This Week's Sponsor:

Gamery

A sleek and intuitive game library app for casuals and pros

10 Years of MacStories

Later this week on Saturday, April 20, MacStories will turn 10 years old.

It was Monday, April 20, 2009 when, fresh out of a job from which I had gotten fired, I decided to publish the first official post on my self-hosted blog after a few weeks of running a free WordPress.com website. I was 21. My English was terrible and, at the time, MacStories was written in two languages, English and Italian – probably to hide my discomfort as a non-native English speaker. If you want to hear this story (and my entire background) in much greater detail, John interviewed me on this week’s special episode of AppStories.

Since that first post about web browsers, MacStories has been on my mind every day and it remains the most important thing I’ve ever built in my adult life. In many ways, MacStories has come to define me.

As you might guess, I’ve struggled to come to terms with the meaning of this anniversary. I don’t like celebrating work-related anniversaries. I don’t think our readers appreciate excessive self-congratulatory content and I’d rather focus on getting work done every day. I prefer to let other people compliment us if they ever feel compelled to do so; otherwise, I just want to focus on providing a service to our audience, because that’s what I’m ultimately here to do: to make sure that MacStories and our related properties can be useful and inspiring for our readers around the world.

Ten years, however, does feel like an extremely long time in Internet years. For this reason, when I started thinking about this looming milestone sometime last year, I knew I had to do something special for this anniversary – just this once – to look back at the past decade of MacStories, reflect on the things I’ve learned along the way, and plan ahead for the future.

Here’s the short version: this week is going to be extra special on MacStories. We’re launching our first official merchandise today (macstoriesmerch.com) and there will be a series of retrospectives published on MacStories throughout the week (keep an eye on this tag). In addition, we will be launching a couple of new perks exclusive to Club MacStories members.

Now, allow me to share some thoughts about creating MacStories and what this website has meant for me over the past 10 years.

Read more

Agenda: First Your Calendar, Now Your Reminders [Sponsor]

Agenda is a strong new entrant in the arena of note taking apps for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It’s elegant and powerful — Agenda was the only Mac app to win an Apple Design Award in 2018 — and includes a few twists on what you have come to expect from a note taking app.

To begin with, Agenda focuses on dates. You organize your notes chronologically in projects, with each project flowing from future, through present, and into the past. Use Agenda to plan for a future meeting or vacation, and have your notes ready when it is time to begin. When it’s all over, the very same notes are preserved for posterity in Agenda’s unique timeline.

You can even link notes to events in your calendar app, and edit the events without leaving Agenda. Rather than competing with your calendar, Agenda complements it, working perfectly in tandem.

Even more exciting, the Agenda team is putting the finishing touches on an update which will bring that same level of integration for Apple’s Reminders app. Reminders is great tool for scheduling tasks that are due at a particular time or place; in just a few weeks time, Agenda will allow you to create and edit reminders without leaving the app.

https://youtu.be/jvMcgS1tnYI

Similar to calendar support, the Agenda team have opted to integrate with the existing Reminders app, rather than reinvent the wheel. You will be able to link reminders to list items in Agenda, so that you get a notification when they become due. Agenda will autofill as much information as possible, making it ridiculously easy to create new reminders for your tasks. There is even support for a markdown-like syntax, so you don’t even have to stop typing.

Agenda is free to download and use forever. It is a great time to give it a try, because there is now support for importing from Evernote and Apple Notes, and free sync via iCloud.

A premium feature upgrade is available via In-App Purchase. It includes all current premium features, as well as new ones added in the next 12 months. Best of all, the features you unlock are yours to use forever — strictly no subscription.

Our thanks to Agenda for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Calory Review: Simple, Convenient Calorie Tracking

In my estimation, there are two types of nutrition-tracking apps on the App Store: those for users who want full control of all nitty-gritty details regarding what they consume, and those for people like me who just want to do simple calorie-tracking. Calory, a new iOS app from the makers of WaterMinder, HealthView, and HabitMinder, falls strictly in the latter category. While you can optionally track certain statistics like fat, carbs, and protein, the primary purpose of Calory is convenient calorie tracking – and the app excels at that.

Read more

Connected, Episode 238: Weird Plex, But Okay→

Federico has discovered something terrible about his childhood, Stephen had an accident and Myke wants a new TV. After all of that is taken care of, the trio talk about a new iPad case that uses the Magic Keyboard and using macOS as an iPad app.

On this week’s episode of Connected, I share more details about my Luna Display setup and describe how I’ve been using the Touchtype Pro case. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

  • Freshbooks: Online invoicing made easy.
  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • Warby Parker: Quality eyewear at a fraction of the usual price. Order your FREE Home Try-On kit today.
Permalink

Mobile Video Production Spotlighted at the 2019 NAB Show→

Every year, the National Association of Broadcasters holds a trade show spotlighting advancements in technology in the media and entertainment industries. Jeff Benjamin, who produces much of 9to5Mac’s video content, was on hand for the show this week and reports that mobile video production was one of the highlights of the show:

The first thing that I noticed about this year’s show, is that some of the major players in the mobile video editing space planned their booths to be adjacent to one another. This was a smart move, as it created a stronger presence for mobile video editing than in years before.

I also noticed that there was a significant uptick in foot traffic than in the past. Some of this can be attributed to the way the booths were organized, but I feel like mobile video editing has gained more legitimacy as a whole as people come to grips with how powerful the available apps, tools, and hardware have become.

Benjamin’s story includes details on upcoming updates to LumaFusion and Filmic Pro that are in the works as well as a new app coming later this year from Filmic called Filmic Audio that allows one iOS device to be used as a remote audio recorder that will sync its recordings with video filmed using Filmic Pro on a second iOS device. Benjamin also previews an update coming to the Gnarbox, an outboard storage and backup solution, which is designed to be used by photographers and videographers wired or wirelessly with iOS devices, and the Movi Cinema Robot, an iPhone gimbal that is gaining Filmic Pro integration soon.

Mobile video production is one of the most interesting pro areas for which iOS devices are being used currently as was recently highlighted by Jonathan Morrison who has used apps like LumaFusion to produce YouTube videos. As Benjamin points out, mobile video production is clearly on Apple’s radar based on the company’s behind the scenes look at how it shot some of its recent iPad Pro ads. I too hope Apple’s interest foreshadows the arrival of new iOS 13 features that will simplify video and audio production.

Permalink

Using a Mac from iOS, Part 2 – Luna Display and macOS as an App

iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

In the first part of my ongoing experiment with controlling and accessing a Mac from the iPad Pro, I covered FileExplorer – the app I use to open Finder locations from iOS’ Files app – and shared a collection of shortcuts to control certain macOS features via Siri and the Shortcuts app. I also described my podcasting setup and how I’ve been taking advantage of Keyboard Maestro to automate window resizing across my two displays connected to the Mac mini. Today, I’m going to cover one of those two external displays – the iPad Pro running the Luna Display app – and how I’ve been using it to have “macOS as an app” on my iPad Pro. If you find this idea of reducing macOS to an app that runs on the iPad upsetting, the rest of this article likely isn’t going to make you happy. If you’re intrigued, however, strap in because I have a lot to share.

Read more

    AppStories, Episode 106 – The Apps of Apple’s March 25 Services Event→

    On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a close look at the apps and services announced by Apple at its March 25th services event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino including the TV app, News, Apple Arcade, and Apple Card.

    Sponsored by:

    • Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code APPSTORIES at checkout for 10% off.
    • ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Get 3 months free with a 1-year package.

    Permalink

    HoudahSpot 5 Review: Advanced File Search and Filtering on the Mac

    There’s a lot of power lurking under the hood of the Mac’s Spotlight search index, but that’s also the trouble. To make Spotlight accessible to more users, many of the feature’s most useful tools are hidden behind menus and special search syntax.

    HoudahSpot takes a different approach that makes it easier to access the power of Spotlight. The app surfaces Spotlight’s advanced file search functionality and couples it with its own layer of tools to extend what Spotlight can do. With version 5, the app has been reexamined from top to bottom adding new features and refining the entire experience. The result is a terrific update that maintains HoudahSpot’s position as one of the premier pro utilities on the Mac.

    Read more