:
iOS 14.2, JIT, and Emulation at Full Performance→
I meant to link this on MacStories last week: Apple lifted some of the limitations surrounding JIT (just-in-time compilation) for apps in the recently released iOS 14.2, which is enabling developers of emulation software, such as Delta and DolphiniOS, to run their apps at full performance on iPhone and iPad.
Filipe Espósito, writing for 9to5Mac, covered this a couple weeks ago and interviewed Riley Testut, the creator of AltStore (the non-jailbreak-based alternative App Store) and Delta, the popular emulator for old Nintendo consoles:
As described by Testut, Apple has added support for JIT compilation in iOS 14.2 beta 2 — but this has never been publicly mentioned by the company. The support was maintained throughout the betas and was kept in the final release. The developer believes this is an official implementation rather than a mistake by Apple, but there’s no way to confirm this for now.
And they quoted Testut saying:
For example, with JIT Delta could in theory emulate more powerful systems such as PS2, GameCube, and Wii; without JIT, we’d need to wait several more years before the hardware was capable of that. At first I was skeptical, but am now leaning more towards thinking this was an intentional change.
Hopefully, Apple will not revert this in a future update to iOS and iPadOS.
Viewtiful Joe and Metroid Prime running in DolphiniOS on my iPad Pro. Both games occasionally drop to 30fps, but playing them at 4K is amazing regardless.
I’m an AltStore subscriber, and I’ve been playing old GameCube and Wii games on my iPad Pro with beta versions of AltStore and DophiniOS for the past week. Being able to play Viewtiful Joe and Metroid Prime1 at 4K60fps on an iPad Pro with a connected DualShock 4 controller is incredible, and something I never thought would be possible 17 years ago, when those games originally launched. What’s even more impressive is that, obviously, neither the GameCube nor Wii were capable of native 4K output at the time (as it simply didn’t exist), so not only can an iPad Pro emulate those consoles at full performance with JIT now, but it can even upscale them to 4K without any issues.
- I can’t believe Nintendo hasn’t remastered Metroid Prime: Trilogy for the Nintendo Switch yet. ↩