It helps you take regular breaks from your Mac to rest your eyes, without breaking your flow.
This week, on Next Portable Console, a new AYN Thor launcher is in the news, Valve beta tests Big Art Mode, spruceOS gets an update, and the guys rank the many Genki Grips for the Switch 2.
Then on NPC XL for Patreon members, Federico reveals a project he’s been working, and John explores the relationship between aspect ratios, chipsets, and OSes.
Also available on YouTube here.
This week on AppStories, John interviews Federico about his review of the M5 Ultra Mac Studio and it local AI capabilities.
On AppStories+, Federico takes listeners behind the scenes on how he tested the M5 Ultra Mac Studio.
Also available on YouTube here.
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For the past few days, I’ve been testing the (currently) top-of-the-line M5 Ultra Mac Studio with 256 GB of RAM.
I’ll cut to the chase: the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is a dream machine for local AI agents. This computer makes it possible to run personal assistants powered by local models with great performance and no additional cloud costs. If you’ve been skeptical of testing OpenClaw or Hermes Agent with local models because they’d never be even remotely near the intelligence and speed of cloud ones, this Mac will change your mind about that.
Since last Thursday, I’ve been comparing this Mac Studio to its predecessor, the M3 Ultra with 512 GB of RAM, as well as my own desktop gaming PC with an RTX 5090 inside. For its size, price, thermal performance – not to mention Apple’s approach to unified memory – the M5 Ultra Mac Studio has fundamentally changed how I think about models running locally and what they can enable now. A 5090, of course, still has an edge over the M5 Ultra thanks to its higher memory bandwidth. But considering the sheer size of my PC build, as well as its heat and noise, I would prefer an M5 Ultra Mac Studio any day. It also happens to be a Mac, with an operating system that looks nice and doesn’t suck, plus a vibrant app ecosystem. (Windows fans, I’m sorry, but Microsoft software will never get my sympathy.)
As I’ll explore in this article, running the latest Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model on the M5 Ultra Mac Studio has been so nice and fast, I’ve made it my default in both Open Minis for iOS and Hermes Agent. That’s right: the personal assistants I use the most – more than Siri AI, in fact – are now entirely powered by a model running locally on a Mac Studio. Furthermore, thanks to the M5 Ultra’s faster GPU and higher memory bandwidth, these agents start responding more quickly, stay fast at larger context windows, and can run long, multi-turn loops without slowing to a crawl as the session grows. Because of this, I’ve also been using local models in the Codex app on my Mac – either as main threads or subagents orchestrated by GPT-6 Astra – and I’ve had a great experience doing so.
I should note upfront that I’m not an AI developer by trade: I do not train or fine-tune models. I’m a tinkerer at heart, and I’ve been playing around with local AI models for over a year at this point. This summer, I went all-in on local AI usage for a big project I was working on, which I will explain in the following section.
My goal with this article is to provide you with a mix of two things: numbers and visualizations based on the (many) tests I’ve run over the course of four days, and an explanation of my practical use cases for local AI applied to my workflow and how I get things done for MacStories.
Let’s dive in.
This week on MacStories Unwind, John and Federico have new Apple Watches, John wonders where Shortcuts is heading, Federico has a prediction, and they both share an update on the TV and games they’re enjoying.
Also available on YouTube here.
20 Twenty Shortcuts Built with the New iOS 27 Shortcuts Actions As I promised in my iOS 27 review, I’m sharing a set of 20 shortcuts designed specifically for iOS 27’s updated Shortcuts app and its new actions and automation triggers. In these exclusive shortcuts for Club members, I’ve tried to run the gamut of new possibilities offered in Shortcuts: from self-contained clipboard managers and read-later...
This week Federico shares thoughts from his review of iOS and iPadOS 27. Then in the AppStories+ post-show, he explains how he used agents to support the production of the review and Club MacStories extras.
Also available on YouTube here.
We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.
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After years of relentless building, it’s good to see Apple sweat the details again.
In the 11 years I’ve been writing annual iOS and iPadOS reviews every summer, I don’t think I’ve ever struggled to find an “angle” for my story as much as I did this year. The reason was twofold: I wasn’t particularly enamored with Siri AI and Apple’s belated chatbot efforts; and, as I realized during the summer, it can be challenging to write about an OS update that is largely focused on performance improvements and refinements.
“Everyone wants a so-called Snow Leopard year until it actually happens,” I thought to myself on several occasions over the past few months. Think about it: on paper, we all love a good ol’ basket of bug fixes that just make our phones better without changing much about the overall design and experience of iOS. It’s a commendable effort, and there’s no denying that iOS 27 is the snappiest (insert meme here), most stable version of iOS I’ve ever tested – and it has been since the first developer beta. In practice, though, it turns out that considering a major iOS update merely through the lens of improvements and fixes can be…a little boring.
So I’ve been sitting on this review for a while. I let it simmer. Then, a month ago, as I was sunbathing with my girlfriend Silvia down south in beautiful Vieste, Puglia, it hit me: iOS 27 is a geographically ambiguous update. Stay with me here. Depending on where you are in the world, this update can either be a little boring or pretty exciting.
My (Many) Questions About the iPhone Duo As I wrote earlier this week on MacStories, I’ve been eagerly anticipating an Apple foldable device for years, and I’m incredibly excited about the iPhone Duo based on what Apple has shown so far. I’ve perused first impressions and hands-on videos over the past few days, and it sure looks like Apple took its time...
Apple’s iPhone lineup is taking a different shape this year.
At today’s Surprise and Shine event, the company introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max alongside the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone. The Pro models build on the familiar design introduced last year, while the Duo marks the debut of an iPhone with a brand new form factor that combines a smaller, outer display with a larger, almost iPad mini-like internal display.
As a longtime iPad user who’s long been fascinated by foldables (and I’ve tried some over the years, too), I’ve been eagerly anticipating Apple’s debut in this space. Based on what we’ve seen today, it looks like Apple was able to deliver on the promise of a new iPhone category that combines the best of iOS with concepts borrowed from iPadOS, turning the iPhone into a versatile pocket computer that epitomizes Apple CEO John Ternus’ concept of the “personal hub”.
As we’ll see in this article, while the iPhone 18 Pro’s story largely revolves around the camera (unsurprisingly) and improved performance (some of the A20 Pro’s numbers are, in fact, a surprise merely a year after the A19 Pro), the iPhone Duo marks a new beginning for iOS, which now supports features that never existed on the platform before, as well as a series of interactions that Apple is exploring for the first time.
Let’s dive in.
John
