Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
This week, Federico and John rethink podcast apps, exploring why it’s such a tricking category to get right for the greatest number of users.
This week, Federico returns to join John and Brendon to recap the latest portable gaming news before Federico drops a massive GameCube surprise on his co-hosts.
Today, we’re expanding NPC: Next Portable Console to include video on YouTube. The reception to the show has been fantastic. NPC debuted in the top five on the Apple Podcasts Video Game chart and has been attracting more listeners every week as an audio-only podcast on YouTube. However, with videogames being such a popular category on YouTube, we knew we could do more for listeners by adding a proper video version of the show.
So beginning today, you can watch NPC on the MacStories YouTube channel:
Today’s episode was the perfect place to start with video. I don’t want to give away Federico’s surprises here, but he plotted a big reveal for months that he springs on Brendon and me in today’s episode. It’s a deep dive into the console modding community and a classic Federico reveal. As always, we highlight the latest portable gaming news, too.
If you haven’t tried NPC or checked out the MacStories YouTube channel yet, you can subscribe to NPC on YouTube or subscribe to the MacStories channel for access to all six of our podcasts and more. Of course, all of our shows are available as audio-only podcasts too.
Thanks to everyone who has listened to NPC and our other new shows these past few months. It means a lot to us. Our ongoing experiments with YouTube are a direct result of the enthusiasm for the shows and something we plan to do more of in the coming months.
I’ve used Federico’s Apple Frames shortcut to add device frames to screenshots for years. It’s a great way to quickly process multiple screenshots and upload them to the MacStories CDN with minimal effort. But as great as Shortcuts is for simplifying this sort of task, there are advantages to using a native app instead.
Shareshot is an app for iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro that occupies a lot of the same feature space as Apple Frames, using Apple hardware to frame screenshots. However, the app simultaneously does more and a little less than Federico’s shortcut. That one missing feature means that I won’t be abandoning Apple Frames, but because of the things the app can do that Apple Frames can’t, Shareshot will be joining the shortcut as a utility I expect to use a lot.
Let’s dig into what makes Shareshot shine.
Today, Patreon alerted creators who use its platform that Patreon must begin using Apple’s In-App Purchases system in its iOS app or face the app’s removal from the store. According to Patreon:
This has two major consequences for creators:
- Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop.
- Any creator currently on first-of-the-month or per-creation billing plans will have to switch over to subscription billing to continue earning in the iOS app, because that’s the only billing type Apple’s in-app purchase system supports.
This change was first publicized by Patreon late last year, but the exact date of the 2024 transition was unknown at the time. The Patreon post linked above and a video by Patreon founder Jack Conte explain the situation in depth and walk through what the company is doing to help transition creators and their members to new billing systems.
The changes don’t affect supporters who purchase a membership before November 2024. Also, Patreon has created a tool for creators to pass Apple’s 30% fee on to their members who sign up using the iOS app, which it recommends doing. However, that’s bound to create some ill will with members, and it doesn’t solve the fact that certain kinds of billing like ‘per creation’ charges aren’t available as part of Apple’s payment system, meaning that many creators will need to change their financial arrangements with their members.
It’s a real shame to see this. On the one hand, I’ve always wondered why Patreon was able to use its own billing system. Apparently, so was Patreon. On the other hand, though, Apple allowed Patreon to do its own thing for years. Patreon and creators built businesses that don’t fit neatly into Apple’s payment system, so it doesn’t strike me as fair that now, they have to find a way to fit that square peg into a round hole.
I wish this were an isolated thing, but it isn’t. Apple’s caring-for-creators engine seems to have run out of gas.
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Sigmund and Devon preview Apple Intelligence, highlight new Apple Original heist flick The Instigators, discuss improvements to Continuity Camera in the tvOS 18 beta, and recap Land of Women.
Chris is absent for mysterious reasons, Niléane finds clever ways to watch the Olympics, and Matt explores his podcast app feelings.
This week, Federico returns to discuss the animal kingdom and share our E-ink device hot takes, along with a movie pick.
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
This week, I am joined by Jonathan to preview watchOS 11, which is one of the most feature packed OSes being updated this fall.
On AppStories+, John reports on how his travel tech setup fared.
This week, Robb is this snackplier this week, and I had a sour patch kids situation, and we both discuss Samsung’s renaming of a train station.
One of my greatest frustrations with read-later apps is how hard most make it to get your data out on your terms. Few allow you to export links using Shortcuts or some other system, and even fewer offer to do the same with highlights – until now. With version 2.0, GoodLinks adds highlighting and note-taking combined with excellent Shortcuts support, giving users full access and flexibility to incorporate saved URLs, highlights, and notes into their workflows however they want.
Thanks to Obsidian’s deep catalog of plugins from third-party developers, it’s been possible to import highlights from read-later apps like Readwise Reader and Amazon’s Kindle app for some time. Those are good solutions when I’m working in Obsidian, but both I and our readers use lots of different apps. That’s why I was so glad to see GoodLinks (available for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac) get this major 2.0 revision that transforms it from a place to save links and articles to a more well-rounded research tool, thanks to highlighting and notes.
Yesterday, Federal District Judge Amit Mehta issued a ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google in favor of the government. Judge Mehta didn’t mince words:
Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
The Judge further explained his ruling:
Specifically, the court holds that (1) there are relevant product markets for general search services and general search text ads; (2) Google has monopoly power in those markets; (3) Google’s distribution agreements are exclusive and have anticompetitive effects; and (4) Google has not offered valid procompetitive justifications for those agreements. Importantly, the court also finds that Google has exercised its monopoly power by charging supracompetitive prices for general search text ads. That conduct has allowed Google to earn monopoly profits.
It’s a long opinion, coming in at nearly 300 pages, but the upshot of why Judge Mehta ruled the way he did is summed up nicely near the beginning of the tome:
But Google also has a major, largely unseen advantage over its rivals: default distribution. Most users access a general search engine through a browser (like Apple’s Safari) or a search widget that comes preloaded on a mobile device. Those search access points are preset with a “default” search engine. The default is extremely valuable real estate. Because many users simply stick to searching with the default, Google receives billions of queries every day through those access points. Google derives extraordinary volumes of user data from such searches. It then uses that information to improve search quality. Google so values such data that, absent a user-initiated change, it stores 18 months-worth of a user’s search history and activity.
If you’re interested in how web search works and the business deals that drive it, the opinion is a great primer. Plus, although the details already dribbled out over the course of the 10-week trial, there are lots of interesting bits of information buried in there for anyone interested in Apple’s search deal with Google.
The Dynamic Island has been one of my favorite software additions to the iPhone since it was introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro lineup. The feature is a fun blend of hardware and software that turns the new pill-shaped TrueDepth camera array into a status bar that can collapse and expand to display media controls, Live Activities, and more.
While Live Activities are now also available on iPadOS, neither the iPad nor the Mac have gotten a Dynamic Island following their latest hardware and software revisions. I would argue that the latest generations of Apple silicon MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are pretty good candidates for a Dynamic Island. Both lineups feature a notched screen that currently doesn’t serve any purpose apart from expanding the display to the top edges of the laptop’s aluminum case and limiting the amount of space available for Mac menu bar apps.
Today, I’m taking a look at two Mac apps that add functionality to the notch to make it more Dynamic Island-like. Both have made me realize that, while not absolutely essential, the Dynamic Island definitely has a place on the Mac.
