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Posts tagged with "apps"

Apple Music Replay Is Out, but for a Deeper Look at Your Music Habits, Try Last.fm

Yesterday, Apple released Apple Music Replay, its annual recap of Apple Music subscribers’ listening habits. The site is beautifully designed with images of artists coming to life with video when you’re not scrolling the page. Included this year are:

  • A highlight reel
  • Top artists
  • Top songs
  • Top albums
  • Top genres
  • Top playlists
  • Top radio stations
  • Listening milestones

As I scroll through my lists, there isn’t anything surprising here. I could have guessed my top artists, songs, and albums and put at least the top five or so in the correct order, which goes to the heart of what I and others have faulted Apple Music Replay for in the past.

The site looks great, and the listening milestones, which explain things like the fact that I crossed 25,000 minutes of listening in early August, are interesting, but they don’t go deep enough. I’d like to know things like which of the artists that I didn’t listen to prior to 2023, did I listen to the most in 2023? What’s a favorite album or band from years ago that I rediscovered? How did the genres I listened to evolve over the course of the year? Which artists took off in my regular rotation compared to past years? There are a million questions that could be answered by Apple Music that aren’t, and that’s a shame.

Spotify does a better job at surfacing interesting data with Wrapped, but if you’re like me and prefer other aspects of Apple Music, sign up for Last.fm, use one of the many excellent indie apps, like Marvis Pro, Soor, Albums, Longplay, Doppler, and Air Scrobble that support the service, and then enjoy your weekly, monthly, and annual reports in Last.fm’s app or on its website.

To view your own Replay 2023 statistics, visit replay.music.apple.com.

Play 2.0 Adds YouTube Channel Support, Folders, and a New Premium Subscription

Marcos Tanaka’s Play has become the way I watch YouTube, which isn’t something I expected would happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the app since its launch early last year. The app, available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, started as a way to save YouTube links to watch later. That made Play indispensable for keeping track of videos in a way that is similar to how I save articles I want to read later in Matter.

With version 2.0, Marcos has transformed Play from a utility where I save links for later to how I find videos and watch them in the first place. The big difference is that Play now allows users to manage YouTube channels inside the app. I still come across YouTube links on social media, iMessage conversations, on the Club MacStories Discord server, and elsewhere that I add to Play using its excellent share sheet integration. However, with support for YouTube channels, I now have a chronological list of everything published by my favorite channels delivered to an inbox where I can quickly pick the ones I want to watch, which is wonderful.

If that sounds a lot like RSS, that’s because it is. That’s how I prefer to scan my favorite websites for articles to read, and now, it’s how I’m watching my favorite YouTube channels.

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Introducing the New MacStories Setups Page

Federico's setup (left) and John's (right).

Federico’s setup (left) and John’s (right).

Setup optimization is a never-ending journey at MacStories. We’re always looking for the fastest, most efficient, and often, most portable way to do everything in our lives. The result is constant change. Hardware and apps are swapped in and out of our systems and workflows frequently.

We write or talk about our setups in a bunch of different places, which we realize can make it hard to keep up with the most current version of what we’re using. That’s why we’ve dedicated macstories.net/setups/ to our setups. That way, the next time you wonder, what was that pair of headphones Federico mentioned on AppStories or that giant battery pack John wrote about for Club MacStories, you’ll have a place where you can quickly find the answer. You’ll find a link to the new Setups page in the navigation bar at the top of the MacStories homepage, too.

Our new Setups page is what Apple might call ‘a living document.’ We’ll update it periodically throughout the year with changes we make with links to everything that’s still being sold somewhere.

Speaking of links, many of the ones you’ll find on the Setups page are affiliate links. If you buy something using those links, MacStories, Inc. will receive a small commission. You can learn more about how MacStories uses affiliate links in our privacy policy.

Also, if you have any questions about the gear and apps listed on the Setups page, feel free to reach out on Mastodon using @viticci or @johnvoorhees, or ping us on Discord.

Spotlight on Club MacStories+ and Club Premier App Discounts

When we launched Club MacStories+ and Club Premier in 2021, we offered members exclusive deals on around a dozen of our favorite apps and services. In the two years since expanding the Club, our discount program has grown substantially. Now, thanks to the generosity of the developer community, Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members enjoy discounts on 34 apps and services from 24 developers.

To put the Club deals into context, taking advantage of them all would save you more than the cost of two years of Club Premier, the highest Club tier. That’s before you even consider the many other perks Club MacStories and Club Premier members enjoy, including:

  • Weekly and monthly newsletters
  • A sophisticated web app with search and filtering tools to navigate eight years of content
  • Customizable RSS feeds
  • Bonus columns
  • An early and ad-free version of our Internet culture and media podcast, MacStories Unwind
  • A vibrant Discord community of smart app and automation fans who trade a wealth of tips and discoveries every day
  • Live Discord audio events after Apple events and at other times of the year

On top of all of that, Club Premier members get AppStories+, an extended, ad-free version of our flagship podcast that we deliver early every week in high-bitrate audio.

That’s a lot, but with Thanksgiving upon us here in the US, I wanted to take a moment to focus on just the discounts and thank the developers who work with us to bring Club members such great deals and spotlight each of them for all MacStories readers. Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members can access all Club deals by visiting club.macstories.net/discounts.

The lineup changes regularly, but here are all the deals that Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members can take advantage of now:

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Over 300 Indie Apps On Sale From Black Friday Through Cyber Monday

It’s almost Black Friday, and Matt Corey gathered indie developers to organize an app sale that runs from November 24 to November 28th, 2023. Corey, the maker of Bills to Budget, Signals, and other apps that are part of the sale, has put together a collection of over 300 apps that will be offered at a discount tomorrow and Wednesday. The list is too long to publish here but includes many we’ve covered here on MacStories and on Club MacStories in the past, including:

There are a lot of great deals, with many apps discounted by 50%, and what’s listed above is less than a quarter of the participating apps, so be sure to visit Indie App Sales for all the details, including discount codes for the apps that aren’t on the App Store, and support these great indie apps.

Quiche Browser Is a Beautiful and Modular Web Browser for iOS

As part of my ongoing experiment with third-party web browsers for the iPhone, I recently stumbled upon a new indie browser for iOS, which I was instantly drawn to thanks to its adorable name. Quiche Browser is a beautiful browser developed by Greg de J that focuses on UI modularity and small quality-of-life enhancements. The app has surprised me with its great design, and one unexpected use case.

In Quiche Browser, every button can be moved and customized. If you are not the kind of person who likes to tweak the placement of every interface element, this may sound overwhelming. Fortunately, Quiche Browser lets you pick from the ‘Toolbar Gallery’, a collection of toolbar presets that you can customize and adjust. This is an excellent way to quickly get started with your preferred preset, and also to learn how you can customize Quiche’s look, whether you want a fully-featured toolbar or a minimalistic look.

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I Tried to Run Cities: Skylines 2 on My M2 MacBook Air via Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit… And I Discovered A Great App Instead

I have always been a huge fan of city-building games. The first video game I ever played was SimCity 3000, on my uncle’s bulky PC running Windows 2000. I then went on to play SimCity 4 throughout middle and high school. Sadly, EA’s reboot of the franchise in 2013 was a sizable disappointment, and has lead fans to love Cities: Skylines instead, a newcomer to the genre.

Cities: Skylines was released in 2015 simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have fond memories of playing the game on my newly purchased 13-inch MacBook Pro. It was my companion during numerous train trips I took across France and Germany that winter. Although the MacBook Pro’s battery would probably have been depleted in 20 minutes if it were not for the presence of power plugs in most trains, the fact that it launched and ran on my Mac without compromise was impressive.

I was eagerly looking forward to the release of Cities: Skylines 2 this year. After reading a number of positive reviews, I knew I would want to play the game as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Paradox Interactive threw a wrench in my plans: Cities: Skylines 2 is currently exclusive to Windows, and the company has not yet announced any plans to release the game on macOS.

This year at WWDC, Apple released the Game Porting Toolkit, a software translation layer that can help game developers easily port their Windows games to the Mac. It seemed the toolkit was allowing users to launch their favorite Windows games on their Mac with surprising ease. Intrigued, I wanted to test it out to see if I could play Cities: Skylines 2 on my M2 MacBook Air.

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Apple Announces Close to 40 App Store Awards Finalists

Today, Apple announced the finalists for its App Store Awards, a selection of apps that the App Store Editorial team picks each fall to recognize “their excellence, inventiveness, and technical achievement” in ten categories.

Introducing award finalists is a departure for Apple from past years when the company only announced the winners. The change is carried over from the company’s annual Apple Design Awards that are revealed at WWDC every year and is one I like. Today’s finalists include nearly 40 apps and games that span a wide variety of categories and range from creations by solo developers to big companies. It’s an eclectic mix that captures the breadth of the App Store well.

Apple says it will reveal the winners of the App Store Awards later this month. If past announcements are any guide, the last week of November is a good bet on the timing. In the meantime, we have the complete list of finalist apps and games from Apple’s press release after the break.

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Automattic Acquires Interoperable Messaging Service Texts

Source: Texts.

Source: Texts.

Today, Automattic acquired Texts, a startup that’s been building a one-stop destination for managing your many chat and messaging apps in one place.

Automattic, which runs blogging platform WordPress.com and Tumblr, has been acquiring a growing list of companies in recent years, including the makers of apps like Day One and Pocket Casts. The company’s latest purchase marks its first foray into messaging.

Texts is a paid service that allows users to send and receive messages on several platforms, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord DMs, from a single app. There are other companies, like Beeper, attempting something similar using the open-source protocol Matrix, but Texts is a little different. It has developed its own technology stack for handling messages from multiple services that the company says doesn’t require it to send them across its servers and is end-to-end encrypted. Instead, Texts sends messages directly from one of its supported messaging platforms to another. Currently, Texts is available on the Mac, Windows, and Linux, with an iOS app under development and Android on the company’s roadmap too.

I had a chance to speak with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg about the acquisition, and it was clear from our conversation that he views it as a natural next step in the company’s support of open web platforms. It’s also a great fit with WordPress.org and Tumblr’s embrace of the ActivityPub protocol, which powers Mastodon and other federated social networks.

With the list of companies that offer some sort of siloed messaging that doesn’t interoperate with any others continuing to grow, I imagine the demand for a service like Texts’ is only going to grow over time. Backed by Automattic, Texts should have the resources to bring interoperability to more messaging services and grow its support for additional OSes more quickly, making it more competitive in what I expect will become an increasingly competitive market as lawmakers and regulators continue to put pressure on tech companies to make their messaging platforms more open.