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Last Week, on Club MacStories: A Special Apple Event Town Hall, ShareMenu 2.0, a Typefully Shortcut, and a Home Office with a View

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

Town Hall: Apple’s Peek Performance Event

  • Last week, Federico, John, and Alex were joined by MacStories Discord moderator Lachlan Campbell for a live Town Hall event in the Club MacStories+ Discord community to recap and share first impressions of Apple’s Peek Performance keynote, which introduced a new iPhone SE, iPad Air, Mac Studio, and the Studio Display.
  • The Town Hall was recorded and published as part of the Club MacStories+ Town Hall podcast feed, which members can access from the Club podcasts page.

MacStories Weekly: Issue 311

  • ShareMenu 2.0: an update to Federico’s ShareMenu shortcut that’s designed to replicate the behavior of the old ‘Run Workflow’ extension. Version 2.0 includes improved macOS integration and support for more file types.
  • Draft Tweet: A shortcut that John created for sharing articles using Typefully, a web app for scheduling tweets and managing multiple Twitter accounts.
  • Club member Dan Stucke’s home office setup that has a beautiful view of the English countryside.
  • Plus:

Visit plus.club to learn more about Club MacStories.

Textastic: Code Editor and SFTP Client for iPad and iPhone [Sponsor]

Textastic is the most comprehensive and versatile text and code editor available for iPad and iPhone.

This starts with syntax highlighting support for more than 80 programming and markup languages: Textastic handles highlighting for C, C++, Swift, Objective-C, Rust, Go, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua, Markdown, LaTeX, YAML, JSON, and many more. If your favorite language is not yet included in the extensive list, you can add your own syntax definitions and themes compatible with Sublime Text and TextMate.

With clients for SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, and Google Drive, as well as the integrated SSH terminal, however, Textastic goes well beyond the functionality of a traditional text editor. Since Textastic supports tabs, you can have multiple files and SSH terminals open at the same time, and, on iPad, in multiple windows side by side.

Whether you want to create web pages and check them with the built-in web preview, edit configuration files on your server, or perform code reviews, Textastic is the perfect tool for your mobile workflow.

Customizable keyboard shortcuts, wide-ranging configuration options, support for Git repositories using the Git client Working Copy, and robust find and replace, turn this app into the most powerful code editor for iPad you’ll find.

The long list of features also includes support for iCloud Drive, the Files app, drag and drop, trackpad and mouse, printing, Split View, multiwindowing, and a whole lot more.

The app is, of course, regularly updated and maintained as well. With the recently released version 9.8, for example, Textastic got the ability to search the contents of files in a folder and its subfolders for text or regular expressions, allowing you to stay on top of large projects and quickly find what you’re looking for.

And if you ever get stuck, the in-depth manual, which describes every part of the app in detail and is illustrated with nearly 150 screenshots, will help you out.

To learn more about Textastic and what it can do for your iPad and iPhone code editing needs, visit textasticapp.com, and download a copy today.

Our thanks to Textastic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

AppStories, Ep. 264 - 44 minutes

Apple Event Impressions: The New iPad Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 264 - Apple Event Impressions: The New iPad Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John cover their first impressions of the iPad Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display, including Federico’s thoughts on where the Air fits into the iPad lineup and John’s take on what to keep in mind when customizing a Mac Studio.

This episode is sponsored by:

  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple
  • Microsoft Lists – A Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize work.
  • New Relic – Monitor, debug, and improve your entire stack. Sign up now and get 100GB of data free, forever - no credit card required.

Apple Event Impressions: The New iPad Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display

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MacStories Unwind: A.P. Bio and House by Shout Out Louds

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico updates us on the latest software changes to the Xbox Series X|S and recommends A.P. Bio, a TV comedy from Peacock and John discovers his favorite album of 2022 so far: House by Shout Out Louds.

Follow-Up

Federico’s Pick:

John’s Pick:

Logger Is the Missing Console for Shortcuts Power Users

Logger for Shortcuts.

Logger for Shortcuts.

Indie developer Alex Hay has long pushed the boundaries of what third-party developers can build with the SiriKit framework and Shortcuts integrations on Apple platforms.

In late 2019, his Toolbox Pro app redefined what it means to complement Apple’s Shortcuts app with additional actions, creating an entirely new sub-genre of headless utilities designed to provide additional actions with configurable parameters. Recently, Hay introduced Nautomate, another utility that provides users with Shortcuts actions to integrate with the Notion API without having to write a single line of code. And today, Hay is launching Logger, another Shortcuts-compatible app that is similar to his previous ones, but with a twist: rather than adding actions for external services or apps such as Apple Music and Notion, Logger offers actions to create the troubleshooting console that has always been missing from Shortcuts.

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The Shift in Apple’s Hardware Strategy→

John Porter writing for The Verge puts a finger on a strategic shift that has slowly been emerging at Apple for a while.

Summoning the era of butterfly keyboards and the Mac Pro’s infamous thermal corner, Porter says:

There was a time not long ago when it seemed like Apple spent more time telling its customers what they wanted rather than just giving it to them.

In contrast,

with yesterday’s announcements, which include the powerful and port-rich Mac Studio and a new monitor that costs a fraction of the price of Apple’s previous attempt, Apple is now consistently doling out consumer-friendly features its fans have been calling for.

Porter traces the roots of Apple’s shift in approach back to 2017 when the company gathered a small group of writers to announce that it was hitting reset on the Mac Pro. Two years later, Apple introduced a new Mac Pro, and ever since then, there’s been a steady stream of devices released that underscore the company’s new hardware approach.

Reading the tea leaves to discern strategic shifts like this is always fraught with peril, but I think Porter is onto something. As he lays out, there are plenty of signs of the shift stretching back five years, and no better evidence than the Mac Studio, which is bristling with utilitarian conveniences like ports and an SD card slot on the front of the computer and plenty of other I/O options tucked away on the rear of the machine.

Apple’s shift has left users with an abundance of excellent computing options. Next, I hope we see a similar shift in the company’s approach to its software, concentrating on taking better advantage of the devices now available to users.

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Jason Snell on the Implications of Apple’s Major League Baseball Deal→

If you came away from yesterday’s Apple event with the impression that TV+ will be airing two Major League Baseball games every Friday, you wouldn’t be wrong. However, there’s a lot more to the story than meets the eye, as Jason Snell explains at Six Colors.

In addition to a two-games per week exclusive, TV+ will be adding a show called MLB Big Inning, which Apple says will feature “highlights and look-ins.” As Jason explains:

If you’re familiar with the NFL Red Zone product, in which a studio host zips the viewer around to different live games when interesting things are happening, it’s a little like that—but for baseball.

TV+ will also offer what’s known as linear programming, airing a 24/7 feed of “MLB game replays, news and analysis, highlights, classic games, and more.” The difference with linear programming is that instead of streaming individual shows on-demand, a steady stream of MLB content will be available allowing viewers to drop in and watch whatever happens to be playing.

This is not unprecedented for Apple. In 2020, the company debuted Apple Music TV, a TV+ channel that streams music videos 24/7. Like the music videos before it, 24/7 baseball content will help fill the gaps in TV+’s lineup for those times when subscribers don’t feel like picking something specific to watch.

The big picture implications of Apple’s deal with MLB provide an insight into where televised sports is heading. In the case of baseball, Jason says:

Right now, baseball is propped up by revenue from regional sports networks (RSNs) that have paid enormous amounts of money to sequester their product on cable so that it’s impossible for fans to cut the cord. The problem is, fans are like everyone else, and they are cutting the cord. At some point, the guaranteed revenue from RSNs will collapse, and leagues that rely on that revenue will be in deep trouble.

This isn’t the sort of transition that will happen overnight, but given the rise of streaming services, which has accelerated in recent years, I expect we’ll see even more deals like the one struck by Apple and MLB in the future.

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Mac Studio, M1 Ultra, and Apple Studio Display: The MacStories Overview

Yesterday during their Peek Performance keynote event, Apple unveiled the Mac Studio and Apple Studio Display. The former is an all-new computer joining the Mac lineup, with specs that are blowing away Apple’s previous offerings due to the introduction of a new top-of-the-line M-series chip: the M1 Ultra. The Apple Studio Display marks Apple’s true return to the consumer display market after a near decade-long hiatus.

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