Podcast Rewind: Swapping Apps, Multiple Steam Controllers, Matt’s New Cult, and John’s High-Tech Shoes

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, John and Federico kick off the app swap challenge, with each of them giving the other three apps to use. We’ll be checking in on how it’s going each week with a final roundup of the results of the experiment after WWDC.

On AppStories+, we each pick aspirational apps and OS features that we wish we used more but don’t.

NPC: Next Portable Console

This week, mysterious Valve shipments are heading to the U.S., GameHub hits 6.0, one of us got multiple Steam Controllers, and plastic versus aluminum.

On NPC XL, Brendon, John, and Federico share apps and tips for Android gaming.

Comfort Zone

It’s just the boys today, as Chris has a slew of updates, while Matt has joined a new cult. They also try their darnedest to understand the appeal of mouse gestures in browsers.

On Cozy Zone, the gang roasts your (yes, your!) old Home Screens.

MacStories Unwind

This week, an Italian movie dubbing controversy, the role of tech in the first-ever sub-two hour marathon, John’s high-tech running shoes, and a jangle-pop EP for your listening pleasure.

AppStories, Episode 484, ‘An App Swap Challenge’ Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by:

  • Steamclock: We make great apps. Design and development, from demos to details.

An App Swap Challenge: Pick Three Apps for Each Other to Try for a Month and Report Back

AppStories+ Post-Show: Aspirational Apps and Features We’d Like to Use More

  • John
  • Federico
    • Apple Journal
    • Home Screen widgets
    • iPhone’s StandBy mode

Subscribe to AppStories+

Visit AppStories.net to learn more about the extended, high bitrate audio version of AppStories that is delivered early each week and subscribe.

NPC, Episode 80, ‘Is the Steam Machine Just Around the Corner?’ Show Notes

Steam Controller Pre-Orders

Valve Hardware Speculation

Anbernic RG Rotate

Lenovo Legion Tab

Game Native and Android PC Emulation

Subscribe to NPC XL

NPC XL is a weekly members-only version of NPC with extra content, available exclusively through our new Patreon for $5/month. Each week on NPC XL, Federico, Brendon, and John record a special segment or deep dive about a particular topic that is released alongside the “regular” NPC episodes. You can subscribe here.

Comfort Zone, Episode 100, ‘Don’t Let Tech Companies Electrocute You’ Show Notes

Things Discussed

Cozy Zone

For even more from the Comfort Zone crew, you can subscribe to Cozy Zone. Cozy Zone is a weekly bonus episode of Comfort Zone where Matt, Niléane, and Chris invite listeners to join them in the Cozy Zone where they’ll cover extra topics, invent wilder challenges and games, and share all their great (and not so great) takes on tech. You can subscribe to Cozy Zone for $5 per month here or $50 per year here.

MacStories Unwind, ‘Is It the Shoes?’ Show Notes

Picks

Unwind Deal

MacStories Unwind+

We deliver MacStories Unwind+ to Club MacStories subscribers ad-free with high bitrate audio every week. To learn more about the benefits of a Club MacStories subscription, visit our Plans page.

MacStories launched its first podcast in 2017 with AppStories. Since then, the lineup has expanded to include a family of weekly shows that also includes MacStories Unwind, Magic Rays of Light, Comfort Zone, NPC: Next Portable Console, and First, Last, Everything that collectively, cover a broad range of the modern media world from Apple’s streaming service and videogame hardware to apps for a growing audience that appreciates our thoughtful, in-depth approach to media.

If you’re interested in advertising on our shows, you can learn more here or by contacting our Managing Editor, John Voorhees.

Apple Recognizes Developer Community Leaders→

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Yesterday, Apple published a new page on its Developer site highlighting the contributions of 50 prominent members in the Apple developer community. The page recognizes individuals from around the world and across a variety of disciplines, from technical writing, content creation, and education to event organizing and accessibility advocacy. Each profile includes a photo, a short biography, and a link to the person’s LinkedIn profile.

It’s great to see Apple give this well-earned special recognition to those who do so much to improve the lives of users everywhere through their apps and other work. The community of developers that has grown around Apple’s platforms is a priceless asset to the company and its customers, and they deserve to be honored. I hope we’ll see even more of this public positive engagement with developers out of Apple going into and following WWDC.

I highly recommend browsing through the page on the Developer site. You’ll likely see some faces you recognize from our coverage and apps you love, including Hacking with Swift’s Paul Hudson, visionOS educator Joseph Simpson, previous First, Last, Everything guest Robin Kanatzar, Mercury Weather’s Malin Sundberg, and many more. If there’s another developer you think should be recognized in the future, the page includes a link to submit their name to Apple for consideration as well.

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A Dictation App with a CLI Is Exactly What I Needed

Monologue for iOS.

Monologue for iOS.

As I mentioned in a recent issue of MacStories Weekly for Club members, I believe that reliable dictation and text-to-speech are largely solved problems in the AI industry right now for most languages. There are certainly subtle differences between the latest models and not-so-subtle discrepancies when you consider local (and free) transcription models versus cloud-hosted (and often expensive) solutions, but by and large, LLMs have “fixed” the problem of fast and high-performance speech-to-text transcription. Whether you’re using Superwhisper, Wispr Flow, Aqua Voice, or a local wrapper for Parakeet or Microsoft’s VibeVoice, chances are that your transcribed text will be more than good enough these days. Just like with regular chatbots, benchmarks matter less and less: it’s the overall user experience that defines products that are otherwise very similar to each other.

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Spark Mail Adds a Mac CLI and Agent Skills

About two weeks ago, Spark, the email app by Readdle, was updated with a CLI and a set of agentic skills for Claude Code, Codex, and other agents, allowing them read-only access to messages, calendar events, contacts, and meeting notes. These features were extended again a few days ago with new abilities that added email triage actions and more skills. The approach is clever in its local architecture, which keeps your message data on your Mac while making it available to agents.

CLIs are one of this year’s top app trends, with a wide variety of productivity apps adding them. The reason is simple: agents that work in the Terminal like Claude Code and Codex can use local CLIs, which keeps token usage down because the agent only sees a command’s text output instead of carrying tool schemas with it the way MCP servers do.

Spark works with several agents.

Spark works with several agents.

Spark isn’t the first to create an email CLI. The Google-created, but “not an official product,” googleworkspace CLI interfaces with Gmail and a bunch of other Google services, offering over 100 skills. The difference is that a CLI like googleworkspace contacts Google’s Gmail servers and acts on your messages in the cloud, whereas Spark’s CLI acts as a remote control for the Spark app itself, managing the messages locally on your Mac and then syncing them back to Gmail via the desktop app.

I’ve worked with both the googleworkspace CLI and Spark’s, and Spark’s is by far the easier one to use because you don’t need to set up a Google Cloud project or deal with OAuth. The only drawback is that the Spark app needs to be open for its CLI to work because everything happens on your Mac. However, as a practical matter, that’s not a limitation that has impacted me since my email app is open when I’d want to use Spark’s CLI or skills anyway.

Read-only actions are available for all users. Triage actions require a Pro subscription.

Read-only actions are available for all users. Triage actions require a Pro subscription.

There are two levels to what Spark offers. The read-only CLI and skills are available to all users, whether or not they subscribe to Spark Pro. Those actions include the ability to search and summarize messages, fetch context, read threads, and view your calendar, contacts, and meeting notes. A Pro subscription adds message drafting, replying, snoozing, pinning, labeling, moving, and archiving, along with team commenting. It’s an excellent set of actions that uses syntax similar to Gmail, which means it should be familiar to many long-time Gmail users straight out of the box.

And there’s more. Readdle has also released a set of recipes and personas, which are open-source skills. The recipes include instructions for morning and end-of-day email reviews, reviewing of new senders, catching up on messages after vacation, and more. Personas are more holistic approaches to your inbox that apply to an entire email session and have modes. For example, the Founder persona has Rapid Triage, Aggressive Delegation, and Cross-Team Oversight modes. Other personas include Executive Assistant, Freelancer, and Team Lead. Full details of every recipe and persona are available on Readdle’s GitHub page.

Searching email via the command line.

Searching email via the command line.

I’ve spent time using the read-only actions of Spark’s CLI with Claude Code, and it’s an excellent option for automating your email. Setup is simple and fast, and it works well. I’m not sure personas are for me, but there are a bunch of interesting ideas among the recipes, which I intend to explore more and use to create my own skills.

Spark Mail is available as a free download on the Mac App Store. The CLI’s triage actions are exclusive to users who subscribe to Spark Pro, which costs $20/month or $200/year.

iOS 26.5 Adds RCS Encryption in Beta Starting Today

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple announced that beginning today, users on iOS 26.5 will be able to send encrypted RCS messages to Google Messages users who are on the latest version of that app. Apple says that means a message that is intercepted in transit is unreadable. You’ll be able to tell if your messages are encrypted by a lock icon at the top of the screen.

RCS encryption is turned on by default and supported by carriers around the world. I spent some time scrolling through the list of carriers that support RCS encryption, and it’s extensive. You can check if your carrier is on the list at the link above.

Podcast Rewind: Codex, GameHub, a Mouse Lament, a Peacock Invasion, and an Interview with Niléane Dorffer

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week on AppStories, John shares a tip for moving files with Taildrop before he and Federico dig into Codex and its unique capabilities.

On AppStories+, Federico and John have both returned to Apple Reminders and discuss why and how they’re using it.

NPC: Next Portable Console

This week on Next Portable Console, we finally have RG Rotate specs and prices, get excited for the Steam Controller, update listeners on the latest grips available for the Switch 2, and cover the GameHub for Mac beta.

On NPC XL, we revisit GameNative, and Federico turns his Legion Go 2 into a SteamOS device.

First, Last, Everything

Jonathan is joined by Niléane Dorffer, a French-Réunionnese podcaster, writer, and activist, known for being the co-host of Comfort Zone, her writing at MacStories, and her advocacy for trans rights.

Comfort Zone

With Chris out getting a puppy, Matt and Niléane hold down the fort, celebrating an app and lamenting a mouse. Then, everyone pretends to be someone else for fun.

On Cozy Zone, the gang compares their Mac Docks, and you won’t believe it, monsters were revealed!

MacStories Unwind

This week, Federico wins the wild kingdom award, John is defending against vultures and has a creepy new show to recommend, and Federico closes with a TV check-in.

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