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Fello AI: All-In-One AI Chat Client for macOS [Sponsor]

Fello AI is a native macOS app that unifies today’s top AI models into one streamlined chat client. Instead of juggling multiple subscriptions and clunky web tools, you can now access models like ChatGPT-4o, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0 Pro, Grok, LLaMA, or Perplexity all from a single interface.

Designed for professionals, students, and creatives, Fello AI simplifies everyday tasks such as coding, research, writing, and brainstorming. It can perform real-time web search to ensure that answers reflect the latest news and are up to date.

Fello AI is also a powerful tool for file analysis, letting you chat with up to 16 PDFs, documents, or images at once. Whether you’re summarizing reports, reviewing contracts, writing image captions or extracting key data, AI makes it effortless.

The app’s advanced interface includes a prompt library for saving frequently used commands, conversation pinning for quick access to important chats, and bookmarking to keep track of key insights—helping you stay organized and efficient.

Built natively for macOS, Fello AI delivers a fast, smooth experience that integrates seamlessly with your system. With features like drag-and-drop file uploads, keyboard shortcuts, and system-wide search, the app feels right at home in the Mac ecosystem.

Instead of paying hundreds of dollars per month to access multiple AI models separately, Fello AI brings them all together in one app for less than $10 per month. With a single subscription, you get unlimited messaging, file analysis, and access to all supported AI models—making it the smartest and most cost-effective way to use AI on macOS. Learn more about Fello AI.

Our thanks to Fello AI for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Lux’s Sebastiaan de With on the iPhone 16e’s Essential Camera Experience→

As I read Sebastiaan de With’s review of the iPhone 16e’s camera, I found myself chuckling when I got to this part:

You can speculate what the ‘e’ in ‘16e’ stands for, but in my head it stands for ‘essential’. Some things that I consider particularly essential to the iPhone are all there: fantastic build quality, an OLED screen, iOS and all its apps, and Face ID. It even has satellite connectivity. Some other things I also consider essential are not here: MagSafe is very missed, for instance, but also multiple cameras. It be [sic] reasonable to look at Apple’s Camera app, then, and see what comprises the ‘essential’ iPhone camera experience according to Apple.

What amused me was that I initially planned to call my iPhone 16e review the ‘e’ Is for Essential, but I settled on ‘elemental’ instead. Whether the ‘e’ in iPhone 16e stands for either of our guesses or neither really doesn’t matter. Like Sebastiaan, I find what Apple chose to include and exclude from the 16e fascinating.

When it comes to the iPhone 16e’s camera, there are differences compared to the iPhone 16 Pro, which is the focus of Sebastiaan’s review. The 16e supports fewer features than the Pro and the photos it takes don’t reproduce quite as much detail, especially in low-light conditions. There are other differences, too, so it’s worth comparing the review’s side-by-side comparison shots of the 16e to the 16 Pro.

Overall, though, I think it’s fair to say Sebastiaan came away impressed with the 16e’s camera, which has been my experience, too. So far, I’ve only used it to shoot video for our podcasts, and with good lighting, the results are excellent. Despite some differences, the iPhone 16e combined with the wealth of photo and video apps, like Lux’s Halide and Kino, make it a great way to enjoy the essential iPhone photography experience.

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Podcast Rewind: New Apple Hardware, Avoiding the Echo Chamber, and the latest Apple TV+ Shows

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

Matt and Chris have all the new Apple hardware, and Niléane takes the challenge to the next level.

MacStories Unwind

This week John is tricked by Daylight Savings, Federico and he reflect on how to avoid getting stuck in a creative echo chamber, share movie and music picks, along with a movie deal, and digress into the world of European cartoon theme songs before calling it a day.

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon highlight the debut of Apple Original drama Dope Thief, share their ideas for how Apple Intelligence could enhance the Apple TV experience, and recap the captivating first season of Prime Target.

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Getting Away from Your Desk with JSAUX’s FlipGo Pro Dual Display

JSAUX’s 16” FlipGo Pro Dual Portable Monitor is the sort of gadget that I expect most people will look at and either understand immediately or dismiss, which makes it the kind of hardware I love. I have a fascination with portable displays borne of too many hours sitting at a desk staring at the same screen. I love my desk setup, but an occasional change of scenery goes a long way toward improving my day. It clears the cobwebs, sparks creativity, and is just nice.

So when JSAUX offered to send me their 16” FlipGo Pro dual-screen portable display after CES, I took them up on it. I’ve tried other portable displays, a journey that began with the C-Force CF015 15.6” portable OLED display and more recently led me to try 15.6” 1080p and 17” touch-enabled 4K displays from espresso. Each has had its strengths and weaknesses, but all were roughly laptop-sized displays. There’s a place for that; however, I was intrigued by the idea of something that’s even bigger yet still portable.

That’s exactly what the FlipGo Pro is aiming for by taking two 16” IPS displays and joining them with a hinge. The result is a big, bright display that can adapt to a number of use cases. Yet, while the FlipGo Pro is portable, it’s still a lot of display that will make you think twice before throwing it in your bag. That isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s a factor worth examining more closely, along with the display’s full specs and the situations where it works best.

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Ted Lasso Renewed for a Fourth Season on Apple TV+

Apple has officialy renewed its hit comedy series Ted Lasso for a fourth season on Apple TV+ with series star and executive producer Jason Sudeikis returning. Sudeikis even offered a small hint of what viewers can expect:

As we all continue to live in a world where so many factors have conditioned us to “look before we leap,” in season four, the folks at AFC Richmond learn to LEAP BEFORE THEY LOOK, discovering that wherever they land, it’s exactly where they’re meant to be.

Sudeikis also appeared on the New Heights podcast today, mentioning that his character Ted will coach a women’s football team in the next season. This information was exclusively revealed on MacStories’ own Magic Rays of Light podcast in February.

Season four is currently being written. The creative team behind the show, including executive producers Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, is returning alongside new executive producer Jack Ruditt. The series, based on the preexisting format and characters from NBC Sports, won 13 Emmy awards over its first three seasons, including back-to-back wins for Outstanding Comedy Series.

Other details about season four, including its full cast and anticipated release date, are currently unknown. But for fans of Ted Lasso, this official renewal is an exciting progression after many months of rumors that the show would return. Sometimes, the hope doesn’t kill you.

Apple Says It Will Adopt New RCS Encryption Standard in a Future OS Update

Earlier today, the GSM Association approved new RCS specifications that enable end-to-end encryption when using RCS to send messages. According to a post by Tom Van Pelt, the GSMA’s Technical Director:

Most notably, the new specifications define how to apply MLS within the context of RCS. These procedures ensure that messages and other content such as files remain confidential and secure as they travel between clients. That means that RCS will be the first large-scale messaging service to support interoperable E2EE between client implementations from different providers. Together with other unique security features such as SIM-based authentication, E2EE will provide RCS users with the highest level of privacy and security for stronger protection from scams, fraud and other security and privacy threats.

Currently Google Messages supports end-to-end encryption over RCS when the messages are sent among Google Messages users but not, for example, between an iPhone and Android user. The GSMA’s new specifications are designed to permit that sort of cross-platform encryption for the first time.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, an unnamed Apple spokesperson said:

End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and now we are pleased to have helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile published by the GSMA. We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.

While it’s not clear to me from the announcements today whether OS updates will also be necessary on the Android end to implement end-to-end encryption, it’s good to see a standards body moving relatively quickly to ensure that privacy is available cross platform and that Apple is committed to adopting the new specifications.

The iPad’s “Sweet” Solution

In working with my iPad Pro over the past few months, I’ve realized something that might have seemed absurd just a few years ago: some of the best apps I’m using – the ones with truly desktop-class layouts and experiences – aren’t native iPad apps.

They’re web apps.

Before I continue and share some examples, let me clarify that this is not a story about the superiority of one way of building software over another. I’ll leave that argument to developers and technically inclined folks who know much more about programming and software stacks than I do.

Rather, the point I’m trying to make is that, due to a combination of cost-saving measures by tech companies, Apple’s App Store policies over the years, and the steady rise of a generation of young coders who are increasingly turning to the web to share their projects, some of the best, most efficient workflows I can access on iPadOS are available via web apps in a browser or a PWA.

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Where’s Swift Assist?→

Last June at WWDC, Apple announced Swift Assist, a way to generate Swift code using natural language prompts. However, as Tim Hardwick writes for MacRumors, Swift Assist hasn’t been heard from since then:

Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn’t announced that it’s been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it’s not even mentioned in the release notes.

Meanwhile, developers have moved on, adopting services like Cursor, which does much of what was promised with Swift Assist, if not more. A similar tool built specifically for Swift projects and Apple’s APIs would be a great addition to Xcode, but it’s been nine months, and developers haven’t heard anything more about Swift Assist. Apple owes them an update.

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Podcast Rewind: Tech Ultimatums, Samsung’s Wild Prototype Handheld, and Our Gaming Origin Stories

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, Federico and I share our self-imposed tech deadlines for the hardware and software they use.

This episode is sponsored by:

  • Memberful – Easy-to-Use Reliable Membership Software

NPC: Next Portable Console

Brendon, Federico, and I are back for another week of handheld news, including a tiny bit of Switch 2 news, an up and down week for Retroid, DS handhelds inch forward, Samsung wonders if thumbholes are the perfect complement to thumbsticks, and AYANEO decides thumbsticks aren’t worth the trouble. Plus, Brendon shares NextUI and the 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller.

NPC XL

This week, Federico, Brendon, and I take listeners on a tour of our handheld and console gaming histories.

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