New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba
What Kind of Person Are You? 
This week, Federico and John interview Robb Knight, John’s co-host on Ruminate, a show about the open web, snacks, and the occasional videogame about Mastodon, ActivityPub, and the apps Robb uses day-to-day.
MacStories Weekly: Issue 442 This week, in addition to the usual links, app debuts, and recap of MacStories' articles and podcasts:
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Niléane has a fancy new way to block ads and annoyances, Chris has our first look at a bunch of Final Cut Pro updates, and then we all judge the best apps on the App Store with Orange icons.
Devon and Jonathan highlight the sophomore season premiere of Bad Sisters and discuss the power of TV-tracking with Trakt.
This week, I melt an appliance and Federico goes big with a battery, plus two videogame recommendations and a movie bargain.
Over at Retro Game Corps, Russ Crandall put the new M4 Mac mini through its paces to see how it handled videogame emulation. As Crandall’s video demonstrates, even the base model version of Apple’s tiny Mac did very well:
Crandall walks viewers through the basics of setting up Emulation Station Desktop Edition on a Mac, which serves as a front-end that uses a variety of emulators to play classic systems. It’s not surprising that the M4 mini didn’t break a sweat emulating the oldest systems like Nintendo’s NES and Game Boy. However, it also did well with more modern systems like GameCube, running at six times the native resolution at 4K.
The mini struggled at times with the most modern systems Crandall tested, like Xbox, but the takeaway is clear: the Mac mini is a capable videogame emulation system. That will be true for other M4 Macs, too, but what’s unique about the mini is its size. The computer’s small footprint lends itself to sitting under a TV or pairing with a portable monitor to play games wherever you have the space.
Uses like Crandall’s are what make the Mac mini such a compelling update. It’s always been small, but by shrinking the mini even further and significantly improving its power, Apple has opened up new possibilities for its smallest Mac.
Today, Apple revealed the latest updates to Final Cut Pro for the Mac and iPad, with both offering a variety of new features and simplified workflows.
Final Cut Pro 11 for the Mac has added magnetic masks, extending the “magnetic” metaphor used for clips placed on your timeline. Apple says the new feature will allow you to quickly mask people and objects in a shot to color grade them or add effects separately from the rest of a scene.
The app can automatically generate closed captions now, too. The feature, which was briefly shown off in a video published alongside the announcement of the new Mac mini, uses artificial intelligence to convert dialogue into text.
Final Cut Pro 11 is also now capable of editing spatial video for the Apple Vision Pro. In its press release, Apple says:
Final Cut Pro 11 now supports spatial video editing, allowing editors to import their footage and add effects, make color corrections, and enhance their projects with titles. The depth position of titles and captured footage can also be adjusted during the editing process. Spatial video clips can be captured directly with Vision Pro, or on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and Canon’s new RF-S7.8mm F4 STM DUAL lens paired with Canon R7.
Final Cut Pro for the iPad has been updated to version 2.1 with several new features. I’ve been using Final Cut Pro more regularly since we started the MacStories YouTube channel, and one of the limitations I noticed immediately is that the color correction tools in the iPad version weren’t nearly as good as on the Mac. The iPad’s color tools still aren’t as sophisticated as what’s available on the Mac, but this update does add new color grading presets as well as a new Enhance Light and Color feature that intelligently applies color, contrast, brightness, and color balance to a video and works with SDR, HDR, RAW, and Log-encoded media.
Live Drawing on a video has been expanded with new brushes, too. There are new watercolor, crayon, fountain pen, and monoline pen brushes, letting users create a greater variety of looks for their videos. Other new effects include a picture-in-picture effect, callouts, and a set of built-in soundtracks. I’m eager to try picture-in-picture, which should be a good way to create tutorials and other types of videos and callouts; it’s an effect available from multiple third-party effects vendors on the Mac, but new to the iPad.
The iPad version of Final Cut Pro is also adding a host of other new features, including:
Lux Camera’s video camera app Kino has been updated to version 1.2, bringing a variety of new features and a redesigned icon. I covered the debut of Kino back in May and have been using it a lot lately because its design makes taking great-looking video so easy.
At the heart of Kino’s 1.2 update is support for the latest iPhones. Kino now works with the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro’s Camera Control for making adjustments that previously were only possible by touching your iPhone’s screen.
On the 16 Pro, the app also supports 4K video at 120fps with its Instant Grade feature enabled. That’s the feature that lets you pick a color grading preset created by video experts, including Stu Maschwitz, Sandwich Video, Evan Schneider, Tyler Stalman, and Kevin Ong. Version 1.2 of Kino lets you reorder those grades in its settings to make your favorites easier to access. Finally, Kino has added support for the following languages: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
If you haven’t tried Kino before, it’s available on the App Store for $9.99.
Apple has announced fifteen games coming to Apple Arcade between December 5 and January 9, ranging from all-new titles to App Store games making the jump to Arcade.
Snowman is making another Skate City game dedicated to New York. The original Arcade title takes place in cities around the world, but on January 9, Skate City: New York will take Arcade subscribers on a tour of the Big Apple.
Arcade is getting three Final Fantasy titles too. Apple describes Square Enix’s Final Fantasy IV (3D Remake)+ as:
beautifully revived with updated graphics, and improved gameplay and voice acting for event scenes. The hit fourth game in the iconic FINAL FANTASY series is also the first title to introduce the Active Time Battle system that players have come to love in the franchise.
The game, which will be out on December 9, looks similar to what is available for Windows on Steam. FF IV: The After Years+ will also debut on Arcade December 9.
Then on January 9, Apple Arcade will get Final Fantasy+, which is the first of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games that are currently available as paid upfront games on the App Store and other platforms.
Apple also announced Gears & Goo, a Vision Pro exclusive game by Resolution Games. It’s a colorful tower defense game that plays out in front of you and will release on January 9.
Apple announced the following games, too:
That’s a lot of games for the holiday season with a nice variety that should appeal to a wide audience. I’m looking forward to dipping into a few of these games soon.
App Store Connect, the web app that developers use to submit their apps to Apple’s App Store and manage them, was updated yesterday with new tools developers can use to promote their apps.
Developers have been able to submit promotional requests to Apple for quite some time, but the new Featuring Nomination process is now baked right into App Store Connect. Developers can submit nominations from App Store Connect where they will be asked for information about their app. Nominations can be made for events such as a new app launch or adding in-app content and features. When an app is chosen by the App Store editorial team for a feature, developers will be notified in App Store Connect, too.
App Store Connect has also added the ability to generate promotional materials. The assets created can be used on social media and other platforms to promote app launches and other significant events.
These new App Store Connect tools promise to make promoting apps more convenient by including the Featuring Nomination process alongside other aspects of app submission. However, I expect it’s the ready-made promotional assets that are the more significant addition for smaller developers who may not have the budget or skills to create the materials themselves.
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
This week, Federico and I are joined by Chris Lawley for a fun defense of his taste in music and beverages, plus a discussion of Apple’s acquisition of Pixelmator, working on the iPad, Final Cut Pro for iPad, and the apps Chris uses for his daily work.
On AppStories+, how Chris Lawley got started on YouTube.
Snack news has some cactis candy and cereal, I follow up on Godspeed, and we discuss Apple’s very small history of book publishing.
Federico
John
