Club MacStories+ AV Club Town Hall, Glass Onion
AppStories, Episode 317 – Artificial Intelligence and Apps (Part 2)→
This week on AppStories, we conclude our mini-series on artificial intelligence with a conversation about the apps we’ve used that include AI features.
Sponsored by:
- Things – Now with Deep Shortcuts Integration
- Issuu – Get started with Issuu today for FREE or sign up for an annual premium account and get 50% off
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On AppStories+, Federico shares his KNX home automation setup.
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Last Week, on Club MacStories: HomeKit Apps, Turning Twitter Searches into RSS Feeds, a Sofa Giveaway, and MacStories Unplugged
Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings:
MacStories Weekly: Issue 356
- Apps to make controlling HomeKit devices easier
- A Sofa giveaway
- Using Twitter advanced search with Inoreader to create RSS feeds of specific users
- A shortcut for adding temperature sensor data to your Mac’s menu bar
- A brand-new episode of our Club podcast, MacStories Unplugged featuring HomeKit, the PSVR 2, HDMI upscalers, and more.
- Plus:
- App Debuts
- Highlights from the Club MacStories+ Discord
- Interesting links from around the web
- A sneak peek at what’s next on MacStories’ podcasts
- and more
Up Next
Tomorrow at 11:30 am Eastern US time, we’ll be hosting a live audio Town Hall in the Club MacStories+ Discord community to discuss the movie, Glass Onion. If you can’t join us live, you can catch up later with the podcast version of the event.
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Our thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring MacStories this week.
Artificial Intelligence and Apps (Part 2)
Federico
John
AppStories Episode 317 - Artificial Intelligence and Apps (Part 2)
0:00
45:32
45:32
This week, Federico and John conclude their mini-series on artificial intelligence with a conversation about the apps they’ve used that include AI features.
This episode is sponsored by:
- Things – Now with Deep Shortcuts Integration
- Issuu – Get started with Issuu today for FREE or sign up for an annual premium account and get 50% off
Links and Show Notes
Apps and AI
- Notion AI
- Readwide Reader’s Ghostreader
- Ice Cubes
- Using ChatGPT to Help Write SwiftUI Code in Streaks
- Playlist AI
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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MacStories Weekly: Issue 356
This week, in addition to the usual links, app debuts, and recap of MacStories' articles and podcasts:
- HomeKit Apps for Easy Access to Scenes and Devices, by John
- Adding the Average Indoor Temperature to My Mac's Menu Bar, by John
- Adding Tweets from Specific Users as Feeds in Inoreader Using Advanced Twitter Searches, by Federico
- Accessing the Battery Health on an iPad, What Happens When Your iPhone or iPad Updates, Mona Themes, and a GPT Shortcut, by John
- Perks, by MacStories Team
- HomeKit, PSVR 2, and HDMI Upscalers, by MacStories Team
MacStories Unwind: Metroid Prime Remastered and Shrinking
This week, Federico’s dream comes true with the release of Metroid Prime Remastered, and John has fallen hard for Shrinking, an Apple TV+ comedy from the makers of Ted Lasso.
Links and Show Notes
Federico’s Pick:
- Metroid Prime Remastered
- Trailer (2023)
- Original Metroid Prime trailer (2001)
- Triple Click Podcast, Triple Play: Metroid Prime Remastered
John’s Pick:
iOS and iPadOS 16.4 Betas Are Out with New Emoji, Loads of Safari Updates, Apple Podcasts Enhancements, Shortcuts Actions, and More
Apple has released betas of iOS and iPadOS 16.4 with new features and its version of new emoji approved by the Unicode Consortium last summer.
Some of the biggest changes coming to iOS and iPadOS later this spring will be to Safari. Many of the biggest user-facing features relate to web apps. Apple has supported saving web apps to the iPhone and iPad’s Home Screen since the earliest days of those devices, but today’s announcements put web apps on a more even footing with native apps than before.
According to a post by Brady Eidson and Jen Simmons on WebKit.org:
- Safari will support Web Push with iOS and iPadOS 16.4, which will work like other notifications on the system. Once a user authorizes a web app to send notifications, they will be sent and managed just like notifications from native apps.
- Users will be able to associate notifications from web apps with Focus modes, too, allowing or filtering them out based on the options picked when setting up a Focus mode.
- Web app icons on your Home Screen will gain the ability to display badges.
- Third-party browsers will be able to add web apps to the Home Screen for the first time from the share sheet.
- Multiple web apps can be added to the Home Screen and renamed by users allowing them to be part of different Focus filters.
There are many other interesting additions and changes to the WebKit framework for developers that they can check out on the WebKit site.
Last summer, the Unicode Consortium announced its draft candidates for new emoji. The betas of iOS and iPadOS 16.4 include Apple’s renderings of those emoji, a handful of which are in the image at the beginning of this story. Included among the new emoji are a shaking face, three new colors of hearts, left and right pushing hands in multiple skin tones, a moose, a donkey, a blackbird, a goose, ginger, a hair pick, a flute, peas, and more.
Apple Podcasts includes changes in the betas too. Channels are Apple Podcasts’ collections of shows from a single publisher. In iOS and iPadOS 16.4, Channels will be included in the library, allowing users to access the ones they follow and subscribe to more easily. Up Next is adding the ability to resume episodes, start saved episodes, and remove any you want to skip. Plus, episodes you’re listening to in the app that you don’t follow or subscribe to will live in Up Next until you finish or remove them. Users will also be able to access their Up Next and Recently Played queues from CarPlay, which should add a lot more flexibility than before. For more detail on these changes, which are also coming to the Mac, check out Apple’s post on the Apple Podcasts for Creators website.
There are a bunch of other smaller changes coming too:
- Messages is gaining Mastodon post previews.
- Focus modes will be able to turn the iPhone’s Always-On display on and off.
- Shortcuts will gain actions to turn Stage Manager and the Always-On display on and off.
- The ability to upgrade your HomeKit architecture has returned to the Home Settings of the Home app.
- Anyone with a paid developer account can now install the betas without first installing a developer profile on their iPhone or iPad.
- Wallet has gained a package tracking Home Screen widget.
Primate Labs Updates Geekbench on All Platforms→
Yesterday, Primate Labs released Geekbench 6, the suite of benchmarking tools for Apple and other vendors’ hardware. According to the company:
Geekbench tests have always been grounded in real-world use cases and use modern. With Geekbench 6, we’ve taken this to the next level by updating existing workloads and designing several new workloads, including workloads that:
- Blur backgrounds in video conferencing streams
- Filter and adjust images for social media sites
- Automatically remove unwanted objects from photos
- Detect and tag objects in photos using machine learning models
- Analyse, process, and convert text using scripting languages
In addition to updating benchmark workflows, Primate Labs says Geekbench includes modern file types and file sizes that reflect current computing tasks on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and other devices. The company also changed its multi-core benchmark to include tasks that span multiple cores to align the tests with how modern devices typically tackle a job.
My time with the new benchmark apps has been limited, but running them on my Mac and iPhone went smoothly. It’s worth noting that the apps are significantly larger, and it take longer than before due to the changes made to the underlying benchmark tests. However, it’s great to see Primate Labs working to make its tests reflect modern usage patterns and hardware.
Geekbench 6 for Mac is available as a direct download from Primate Labs. The iOS and iPadOS versions of the app are available on the App Store.