In the newsletter today I wrote about two apps: - One of the best new Mac apps I've tried in a long time made for Apple Music; - The new @notion.com Agents app, which is a really nicely designed experience for working with LLMs in Notion. www.macstories.net/club/macstor...

Apple's security team, watching their former employee download gigabytes of trade secrets at OpenAI

From last night, we published: My thoughts on Siri AI www.macstories.net/stories/siri... First impressions for: Golden Gate www.macstories.net/stories/maco... watchOS 27 www.macstories.net/stories/watc... visionOS 27 www.macstories.net/stories/visi...

Here's another example of typical Gemini behavior appearing in Siri AI: Siri starts giving a wrong response, changes its mind, continues paragraph with a different (and correct) response. (I've seen Gemini Flash models do this all the time.) (Sonnet 5 Medium on the right.)

Let's talk about Siri AI's web search and App Intents index. I'm asking for the latest single by Phoebe Bridgers. A text search works, and brings up web sources. If I'm asking to * play* it, Siri actually plays a song from years ago.

RemCTL comes bundled with a skill for Claude Code and Codex that lets you turn Reminders into a powerful task manager. It works great in Codex mobile and other agents. It uses native EventKit and private ReminderKit, with perfect compatibility with the Reminders app. github.com/viticci/remctl

new ink who dis

Lastly, we made a dedicated mini-site for Shortcuts Playground: www.macstories.net/shortcuts-pl... I learned so much about working with agents, designing a harness, and how Shortcuts works in building all this. I fully expect to be Sherlocked in 3 weeks and I can't wait. Enjoy!

But that's not all: Shortcuts Playground made 100+ shortcuts to test itself. Those shortcuts, plus all my previous ones, are now part of the completely redesigned MacStories Shortcuts Archive, launching today: www.macstories.net/shortcuts/ Announcement post: www.macstories.net/news/the-new...

I'm thrilled to introduce Shortcuts Playground: A plugin for Claude Code and Codex to create native Apple shortcuts with natural language. Type a sentence in, get a shortcut back. It can one-shot complex shortcuts and even remix old shortcuts. Free and open source: github.com/viticci/shor...

I'll be in Cupertino for WWDC! If you see me and want to say hi, please do! I don't get to meet developers/readers/listeners often, and it's always a highlight of my year. (I am fairly easy to spot via the tattoos.)

WWDC keynote officially announced for June 8 See you there!! 👀

Yeah, the Steam Controller is *very* comfortable. Buttons feels just clicky enough. More on @npc.macstories.net next week!

Dusk – a port of Twilight Princess for PC, iOS, Android, Mac, and Linux – is outstanding. Original game + enhancements + QoL fixes. No support for custom textures on Android yet. Runs at 120fps locked on my Odin 3 Ultra. twilitrealm.dev

This week for Club members, I wrote about how I fixed something that annoyed me for a while: Syncing Codex skills and AGENTS.md between multiple Macs: www.macstories.net/club/macstor...

I obviously took advantage of the new Pets feature of Codex to make a custom Scott Forstall companion and named him Scotty. He's perfect developers.openai.com/codex/app/se...

I have accidentally come across a MagSafe Umbrella (??) for the iPhone on Amazon and, uh, I kinda need this...?

The Apple Frames CLI is *incredibly* fast. Here's a video showing how it frames 50 screenshots in an instant. It's highly customizable, supports more options than the shortcut, and comes with a skill for agents. github.com/viticci/fram...

Has anyone figured out the secret trick to making the Todoist MCP "sticky" in the Claude app? This disconnection happens to me every day now. I feel like I'm constantly re-authenticating this. 😔 (Are there any non-horrible alternatives to Todoist with a more reliable MCP?)

iPad Pro M5 PC streaming setup now fully optimized: new streaming server, new controller, and new client app 👀 All ready for Crimson Desert this week, and more details on the next @npc.macstories.net 😄

MacBook Neo onboard experience is kinda rough. Downloaded 3 Electron apps (which most people would these days), and immediately filled RAM + went with 2.5 GB swap. Entire UI feels stuttery (likely because of initial indexing, too) That said, the computer itself looks and feels lovely.

Something like Perplexity Computer feels like the right approach for a safer, virtualized alternative to OpenClaw. However: - Lack of mobile support - Slow to navigate between projects - Impossible to store credentials and secrets Wouldn't be shocked to see a 'Claude Computer' next.

And in work-related news: For years we've had *hundreds* of issues with Buttondown (our email provider) not syncing members from Memberful correctly. I finally went ahead and built a tool for myself that is fixing thousands of mismatches. You can just build *productive* things now.

Today's AI experiment for the family: I used OpenClaw + Codex + Notion to build us a little app to keep track of our dogs' meals for our home diet 🥺

Got a new design in Spotify for iPadOS with a new tab bar and right panel for Now Playing. Nice.

OpenClaw with Telegram topics in a group (and multiple agents per topic, each with a model + thinking level) is the way to go. Fast, multimodal, and replacing so many apps for me. Also using Codex 5.3 now, and I actually dig the vibes. @steipete.me truly building something incredible here.

I've been using the just-announced @notion.com custom agents for the past couple of months – I'm a big fan. I have a custom agent that connects to multiple MCPs + workers (also today: github.com/makenotion/w...) to self-organize the bookmark manager of my dreams. I should probably write about this!

Opus 4.6 is, by far, the best model to use with OpenClaw, but it's only Monday and I'm already at 60% of my subscription usage (Max plan) 💀 API is way too expensive to use this. Too bad OpenAI doesn't make a model that's just as nice to use with OpenClaw as Opus. (Yet?)

Going two for two with OpenAI acquisitions so far: www.macstories.net/stories/sky-... www.macstories.net/stories/claw... What should I write about next? 😅

Took the new Claude Code "fast mode" for a spin with my Shortcuts Playground. A shortcut that typically generates in 10 minutes was done in 4; spent €11 in extra usage for it. It's very expensive, and very fast for an Opus model. platform.claude.com/docs/en/buil...