If you haven’t heard of Copilot yet, it’s time to check out Apple’s Editors Choice award-winning money tracker app. Copilot makes it simple to monitor your finances while providing valuable insights.

Their native iPhone and Mac apps can do it all: you can track your spending, budgets, investments, and net worth all in one place, allowing you to drill into the details without losing sight of the big picture.

In the Apple community, Copilot is known for staying in sync with new iOS launches, from responsive widgets to tinted icons ready for iOS18. Beyond beautiful design and functionality, Copilot’s mission is to build a future where everyone has a clear picture of their finances, without all the anxiety. Where anyone can reclaim their data from the banks to build their own plan for achieving their goals — with confidence and trust in their tools for doing so.

Copilot’s new Cash Flow section brings them closer to that vision. It focuses on three key areas: income, spending, and net income. You can easily compare your progress over different time frames to see how your financial habits stack up month-to-month or even week-to-week.

For a limited time, MacStories readers can get a special two-month free trial by using the code MACSTORIES when signing up. Visit their website to learn more and download Copilot from the App Store to get started today.

Our thanks to Copilot for sponsoring MacStories this week.

If you’re a developer building a membership website for a client’s business, you should be using Memberful. It’s the best-in-class membership software used by the biggest creators, publishers, and media companies across the web.

Memberful includes everything you need to get the job done, including:

• Seamless WordPress integration;
• Content protection, enabling your clients to offer exclusive blog posts, videos, and downloadable resources;
• A wide array of customizable membership options, allowing your clients to set up membership tiers, recurring subscriptions, one-time payments, and more;
• Built-in payment processing via Stripe, so check-out is simple, and your clients get paid on time; and
• Full customization, so your Memberful implementation matches your client’s branding

We’ve used Memberful at MacStories since 2015 when we launched Club MacStories. Memberful made setting up the Club easy and has allowed it to grow and offer new perks to members as our needs changed and our business grew. What started as a simple newsletter implementation now includes downloadable content, members-only podcasts, and more.

Memberful also scales gracefully from creators who are just starting to those who already have thousands of members. Regardless of the stage of your client’s business, Memberful’s robust API and webhooks make setting up their website a breeze without writing complex custom code. And, with integrations with popular services like MailChimp and Discord, your clients will have even more ways to engage with their audience. Plus, you’ll get comprehensive analytics and can automate email communications, allowing you to easily adjust your marketing strategy as you go and stay in touch with members.

Help your clients monetize their passion by getting started for free with Memberful. It’s the best way for creators, publishers, and media companies to reach their audiences.

Our thanks to Memberful for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Upgraded offers an easy way to get the MacBook you need right away — and in the future.

Choose a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, starting at $36.06 and $52.17 a month, respectively, then upgrade to the latest model every two years.

Interest rates start at 0%, and AppleCare+ is included. See for yourself at getupgraded.com.

Here’s how it works

1. Choose your new MacBook. Select anything from an entry-level Air to a fully-loaded Pro. AppleCare+ is always included.
2. Enjoy low monthly payments. The cost is spread over 36 months, with the option to upgrade after 24 payments.
3. Get upgraded every two years. Select a new MacBook, transfer your data, and send the old one back to Upgraded. They’ll refurbish it and give it a new life, saving you the hassle of selling it yourself.

Don’t want to upgrade? You can continue paying off the remaining 12 months to keep it instead.

Trusted partners

Check if you’re eligible to join without impact to your credit score.

Behind the scenes, Upgraded works with trusted partners to make sure everything runs smoothly.

• The upgrade program is financed through Citizens Pay, the same bank used by Apple for the iPhone Upgrade Program.
• GatorTec, an Apple Premier Partner, ensures fast delivery from Apple warehouses across the country.
• All devices come with AppleCare+, meaning insurance and support are covered by Apple if needed.

Upgraded may be a new name in the States, but they’ve been helping large retailers in Europe create similar programs since 2016 and have already served over 200,000 customers worldwide. Early investors include Y Combinator and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman.

Get upgraded today

With low monthly payments, bundled insurance, and effortless upgrades, Upgraded makes it easy to keep your gear up to date. And MacBooks are just the beginning: The company plans to offer more devices soon. See all available options at getupgraded.com.

Your time is precious. So, instead of spinning your wheels as you look for the next thing to watch, read, play, or do, try Sofa for iPhone, iPad, and soon, the Vision Pro. It lets you be more intentional with your downtime by creating organized lists as you discover new things to try.

Most apps are designed for work. Sofa’s different. It’s built for play, with a focus on making the most of your free time. It’s more organized than a list in Notes, with just enough structure combined with extensive customization options to make it your own.

You can track anything you want in Sofa: apps, books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, websites, travel ideas, restaurants, and more. The app includes over 100 themes, Shortcuts support, Smart Lists, user-defined ingredients, and more. It’s the sort of flexibility, from the lists you make to how the app looks, feels, and works, that you won’t find anywhere else.

Most of Sofa, including unlimited lists, syncing via iCloud, tracking your activity, and automating with Shortcuts is completely free. But, with a Super Sofa subscription, you can add custom ingredients, Smart Lists, item and list pinning, sticky notes, and more.

So, download Sofa today for free, and be sure to take advantage of a limited-time deal just for MacStories readers, who can get 40% off their first year of a Super Sofa subscription by going to sofahq.com/macstories.

Our thanks to Sofa for sponsoring MacStories this week.

In a perfect world, end users would only work on managed devices with IT-approved apps. But every day, employees use personal devices and unapproved apps that aren’t protected by MDM, IAM, or any other security tool.

There’s a giant gap between the security tools we have and the way we actually work. 1Password calls it the Access-Trust Gap, and they’ve also created the first ever solution to fill it.

1Password Extended Access Management secures every sign-in for every app on every device. It includes the password manager you know and love, and the device trust solution you’ve probably heard of on this podcast, back when it was called Kolide.

1Password Extended Access Management cares about user experience and privacy, which means it can go places other tools can’t–like personal and contractor devices. It ensures that every device is known and healthy, and every login is protected. So stop trying to ban BYOD or Shadow IT, and start protecting them with 1Password Extended Access Management.

Check it out today.

Our thanks to 1Password for sponsoring our WWDC coverage this week.

Raycast makes your Mac better because it’s fast, ergonomic, and reliable. Best of all, though, Raycast comes with powerful tools your Mac should have but didn’t. Plus, it’s extensible, with a rich catalog of extensions built by developers around the world that solve every productivity need you can imagine.

With Raycast, everything is at your fingertips. The app’s searchable clipboard means always having what you need a few keystrokes away. With emoji and gif search tools, Raycast makes it easy to express yourself. Plus, there are tools to perform quick calculations, currency and unit conversions, and a lot more.

And with broad developer support, there are extensions available to:

• Track your flights
• Take notes
• Save tasks
• Search for your files
• Run scripts
• Kick off shortcuts
• Translate text
• and even manage your windows

With Raycast, all of this and more can be accomplished quickly and easily without switching contexts, reducing distractions and speeding up every interaction with your Mac.

Raycast is also the best way to interact with AI. It’s an always-on window into ChatGPT that helps you code, write email messages, automate repetitive tasks, and more.

Raycast is free to download and use, but with annual plans that start at what works out to just $8/month, you can go pro with its AI features, theming, and setup sync across multiple Macs.

Visit Raycast’s website today to learn more, download Raycast for free, and see how its Pro accounts can take your Raycast experience to the next level.

Our thanks to Raycast for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Raycast makes your Mac better because it’s fast, ergonomic, and reliable. Best of all, though, Raycast comes with powerful tools your Mac should have but didn’t. Plus, it’s extensible, with a rich catalog of extensions built by developers around the world that solve every productivity need you can imagine.

With Raycast, everything is at your fingertips. The app’s searchable clipboard means always having what you need a few keystrokes away. With emoji and gif search tools, Raycast makes it easy to express yourself. Plus, there are tools to perform quick calculations, currency and unit conversions, and a lot more.

And with broad developer support, there are extensions available to:

• Track your flights
• Take notes
• Save tasks
• Search for your files
• Run scripts
• Kick off shortcuts
• Translate text
• and even manage your windows

With Raycast, all of this and more can be accomplished quickly and easily without switching contexts, reducing distractions and speeding up every interaction with your Mac.

Raycast is also the best way to interact with AI. It’s an always-on window into ChatGPT that helps you code, write email messages, automate repetitive tasks, and more.

Raycast is free to download and use, but with annual plans that start at what works out to just $8/month, you can go pro with its AI features, theming, and setup sync across multiple Macs.

Visit Raycast’s website today to learn more, download Raycast for free, and see how its Pro accounts can take your Raycast experience to the next level.

Our thanks to Raycast for sponsoring MacStories this week.

When MGM Resorts suffered a $100 million hack in September, CEO Bill Hornbuckle wasn’t too worried about the lost revenue, because cyber insurance would cover the tab. “I can only imagine what next year’s bill will be,” he joked.

Weeks later, on a call with analysts, Hornbuckle complained about the “staggering” rise of insurance costs in the past few years.

This story neatly illustrates the crisis in cyber liability coverage. For years, companies have invested more in security insurance than in actual security. The result has been a tidal wave of data breaches that have driven up the cost of premiums to the point that they are rapidly becoming unaffordable.

Some large enterprises are responding to the increased costs by creating their own “captive carriers,” insurance providers that exist only to serve them. But that’s clearly not an option for small businesses, which are more likely to go without insurance altogether.

According to Andrew Bucci, VP of Sales at Amplified Insurance Partners, “It’s going to come to a point where some people may have to self-insure, which means that they don’t take a cyber policy out and they just cross their fingers they don’t have some sort of breach.” That’s a huge gamble for SMBs, since they could be driven to bankruptcy by a single security incident.

At Kolide, we’ve seen our cyber insurance premiums go up by 40% in just the last two years, and we got curious about:

• What’s driving the increases?
• Who really needs cybersecurity insurance?
• How can the average company reduce their premiums?

What we found was that insurance companies themselves can help get us out of this crisis, by mandating some (pretty basic) security requirements for their customers–things like MFA, endpoint security, and retiring end-of-life software. 

Read the full blog to learn more about our findings.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Now, don’t get offended, but – you aren’t as good at clocking deepfakes as you think you are. 

And it’s not just you–nobody’s that good at it. Not your mom, or your boss, or anyone in your IT department. 

To make matters worse, you probably think you can spot a fake. After all, you see weird AI-generated videos of celebrities on social media and they give you that uncanny valley tingle. But it’s a different ballgame when all you’ve got to go on is a voice. 

In real life, people only catch voice clones about 50% of the time. You might as well flip a coin.

And that makes us extremely vulnerable to attacks.

In the “classic” voice clone scam, the caller is after an immediate payout (“Hi it’s me, your boss. Wire a bunch of company money to this account ASAP”). Then there are the more complex social engineering attacks, where a phone call is just the entryway to break into a company’s systems and steal data or plant malware (that’s what happened in the MGM attack, albeit without the use of AI).

As more and more hackers use voice cloning in social engineering attacks, deepfakes are becoming such a hot-button issue that it’s hard to tell the fear-mongering (for instance, it definitely takes more than three seconds of audio to clone a voice) from the actual risk.

To disentangle the true risks from the exaggerations, we need to answer some basic questions:

1. How hard is it to deepfake someone’s voice? 
2. How do hackers use voice clones to attack companies?
3. And how do we guard ourselves against this… attack of the clones?

Like a lot of modern technologies, deepfake attacks actually exploit some deep-seated fears. Fears like, “your boss is mad at you.” These anxieties have been used by social engineers since the dawn of the scam, and voice clones add a shiny new boost to their tactics. 

But the good news is that we can be trained to look past those fears and recognize a suspicious phone call–even if the voice sounds just like someone we trust.  

If you want to learn more about our findings, read our piece on the Kolide blog. It’s a frank and thorough exploration of what we should be worried about when it comes to audio deepfakes.**

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.