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.

Clean Up Your Inbox Today (and Keep It That Way Forever) with SaneBox [Sponsor]

What if you had someone who would sort through your email and find only the important messages? That is exactly what SaneBox does. After you set it up, SaneBox leaves your important messages in your inbox and moves the rest to a SaneLater folder for reviewing later. That initial inbox purge is powerful because it reduces your inbox to a manageable number of messages. With additional training to tell SaneBox what’s important to you, it only gets better at dealing with the daily deluge of messages.

There’s much more to SaneBox than shuffling unimportant messages into a designated folder, though. If there’s something you never want to see ever again, send it to the SaneBlackHole, which is much easier than unsubscribing to unwanted messages.

You can also set up SaneReminders by sending messages to an address that sends a reminder to you at a later date if the recipient of your message hasn’t responded after a certain amount of time. Or forward messages to SaneReminders to have it pop back into your inbox at a later date when you are ready to deal with it.

SaneBox works on top of your existing email setup. There’s no app to download or new email account to set up. It all works server-side so you can use any email client you want.

Sign up today for a free 14-day SaneBox trial to take back control of your email. MacStories readers can receive a special $25 credit automatically by using this link to sign up.

Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.


iOS 11’s Impact on Third-Party Apps

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 11 - iOS 11’s Impact on Third-Party Apps

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Federico and John consider the effect on third-party apps of PDFKit, the system Markup extension, changes to Notes, and password AutoFill for apps.

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The Wall Street Journal’s Mini-Documentary on the Creation of the iPhone

The Wall Street Journal released a short documentary called Behind the Glass to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone’s release on June 29, 2007. The almost ten-minute long documentary cuts between interviews with Greg Christie, former Vice President of Human Interface, Scott Forstall, former Vice President for the iPhone Operating System, and Tony Fadell, former Senior Vice President of the iPod division. The three describe the struggle over whether to base the iPhone’s hardware on a multi-touch interface versus the iPod and the ensuing 2.5-year effort to create the first iPhone.

The interviews are short but recount several anecdotes, including the attempts to find a way to adapt the iPod’s interface to work as a phone and the predictive software used to make the touch keyboard accurate. Even ten years later, the retelling of the stories behind the iPhone’s birth is captivating.

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Game Day: Newton

Casual puzzle games that you can pick up and play for a few minutes are a great way to kill time when you’re bored. Since the earliest days of the App Store,1 games have taken advantage of the iPhone’s sensors to create puzzles with realistic physics. Newton, by Binary Games, is a fun and challenging addition to the genre with unique mechanics and gameplay that I’ve enjoyed playing this week.

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App Debuts

Groovebox This app is a lot of fun whether or not you have any experience mixing music. Tracks are categorized into Drumbox, Retrobass, and Poly-8. Pick a few from the hundreds available then tweak to your heart’s content. The app is free, but some of the controls are only available via In-App Purchase. In...


Q&A

Question: I use RescueTime on my Mac to track application usage and measure my productive vs. unproductive time. I upgraded my old iPad 3 to the 10.5” iPad Pro and have been using it a lot for work this week. I absolutely love it, but I’m missing my regular reports on how I’m spending my...


Album

Smileys in Hats If you’re tired of the standard smilies, check out these. Beautifully rendered in 3D, there are some great hats and glasses decorating this pack. Veggie Emojis Twenty smiling veggies and a solid set of speech bubbles with messages that will come in handy with the veggie stickers or in combination with...


AppStories, Episode 10 – iOS 11’s All-New App Store

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we take a look at the upcoming changes to the App Store announced at WWDC, the challenges Apple will face producing original content about apps, and consider what it will mean for users and developers.

Sponsored by:

  • Zapier - Connect your apps and automate your workflows.
  • WaterMinder – Track your daily water intake.

https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/episodes/10/embed/

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Sega Forever Brings Sonic and Other Classics to iOS

Sega has been out of the hardware business for a long time, but still, has some of the most beloved video game franchises around. Today, Sega began releasing classic Sega games under the banner Sega Forever.

The first titles released are Sonic the Hedgehog, which was already available on iOS, Comix Zone, Altered Beast, Kid Chameleon, and Phantasy Star II. The games, which are standalone downloads, are free and include ads that can be removed with a $1.99 In-App Purchase. The Sega Forever website indicates that the next title in line for release is Virtua Tennis Challenge, which is currently $4.99 on the App Store and hasn’t been updated since 2013. For iMessage sticker fans, each game also includes a handful of animated stickers of game art.

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