In the current era of coding agents becoming productivity assistants, iPadOS’ limitations are no longer defined by the lack of desktop-class multitasking or access to external peripherals. A new class of iPadOS shortcomings looms large on the horizon: the iPad’s app sandboxing and the absence of an open filesystem have relegated it to acting as a remote control for agents.
Posts tagged with "featured"
Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads
MacStories Setups Update: Batteries, Chargers, E-Ink Note-Taking, and Videogames
It’s beta season, which is as good an excuse as any to mix up our setups with new gadgets and apps. Between travel, preparing for our OS review research and writing sprint, and revisiting Apple system apps, the past few months have resulted in changes to our setups.
Summer travel means batteries to charge our gear and chargers to charge those batteries. It’s a trend that was clearly on our minds as Federico and I planned our trips to WWDC. Federico added a 20,100mAh Anker Prime Power Bank and an Anker Nano Power Bank, going both big and small for his long flight to California, while I added a beefy Belkin UltraCharge Pro battery with a 25,000mAh capacity and a Belkin USB-C 140W Y Cable. I also added a compact Belkin GaN 70W Charging Station for charging on my balcony over the summer and an Anker Nano Power Strip with Desk Clamp, which has been a great way to keep outlets and USB ports within reach but out of the way.
The remainder of our setups are an eclectic mix of gadgets. Federico fell in love with the Legion Go 2 all over again, swapped his iPhone Air for an iPhone 17 Pro, and added a pair of AirPods Max 2 to his gear.
The biggest change to my setup is my most recent: the reMarkable Paper Pure, an e-ink note-taking and reading tablet that I plan to review soon. Preorders just started shipping, and reMarkable sent me a review unit that I plan to incorporate into my research setup through a series of scripts and native apps. The apps will allow me to send articles, PDFs, writing drafts, and more to the Paper Pure and extract handwritten notes as text back into my research setup. It’s been a lot of fun to build and will be the subject of an upcoming Mac Hacks story for Club MacStories members.
, which is also featured on [the Setups page](https://www.macstories.net/setups/).](https://cdn.macstories.net/images/uploads/2026/06/17/img-0827-1781724156846-4e232b7ef1.jpg)
The Anbernic RG Rotate and Logitech Mobi Fold mouse, which is also featured on the Setups page.
On the fun side of things, I’ve been enjoying the Anbernic RG Rotate Android handheld a lot. It has a screen that rotates around one corner to reveal gaming controls. The device, which we covered in a couple of recent NPC episodes, has been a lot of fun to take with me everywhere I go for a quick fix of my favorite retro games. I also added the Mobapad M12 HD to my extensive collection of controllers. I only received the M12 HD a couple of days ago, but it was immediately more comfortable to use than the Switch 2 Joy-Con it replaces.
That’s a wrap for this installment of the Setups update. Be sure to keep an eye on the MacStories Deals Bluesky and Mastodon accounts. Amazon Prime Day is next week, and there are already some great deals on our favorite gear linked on the Setups page, so browse around and get in touch on social media if you have any questions about our setups.
WWDC 2026: Between Seasons
It’s my last day at Apple Park for my seventh in-person WWDC, and as I’m waiting for my final briefing just outside the Steve Jobs Theater – ever so magnificent in its polish, and yet always so strangely calm a place – I keep returning to a thought that’s been circling my head, begging for attention. I’ve never felt so “in between” phases of my career. Physically in this very moment, of course, as I’m literally sitting on an also-polished wooden bench overlooking one side of the ring, watching groups of people climb the hill to the theater and others leave. But more so mentally, insofar as I don’t recall another WWDC that’s made me feel so aware of how much things are changing around me.
At my first WWDC in San Francisco in 2016, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I was a 28-year-old blogger from Italy and somehow found my way to the most important event about the software I loved writing about. It was uncomfortable: what was I even doing there, taking notes on an iPad while folks from The New York Times or Wall Street Journal prepared articles that millions of people would read? But I didn’t mind it. I was in the middle of change; the discomfort fueled me.
10 years later, as an almost 38-year-old blogger from Italy who’s wondering just how, exactly, Apple managed to hide speakers playing music in the bushes outside the Steve Jobs Theater, I look at the content creators who are possibly experiencing their first WWDC, and realize: how am I still here, and still taking notes on an iPad, while these younger folks are shooting videos that millions of people will watch? I’m in between changes again, but I don’t mind it. The challenge still feeds me. I’m more comfortable now, but – miraculously – I don’t feel cynical or jaded. Some people are into that sort of attitude; I’ve always preferred to put in the work to be critical and enthusiastic about the things I like. In a world of complaints, optimism is a skill.
The music is still mysteriously coming from somewhere around the bushes. My friend Myke walks out the theater and tells me I’m going to love the session downstairs about AI on the Mac. “Who would have thought I’d be into that someday”, I think to myself.
watchOS 27: The MacStories Overview
During yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Apple introduced the latest software for the Apple Watch, watchOS 27. As with the other Apple platforms, much of the focus this year was on Siri AI, but there are plenty of quality-of-life improvements to look forward to as well.
Let’s dive in.
iOS and iPadOS 27: The MacStories Overview
During today’s WWDC keynote, Apple unveiled updates across its family of OSes. The keynote itself was very different in structure from previous years, with a lot of the focus on Siri and Apple Intelligence, which, for the most part, are fully cross-platform. (For more on those announcements, check out Devon’s coverage.)
Nevertheless, there were plenty of new features announced for iOS and iPadOS, along with a slew of child safety tools. Let’s take a look.
Siri AI and the Latest in Apple Intelligence: The MacStories Overview
The big question coming into today’s WWDC keynote was what Apple would have to offer in terms of AI – or, as the company refers to it, Apple Intelligence. Given Apple’s behind-the-scenes struggles, delayed features, and partnership with Google to re-architect its Foundation Models based on Gemini, expectations were high, and the company delivered with the announcement of a whole new Siri and a slew of Apple Intelligence features baked into its upcoming operating systems.
Siri AI, the all-new version of Apple’s virtual assistant, was the star of the show and got plenty of time in the spotlight, including several real-time demos on the iPhone and Mac. But the company also announced updates to Visual Intelligence, new photo editing tools, a Shortcuts builder, and additional Apple Intelligence features.
It all starts with the latest Foundation Models based on a new architecture developed by Apple in collaboration with Google’s Gemini models. Coming in both local and Private Cloud Compute variations, these models work across Apple devices using a combination of user input (via text, voice, or images), personal context, on-screen awareness, app actions, and world knowledge in conjunction with the new system orchestrator to power conversations and actions taken by Siri AI as well as Apple Intelligence features baked into each OS. Of course, Apple touts that these features are secure and protect user privacy whether they are run on-device or in Private Cloud Compute.
Introducing RemCTL: The Power-User Reminders CLI for macOS and AI Agents
Today, I’m pleased to release my latest free and open source project: RemCTL, a power-user Reminders CLI that, unlike others, exposes all the latest Reminders features as of iOS and macOS 26. RemCTL supports reading and writing subtasks, tags, sections, rich links, image attachments, grocery lists, and even templates.
It’s available on GitHub here, and it comes bundled with a skill for desktop agents.
Introducing the All-New MacStories Shortcuts Archive
Alongside Federico’s release of Shortcuts Playground, we have a new and improved Shortcuts Archive page. The design adopts a new modular card system for navigation, search, filtering, and the shortcuts themselves, making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for from among over 400 shortcuts.
With so many shortcuts spread across multiple categories, it was important to design something that is easy to navigate, which is why there are a variety of ways to do so:
- Categories lets you jump straight to a collection such as Music, Health, Photos, the Action button, and many more.
- By default, the Shortcuts Archive shows you a featured collection followed by an alphabetically organized list of all our shortcuts. However, by clicking Filters in the navigation bar, you can rearrange the archive to display the shortcuts alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order, arrange shortcuts by category, or start with the recently updated shortcuts.
- Search is a brand new feature of the Shortcuts Archive, too, allowing you to run keyword searches against the name of the shortcut and its description. The search field helpfully adds a pill indicator beneath the search field if you have a filter applied that will impact your search results.
The Archive also includes a new featured collection. With the release of Shortcuts Playground today, that collection spotlights over 100 shortcuts that were built using Shortcuts Playground and verified by Federico. From here, you can also access our special Shortcuts Playground landing page that includes more details about what it can do and links to the agent plugin, announcement post, and more.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we also have a dedicated callout slot for advertisers at the top of the Shortcuts Archive. The Archive is the second most visited page after the MacStories homepage, which makes it a great place to promote apps and developer tools to a an audience of creative professionals, developers, and app enthusiasts who care deeply about the apps and services they use. Currently, it promotes Club MacStories, but if you have an app or service to promote get in touch. We’re offering exclusive monthly and annual spots.
The Shortcuts Archive represents years of work and is packed with excellent automations that are ready for you to use off the shelf or as inspiration for your next automation project. And, with Shortcuts Playground, it’s never been a better time to try your hand at automation. Enjoy browsing the Archive. We hope you like it.
Introducing Shortcuts Playground: Create Apple Shortcuts with Claude Code or Codex
Today, I’m pleased to introduce something I’ve been working on for the past six months: Shortcuts Playground, a plugin for Claude Code and Codex that can create any shortcut for Apple’s Shortcuts app using natural language. With Shortcuts Playground, you can simply prompt Claude Code or Codex with a sentence requesting a shortcut of any kind; a few minutes later, you’ll end up with a real shortcut in Finder, ready to be imported into the Shortcuts app. It’s as simple as that.
Shortcuts Playground is free and open source: anyone can download the plugin from this GitHub repo, where I extensively documented how it works behind the scenes and where you can also inspect the code yourself.
Just point your preferred desktop agent to the repo, and it’ll find the plugin marketplace to install it for you. You can also check out the dedicated mini-site we launched for it at macstories.net/shortcuts-playground.
For Club MacStories+ and Premier members, I’m also releasing Shortcuts Playground as a generative shortcut. It’s quite meta: once you have the main plugin installed on a Mac, you can use a shortcut to make more shortcuts and install them directly on an iPhone, iPad, or other Mac. The Shortcuts Playground shortcut is highly customizable, and I’ve shared a detailed guide for Plus and Premier members here.
As part of this announcement, we’re also launching the completely redesigned MacStories Shortcuts Archive. The new archive is easier to browse with new categories and filters, and it also includes 100 shortcuts that were entirely generated by Shortcuts Playground and verified by me. I figured that it’d be nice to offer concrete evidence of Shortcuts Playground’s capabilities; I think 100 shortcuts should do the trick.
You can read more about the new MacStories Shortcuts Archive here.