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One year ago tomorrow, we introduced the MacStories audience to all-new versions of Club MacStories and AppStories . Club MacStories+ , Club Premier , and AppStories+ , were the culmination of months of work on ideas that we’d been considering for years and represent the first step in offering MacStories readers and listeners a tightly integrated experience across everything we do. There’s more to come, but to mark the first year on this journey, we wanted to take a quick look at how the Club and AppStories have evolved in that time and announce what we’re doing to celebrate this week.
Our Discord community , which is part of both a Club MacStories+ and Club Premier membership, has become a pillar of the Club. It’s a dynamic community rich with terrific recommendations for apps, hardware, automations, and more.
However, the Club Discord community is more than a resource for tips and tricks. It’s where members share their passion for all sorts of media, photography, development, their pets, and more. The Discord server is also where we regularly gather for community Town Halls, which are live audio events hosted by the MacStories team, often with special guests from the community, covering Apple events, WWDC, Automation April, and other events.
Discord is the home of Beta Beat, a series of channels where we invite developers to share their upcoming apps with members who provide feedback. So far, Beta Beat has included apps like LookUp , Play , Timery , MusicBox , and Runestone .
Our periodic bookclub-style AV Club events happen on the Discord server too. We collectively pick and enjoy a book, TV show, movie, or other media and then discuss it during a special Town Hall. We’ve even got a special Discord bot for giveaways that we’ve done for events like Automation April.
Speaking of which, Discord played a big role during Automation April, one of two new special events we debuted in 2022. Participants shared their shortcuts in discord, traded tips, and attended Town Halls dedicated to the event. Participants and winners received special Discord roles too. The community played a big role in the success of the event, which is something we plan to expand to our other MacStories events.
Most important of all, though, are the people who make up the Discord community. We have heard repeatedly from members who join our Discord server about how much they enjoy the civil, respectful conversations with other members. We’re very fortunate to have such a great group of people along for the ride. Of course, we’re also incredibly grateful to our moderators, who have provided valuable feedback to us along the way.
The expansion of the Club marked the debut of two Club MacStories+ and Club Premier-exclusive columns. Automation Academy is Federico’s column where he breaks down Shortcuts actions and techniques to help Club members get more from Apple’s automation system. So far, he’s covered topics from Reminders and Files actions to ways to optimize your shortcuts for the Mac . The column is where Federico debuted his shortcut that creates a podcast feed from articles stored in Matter too.
The Macintosh Desktop Experience is my modern spin on Apple’s oldest OS. In the past year, I’ve written about ways to combine AppleScript, Shortcuts, and third-party automation tools to create advanced automations , covered hardware like the Loupedeck Live , explored modern app launchers such as Raycast , and explained how I’m using Universal Control to incorporate the iPad Pro into my Mac setup.
Of course, we’ve also continued to publish our MacStories Weekly and Monthly Log newsletters, which have been greatly enhanced by Calliope , the web app and technologies assembled by Alex Guyot that underly everything we do with the Club and AppStories. Calliope allows all Club members to read the newsletters on the web in a format that’s far better than Mailchimp’s web versions of newsletters and manage their Club account.
Explore allows Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members to filter Club stories based on a long list of metadata.
Plus, Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members can search and filter seven years of newsletter content by keyword and an extensive set of predefined parameters. Better yet, Explore’s filtered results can be turned into individualized RSS feeds, allowing members to build a personalized Club MacStories experience.
Explore results can be turned into RSS feeds.
The new Club website is also where Club MacStories+ and Club Premier members will find a rotating list of deeply discounted apps and services, including CleanShot X , Keyboard Maestro , Typefully , and Hook .
Last but not least, we launched AppStories+ one year ago, which is our extended, ad-free version of the show that is published a day early for subscribers in high bitrate audio. AppStories+ is available as a standalone subscription from us or via Apple Podcasts , but the show is best experienced as part of a Club Premier plan . Not only is that the most economical way to enjoy everything we offer at MacStories at just $2/month more than the standalone Club MacStories+ membership that’s included as part of Club Premier, but the show is also recorded live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community for special events like Apple events and WWDC as an added perk for Club members.
After over a year of recording AppStories+, there’s a big back catalog of bonus content, too, with over 70 extended episodes published since May 2021. In total AppStories+ subscribers and Club Premier members have access to more than 14 hours of bonus content on a wide range of topics.
To kick off year two of our expanded offerings, we have a few special things in store for Club members this week. The first is a special Town Hall in the Club MacStories+ Discord . Federico, Alex, and I will be on hand to talk about the Club and AppStories+ and will answer member questions. Mark your calendars to listen in live at 4:30 PM Eastern on August 23rd . We’ll release the audio of the Town Hall later in the Town Hall podcast feed too.
We’re also welcoming Vidit Bhargava’s app LookUp back to Beta Beat, so users can test what Vidit is doing with Lock Screen widgets.
Finally, we’ve got a special digital download gift for all Club members, which will be announced in Friday’s issue of MacStories Weekly.
Thanks to all of you who subscribe to Club MacStories and AppStories+ and who read MacStories. The direct support of readers and listeners has been critical to MacStories’ growth for years now, and the expansion we launched last year is the fuel that will drive the next generation of MacStories forward.
We have lots of new ideas in the pipeline for the Club and AppStories for the coming year that we can’t wait to share with you, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s too early to announce anything, but we’ve been clear from the start that last summer’s expansion of the Club and AppStories was part of a much longer-term project. We’ve spent the past year testing and fine-tuning the technical underpinnings of what we built last year, and it’s ready to take on more. So, stay tuned for the next chapter of MacStories.
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:
On Tuesday, August 23, at 4:30 pm Eastern US time , Federico, Alex, and I will mark the first year of Club MacStories’ expansion with a special live audio Town Hall in the Club MacStories+ Discord community .
We are now well into the two-year transition window Apple began with the release of their M1 chip . In fact, the second generation of Apple Silicon processors – the M2 – is now available.
Apple will continue to support Intel-based Macs, but the power found with Apple Silicon is proving to be worth the jump for users and developers. Forward-thinking technology companies seek to release software that leverages the new features released by Apple each year.
In order to use new features possible with Apple Silicon, dev teams will first need to incorporate the latest hardware and software available from Apple. This includes M1/M2 machines and the latest versions of macOS and Xcode. This will enable them to build and test for these new machines.
The need to replace development machines themselves can be costly, but the prospect of replacing an entire data center worth of Macs that run on-premise can be downright cost prohibitive. This presents a challenge for macOS development teams that use continuous integration (CI) to safely make changes to their existing codebases – a generally accepted best practice throughout the industry.
In addition, introducing new hardware architecture may call for a change in the software approach. Does the current orchestration software support Apple Silicon? It’s not likely.
Orka, MacStadium’s macOS-based orchestration software, supports both Apple Silicon and Intel in a mixed cluster. Rather than retooling an entire in-house data center, macOS-focused development companies can simply migrate their CI processes to the cloud and build for all current Mac users. MacStadium provides the private Mac cloud and a skilled team to help you securely scale to your needs.
Reach out to a MacStadium sales engineer to learn more about Orka and how it can accelerate your iOS and macOS Development workflows.
Our thanks to MacStadium for their support of MacStories this week.
This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and I recommend two of 2022’s hottest indie game sensations, Cult of the Lamb and Stray. As a bonus, Federico shares a 3DS game he’s thinking of playing, and I ask for advice on what to play next.
The Pixelmator team announced today that its iPhone and iPad photo editor, Pixelmator Photo , has moved to subscription pricing, and a Mac version of the app is on the way.
Existing Pixelmator Photo users won’t have to subscribe to continue using the app and should be able to add the Mac version at a discount when it’s released. New customers can subscribe for $4.99 per month or $23.99 per year after a 7-day free trial. There’s also a lifetime purchase option that costs $54.99. Pixelmator says that the subscription pricing will increase for new subscribers when the Mac app is released, so now is a good time to subscribe if you were hoping that the team would add a Mac version.
There are a lot of reasons for Pixelmator Photo’s move to a subscription model, which are explained in detail in the team’s blog post . As with any move from paid-up-front to a subscription, some users will be left behind, which is a shame, but I’m not surprised by Pixelmator’s move. I’m more surprised that the switch didn’t occur earlier. Pixelmator Photo is a top-notch, high-quality app that is continuously developed to keep up with advances in Apple’s photo editing frameworks and hardware updates. That’s not the sort of app that can be offered for a set price indefinitely, as demonstrated by the many other sophisticated apps , including other photo editing apps , that have made the leap to a subscription model. Hopefully, the switch to subscriptions will allow the Pixelmator team to continue to develop Photo for a long time to come.
There aren’t many details about the Mac version of Pixelmator Photo to share except for the image at the top of this story, but I like what I see. If you’ve used the iPad version of Pixelmator Photo, the Mac app will be immediately familiar with its spare UI and focus on the image being edited. There’s no word yet on when the Mac version might be released, but when it is, we’ll have a complete review.
The Pixelmator Photo update that adds its new subscription pricing model is available on the App Store now .
This week on AppStories, I’m joined by Alex Guyot to talk about Alex’s MacStories origin story and walk through all of the changes coming to watchOS this fall as part of the MacStories Summer OS Preview series.
On AppStories+, Alex and I discuss Apple’s home automation strategy, Matter, Thread, and more.
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 .

There’s something about the design of this machine that I can’t escape. The footprint is pretty similar between the two notebooks, but in my backpack, there’s a huge difference. Don’t get me wrong: I am thrilled that the MacBook Pro has beefed up to be a better computer, but I’m drawn to the clean, simple look of the Air. I know the Pro is a better match for my workflows, but the Air can do everything I need — if just a little bit slower. And I don’t care about that speed difference any time I pick up the Air to take it with me. Something about it just clicks with me in a way I didn’t anticipate.

I completely understand where Stephen is coming from on this. On paper, the MacBook Pro’s advantages are undeniable, but they’re also expected. It’s a bigger, heavier ‘pro’ computer with fans, after all.
In contrast, the M2 Air feels like magic, despite the M1 version that preceded it. The performance boost from the M2 SoC and features like a bigger, brighter screen and a higher memory option are part of it, but so, too, is the fact that the new Air even looks like a MacBook Pro. Yet, the M2 MacBook Air is still the svelte, silent laptop that it replaces, which feels improbable if not impossible. Like Stephen, the MacBook Air has captured my heart, and I don’t see myself switching to a different Mac laptop anytime soon.
It’s not unusual for Apple keynotes to feature gaming. Sometimes it’s about Apple Arcade, and other times it’s a demo of a third-party title coming to one of the company’s platforms. However, this year’s WWDC keynote was a little different, sprinkling developer-focused gaming announcements throughout the presentation and focusing on the upcoming release of No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village on the Mac. With Metal 3, controller functionality that continues to be extended, and an emphasis on titles with name recognition, many came away wondering if Apple is trying to position its latest Macs as legitimate challengers to high-end gaming PCs.
That’s the question Digital Foundry set out to answer in its latest YouTube video and companion story on Eurogamer by Oliver Mackenzie . When it comes to evaluating gaming hardware, few do it as well as Digital Foundry, which is why I was immediately curious to see what they thought of a fully loaded Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra SoC.
At just slightly larger than an Xbox Series S by volume and with ultra-low power consumption, the Mac Studio is unlike any high-performance PC. Digital Foundry came away impressed with the technical details of the M1 Ultra SoC, which held its own against high-end Intel CPUs and was in the ballpark in comparison to top GPUs:

The M1 Ultra is an extremely impressive processor. It delivers CPU and GPU performance in line with high-end PCs, packs a first-of-its-kind silicon interposer, consumes very little power, and fits into a truly tiny chassis. There’s simply nothing else like it. For users already in the Mac ecosystem, this is a great buy if you have demanding workflows.

However, the system’s performance doesn’t tell the whole story and can’t make up for the lack of videogames available for the Mac :

These results are really just for evaluating raw performance though, as the Mac is not a good gaming platform. Very few games actually end up on Mac and the ports are often low quality. If there is a future for Mac gaming it will probably be defined by “borrowing” games from other platforms, either through wrappers like Wine or through running iOS titles natively, which M1-based Macs are capable of. In the past, Macs could run games by installing Windows through Apple’s Bootcamp solution, but M1-based chips can’t boot natively into any flavour of Windows, not even Windows for ARM.

The upshot is that gaming on the Mac remains a mixed bag. Apple’s most capable M1s make the Mac more competitive with gaming PCs, but it’s not clear that the catalog of games available on the Mac will change anytime soon:

Gaming on Mac has historically been quite problematic and that remains the case right now - native ports are thin on the ground and when older titles such as No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village are mooted for conversion, it’s much more of a big deal than it really should be. Perhaps it’s the expense of Apple hardware, perhaps it’s the size of the addressable audience or maybe gaming isn’t a primary use-case for these machines, but there’s still the sense that outside of the mobile space (where it is dominant), gaming isn’t where it should be - Steam Deck has shown that compatibility layers can work and ultimately, perhaps that’s the route forward. Still, M1 Max and especially M1 Ultra are certainly very capable hardware and it’ll be fascinating to see how gaming evolves on the Apple platform going forward.

Digital Foundry’s results highlight that tech specs are necessary but not sufficient for videogame industry success. The Mac hasn’t been in the same league as high-end gaming PCs for a long time, and tech specs historically were just one of the issues. Given Apple’s lackluster history in desktop gaming, it’s fair to be skeptical about whether the company can attract the developers of current-generation, top-tier games to the Mac. Still, for the optimists in the crowd, the power of the M1 Ultra has brought the Mac a long way from where it stood during the Intel-baed days as a gaming platform. Personally, I’m a skeptical optimist with one foot in each camp. The hardware is heading in the right direction, but the jury’s still out on the software and Apple’s business plan to attract game developers.
In 2021, Kolide went through the SOC 2 Type 1 audit, and they found out just how challenging it can be to prove compliance to a third-party auditor. They also learned firsthand something their customers had been telling them for a while: that they couldn’t have gotten their SOC certification without using their own product.
That product is Kolide, an endpoint security solution for Mac, Windows, and Linux devices. Kolide gives IT admins a single dashboard, through which you can prove that your fleet has the security measures that auditors care about.
With Kolide, you can instantly see whether:
Kolide also provides visibility into nuanced issues that MDMs can’t address, like whether developers have unencrypted SSH keys or plaintext 2FA backup codes.
Moreover, Kolide balances this visibility with respect for user privacy and autonomy. Users can visit the Privacy Center to see what device data is being collected and why. And when Kolide detects a vulnerability on a user’s device, it reaches out via Slack to notify them of the problem and provides step-by-step instructions on how to solve it.
Kolide has helped hundreds of customers achieve compliance –for SOC 2, ISO27001, or their own internal security goals. And they’ve done so in ways that go beyond “checking the boxes” and actually increase transparency and collaboration between IT and end users.
If you want to know how you can get compliant without compromising your values, then we want to talk to you.
Our thanks to Kolide for its support of MacStories this week.

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