Introducing NPC XL: More NPC, Every Week

Welcome to NPC XL.

Welcome to NPC XL.

Ever since Brendon, John, and I started our podcast about portable gaming – NPC: Next Portable Console – last year, I knew I’d found something special. It’s not just that the three of us are obsessed with handhelds and portable consoles; it’s that we work well together, and we’re having so much fun doing the show every two weeks. Who wouldn’t want to do even more with a project they love?

So today, we’re announcing some big changes to NPC:

  • We’re taking the regular show weekly, for free, for everyone!
  • We’re introducing NPC XL, a members-only version of NPC with extra content, available exclusively through our new Patreon for $5/month.
  • NPC is getting its own YouTube channel. With an expansion of the show, it made sense to let it grow beyond the MacStories YouTube channel.
  • NPC is joining the (awesome) TWG Discord server with a dedicated channel for community feedback and participation.

You can find our Patreon here, and we also dropped a surprise episode of NPC today announcing the expansion of the show:

Now, allow me to spend a few more words on why we’re doing this and what you can expect from becoming a patron of NPC XL.

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Apple Reveals New Magic Keyboard for iPad Air

Alongside today’s announcement of the M3 iPad Air and A16 iPad, Apple also revealed the all-new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air. The iPad Air line has traditionally inherited previous versions of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, so this Air-exclusive version is a first. It offers some of the new features that came to the iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard last year as well as an interesting set of tradeoffs when compared to the Pro model.

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Air adds a 14-key function row above the number keys for adjusting screen brightness, controlling volume and audio playback, and more. It also features a larger trackpad than the previous version for the iPad Air as well as the new hinge design introduced on the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro last year. As before, it connects to the iPad Air via the Smart Connector and includes a single USB-C port for passthrough charging.

It’s great to see these features from the iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard make their way to the iPad Air. At the same time, the Air version does include some compromises, most notably its omission of backlit keys. It also lacks the aluminum palm rest and trackpad haptic feedback found on the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, and it only comes in a single color option: white.

The iPad Air’s Magic Keyboard is marginally cheaper than the iPad Pro version (and the Magic Keyboard for last year’s iPad Air), costing $30 less at $269 for the 11-inch version and $319 for the 13-inch version. It’s compatible with a far wider range of devices, too. While the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro only works with the latest M4 models, the iPad Keyboard for iPad Air works with the new M3 models, last year’s M2 versions, and models going back to 2020.

This new keyboard offering for the iPad Air is a mixed bag, but I think it’s a net positive. Apple is taking a step towards simplifying the iPad accessory lineup by clearly separating iPad Air features from iPad Pro features. It will be an adjustment for Air owners who are used to getting all of the features of the previous-gen iPad Pro keyboard, but it sets a clear expectation for what Apple thinks the iPad Air experience should be.

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Air is available to preorder today with deliveries and in-store availability starting March 12.

Apple Announces the New iPad Air and Base Model iPad

The new iPad Air. Source: Apple.

The new iPad Air. Source: Apple.

Apple today introduced an update to the iPad Air featuring the company’s M3 chip and a new base model iPad with the A16 chip and more starting storage at 128GB.

According to Apple’s press release, the new Air is almost twice as fast as the model with an M1 chip and up to 3.5 times faster than the Air with an A14 Bionic chip. Apple elaborates:

The powerful M3 chip offers a number of improvements over M1 and previous-generation models. Featuring a more powerful 8-core CPU, M3 is up to 35 percent faster for multithreaded CPU workflows than iPad Air with M1. M3 features a 9-core GPU with up to 40 percent faster graphics performance over M1. M3 also brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time with support for dynamic caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing. For graphics-intensive rendering workflows, iPad Air with M3 offers up to 4x faster performance than iPad Air with M1, enabling more accurate lighting, reflections, shadows, and extremely realistic gaming experiences.

The new model is available in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray and in 11-inch and 13-inch screen sizes. The Air also has 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage options.

The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, and the 13-inch model starts at $799 with education customers getting $50 off those prices. The cellular models add $150 to the price tag. The iPad Air can be preordered today for delivery and in-store pickup on March 12th.

The base model iPad. Source: Apple.

The base model iPad. Source: Apple.

As for the base model iPad, it comes in blue, pink, yellow, and silver, starting at $349 for the 128GB model. Cellular costs an additional $150, and education customers get $20 off. The other storage options for the iPad update are 256GB and 512GB. Like the iPad Air, the base model iPad can be ordered today for delivery March 12th.

Gemini for iOS Gets Lock Screen Widgets, Control Center Integration, Basic Shortcuts Actions

Gemini for iOS.

Gemini for iOS.

When I last wrote about Gemini for iOS, I noted the app’s lackluster integration with several system features. But since – unlike others in the AI space – the team at Google is actually shipping new stuff on a weekly basis, I’m not too surprised to see that the latest version of Gemini for iOS has brought extensive support for widgets.

Specifically, Gemini for iOS now offers a collection of Lock Screen widgets that also appear as controls in iOS 18’s Control Center, and there are barebones Shortcuts actions to go along with them. In both the Lock Screen’s widget gallery and Control Center, you’ll find Gemini widgets to:

  • type a prompt,
  • Talk Live,
  • open the microphone (for dictation),
  • open the camera,
  • share an image (with a Photos picker), and
  • share a document (with a Files picker).

It’s nice to see these integrations with Photos and Files; notably, Gemini now also has a share extension that lets you add the same media types – plus URLs from webpages – to a prompt from anywhere on iOS.

The Shortcuts integration is a little less exciting since Google implemented old-school actions that do not support customizable parameters. Instead, Gemini only offers actions to open the app in three modes: type, dictate, or Talk Live. That’s disappointing, and I would have preferred to see the ability to pass text or images from Shortcuts directly to Gemini.

While today’s updates are welcome, Google still has plenty of work left to do on Apple’s platforms. For starters, they don’t have an iPad version of the Gemini app. There are no Home Screen widgets yet. And the Shortcuts integration, as we’ve seen, could go much deeper. Still, the inclusion of controls, basic Shortcuts actions, and a share extension goes a long way toward making Gemini easier to access on iOS – that is, until the entire assistant is integrated as an extension for Apple Intelligence.

The Latest from Comfort Zone, MacStories Unwind, and Magic Rays of Light

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

Chris has a first look at a new iPad stand, Matt is ready to drop out and have some fun, and a our Coldplay challenges pushes some of the gang to their limits.

MacStories Unwind

This week, Federico questions my character before discovering the joy of audiobooks, while I have been listening to more podcasts and have a question for listeners about which TV show he should watch next.

Magic Rays of Light

Devon and Jonathan highlight the premiere of German-language medical drama Berlin ER and go immersive arctic surfing on Apple Vision Pro.

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Hands-On with Raycast’s New AI Extensions

Yesterday, Raycast unveiled AI Extensions as yet another addition to the app’s ever-expanding feature set. As we’ve covered on MacStories before, Raycast is a powerful launcher and command bar for the Mac with a sizable ecosystem of built-in and third-party extensions. Extensions allow the launcher to integrate with apps installed on your Mac as well as a multitude of online services such as Google Calendar, translation tools like DeepL, and even handy development tools like Color Picker and Git Commands.

Starting this week, Raycast says it will be possible for any of these extensions to integrate with AI so they can be invoked with natural language directly from the app’s main command window and even chained together as part of complex workflows.

Here are my first impressions.

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How I’m Learning Japanese 14 Days In→

Brendon Bigley, my co-host on NPC: Next Portable Console, is getting married soon and planning a honeymoon to Japan. Before leaving, he and his partner decided to learn Japanese together. In doing so, Brendon has done a ton of research, quizzing friends who have learned the language, and trying a long list of resources, which he’s published on Wavelengths.

I love the idea that one of the biggest steps in learning Japanese is to learn how to learn Japanese:

So there are about one million different ways to go from here, and because every person is different it means you’ll need to try a few different things to get going. Many people say the first step of learning Japanese is to learn how to learn Japanese, and I’d say that’s almost correct. The first step, once again, is to learn hiragana and katakana… second is learning how to learn Japanese.

The reason things get so wild here is that people will say that you need to start learning kanji, vocab, and grammar simultaneously and it’s not not true. Learning even the most basic grammar helps make sense of sentence structure, which enables you to discern kanji and vocab words in the context of real written language. Conversely, the more kanji and vocab you learn the easier it will become to intuitively parse new grammatical rules as they’re introduced.

Learning how to learn something is a crucial step to any new and complicated undertaking but often gets overlooked. That’s because, as Brendon points out, everyone’s path to expertise in anything is different. It pays to listen to the advice of people you trust, as he did, but it’s just as important to listen to yourself and understand how you learn.

Brendon’s story has great advice for learning anything, but in particular, it’s packed with resources for learning Japanese. There are Mac and iOS apps, web apps, Android apps, textbooks, and more. As someone who has a kid traveling around Tokyo and Kyoto right now, I immediately sent him the link. It’s a great one to file away if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Maybe I’ll try to learn Japanese some day.”

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“Everyone Is Caught Up, Except for Apple”→

Good post by Parker Ortolani (who’s blogging more frequently now; I recommend subscribing to his blog) on the new (and surprisingly good looking?) Alexa+ and where Apple stands with Siri:

So here we are. Everyone is caught up, except for Apple. Siri may have a pretty glowing animation but it is not even remotely the same kind of personal assistant that these others are. Even the version of Siri shown at WWDC last year doesn’t appear to be quite as powerful as Alexa+. Who knows how good the app intents powered Siri will even be at the end of the day when it ships, after all according to reports it has been pushed back and looks like an increasingly difficult endeavor. I obviously want Siri to be great. It desperately needs improvement, not just to compete but to make using an iPhone an even better experience.

I continue to think that Apple has immense potential for Apple Intelligence and Siri if they get both to work right with their ecosystem. But at this point, I have to wonder if we’ll see GTA 6 before Siri gets any good.

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