MacStories Team

3462 posts on MacStories since July 2011

Articles by the MacStories team. Founded by Federico Viticci in April 2009, MacStories attracts millions of readers every month thanks to in-depth, personal, and informed coverage that offers a balanced mix of Apple news, app reviews, and opinion.

This Week's Sponsor:

LookAway

It helps you take regular breaks from your Mac to rest your eyes, without breaking your flow.


Quill: Messaging to Make Your Team Better [Sponsor]

Quill is the messaging app and service that puts you, your time, and your focus first so you and your team can work together better.

With Quill, you’re in control of what messages you see and how much you see. That helps you stay focused and on task without constantly being interrupted. At the same time, though, Quill makes it easier than ever to get involved in the conversations and decisions that need your input.

Quill accomplishes all this by focusing conversations around threads instead of channels. You don’t need to follow a channel to be part of a thread. You can join one simply by starting a thread or being mentioned in one. It’s a simple, elegant solution that keeps conversations from getting mixed and muddled together. You can also decline to follow threads in the channels you do follow to cut down on the noise.

Push notifications are off by default for all channels and threads. Instead, events show up in the Activity Feed. Get caught up whenever works best for you instead of being interrupted and distracted. Of course, when something is truly urgent, you can send a priority mention, and the recipient is sent a push notification immediately.

When you see a thread you want to follow in the Activity Feed, you can follow it right then and there. You can also retroactively create a thread, split one thread into two, quote messages, move direct messages to public channels, and a whole lot more. Quill’s unique approach and features make it perfect for individual productivity while also facilitating remote collaboration among distributed teams.

To learn more and try Quill for free, visit quill.chat today. Messaging has never been more easy and natural.

Our thanks to Quill for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Previously, On MacStories

Apple to Allow Reader Apps to Link to Account Management Pages on the Web in Early 2022 Reminders’ Smart Lists Put Unprecedented Control in the Hands of Users Building Calliope: A Technical Journey Through MacStories’ Big Software Project Relay FM’s Third Annual Fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Is Underway...


Club Perks

Tempo Exclusively for Club MacStories members, we have 20 copies of Tempo, the workout log for runners, walkers and hikers, which was recently updated with the ability to set goals to help motivate you and maintain a consistent training routine. Enter your email address using the button below by Noon, Eastern US time on Wednesday,...


Up Next On MacStories’ Podcasts

Next week on AppStories, Federico and John look at Reminders’ new Tag Browser and Smart Lists feature, Notes’ Smart Folders, and consider the growing trend of user customization in Apple’s iOS and iPadOS apps. This week on MacStories Unwind, Alex joins John to talk about John’s feature story on Reminders, Alex’s deep dive...


Reader Setup: Rod Christiansen

Twitter: @RodChristiansen. Tech. Marketing. Systems. Biking. Smoothies. Running Resilient Consulting. Editor’s Note: When Rod shared his desk setup in the #share-your-setup channel of the Club MacStories+ Discord, we knew immediately that we wanted to spotlight it here for everyone to enjoy. My desk setup since the 24” M1 iMac has been my pride and joy....


In This Issue

The Clock, Federico shares a shortcut to split PDFs and make images from specific PDF pages, Club member Rod Christiansen shares his desk setup, highlights from the Club MacStories+ Discord, plus the usual Links, App Debuts, a recap of MacStories articles, and a preview of upcoming MacStories podcast episodes....


AV Club: Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

The Club MacStories+ Discord community has picked the book ‘Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life’ by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles as the first AV Club selection. We have tentatively set a first special AV Club Town Hall to be held live on Monday, September 20th at 10 PM CEST. Date...


In This Issue

This month, Federico shares an excerpt from his upcoming iOS and iPadOS 15 review about how he’s using Quick Note, and John explains the barebones Obsidian task management system he used in the days leading up to last week’s Club and AppStories announcements....


Tinderbox 9: The Tool For Notes. Visualize, Analyze, and Share Your Ideas [Sponsor]

Tinderbox is a powerful Mac app that stores and organizes your notes, plans, and ideas, bringing order and insight to the vast amounts of information collected when you’re working on a big project. Whether that’s writing a book, creating course materials, planning a wedding, or just managing your day-to-day life, Tinderbox helps impose structure on your data to keep you organized and productive.

And now with Tinderbox 9, the app offers over 150 new features including a flexible command bar, smarter artificial intelligence, a built-in gallery for saving views, improved visualizations of your data, and a whole lot more. Tinderbox has unparalleled power to analyze, visualize, and understand your notes. The app is a favorite of researchers, writers, investigators, product managers, and teachers. That’s because Tinderbox acts as a personal content assistant helping you discover connections and relationships between your notes that you might otherwise miss.

It’s easy to get started by dragging connections between notes or use Tinderbox’s wiki-like Ziplinks to link notes and ideas together. There are multiple ways to visualize your notes, too, including mind maps, outlines, word clouds, timelines, and dashboards. Each is a powerful way to gain new perspectives on your ideas.

Tinderbox also has agents and rules and employs powerful AI tools to automatically identify names and places, look up addresses, and even suggest links. Of course, the app integrates with DEVONthink, Scrivener, Bookends, Apple Notes, and more.

It has also never been easier to get started with Tinderbox. With more than 50 tutorial videos, ranging from “Creating your first notes” to “Organizing background research for architectural history” there’s a wealth of video content available. Tinderbox has a vibrant, active community, too, which includes regular meetups that offer hands-on problem-solving for new and experienced users alike. You can learn more on the Tinderbox forum or watch past meetups on Vimeo.

So, download Tinderbox 9 today to try it for free, for the best way to visualize, analyze, and share your ideas.

Our thanks to Tinderbox for sponsoring MacStories this week.