2025-09-13 02:54:15
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
Niléane goes phone shopping for someone else, Chris conducts the iPhone 16 Pro exit interview, and the whole gang gets weird with inputs.
On Cozy Zone, the gang roasts each other’s desk setups.
This week, John explains the art of Southern storytelling with an example, reminding Federico to touch grass before sharing a classic movie deal and previewing some of the perks coming next week with his iOS and iPadOS 26 review.
How would you have done our challenges? How would you answer the question at the end of the show? Let us know!
Want more from the gang? Cozy Zone is a bonus podcast every Monday where we let loose on all sorts of fun topics. You can get cozy with the Comfort Zone crew for just $5/month or $50/year, which not only makes the bonus episodes possible, but supports Comfort Zone, too.
We deliver MacStories Unwind+ to Club MacStories subscribers ad-free and early with high bitrate audio every week.
To learn more about the benefits of a Club MacStories subscription, visit our Plans page.
MacStories launched its first podcast in 2017 with AppStories. Since then, the lineup has expanded to include a family of weekly shows that also includes MacStories Unwind, Magic Rays of Light, Comfort Zone, NPC: Next Portable Console, and First, Last, Everything that collectively, cover a broad range of the modern media world from Apple’s streaming service and videogame hardware to apps for a growing audience that appreciates our thoughtful, in-depth approach to media.
If you’re interested in advertising on our shows, you can learn more here or by contacting our Managing Editor, John Voorhees.
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;
Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.
Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.
Join Now2025-09-11 04:17:45
.](https://cdn.macstories.net/dallas-taylor-1757510864489.png)
Source: Dallas Taylor.
While the highlights of Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 reveal seemed to be the addition of heart rate sensors, increased battery life, and improved Active Noise Cancellation, Dallas Taylor on YouTube went a bit deeper on the actual listening experience.
Taylor is a sound designer and the host of the excellent Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. (I can highly recommend this episode about the famous sounds of Apple and this one about the iconic sound of HBO.) He also runs a YouTube channel and was invited to Apple Park yesterday to try out the new AirPods Pro for himself.
He came away very impressed with the improved ANC, but what stood out to me was the significant upgrade in sound quality he mentioned, especially the bass. You can watch Taylor give his thoughts below, but it’s interesting to hear about a notable improvement in what people use AirPods for the most: listening to music.
You can follow all of our September 2025 Apple event coverage through our September 2025 Apple event hub or subscribe to the dedicated September 2025 Apple event RSS feed.
→ Source: youtube.com
2025-09-11 00:13:02
Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:
This week, Federico and John do their annual pre-Apple event “vibe check,” discussing what they expect and hope to see at the upcoming September Apple event. They explore the rumored iPhone 17 lineup, AirPods Pro 3, and debate the Apple Watch Ultra. Plus, they share thoughts on the prospect of a Apple TV with Apple Intelligence capabilities, HomePods, and updates to AirTags.
On AppStories+, John and Federico explore the divisiveness surrounding the Liquid Glass update coming to macOS Tahoe.
This episode is sponsored by:
This week, Brendon and John examine the latest handheld announcements from Lenovo and AYN that both come with impressive specs and some age-old frustrations. Plus, a new chip is coming to Anbernic’s lineup, and Brendon shares his first impressions of Dbrand’s Nintendo Switch 2 killswitch case.
On NPC XL, Brendon and John tackle the handheld collector’s dilemma as both hosts find themselves swimming in too many devices. They discuss strategies for decluttering their collections, from Brendon’s “three device rule” to the challenges of finding good homes for beloved handhelds.
In this premiere episode, YouTuber Tom Hitchins, aka Byte Review, discusses his creative life that led to the creation of one of the most aesthetically pleasing tech channels on the site. From teaching Photoshop at a college to a lifelong love of Nintendo and Japanese design and entertainment, Tom’s passion for technology touches every aspect of his life.
NPC XL is a weekly members-only version of NPC with extra content, available exclusively through our new Patreon for $5/month.
Each week on NPC XL, Federico, Brendon, and John record a special segment or deep dive about a particular topic that is released alongside the “regular” NPC episodes.
You can subscribe here.
MacStories launched its first podcast in 2017 with AppStories. Since then, the lineup has expanded to include a family of weekly shows that also includes MacStories Unwind, Magic Rays of Light, Comfort Zone, NPC: Next Portable Console, and First, Last, Everything that collectively, cover a broad range of the modern media world from Apple’s streaming service and videogame hardware to apps for a growing audience that appreciates our thoughtful, in-depth approach to media.
If you’re interested in advertising on our shows, you can learn more here or by contacting our Managing Editor, John Voorhees.
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;
Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.
Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.
Join Now2025-09-10 21:43:51
Reminders created by Claude for iOS after a series of web searches.
A few months ago, when Perplexity unveiled their voice assistant integrated with native iOS frameworks, I wrote that I was surprised no other major AI lab had shipped a similar feature in its iOS apps:
The most important point about this feature is the fact that, in hindsight, this is so obvious and I’m surprised that OpenAI still hasn’t shipped the same feature for their incredibly popular ChatGPT voice mode. Perplexity’s iOS voice assistant isn’t using any “secret” tricks or hidden APIs: they’re simply integrating with existing frameworks and APIs that any third-party iOS developer can already work with. They’re leveraging EventKit for reminder/calendar event retrieval and creation; they’re using MapKit to load inline snippets of Apple Maps locations; they’re using Mail’s native compose sheet and Safari View Controller to let users send pre-filled emails or browse webpages manually; they’re integrating with MusicKit to play songs from Apple Music, provided that you have the Music app installed and an active subscription. Theoretically, there is nothing stopping Perplexity from rolling additional frameworks such as ShazamKit, Image Playground, WeatherKit, the clipboard, or even photo library access into their voice assistant. Perplexity hasn’t found a “loophole” to replicate Siri functionalities; they were just the first major AI company to do so.
It’s been a few months since Perplexity rolled out their iOS assistant, and, so far, the company has chosen to keep the iOS integrations exclusive to voice mode; you can’t have text conversations with Perplexity on iPhone and iPad and ask it to look at your reminders or calendar events.
Anthropic, however, has done it and has become – to the best of my knowledge – the second major AI lab to plug directly into Apple’s native iOS and iPadOS frameworks, with an important twist: in the latest version of Claude, you can have text conversations and tell the model to look into your Reminders database or Calendar app without having to use voice mode.
In an announcement earlier this week, the company focused on their integration with MapKit to discover nearby locations with Claude, but when I opened the app, I noticed that the splash screen mentioned “tasks and lists”, and I was curious to check it out. So I took some time off editing my upcoming iOS and iPadOS 26 review to see for myself, and from what I’ve seen so far, I’m impressed.
Claude’s splash screen on iPadOS.
Claude for iOS can now access Reminders to search lists, create or delete tasks, and modify existing tasks. All of this is based on Apple’s native Reminders framework with proper permission prompts, and Reminders gets treated by Claude as another tool that can be invoked in conversations alongside your location and the Calendar app. All of these new tools live in Claude’s settings under the new ‘Permissions’ page, where you can choose to enable read or write access for them and select whether they should run automatically or ask you for permission every time.
Given my previous experience with Claude Opus 4 and interleaved thinking steps for long-running tasks, I decided to take this feature for a spin with a moderately complex query. Here’s what I asked:
Search the web for Viticci’s annual iOS reviews over the years. I want you to find all links to the reviews I posted starting with iOS 9. Then, for each, create a reminder in my Work list, due in 15 minute increments starting at 5 PM today, with the title of the review as task name and the URL in the notes field of the reminder if you can.
Claude Opus 4.1 got to work and started searching the web for links to all of my reviews, starting with the one for iOS 9 from 2015. After finding all the links, it requested access to my Reminders and tried to create each task in my ‘Work’ list, but since it couldn’t find that list, it created all tasks in the default ‘Reminders’ one instead. Impressively, since Claude ran a separate tool to identify my current time, it managed to create tasks with 15-minute offsets in their due times like I asked, and it put the link for each review in the notes field of the task.
Claude’s Reminders permission prompt.
Reminders created (then moved) by Claude.
I also tested Claude’s integration with the Calendar app, and after some back and forth, I got it to work. Initially, Claude kept defaulting to the existing Google Calendar integration in my account, but after I phrased my request as such:
What’s in my calendar for the next three days? Check the system Calendar app, not Google.
Claude understood that I wanted to work with the native Calendar app, successfully queried my list of events, and presented some results:
Events from the Calendar app in Claude.
Unfortunately, as is the case with other Reminders integrations in third-party iOS apps, Claude cannot access more modern app features like native rich links, tags, and subtasks. Every year, I keep hoping that Apple will create a proper “ReminderKit” framework for developers; until that happens, Claude and Perplexity will be stuck with this kind of basic integration.
I also took a look at the function-calling that happens behind the scenes when Claude retrieves and creates reminders on iOS and iPadOS. Funnily enough, when reasoning over the steps required to create a reminder in a specific list, Claude itself outlined all the Reminders tools at its disposal:
The user wants me to move the reminders to a Work list. However, when I searched for lists earlier, there was no “Work” list found. I should first create a Work list or search again to make sure, and then move the reminders there.
Let me search for all lists again to be sure there’s no Work list, and if not, I should inform the user that we need to create one first. I cannot create a new list with the current tools - I can only add reminders to existing lists.
Looking at the available tools, I don’t see a way to create a new list. I can only:
- Search for lists (reminder_list_search_v0)
- Create reminders in existing lists (reminder_create_v0)
- Update reminders (reminder_update_v0)
- Delete reminders (reminder_delete_v0)
I should let the user know that I cannot create a new Work list with the current tools, and they would need to create it manually in the Reminders app first.
In my experiments with Claude during this iOS review season – which I will write about in depth in the ‘Making Of’ story for my iOS review for Club members – I’ve noticed that it’s really helpful to know the names of the exact tools you want Claude to use, especially if you have several (or conflicting) integrations enabled. With these new Reminders tools, it’s going to be interesting to set up projects for hybrid automations that use a fixed set of function calls and the flexibility of a large language model.
So, five months after Perplexity’s iOS voice assistant, Anthropic has shipped their own take on iOS integrations that work with text chats. I keep thinking that this is an obvious route for major AI labs without their own ecosystem (i.e., Google) and that I’m surprised OpenAI hasn’t built anything along these lines for its ChatGPT iOS app yet. We’ll see!
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;
Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.
Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.
Join Now2025-09-10 21:36:18
Source: Apple.
In the run-up to yesterday’s Apple Event, there were increasingly loud rumblings that Apple would introduce a crossbody strap or lanyard that could be attached to new iPhone cases.
What followed was a noticeable amount of confusion from those in the tech sphere as to why Apple was entering this market. Now that the Crossbody Strap has been released, Jess Weatherbed at The Verge has a great explainer on why crossbody straps are an increasingly popular trend and why Apple’s take on them is so good. (Spoiler: it’s magnets. It’s always magnets.)
This trend seems to be more popular in Europe and Asia, but it’s picking up steam in the United States, too. I personally see them all the time in London, both as fashion accessories and practical ways for people to carry their most important device. In fact, as a quick experiment, I counted almost 20 of them on my five-minute walk back from this morning’s school drop-off.
The Apple Crossbody Strap is available to order now and is only compatible with Apple’s cases for iPhone 17, Air, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max. For more on all the accessories Apple released this week, check out Niléane’s overview.
You can follow all of our September 2025 Apple event coverage through our September 2025 Apple event hub or subscribe to the dedicated September 2025 Apple event RSS feed.
→ Source: theverge.com
2025-09-10 07:05:56
Today, in tandem with new video recording capabilities and lenses in the iPhone 17 Pro line, Apple announced version 2.0 of Final Cut Camera, its pro video recording app for the iPhone.
The update introduces support for ProRes RAW and genlock, which the new iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are able to record in. ProRes RAW is an industry-standard way to record video, allowing the capture of RAW data, which unlocks incredible control of recorded video in post-production. In upcoming releases of Final Cut Pro for Mac and Final Cut Pro for iPad, exposure, color temperature, tint, and demosaicing can all be adjusted on ProRes RAW footage.
Genlock, a process of synchronizing multiple video sources by having them lock onto an external reference signal, will allow filmmakers to make frame-accurate edits in a fraction of the time it would take when doing so manually.
As part of the recording process, version 2.0 supports open gate recording, allowing the use of the whole camera sensor to capture video, instead of the current cropped version. This opens up possibilities for reframing shots, stabilizing footage, and setting final aspect ratios without reducing the quality of the image.
As well as these announcements, Final Cut Camera introduces the following new functionalities:
Final Cut Camera will be available later this month.
Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.
What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.
Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;
Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.
Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.
Join Now