Posts in Linked

Doing Research with NotebookLM→

Fascinating blog post by Vidit Bhargava (creator of the excellent LookUp dictionary app) about how he worked on his master thesis with the aid of Google’s NotebookLM.

I used NotebookLM throughout my thesis, not because I was interested in it generating content for me (I think AI generated text and images are sloppy and classless); but because it’s a genuinely great research organization tool that provides utility of drawing connections between discreet topics and helping me understand my own journey better.

Make sure to check out the examples of his interviews and research material as indexed by the service.

As I explained in an episode of AppStories a while back, and as John also expanded upon in the latest issue of the Monthly Log for Club members, we believe that assistive AI tools that leverage modern LLM advancements to help people work better (and less) are infinitely superior to whatever useless slop generative tools produce.

Google’s NotebookLM is, in my opinion, one of the most intriguing new tools in this field. For the past two months, I’ve been using it as a personal search assistant for the entire archive of 10 years of annual iOS reviews – that’s more than half a million words in total. Not only can NotebookLM search that entire library in seconds, but it does so with even the most random natural language queries about the most obscure details I’ve ever covered in my stories, such as “When was the copy and paste menu renamed to edit menu?” (It was iOS 16.). It’s becoming increasingly challenging for me, after all these years, to keep track of the growing list of iOS-related minutiae; from a personal productivity standpoint, NotebookLM has to be one of the most exciting new products I’ve tried in a while. (Alongside Shortwave for email.)

Just today, I discovered that my read-later tool of choice – Readwise Reader – offers a native integration to let you search highlights with NotebookLM. That’s another source that I’m definitely adding to NotebookLM, and I’m thinking of how I could replicate the same Readwise Reader setup (highlights are appended to a single Google Doc) with Zapier and RSS feeds. Wouldn’t it be fun, for instance, if I could search the entire archive of AppStories show notes in NotebookLM, or if I could turn starred items from Feedbin into a standalone notebook as well?

I’m probably going to have to sign up for NotebookLM Plus when it launches for non-business accounts, which, according to Google, should happen in early 2025.

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Bookshop.org Now Supports Local Booksellers with eBook Sales→

Bookshop.org launched in 2020 as a way to sell books online while still supporting local bookstores, which have become a rarity in the U.S. The company has seen success selling physical books online. As Boone Ashworth explains at Wired:

For physical books, Bookshop lets buyers direct 30 percent of the proceeds of a sale to their favorite participating bookstore. An additional 10 percent of those sales, plus the sales of books that are not earmarked for a specific store, gets split up and distributed to every store on Bookshop’s platform.

Now, Bookshop has added eBooks that can be purchased online and read in the company’s new Bookshop.org app, available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Ashworth breaks down how these sales work:

Ebook sales through Bookshop, however, will see 100 percent of the proceeds going to the store that sells them through the platform. If a user buys an ebook directly from Bookshop without naming a bookstore they want to support, then a third of that profit will go into the pool of funds that gets divided between stores. The rest will go to pay for Bookshop.org’s engineers and server costs.

Giving local bookstores the ability to sell eBooks fills a big hole for those businesses. Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter shared the company’s motivation for offering eBooks with Wired:

“It’s crazy that bookstores can’t sell ebooks to their customers right now,” Hunter says. He says he wants this program to continue his company’s mission of propping up local bookstores, but he also hopes this move will help take Amazon down a peg as well.

I’ve tried Bookshop’s app briefly with some book previews, and it works well. The settings options aren’t as extensive as in other eBook readers, but the basics – like text size, pagination versus scrolling, a couple of font options, and light, dark, and paper themes – are all there. The design makes browsing your library of books or finding something new to read easy, too. It may not be enough for some readers, but this is a 1.0 release, so I’m optimistic additional options will be offered with time.

It’s great to see Bookshop offering eBooks. We have an excellent bookstore here in Davidson that I love to browse, but more often than not, I prefer an eBook over the paper version, so it’s nice to have that as an option now.

The Bookshop.org app is available on the App Store as a free download. eBooks must be purchased online and synced with the app.

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Sotheby’s Is Auctioning Custom iPods from the Late Karl Lagerfeld’s Massive Collection→

Behold, the BlingPod. Source: [Sotheby's](https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/karl-karl-lagerfelds-estate-v-le-studio-pf2553/a-set-comprising-an-ipod-classic-apple-and-a-micro)

Behold, the BlingPod. Source: Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s is auctioning the estate of renowned designer Karl Lagerfeld. The auction house, which is auctioning the estate’s assets in multiple lots, includes several collections of classic iPods and custom iPods, like the ultra-blinged-out one above. The estate’s collection also includes these first-generation iPod Nanos that Parker Ortolani posted on Mastodon:

Source: [Sotheby's](https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/karl-karl-lagerfelds-estate-v-le-studio-pf2553)

Source: Sotheby’s

Compared to Lagerfeld’s full collection, though, Sotheby’s selection is a drop in the bucket. It’s estimated that the designer owned over 500 iPods when he passed away. According to graphic novelist Warren Ellis’s website:

Lagerfeld famously had an “iPod nanny” to digitise his collection for the iPods and to add new music to new devices. This is how he ended up with over 300 of them – he treated them like cassette tapes.

Source: [Sotheby's](https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/karl-karl-lagerfelds-estate-v-le-studio-pf2553).

Source: Sotheby’s.

I’m impressed with Lagerfeld’s commitment to the iPod long after all but the Touch was discontinued. There’s a lot to be said for single-purpose devices like the iPod. I’d love to see Apple bring the iPod back one day, even if it were just a limited run. But if they do, I hope they get weird with it and take inspiration from some of these great custom iPods from Lagerfeld’s collection.

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Introducing Our Updated iPad Hub→

We’ve updated MacStories’ iPad hub. You may not have noticed before, but it’s linked right there in the masthead, and it’s an amazing resource. The iPad hub collects over a decade of Federico’s coverage of years of iPad hardware and iPadOS. It’s a fantastic historical resource and the best place to find his latest coverage.

Federico has been using and writing about the iPad since its beginning. His many hardware reviews benefit from that in-depth knowledge and his experiments in modularity and creating a hybrid laptop-tablet are legendary.

On the iPad hub, you’ll find:

If you love the iPad as much as we do, check out our iPad hub. It’s a fantastic resource and a fun trip through Apple’s hardware history.

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Epic Games Announces iOS Store Expansion in the E.U.→

The Epic Games Store, which is available in the E.U. on iOS as a result of the Digital Markets Act and globally on Android, is expanding.

During a press briefing, Epic’s Tim Sweeney said:

Our aim here isn’t just to launch a bunch of different stores in different places, but to build a single, cross-platform store in which, within the era of multi-platform games, if you buy a game or digital items in one place, you have the ability to own them everywhere.

As part of the store expansion, The Verge’s Lauren Feiner reports that Epic will cover Apple’s E.U. Core Technology Fee charged on free games for the first 12 months. Epic will also offer monthly free games, and eventually, weekly freebies. The new games aren’t available just yet, but should be soon.

It’s good to see Epic expanding its offerings on iOS and Android. Alternative marketplaces have grown slowly in the E.U., but with Epic willing to reduce the financial risk of Apple’s Core Technology Fee, we should start seeing Epic’s store expand more rapidly.

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The Vision Pro Lends a Hand to the STRUTT ev¹ Personal Mobility Device→

YouTuber Two F Zero T has a first look at the STRUTT ev¹, a personal mobility device that was shown off at CES and can be controlled with the Vision Pro. The video, which I first saw linked by Apple’s Mike Stern on Mastodon, demonstrates the impressive tech packed into the STRUTT ev¹, including a unique integration with the Vision Pro. Thanks to Apple’s headset, users can navigate their surroundings with the Vision Pro’s eye and head tracking.

One of the things that’s easy to forget is that the Vision Pro builds on Apple’s years of accessibility research and development, which pioneered many of the interactions central to how people use it. With the release of the Vision Pro, developers working on new hardware like the STRUTT ev¹ can build on Apple’s innovation to offer an even richer feature set in their products. It’s a virtuous circle that benefits everyone. Apple’s products work better for more people, and companies like Strutt can build on that technology to offer an enhanced experience to their customers, too.

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Netflix Games Seemingly Narrows Its Focus→

I’ve followed Netflix Games’ journey closely for the last three years. The company has dipped its toe into a wide variety of genres but stood out for its deep catalog of artistic indie games, including recent additions like Monument Valley 3. However, based on an earnings call reported on by Neil Long of mobilegamer.biz, that may be changing.

According to Long, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said:

After three years of releasing a broad range of mobile titles, Netflix said it is now focusing on “a few key genres”, including narrative games based on its own IP, party games, kids games and “mainstream established titles (like Grand Theft Auto)”.

From that, it sure sounds like indie games are being squeezed out at Netflix Games, which has seen its fair share of upheaval recently. I hope not though. Having high-quality indie titles on my iPhone that are also available on my Ayn Odin Android portable console has been a delight.

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A Firmware Update that Promises to Turn Smart Lights into Motion Sensors→

Jennifer Pattison Touhy has a story on The Verge today about a technology debuting soon that turns existing smart lights into motion sensors:

Sensify is a proprietary technology based on wireless network sensing (WNS) that works with Zigbee-based smart devices, like Hue smart lights. According to Pattison Touhy:

WNS works by detecting disturbances in radio frequencies and can also be applied to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread technologies. McKinney says Sensify requires three or more devices positioned around a detection area to detect motion and occupancy in the space. The tech also allows for precise detection zones based on where the devices are situated. “The devices send messages to each other, look at underlying network diagnostic information, and process it to provide occupancy sensing decisions,” says McKinney.

The story goes on to explain the performance of the technology:

Performance-wise, McKinney says Sensify is “equivalent or superior” to passive infrared sensing (PIR) tech, which is traditionally used for motion sensing. It also doesn’t need line of sight, as PIR does. However, it’s not as precise as technologies like mmWave sensing, which can determine if someone is in a room through as slight a movement as breathing. “The lights will still likely turn off if you’re still, even if you’re in the space,” he says.

That’s great to hear and something I hope is enabled by manufacturers without charging an additional fee or subscription. I know that may be wishful thinking, but even if there is a fee, it may be worth it to not litter your home with less accurate motion sensors everywhere and could give Hue and other Zigbee-based device makers an advantage over other companies.

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Our MacStories Setups: Updates Covering Video Production, Gaming, and More→

The second half of 2024 saw a lot of change to my setup and Federico’s. We launched the MacStories YouTube channel, expanded our family of podcasts, and spent time chasing the ultimate portable gaming setup for NPC: Next Portable Console. The result was that our setups have evolved rapidly. So, today, we thought we’d catch folks up on what’s changed.

Our Setups page has all the details, but you’ll notice a couple of trends from the changes we’ve made recently. As Federico recounted in iPad Pro for Everything: How I Rethought My Entire Workflow Around the New 11” iPad Pro, the linchpin to ditching his Mac altogether was recording audio and video to SD cards. He already had a solution for audio in place, but video required additional hardware, including the Sony ZV-E10 II camera.

Federico's White OLED Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion y700 tablet.

Federico’s White OLED Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion y700 tablet.

Federico’s gaming setup has evolved, too. The Sony PS5 Pro replaced the original PS5, and he swapped the limited edition white Steam Deck in for the standard OLED version. He also revealed on NPC: Next Portable Console this week that he’s using a Lenovo y700 2024 gaming tablet imported from China to emulate Nintendo DS and 3DS games, which will be available worldwide later this year as the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3. Other upgrades to existing hardware Federico uses include a move from the iPhone 16 Plus to the iPhone 16 Pro Max and an upgrade of the XREAL Airs to the XREAL One glasses.

My portable video recording setup

My portable video recording setup

As for myself, CES and its bag size limitations pushed me to rethink my portable video and audio recording setups. For recording when I’m away from home I added several items to my kit that I detailed in What’s in My CES Bag?, including:

On the gaming side of things I added a white TrimUI Brick and GameCube-inspired Retroid Pocket 5.

2024 was a big year for setup updates for both of us. We already have new hardware incoming for testing, so keep an eye on the Setups page. I expect we’ll update it several times in 2025 too.

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