For all its flaws, I do enjoy using Apple Music. I’ve tested going back to Spotify before, but I find the UI too busy. With the addition of podcasts on Spotify, too, I’ve just found the Music app to be much more pleasant. Nevertheless, one thing I’m not a massive fan of is the way...
The End of Juno, Quick Notes in Drafts, and More Great Photos
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord: Some sad news for Vision Pro users: Christian Selig’s YouTube app Juno has been removed from the App Store, as linked to by Lachlan. Juan made a handy shortcut for creating a quick note, but in Drafts instead of Notes. Sid captured some fantastic travel photos on...
All the iPhones, Window Tiling, and New Features for Old HomePods
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord: Club Member bbech showed off a fantastic picture of a spiderweb in the #photography channel. John dropped a link to a handy developer tool for transpiling iOS code to Android into the #developers channel. Niléane posted a nice tip showing a hidden feature of the new window...
Home Screen: Jonathan
I’ve kept a relatively steady Home Screen and Lock Screen for a while now, but two things in the last week have pushed me to radically change how I interact with my iPhone. First, the iPhone 16 Pro with its new Camera Control arrived on my doorstep. (I had ordered it; it wasn’t...
Teaching Myself Blender and the Desire to Keep Learning
By now, many of you have probably seen my watchOS 11 review on the site. (And if you haven’t, please read it; I’m very needy.) You may have noticed the section header images of Apple Watches half sunken into a white surface and some shallow-focus Apple Watches containing the various screenshots for the piece. It’s...
New Apple Device Day, Controller Attachments, and More DMA
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord: Chris Z linked to a fun-looking controller attachment for the iPhone. If you use Working Copy, you would do well to check out this message from the developer, linked by Niléane. Folks shared their thoughts – and their setups – while reading Federico’s iOS and iPadOS 18...
watchOS 11: The MacStories Review
After years of steady, iterative updates to watchOS, last year, Apple dropped one of their most significant releases in years with watchOS 10. The design language was updated for all of their first-party apps, watch faces were upgraded to take full advantage of the larger screens on current models, and the Smart Stack was introduced to make glanceable information much easier to access. To make way for the Smart Stack, Apple also reassigned the Digital Crown and side button to new functions. These changes, along with the usual updates for health and fitness, made for a release that every Apple Watch user took note of.
The awkward recalibrating of muscle memory aside (I still very occasionally swipe up on my watch face to try and reveal the Control Center), it was an excellent update. My only worry coming out of it was that Apple would dust off their hands, reassign lots of their talent to something else, and go back to the usual, iterative, health- and fitness-focused updates with watchOS 11.
Thankfully, that was far from the case. Not only has Apple made some solid updates to the Apple Watch hardware line this year, but they’ve also enhanced and added to the software in ways that signal they are far from done.
The question is, are these changes going to enhance your daily use of Apple’s most personal device, or are they just, well, changes?
I’m excited to dive into this question in my first watchOS review for MacStories, but before I do, I want to thank Alex for his years of excellent watchOS coverage. I hope I can live up to the standards he set.
Right, let’s do this.
New Reeder, Glowtime Reactions, and a Wild Vision Pro Experiment
Among the highlights on the Club MacStories+ Discord: Members had plenty of thoughts on the new Reeder. There was a lot of reaction to the Glowtime event as everyone went through the announcements, discovered tidbits, and wondered whether to head down the non-Pro iPhone route. Members had a fun time making some wild guesses about...
My Low-Key Takeaways From ‘Glowtime’
Well, the glow has now faded from Apple’s Glowtime event, and we’ve all had time to process what happened – and didn’t happen – live on tape from Apple Park. For me, the most fascinating part of these events (as most of the raw details have usually leaked beforehand) is watching how Apple presents the...