Apple hasn’t spoken much at all about Sidecar since its initial release in 2019. For those who may have understandably forgotten what it even is: Sidecar is the name of the feature that allows iPads to act as external displays for Macs. It works both wired and wirelessly, and has lived most of its existence...
Behind the Scenes of Automation April
With Automation April wrapped up and the Shortcuts Contest winners chosen, it feels like the right time to take a look at the technology we built out for this month-long event. It won’t surprise Club members to know that our Calliope platform was behind the scenes here. If you read my last post on Calliope,...
Two Months Later: Iterating on Calliope
Launching the new Club MacStories was a major milestone for the MacStories team. We’d been working on Calliope full-time for nearly a year, plus thinking about and planning it for years prior. To have a successful launch after pouring ourselves into this project was an incredible experience. As with most software products though, launching was...
Building Calliope: A Technical Journey Through MacStories’ Big Software Project
Last week the MacStories team launched Project Calliope, an enormous new software project that we’ve been working on tirelessly for the last year. If you’ve been following along, you’ve heard us describe Calliope as a CMS; but from a software-engineering perspective, it’s actually a whole lot more. While we introduced Calliope as the foundation of our all-new Club MacStories and AppStories websites, we have much bigger plans for the new platform going forward. This is the foundation for the next generation of MacStories, from the website itself to many special projects in the future.
We’re extremely proud of what we’ve created here, and as the sole developer of Calliope, this post will be my deep dive into the more technical side of the project. Fair warning: this will be easier to follow if you’re a software developer (particularly a web or back-end developer), but I’ll be doing my best to give understandable explanations of the technologies involved. I also just want to talk about the journey we took to get here, the challenges we faced along the way, and the factors that drove us to this particular set of solutions.
Diagramming and Mind Mapping Apps
{.app-collection} [[alex]] Mind maps and diagrams are extremely helpful tools for organizing thoughts and ideas. Whether you’re planning your next project, preparing a presentation for work, or just brainstorming an idea, having a good mind mapping app on hand can be vital. The App Store is full of options for this use case, but to...
My Apple Watch Setup
[[alex]] After six years of reviewing watchOS, I’d like to think I have a decent feel for the Apple Watch. While the early days of the device felt like its potential was limitless, later years brought the realization that its true purpose was far more aligned with health and fitness tracking and brief interactions. The...
Clipboard Manager Apps
{.app-collection} [[alex]] Clipboard management is an essential utility on the Mac and has some interesting options on iOS and iPadOS as well. The main feature of a clipboard manager is to save your clipboard history: each time you copy something, it gets saved, then later you can recall your recently copied items even after you’ve...
Crossy Road
On November 20, 2014, I found myself a college sophomore desperately in need of a tool to take care of my number one priority: wasting time during lectures. There were other phone games, but I was bored of most of them. I needed something new. Then videogame studio Hipster Whale released Crossy Road. Today marks...
Home Screen: Alex Guyot
{.no-bio} My Home screen has weathered many extremes throughout the years. In the early days of iOS automation I used a serene background image with nothing but Launch Center Pro in the dock. A handful of times I’ve embarked on OCD-fueled vision quests in which only perfectly color-matched apps were allowed to be featured. I’ve...