This week, in addition to the usual links, app debuts, and recap of MacStories' articles and podcasts:
MacStories Weekly: Issue 457
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Podcast Rewind: New Apple Hardware, Avoiding the Echo Chamber, and the latest Apple TV+ Shows
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Comfort Zone
Matt and Chris have all the new Apple hardware, and Niléane takes the challenge to the next level.
MacStories Unwind
This week John is tricked by Daylight Savings, Federico and he reflect on how to avoid getting stuck in a creative echo chamber, share movie and music picks, along with a movie deal, and digress into the world of European cartoon theme songs before calling it a day.
Magic Rays of Light
Sigmund and Devon highlight the debut of Apple Original drama Dope Thief, share their ideas for how Apple Intelligence could enhance the Apple TV experience, and recap the captivating first season of Prime Target.
Getting Away from Your Desk with JSAUX’s FlipGo Pro Dual Display
JSAUX’s 16” FlipGo Pro Dual Portable Monitor is the sort of gadget that I expect most people will look at and either understand immediately or dismiss, which makes it the kind of hardware I love. I have a fascination with portable displays borne of too many hours sitting at a desk staring at the same screen. I love my desk setup, but an occasional change of scenery goes a long way toward improving my day. It clears the cobwebs, sparks creativity, and is just nice.
So when JSAUX offered to send me their 16” FlipGo Pro dual-screen portable display after CES, I took them up on it. I’ve tried other portable displays, a journey that began with the C-Force CF015 15.6” portable OLED display and more recently led me to try 15.6” 1080p and 17” touch-enabled 4K displays from espresso. Each has had its strengths and weaknesses, but all were roughly laptop-sized displays. There’s a place for that; however, I was intrigued by the idea of something that’s even bigger yet still portable.
That’s exactly what the FlipGo Pro is aiming for by taking two 16” IPS displays and joining them with a hinge. The result is a big, bright display that can adapt to a number of use cases. Yet, while the FlipGo Pro is portable, it’s still a lot of display that will make you think twice before throwing it in your bag. That isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s a factor worth examining more closely, along with the display’s full specs and the situations where it works best.
Ted Lasso Renewed for a Fourth Season on Apple TV+
Apple has officialy renewed its hit comedy series Ted Lasso for a fourth season on Apple TV+ with series star and executive producer Jason Sudeikis returning. Sudeikis even offered a small hint of what viewers can expect:
As we all continue to live in a world where so many factors have conditioned us to “look before we leap,” in season four, the folks at AFC Richmond learn to LEAP BEFORE THEY LOOK, discovering that wherever they land, it’s exactly where they’re meant to be.
Sudeikis also appeared on the New Heights podcast today, mentioning that his character Ted will coach a women’s football team in the next season. This information was exclusively revealed on MacStories’ own Magic Rays of Light podcast in February.
Season four is currently being written. The creative team behind the show, including executive producers Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, is returning alongside new executive producer Jack Ruditt. The series, based on the preexisting format and characters from NBC Sports, won 13 Emmy awards over its first three seasons, including back-to-back wins for Outstanding Comedy Series.
Other details about season four, including its full cast and anticipated release date, are currently unknown. But for fans of Ted Lasso, this official renewal is an exciting progression after many months of rumors that the show would return. Sometimes, the hope doesn’t kill you.
Apple Says It Will Adopt New RCS Encryption Standard in a Future OS Update
Earlier today, the GSM Association approved new RCS specifications that enable end-to-end encryption when using RCS to send messages. According to a post by Tom Van Pelt, the GSMA’s Technical Director:
Most notably, the new specifications define how to apply MLS within the context of RCS. These procedures ensure that messages and other content such as files remain confidential and secure as they travel between clients. That means that RCS will be the first large-scale messaging service to support interoperable E2EE between client implementations from different providers. Together with other unique security features such as SIM-based authentication, E2EE will provide RCS users with the highest level of privacy and security for stronger protection from scams, fraud and other security and privacy threats.
Currently Google Messages supports end-to-end encryption over RCS when the messages are sent among Google Messages users but not, for example, between an iPhone and Android user. The GSMA’s new specifications are designed to permit that sort of cross-platform encryption for the first time.
In a statement to 9to5Mac, an unnamed Apple spokesperson said:
End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and now we are pleased to have helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile published by the GSMA. We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.
While it’s not clear to me from the announcements today whether OS updates will also be necessary on the Android end to implement end-to-end encryption, it’s good to see a standards body moving relatively quickly to ensure that privacy is available cross platform and that Apple is committed to adopting the new specifications.
The iPad’s “Sweet” Solution
In working with my iPad Pro over the past few months, I’ve realized something that might have seemed absurd just a few years ago: some of the best apps I’m using – the ones with truly desktop-class layouts and experiences – aren’t native iPad apps.
They’re web apps.
Before I continue and share some examples, let me clarify that this is not a story about the superiority of one way of building software over another. I’ll leave that argument to developers and technically inclined folks who know much more about programming and software stacks than I do.
Rather, the point I’m trying to make is that, due to a combination of cost-saving measures by tech companies, Apple’s App Store policies over the years, and the steady rise of a generation of young coders who are increasingly turning to the web to share their projects, some of the best, most efficient workflows I can access on iPadOS are available via web apps in a browser or a PWA.
Where’s Swift Assist?→
Last June at WWDC, Apple announced Swift Assist, a way to generate Swift code using natural language prompts. However, as Tim Hardwick writes for MacRumors, Swift Assist hasn’t been heard from since then:
Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn’t announced that it’s been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it’s not even mentioned in the release notes.
Meanwhile, developers have moved on, adopting services like Cursor, which does much of what was promised with Swift Assist, if not more. A similar tool built specifically for Swift projects and Apple’s APIs would be a great addition to Xcode, but it’s been nine months, and developers haven’t heard anything more about Swift Assist. Apple owes them an update.
Podcast Rewind: Tech Ultimatums, Samsung’s Wild Prototype Handheld, and Our Gaming Origin Stories
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
AppStories
This week, Federico and I share our self-imposed tech deadlines for the hardware and software they use.
This episode is sponsored by:
- Memberful – Easy-to-Use Reliable Membership Software
NPC: Next Portable Console
Brendon, Federico, and I are back for another week of handheld news, including a tiny bit of Switch 2 news, an up and down week for Retroid, DS handhelds inch forward, Samsung wonders if thumbholes are the perfect complement to thumbsticks, and AYANEO decides thumbsticks aren’t worth the trouble. Plus, Brendon shares NextUI and the 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller.
NPC XL
This week, Federico, Brendon, and I take listeners on a tour of our handheld and console gaming histories.
On Apple Offering an Abstraction Layer for AI on Its Platforms
I’ve been thinking about Apple’s position in AI a lot this week, and I keep coming back to this idea: if Apple is making the best consumer-grade computers for AI right now, but Apple Intelligence is failing third-party developers with a lack of AI-related APIs, should the company try something else to make it easier for developers to integrate AI into their apps?
Gus Mueller, creator of Acorn and Retrobatch, has been pondering similar thoughts:
A week or so ago I was grousing to some friends that Apple needs to open up things on the Mac so other LLMs can step in where Siri is failing. In theory we (developers) could do this today, but I would love to see a blessed system where Apple provided APIs to other LLM providers.
Are there security concerns? Yes, of course there are, there always will be. But I would like the choice.
The crux of the issue in my mind is this: Apple has a lot of good ideas, but they don’t have a monopoly on them. I would like some other folks to come in and try their ideas out. I would like things to advance at the pace of the industry, and not Apple’s. Maybe with a blessed system in place, Apple could watch and see how people use LLMs and other generative models (instead of giving us Genmoji that look like something Fisher-Price would make). And maybe open up the existing Apple-only models to developers. There are locally installed image processing models that I would love to take advantage of in my apps.
The idea is a fascinating one: if Apple Intelligence cannot compete with the likes of ChatGPT or Claude for the foreseeable future, but third-party developers are creating apps based on those APIs, is there a scenario in which Apple may regain control of the burgeoning AI app ecosystem by offering their own native bridge to those APIs?