This Week's Sponsor:

Turbulence Forecast

Know before you go. Get detailed turbulence forecasts for your exact route, now available 5 days in advance.

AppStories, Episode 293 – Let’s Fix the Music App

This week on AppStories, we roll up our sleeves to talk about the Music app and how it could be improved.

Sponsored by:

  • Trade – Save Big, Support Small Roasters. Get $30 off your first order.
  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple.
  • Sourcegraph – Universal Code Search. Move fast, even in big codebases. Try it now.
[Subscribe here.](https://staging.macstories.net/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, I’ve been playing with a special adapter to connect Nintendo Joy-Con to the iPad mini.

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.

Captionista: Simple, Flexible Video Subtitling for the iPhone and iPad

One of the tradeoffs I see a lot in the apps we cover is between simplicity and flexibility. Simplicity has its virtues, but often apps designed to make things as easy as possible for users end up being inflexible, resulting in cookie-cutter output. The flip side is that maximum flexibility can get out of hand fast, leading to a steep learning curve. Striking the right balance is hard, but the apps that do are always among my favorites because they work so well for a wide audience. That’s exactly how I feel about Captionista, an iPhone and iPad app for adding text to video. It’s simple to understand but includes the kind of depth that epitomizes what it means to do one thing well.

I don’t work with video a lot, and when I do, my needs are pretty simple. Often, I want to demonstrate something with a screen recording, which isn’t always easy to follow without some sort of explanation. That’s where Captionista comes in.

Read more

Relay FM Kicks Off Its Fourth Annual Fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Today, Relay FM, which was founded by our close friends Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley, kicked off its annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help combat childhood cancer. We’d love it if MacStories readers joined us in supporting this cause.

You can make a donation by visiting here.

If you’re a MacStories reader, there’s a good chance you have listened to one of the shows Federico co-hosts on the network or have another favorite, in which case you may have already contributed. However, if not, please consider donating.

St. Jude plays an important role in the fight against childhood cancer, treating kids, and doing research with other medical facilities around the world. Your donations help ensure that families aren’t charged for treatment, travel, housing, or meals, so their sole focus is helping their child get better.

Relay FM will be raising money for St. Jude through the end of September, with the highlight of the drive being Podcastathon, a multi-hour extravaganza featuring special guests from your favorite Relay FM shows that will be held September 16th and will be streamed on Relay FM’s Twitch channel.

This year, Relay FM has added the ability for others to start their own fundraising campaigns to help it achieve its goal. Anyone who participates and raises $1 or more will earn a special Relay FM challenge coin. Raise $250 or more, and you’ll receive a deskmat decorated with a sea of Myke and Stephen cartoon heads.

Thanks in advance for checking out Relay FM’s fundraiser for St. Jude and to all who donate.

Last Week, on Club MacStories: Watch Face Automation, Club-Only Wallpapers, a Giveaway, and an Anniversary Town Hall

Because Club MacStories now encompasses more than just newsletters, we’ve created a guide to the past week’s happenings along with a look at what’s coming up next:

First Anniversary of Club MacStories+ Town Hall

Last week we marked the first anniversary of the expansion of Club MacStories with a special audio event in the Club MacStories+ Discord community. Federico, Alex and I were joined by Relay FM co-founders Stephen Hackett and Myke Hurley to look back at the Club’s past year, hear what Relay FM is doing to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this year, and share the technology that has had the biggest impact on our lives in the past year.

MacStories Weekly: Issue 333

In issue 333 of MacStories Weekly:

Kosmik: For All Mindkind [Sponsor]

Kosmik is a dashboard for your creativity. Built for designers, researchers, and writers, Kosmik’s infinite canvas for the iPad and Mac lets you bring together notes, your writing, images, websites, PDFs, and more on a single canvas called a Universe, so you can stop switching between apps and focus on what you’re creating.

Everything in a Kosmik Universe is a card, and cards from one canvas can be incorporated into another, making the first canvas app with the sort of transclusion found in note-taking apps like Roam Research and Obsidian. It’s a powerful yet simple architecture that reduces friction, so you can focus on your work.

The flexibility of Kosmik’s canvas means you can take notes, browse the web, collect PDFs, images and other resources, and write all in one place. That encourages spatial thinking, making new connections and links between materials, and reduces distractions all at once in a single easy-to-use interface.

Kosmik is a completely native, peer-to-peer solution that respects your privacy. The app syncs your data between devices with no central server. Everything is encrypted end-to-end too.

You can publish your Kosmik canvases and cards to the web for sharing with colleagues, and even more collaboration features are coming later this year. Kosmik is available on the web now, too, making it accessible in more places and to more users than ever before.

If you’re looking for a new way to organize your thoughts, writing, and, really, anything else, sign up for Kosmik today. MacStories readers can enjoy a free year of access just by following this link. From ideation to production, Kosmik lets you think better and more freely to uncover insights and have some fun too!

Kosmik is available to download on the App Store and also offers great resources for new users like its Substack newsletter and Discord community.

Our thanks to Kosmik for sponsoring MacStories this week.

AppStories, Ep. 293 - 51 minutes

Let’s Fix the Music App

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 293 - Let’s Fix the Music App

0:00
50:35

↓

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John roll up their sleeves to talk about the Music app and how it could be improved.

This episode is sponsored by:

  • Trade – Save Big, Support Small Roasters. Get $30 off your first order.
  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple.
  • Sourcegraph – Universal Code Search. Move fast, even in big codebases. Try it now.

Let’s Fix the Music App

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

Subscribe here.

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.

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Instagram