Quick thoughts that link out to other sites
In an effort to put my TBPN shortcuts to good use, I turned on today’s stream for Monday, November 3rd – and happened upon a segment with Mark Gurman, Managing Editor and Chief Correspondent at Bloomberg News:
They discussed how Gurman got started covering Apple, the stories resurfacing this week around the Siri update being powered by Google’s Gemini, and the iPhone 17 lineup.
From Stephen Robles:
David Pierce, host of The Vergecast often complains that Shortcuts is too complicated and not useful. Equally as often, I tell him he’s wrong on social media, but this time I got to do it live! My thanks to David for inviting me on The Vergecast, and I’m pretty sure I won this round.
Here are the chapters:
Check the post on Stephen’s site Beard.FM, check out the episode of The Vergecast (and follow the show on Apple Podcasts), and see the full video on YouTube.
Joe Rosensteel, writing for Six Colors:
One of the things that I think about from time to time is Apple’s collection of apps. Some are the crown jewels, like Apple’s pro apps, and others help an everyday consumer to tackle their iLife. All are pretty starved for attention and resources, outside of infrequent updates aligned with showing off the native power of Apple Silicon, Apple Intelligence, or demos of platform integration that never quite get all the way there.
Three things really brought this up to the surface for me recently: The neglect of Clips and iMovie, the radio silence regarding Pixelmator/Photomator, and Final Cut Pro being trotted out for demos but not shipping appropriate updates.
I agree with Joe’s sentiment, but direct it more towards—you guessed it—the Shortcuts app than Pixelmator, which I’ve been saying is within a reasonable window for updating – anything they’re working on could only feasibly ship after en entire yearly cycle.
Shortcuts, on the other hand, has been out for over 5 years and still hasn’t evolved too far beyond its original Workflow UX – Six Colors’ own Jason Snell just talked about how Shortcuts is not really that friendly on Monday of this week.
Read the whole story on Six Colors.
From the OpenAI company blog:
AI progress isn’t only about advancing intelligence—it’s about unlocking it through interfaces that understand context, adapt to your intent, and work seamlessly. That’s why we’re excited to share that OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated, makers of Sky.
And:
“We’ve always wanted computers to be more empowering, customizable, and intuitive. With LLMs, we can finally put the pieces together. That’s why we built Sky, an AI experience that floats over your desktop to help you think and create. We’re thrilled to join OpenAI to bring that vision to hundreds of millions of people.” —Ari Weinstein, Co-Founder and CEO, Software Applications Incorporated
Incredible run by my former teammates – first selling Workflow to Apple, and now Sky to OpenAI.
I’m super excited to see their deep talent and passion reflected in the ChatGPT app.
Read the full blog post from OpenAI.
From Jason Snell, on Upgrade: An LLM in the Woods:
“It’s like me saying, oh, you know, Shortcuts does a pretty good job of being a consumer user scripting utility.
It’s like, well, yeah, but also really no.”
Plus, later:
“I mean, that’s the bottom line is it’s a great idea. And like I said about Misty Studio1, all things considered, it does a pretty good job of being kind of a friendly face to building an AI model, but in the end, it’s like Shortcuts in that it’s not really that friendly.”
Fair enough – if it truly was, I’d have been out of a job for a long time.
Check out the Upgrade podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.2
From Apple Newsroom:
With the release of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 this month, developers around the world are able to bring even more intelligent experiences right into their apps by tapping into the on-device large language model at the core of Apple Intelligence.
The Foundation Models framework allows developers to create new intelligence features that protect users’ privacy and are available offline, all while using AI inference that is free of cost.
You can now add intelligence to your apps for free on Apple platforms – and while it’s relatively simple today… that’s only for now.
From Apple Support:
New in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26
This update includes enhancements to the Shortcuts app across all platforms, including new intelligent actions and an improved editing experience. Shortcuts on macOS now supports personal automations that can be triggered based on events such as time of day or when you take actions like saving a file to a folder, as well as new integrations with Control Center and Spotlight.
New Actions (Editor’s note: shortened for sake of space)
- Freeform
- Image Playground, requires Apple Intelligence*
- Measure
- Messages
- Screen Time
- Sports
- Photos
- Reminders
- Stocks
- Use Model, requires Apple Intelligence*
- Visual Intelligence, requires Apple Intelligence*
- Voice Memos
- Weather
- Writing Tools, requires Apple Intelligence*
Updated Actions
For those building custom shortcuts, some actions have been updated:
- “Calculate Expression” can now evaluate expressions that include units, including real time currency conversion rates, temperature, distance, and more
- “Create QR Code” can now specify colors and styling
- “Date” can now specify a holiday
- “Find Contacts” can now filter by relationship
- ”Transcribe Audio” performance has been improved
- “Show Content” can now display scrollable lists of items, like calendar events, reminders, and more
Shortcut Editor
For those building custom shortcuts, updates have been made to the shortcut editor:
- Improved drag and drop and variable selection
- Over 100 new icon glyphs are now available, including new shapes, transportation symbols, and more
- Rich previews of calendar events, reminders, and more
- The ability to choose whether shortcuts appear in Spotlight Search
macOS Improvements
Spotlight
Shortcuts can now accept input, like selected text from an open document, when being run from Spotlight.
Automations
Shortcuts can now be run automatically based on the following triggers:
- Time of Day (“At 8:00 AM, weekdays”)
- Alarm (“When my alarm is stopped”)
- Email (“When I get an email from Jane”)
- Message (“When I get a message from Mom”)
- Folder (“When files are added to my Documents folder”)
- File (“When my file is modified”)
- External Drive (“When my external drive connects”)
- Wi-Fi (“When my Mac joins home Wi-Fi”)
- Bluetooth (“When my Mac connects to AirPods”)
- Display (“When my display connects”)
- Stage Manager (“When Stage Manager is turned on”)
- App (“When ‘Weather’ is opened or closed”)
- Battery Level (“When battery level rises above 50%”)
- Charger (“When my Mac connects to power”)
- Focus (“When turning Do Not Disturb on”)
Control Center
Shortcuts can be added as controls to Control Center and the menu bar, including Run Shortcut, Open App, and Show “Menu Bar” Collection
From Apple Newsroom:
Search and Take Action with Updates to Visual Intelligence
Visual intelligence, which builds on Apple Intelligence, now helps users learn and do more with the content on their iPhone screen. It makes it faster than ever for users to search, take action, and answer questions about the content they’re viewing across their apps.
Users can search for the content on their iPhone screen to find similar images across Google, as well as apps that integrate this experience, such as eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, and more. If there’s an object a user is interested in learning about, like a pair of shoes, they can simply press the same buttons used to take a screenshot and highlight it to search for that specific item or similar objects online. And with ChatGPT, users can ask questions about anything they’re viewing onscreen.
Continue playback of video: Visual Intelligence on iPhone 17 Pro
Updates to visual intelligence help users learn and do more with the content on their iPhone screen.
Visual intelligence enables users to summarize and translate text, as well as add an event from a flyer on their iPhone screen to their calendar, with a single tap.
Users can also take advantage of these capabilities by using visual intelligence with their iPhone camera through Camera Control, the Action button, and in Control Center.
And:
Build Intelligent Shortcuts
Shortcuts help users accomplish more faster, by combining multiple steps from their favorite apps into powerful, personal automations. And now with Apple Intelligence, users can take advantage of intelligent actions in the Shortcuts app to create automations, like summarizing text with Writing Tools or creating images with Image Playground.
Users can tap into Apple Intelligence models, either on device or with Private Cloud Compute to generate responses that feed into the rest of their shortcut, maintaining the privacy of information used in the shortcut. For example, users can create powerful Shortcuts like comparing an audio transcription to typed notes, summarizing documents by their contents, extracting information from a PDF and adding key details to a spreadsheet, and more.
My friends at Elgato have updated the Stream Deck app for Mac for version 7.0 with new features for creating virtual Stream Decks on your computer, key logic so each key have multi-tap abilities, weather updates in a new plugin, and quality-of-life features like showing whether an app is currently open.
Here’s how they describe the updates:
🎛️ Virtual Stream Deck — your on-screen workspace controller
Create unlimited virtual keys, customize actions and layouts, then pin them in place or summon to your cursor. It’s your OS sidekick, making every workflow fast and effortless. It’s Stream Deck on your computer, anywhere you go.
[…]
👇 Key Logic — multi-tap abilities
Assign up to three different actions to a single key using Key Logic. Perform a unique action based on how the key is pressed:
- Press
- Double press
- Press and hold
For example, press to play/pause music, double press to skip tracks, or press and hold to go to the previous track.
[…]
⛅ Weather plugin – stay ahead of the forecast
The new Weather Plugin for Stream Deck puts live weather updates and forecasts at your fingertips, with minimal setup and configuration. Instantly see the sky’s latest mood and plan your day without ever picking up your phone or opening a browser.
[…]
🛠️ Improvements and bug fixes
The Open Application action now displays a green dot when the selected app is running.
You can now configure the Open Application action to either do nothing, close, or force quit the selected app when long-pressed.[…]
Virtual Stream Decks are extremely cool.
Check out the Elgato Stream Deck 7.0 Release Notes and get the Stream Deck from Elgato – be sure to sure use my discount code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off.
From the Apple Newsroom:
Today, Apple News+ debuted Emoji Game, an original puzzle that challenges subscribers to use emoji to complete short phrases. Emoji Game is now available in English for Apple News+ subscribers in the U.S. and Canada.
“Emoji Game is the perfect addition to the Apple News+ suite of word and number puzzles, turning the emoji we use every day into a brainteaser that’s approachable and fun,” said Lauren Kern, editor-in-chief of Apple News.
More Apple News shortcuts incoming in 3… 2… 1…
View the full story from Apple.
From Apple’s announcements at WWDC:
App Intents lets developers deeply integrate their app’s actions and content with system experiences across platforms, including Siri, Spotlight, widgets, controls, and more.
This year, App Intents gains support for visual intelligence. This enables apps to provide visual search results within the visual intelligence experience, allowing users to go directly into the app from those results. For instance, Etsy is leveraging visual intelligence to enhance the user experience in its iOS app by facilitating faster and more intuitive discovery of goods and products.
“At Etsy, our job is to seamlessly connect shoppers with creative entrepreneurs around the world who offer extraordinary items — many of which are hard to describe. The ability to meet shoppers right on their iPhone with visual intelligence is a meaningful unlock, and makes it easier than ever for buyers to quickly discover exactly what they’re looking for while directly supporting small businesses,” said Etsy CTO Rafe Colburn.
Elgato has shared a helpful guide for ensuring your internet is fast enough for streaming:
Streaming your content live online is more accessible than ever and also can be equally data hungry. From streaming right from your phone to your followers on TikTok to streaming a professional event in 4K 60fps with High Dynamic Range on YouTube, these all require some amount of bandwidth to get your live content to where it needs to be.
And:
In short, here’s the maximum bitrates supported by the services.
Twitch: 6Mbps (up to 1080p)
YouTube: 40Mbps (Up to 4K)
Also, these are upload speeds – and if you’re using both, it can take even more. I use High Quality Audio and High Quality Video in Ecamm Live, which also add to the network load.
Check out the post from Elgato and get Ecamm Live to stream from your Mac.
Also, be sure to sure use my discount code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off from Elgato.
Elgato has shared a handy guide for making sure you always have a copy of your livestream for later – something that tripped me up when I first started on Twitch:
You just finished a stream full of funny moments, interesting discussion, or a great final stand in a battle royale. But what happened to all that content? Did it just end up in the void or did you make sure to save it for later?
Some streaming services like Twitch.TV have time limits for how long they’ll hold onto your past livestream. If you want those moments to live on, you’ll need to archive them somehow. And in some cases, videos are simply unavailable after the stream due to copyright reasons. If you don’t enable storage of those past streams, it’s been too long, or you listened to some music on stream by accident, those moments could just be history.
If you stream right onto YouTube, and you’re already set as those will automatically be archived as a regular video, as long as you weren’t doing a subathon for over 12 hours. If all you want is for your streams to live on, you’re good to go.
Check out the post from Elgato and follow me on Twitch.
Also, be sure to sure use my discount code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off from Elgato.
My friends at Elgato have updated the Stream Deck app for Mac for version 6.9 with new features for launching and closing an app from the same key, paste from clipboard in Text actions, the ability to choose your browser when opening URLs, and quality-of-life improvements specifically to make the app more Mac-like.
Here’s how they describe the updates:
🆕 Open App – From launch to close, all on one key
Launching your favorite apps just got easier. The new Open Application action shows a searchable list of installed programs—no file path hunting required.
And it now works with Windows Store (UWP) apps like Discord, Spotify, and Microsoft Teams.
✨ Pro tip: Press and hold the key to close the app. Quick in, quick out.
[…]
📝 Text Action – Now with Clipboard Paste Mode
The Text action now includes paste mode selection with options for simulating typing or pasting from clipboard. Simulate typing is exactly that—its as if you’re typing the text. Paste from Clipboard is new and text is pasted as if you’ve pressed CTRL/CMD+V. The default mode has been changed to Paste from Clipboard.
Simulate Typing is useful for programs that need inputs, like typing out commands in sim games
Paste from Clipboard is useful for chat applications, when you want to paste a block of text as a single message
[…]
🌐 Website Action – Choose Your Browser
Now you can choose exactly where your Website actions open. Chrome for work, Firefox for dev, Safari for testing—it’s all up to you.
Just pick from your installed browsers in the dropdown. The old “GET request in background” toggle now lives here too, tucked away for power users.
[…]
⬇️ Profiles just got smarter
Importing profiles from Marketplace? Stream Deck 6.9 now helps you hit the ground running. If a profile uses actions from plugins you don’t have, you’ll be prompted to install them automatically—no guesswork, no more question marks.
[…]
🪄 Quality of life improvements
A few small touches make a big difference:
Option to launch Stream Deck on startup
Option to disable automatic update checks
macOS only: Stream Deck now appears in the Dock when open
macOS only: You can now maximize the app using the green button
[…]
Check out the Elgato Stream Deck 6.9 Release Notes and get the Stream Deck from Elgato – be sure to sure use my discount code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off.
On Wednesday, March 5, I posted blog post “New developer APIs hint at ‘Personal Context’ for Apple Intelligence coming in iOS 18.4”. Today Friday, March 7, Apple said “Nope” to John Gruber – here’s the quote from Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy from his story on Daring Fireball:
“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”
Gruber also gives his analysis of the situation, which you should read in full.
Oh, and those API pages? Gone.
From the Apple Newsroom:
Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever made, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The ultimate pro desktop delivers groundbreaking pro performance, extensive connectivity now with Thunderbolt 5, and new capabilities in its compact and quiet design that can live right on a desk. Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine.
My M1 Mac mini from 2020 is also way overdue for an upgrade…
From the Apple Newsroom:
Apple today announced the new MacBook Air, featuring the blazing-fast performance of the M4 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, a new 12MP Center Stage camera, and a lower starting price. It also offers support for up to two external displays in addition to the built-in display, 16GB of starting unified memory, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence — all packed into its strikingly thin and light design that’s built to last.
I’ve been rocking the M1 MacBook Air from 2020, but it’s beyond time I upgraded…
From Stephen Robles on YouTube:
First beta of iOS 18.4 is here and it brings some exciting new features including ambient music controls, Apple News recipes, and a lot more. Plus, we dive into a feature that might hint at Apple’s upcoming smart home device.
I’ve linked directly to the chapter on the new Shortcuts actions ?
From 9to5Mac:
Do you ever frame screenshots inside Apple device frames? Then you’ve probably used Federico Viticci’s ‘Apple Frames’ shortcut. Unfortunately, the shortcut has been broken in recent months, and now we know that an iOS 18 bug is the cause.
Federico shared this with me a few betas ago and it’s still not fixed… ?
From @elgato:
This is your friendly reminder to back up your Stream Deck profiles. ?
Here’s how: [Video]
Even if you’re not using the new Action Sharing, backing up your Stream Deck profiles is just good practice – I will back up my entire setup regularly, plus individual profiles as I finish or update them.
I’ve also long used my shortcut “Open Stream Deck Backups” to quickly access the folder on macOS as well, since I found myself not remembering the location of the default destination where these are saved.
View the post, get my Stream Deck shortcut, check out the folder of Stream Deck shortcuts in my Shortcuts Catalog, and get the Stream Deck from Elgato.
P.S. You can use my Elgato Partner code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off at checkout.