John Voorhees

5429 posts on MacStories since November 2015

John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico. John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
@johnvoorhees@macstories.net
@johnvoorhees.macstories.net
voorhees@macstories.net

MacStories Unwind: Apple’s Music and MacBook Pro Event, a Great Safari Extension, and Yoink’s Clever Clipboard System

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Sponsored by: Due – I Made the Most Annoying App. And People Loved It.

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico continues his series on his Obsidan setup with a look at how he’s using templates
    • John on favorite moments from Monday’s event
    • A Mac widget tip
    • Lots of new apps

AppStories

Unwind

A Comprehensive Guide to 250+ of Apple Music’s New Mood and Activity Playlists

On Monday, Apple announced that it was expanding the integration between Siri and Apple Music. Zane Lowe, Apple Music’s co-head of Artist Relations and radio host, explained that the company’s team of music experts had created hundreds of playlists for moods and activities. Ask Siri to play a playlist for your dinner party, to help you relax, or for hiking and Lowe said Siri will start a playlist that fits the moment.

Apple also announced Apple Music Voice Plan, a $5/month tier for Apple Music that is operated using Siri. The new playlists are perfect for the new monthly plan, but they’re available to all Apple Music subscribers.

Apple's Zane Lowe introduced the company's new mood and activity playlists and Apple Music Voice Plan.

Apple’s Zane Lowe introduced the company’s new mood and activity playlists and Apple Music Voice Plan.

The playlists have begun showing up on Apple Music, so last night, Federico and I began searching the streaming service to see what’s new. What we found was over 250 playlists each designed to fit a mood or activity that use animated cover art with simple line drawings to set them apart from Apple’s other playlist. Although they were announced as Siri playlists during the event on Monday, anyone with an Apple Music subscription can view and play the new playlists in the Music app like any other playlist in the service’s collection.

Anyone with an Apple Music subscription can play the new mood and activity playlists in the Music app.

Anyone with an Apple Music subscription can play the new mood and activity playlists in the Music app.

You won’t find a directory of the new mood and activity playlists in the Music app, and there’s no filter that can be applied to see the entire collection, so we’ve complied a massive link list of all the playlists we have been able to find so far, organized into categories. Think of it as a sort of ultimate MacStories Unwind weekend pick.

To make it fast and easy to access Apple’s new playlists, Federico has also created a shortcut organized by the categories. You can grab the shortcut below or visit the MacStories Shortcuts Archive where you’ll find it along with hundreds of other shortcuts we’ve published over the years.

Apple Music Siri Playlists

View and open Apple Music’s new playlists without using Siri.

Get the shortcut here.

We’ll add to this list as we find new playlists, so if you find one that you don’t see here, get in touch with me or Federico on Twitter and we’ll add it to the list.

Happy

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Apple Announces 100+ Tech Talks for Developers

Apple announced today that it will be conducting over 100 live sessions and 1,500 hours of one-on-one office hours over the next eight weeks for developers. According to Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations:

Every single day, developers around the world are creating incredible apps and games for our platforms, and it’s our goal to provide them with every resource we can to help make the hard work they put in that much easier and more impactful. Our team is looking forward to connecting with even more developers around the world so we can better support the important work of this incredibly valued community, and listen to and learn from them.

The live sessions are being held online around the world from Bengaluru, Cupertino, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo, making them accessible from a wide range of time zones. Each session, which will be led by someone from Apple and followed by a Q&A session. Topics will include many subjects, including SwiftUI, App Clips, HealthKit, machine learning, AR, and accessibility. Office hours are a chance for developers to get one-on-one assistance with their apps in 30-minutes sessions.

Tech Talks 2021 are free and available to members of the Apple Developer Program and the Apple Developer Enterprise Program. To register, visit developer.apple.com/tech-talks.

AppStories, Episode 245 – Apple’s October Music and MacBook Pro Event→

This week on AppStories, we are joined by Alex Guyot live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community for a special episode recapping and breaking down everything announced by Apple at its latest online event, including the Apple Music, HomePod, and AirPods 3 announcements and the all-new MacBook Pros.

[Subscribe here.](https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, Federico considers ditching his iPad mini’s Smart Cover for a sleeve, and John provides an update on his macOS Monterey review.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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Apple’s October 2021 Event: All The Small Things

Yesterday, Apple covered a lot of ground quickly, and as usual, more details have emerged in the aftermath of the event. We’ve been combing apple.com, Twitter, and other sources to learn more about the new MacBook Pros, AirPods 3 and more, which we’ve collected below:

MacBook Pro

AirPods 3

Everything Else

Apple’s October 18, 2021 Keynote: By the Numbers

As usual, Apple sprinkled facts, figures, and statistics throughout the keynote today. Here are highlights of some of those metrics from the event, which was held online from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

AirPods 3

  • Features the H1 chip
  • IPX4 water resistance
  • Up to 6 hours of listening time (30 hours with the case) or 4 hours of talk time (20 hours with the case) on 1 charge
  • 5 minutes in the case provides 1 hour of charge

M1 Pro and M1 Max

  • The M1 Pro has up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the M1 Max has 400GB/s
  • The M1 Pro supports up to 32GB of unified memory and has a 256-bit LPDDR5 interface
  • The M1 Max supports up to 64GB of unified memory and has a 512-bit LPDDR5 interface
  • The CPUs of the M1 Pro and M1 Max are built with a 5-nanometer process and have 8 high-performance cores with a 192KB instruction cache, 128KB data cache, 24MB L2 cache, and and 2 high-efficiency cores with a 128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, and 4MB L2 cache
  • The CPU of the M1 Pro and M1 Max is 70% faster than the M1
  • There are 33.7 billion transistors on the M1 Pro and 57 billion on the M1 Max CPUs
  • The M1 Pro’s GPU has 16 cores with 2048 execution units, up to 49,512 concurrent threads, 5.2 teraflops, 164 gigatexels/second, and 82 gigapixels/second
  • The M1 Max’s GPU is 4x faster than the M1 and has 32 cores with 4096 execution units, up to 98,304 concurrent threads, 10.4 teraflops, 327 gigatexels/second, and 164 gigapixels/second
  • There are 10,000 Universal apps available on the App Store

MacBook Pro

  • The 16” MacBook Pro has a screen that is 16.2” diagonally, weighs 4.7 pounds, and is 16.8 mm thick
  • The 14” MacBook Pro has a screen that is 14.2” diagonally, weighs 3.5 pounds, and is 15.5 mm thick
  • The MacBook Pros have 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 SDXC card slot, and 1 3.5 mm headphone jack
  • The bezel around the MacBook Pro’s screen is 3.5 mm thin, which is 24% thinner on the sides and 60% thinner on the top
  • The 16” MacBook Pro has 7.7 million pixels and the 14” MacBook Pro has 5.9 million
  • Both screens refresh at up to 120Hz, have a sustained brightness of 1,000 nits, and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits
  • The screen of both models has a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio and can display 1 billion colors
  • The FaceTime HD camera has a 1080p resolution, 4-element lens, and ƒ/2.0 aperture that enables a 2x improvement in low-light performance
  • The new MacBook Pros have 3 microphones with a 60% lower noise floor and 6 speakers with 80% more bass
  • The MacBook Pro’s SSDs write at up to 7.4GB/s and are available in up to 8TB configurations
  • The 14” MacBook Pro gets 17 hours of video playback, which is 7 hours more than before or 11 hours of web browsing on a full battery charge, while the 16” model gets 21 hours of video playback for an improvement of 10 hours or up to 14 hours of web browsing
  • The batteries can be fast charged to 50% in 30 minutes

You can follow all of our October Apple event coverage through our October 2021 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.