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AppStories is a weekly exploration of the world of apps by MacStories’ Federico Viticci and John Voorhees. Each week, they discuss the best new apps, the impact of apps on our culture, and cover the stories behind popular apps. Hosted by Federico Viticci and John Voorhees.
John: Hello and welcome to another episode of AppStories.
John: Today's sponsors are Workbench by Astropad and Base44.
John: I'm John Voorhees, and with me is Federico Viticci. How are you doing, Federico?
Federico: Hello, hello, John. How are you?
John: Oh, I'm doing really well. I'm doing really well.
John: Federico, I'm excited because today we're kicking off a mini-series here on
John: AppStories. We are going to be talking about iPhone Duo apps that you and I have
John: been getting hundreds and hundreds of.
John: They're all stacked up in Notion,
John: and we've been spending our free time going through them, testing them out.
Federico: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Federico: So, obviously, AppStories, this very podcast, is, what,
Federico: nine years old, going to be 10 next spring.
John: Wow.
Federico: MacStories is 10 years older than that. It's 17 years old.
Federico: I have been reviewing apps,
Federico: and you've been reviewing apps with me for such a long time.
Federico: Like, I started the site a year after the launch of the App Store
Federico: with the iPhone 3GS. That's what I had at the time.
Federico: And so, I've seen the launch of the iPhone App Store.
Federico: I've seen the launch of the iPad App Store,
Federico: the Mac App Store, Apple Watch, iMessage.
John: I
Federico: was
John: going to say,
Federico: don't forget iMessage.
Federico: But, Vision Pro, and, of course, like, over the years,
Federico: I've seen the influx of apps for a new Apple device, for a new Apple platform,
Federico: right? That always happens.
Federico: But this kind of wave of just new apps and updates for the iPhone
Federico: Duo, I think the last time that I saw this kind of volume and excitement
Federico: was for the iPad. Yes. 16 years ago.
John: long time, and we just got kind of some confirmation of what we've been seeing on
John: our end, which is Apple released a statement.
John: Susan Prescott, who is in charge of developer relations,
John: said that over 100,000 apps that are, you know,
John: optimized for the iPhone Duo are on the App Store today.
Federico: Yep, yep. So, we kind of, you know, just a quick vibe check on our end,
Federico: judging from our overflowing email inboxes.
John: Yeah.
Federico: And the stuff that we are saving in Notion,
Federico: we knew that the numbers were, like, pretty, pretty intense.
Federico: But, yeah, it's nice to have confirmation from Apple.
Federico: And so, we've been doing a few things at MacStories.
Federico: We've started doing these roundups, sort of the old-fashioned way,
Federico: because we like to test all the things that we write about.
Federico: We don't just like to pull a bunch of links and say, here's a gallery with,
Federico: like, a thousand iPhone Duo apps.
John: Right.
Federico: I mean, I can see the utility for those galleries.
Federico: I prefer to give an opinion about the stuff that we recommend and why,
Federico: especially in this very moment in time when anybody can make an
Federico: app and put it on the App Store.
Federico: But there's varying degrees of care and taste and quality to those apps.
John: Right.
Federico: And because we've been talking about apps for so many years,
Federico: I think we know a thing or two about apps.
Federico: In addition, we've also been complementing that coverage in our newsletter for Club
Federico: MacStories members. You can sign up for $5 a month or $50 a year.
Federico: There are also more expensive plans with additional benefits.
Federico: But, yeah, we've sort of been complementing that app coverage with the
Federico: newsletter every week.
Federico: And now we're going to be doing that on the podcast, too,
Federico: because we just have so many apps.
John: We
Federico: do.
John: And we don't really even know how many episodes of this miniseries we're
Federico: going to
John: do. We
Federico: know.
John: We're just going to vibe it right through. We're going to figure out as we go along.
John: But, you know, we thought we would start going through all these apps and sharing
John: them with people. And do check out Club MacStories because we do have a lot in
John: the newsletter. We'll have a link in the show notes if you want to see what that's
John: all about. But that's where we put anywhere from a handful to just a
John: dozen apps in there every single Friday.
Federico: Yeah, plus, like, tips and tricks and guides and additional, like,
Federico: editorial pieces. And we've also been doing that for 11 years.
Federico: So it's been a long time.
Federico: And the final thing before we actually get into the apps,
Federico: you will notice if you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or in Pocket Casts,
Federico: you will notice that we now have proper support for HLS video,
Federico: which means that whenever you want,
Federico: you can either listen to this episode or you can instantly switch
Federico: to the video version and you will keep your playback position.
Federico: And you can switch back and forth between them at any point.
Federico: And if you're listening to the video and you lock your device,
Federico: the audio will continue playing in the background.
Federico: This is something that we started working on months ago,
Federico: and it required a pretty big transition on our end for all the podcasts that we have.
Federico: But I'm so happy that it's finally available in Apple Podcasts,
Federico: in Pocket Casts.
Federico: I don't know what other compatible clients exist out there with HLS support.
Federico: But yeah, this is now something that you can do in the App Store.
John: Yeah, and shout out to Transistor.fm because they have been really easy to work
John: with and they made the transition really easy on kind of the hosting side of
John: things. And with Apple Podcasts, at least,
John: it couldn't be easier because all you have to do is tap a little button that's right
John: above the playback controls and you can switch back and forth real time.
John: And this also allows the video on Apple Podcasts to appear on the Apple TV for the
Federico: first time. want to watch us in the living room,
John: you can do
Federico: that.
John: Who wouldn't want to, Federico? Who wouldn't
Federico: want to? Obviously. All right. All right. So let's talk about iPhone Duo apps.
Federico: Where do you want to start?
John: I did a collection this week about weird and wonderful apps.
John: And I want to kind of hit some of those because I think one of the things that has
John: stood out to me, there's a couple of things.
John: And in a subsequent episode,
John: we'll talk about kind of what I call the new skeuomorphs,
John: which are this new trend in design towards skeuomorphic design.
John: We've also seen a lot of whimsical and fun and just weird apps out there that are
John: coming out for the Duo that are really taking advantage of its unique shape.
John: The hardware, the hinge, the new way the sensors work with the hinge,
John: that sort of thing. And so I wanted to hit those first.
John: And one of the ones that I find the most fun and interesting,
John: but also kind of hard, difficult to get the hang of is Duo box,
John: which is an accordion.
John: Just like, you know,
John: an accordion that you would squeeze and it has keys on one side and buttons on the
John: other for the chords. And that's what this is. I mean, you hold down a chord.
John: You pick a chord on one side of the screen.
John: You start playing the keys and you start folding the iPhone Duo
John: and it plays music.
Federico: Duo box, you
John: said. Yeah, it's got a lot.
John: It's a pretty deep app because it has like play along songs that help guide you
John: through the keys to play like twinkle, twinkle, little star.
John: It has effects that you can add.
John: You can actually output to like a MIDI device or MIDI compatible app.
Federico: I'm to do it, John. Okay, I'm going to
John: do
Federico: it.
John: Okay. I want to see you do this. It takes.
Federico: Oh, wow. This thing like, so it actually looks like an accordion.
Federico: I'm showing it off on the video.
John: Yeah.
Federico: Okay. So how do I do the Titanic song?
John: Oh, good luck. Good luck
Federico: with
John: Gideon.
Federico: So it's A.
Federico: Oh, I have no idea how to do this.
John: Yeah.
Federico: That's
John: what I mean by it. It takes a little work to get the hang of,
John: but it's fun once you do it.
Federico: Showbox. Can I hit you? Can I hit you?
Federico: Because I've also been going, I mean, we have more than 600.
Federico: We have a Notion database with 600 apps.
Federico: I don't think we've talked about, and me and you, we coordinate behind the scenes.
Federico: I don't think I've told you about this one. Have you seen Hinge Caliper?
John: Oh, I think I have. I have this on
Federico: my list too. actually a caliper.
John: Yes.
Federico: I've
John: seen two or three apps
Federico: I don't know if you can pick it up,
Federico: but so I'm going to try and get closer to the camera.
Federico: So the iPhone Duo has sensors, right?
John: Yeah.
Federico: To detect the angle.
Federico: And when you fold it, the numbers move.
Federico: You can see the angle is moving. Yeah. And so I don't know who's actually going.
Federico: Like, what is the exact scenario?
Federico: You're a carpenter and you find yourself in need
John: Wanting to measure.
Federico: Wanting to measure because you forgot your caliper at home.
John: So you're going
Federico: to use your
John: $2,000 phone
Federico: instead. But you have your iPhone Duo?
John: Yeah. It's pretty cool though, I think. I mean.
Federico: It's pretty cool.
John: Let me hit you one that's related to that called Duometry.
Federico: Duometry.
John: Duometry is the angle thing you're talking about,
John: but it's a game where it tells you an angle and you have to try to match it as
John: closely as you can with your phone and you score based
Federico: on. Oh, I love this. This is, oh, by Arno.
John: I love this
Federico: to Arno Appenzeller. Yeah, yeah.
John: We know this is the better part. We've covered apps by Arno before.
John: And this is, it's just kind of fun. can do a daily challenge. You can play with
Federico: other people. Yeah. So this is how it's going to go
Federico: with these episodes. We're just going to download
John: a bunch
Federico: of apps.
John: This is, this is one of those apps that I think if you're kind of a,
John: a perfectionist, like a certain Italian guy I know,
John: that you will get hooked on this very quickly because you'll want to be the guy
John: who can hit it every time. It's very
Federico: hard. I should not show this app to Silvia.
John: Oh, is this a Silvia
Federico: Okay. Match 45 degrees.
John: Did you get it?
Federico: Touch and hold to lock in.
Federico: Oh, one degree off.
John: Oh, very good.
Federico: Okay.
John: 45
Federico: is
John: pretty, try it. Wait till it gets you to say
John: something like 82 or something and see it, you know.
Federico: 80. Yeah. Okay.
John: Right. I mean, it'll get you one that's like
John: a weird number that isn't obvious. Like.
Federico: Okay. I'm going to hit you with another game, John. Okay.
Federico: That also uses the hinge. I don't know if you've tried this one.
Federico: It's called, let me, let me remember. Safecracker.
John: Oh, I haven't tried this. I remember. So
Federico: one lets you crack a safe by using the hinge and feeling the haptic
Federico: feedback. Okay. So. I'm terrible at this. Okay.
Federico: Now I'm feeling some haptic taps.
John: Right.
Federico: And when they get more close to each other and more frequent,
Federico: that's like the first step of the combination. Like you're cracking a safe.
John: Right.
Federico: So.
John: And that's where you need to stop and start going the
Federico: other
John: direction.
Federico: I probably need to stop here.
John: Yeah.
Federico: Yeah. So this is how it works.
Federico: And you get three rounds and if you get it,
Federico: you can crack the safe and you continue with the game.
Federico: So these are some fun games. I should probably mention some.
Federico: I've also done a roundup on MacStories.
Federico: I'm doing, since I'm the boring old guy here. John is
John: doing
Federico: all
John: the
Federico: games and I'm doing the productivity
John: apps.
Federico: Okay.
John: All he
Federico: does is
John: work.
Federico: All I do is work. Not true. Not true. I do play. I also do play games.
John: do.
John: This episode of AppStories is brought to you by Astropad Workbench,
John: the remote desktop and terminal for AI agents.
John: An agent running on your Mac can keep working while you're away from your desk,
John: but sometimes it needs your attention.
John: Maybe you want to check on a log or change a prompt or restart a process.
John: Workbench lets you do that from your iPhone, iPad,
John: or another Mac with access to both the desktop and the command line.
John: Workbench 1.4 adds terminal support so you can switch between the terminal and
John: the full desktop without reconnecting or opening a separate SSH app.
John: Then switch back to the desktop to see the result.
John: On the Mac, the terminal opens in its own window.
John: It's especially useful if your agents run on a headless Mac mini.
John: Workbench handles the virtual display,
John: matching it to your device that you're connecting from and manages sleep settings
John: so your Mac stays awake and reachable.
John: You don't need to leave your monitor plugged in.
John: There are native apps for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, including the iPhone Duo.
John: And on the Duo, you can see your Mac's desktop and terminals side-by-side.
John: And with voice input on the iPhone and iPad,
John: you can dictate text into your remote Mac when typing on a small screen would be
John: inconvenient. Your session keeps running between devices, too.
John: Start on your iPad and check in later on your iPhone or another Mac.
John: Setup is straightforward.
John: There's no port forwarding, no VPN, and no router configuration.
John: Install Workbench on your Mac and the device you want to connect from.
John: Workbench uses Astropad's liquid streaming engine,
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John: Try Workbench free for 20 minutes every day or upgrade to unlimited access.
John: Visit astropad.com slash appstories.
John: That's astropad.com slash appstories.
John: Our thanks to Astropad Workbench for their support of the show.
Federico: I want to mention... This is an embarrassment of riches over here. It is.
Federico: I want to... Okay. I will start from the obvious. I will mention T3 Code.
John: Okay.
Federico: So if you are working...
Federico: So T3 Code is this new type of
Federico: agentic development environment. the
John: sense
Federico: that...
John: ADE.
Federico: It's not an IDE. It's an ADE.
John: Yeah.
Federico: So it's an app that you use with coding agents.
Federico: What sets it apart is that it's open source and it's made by a
Federico: team of people who obsess over performance and design and integration
Federico: with all kinds of providers.
Federico: So you can use T3 Code with your Claude subscription,
Federico: with your Codex subscription. It's not a harness.
Federico: It's using the actual official harnesses for Claude Code and Codex on
Federico: your machine. T3 Code is just the environment and the orchestrator.
Federico: You set it up on your Mac. You enable remote access. You can use Tailscale.
Federico: You can use SSH.
Federico: You can use T3 Connect, which is a built-in service that they have.
Federico: And then you connect from your iPhone on your iPad.
Federico: And the app has the best remote experience that I've ever... That I've seen so
John: far. Easily
Federico: the
John: best.
Federico: Easily the It's so fast.
John: It's reliable. It's the big companies that are making this. You know, OpenAI.
Federico: And in general, I would say the T3 Code is better than Codex desktop and it's better
Federico: than Claude desktop.
John: Yeah. You won't get lost.
John: Your projects won't get lost the way they do in the sidebar of Codex or
Federico: Claude. They have so many little touches.
Federico: Like when you want to add a folder, it asks you like,
Federico: do you want to add a new folder? Do you want to pick an existing project?
Federico: Is the folder on your local machine or is the folder remote?
Federico: There's keyboard shortcuts for everything. You can mark specific models as favorites.
Federico: You can hide specific models. You can have multiple accounts for the same provider.
John: Multiple Macs.
Federico: Multiple Macs all talking to each other, all orchestrating within one another.
John: That's what I'm doing, boy.
Federico: Yeah. And the app is excellent on the Duo.
John: Yeah.
Federico: It's
John: it's
Federico: got this sidebar over here, your main conversation here.
Federico: And if you have sub-agents going, like for example, if I find a sub-agent here,
Federico: it opens in another split view on the iPhone Duo.
John: Right.
Federico: So I'm going to enable dark mode because maybe it's easier
John: to Yeah, it'll be easier to see. Oh,
Federico: that's
John: easier
Federico: to
John: see. Yeah.
Federico: So you open another sidebar. This is the main thread and this is the sub-agent.
Federico: So it becomes this superpower to have T3 Code on my phone and I can
Federico: quickly check with the screen closed, be like, okay, what are my agents doing?
Federico: All right, let me see. But then if I want to switch between threads,
Federico: I can just open the Duo. There's a sidebar.
Federico: And it's going to go boom, boom, boom.
Federico: I'm going to open all the different threads and I'm going to work on all the
Federico: things that we're working on. It's so well done. You
John: can snooze your threads so you can kind of clean up the sidebar to just the things
John: that are active right now.
John: You can drag threads one to the other so threads are aware of what's going on in
John: other threads. Threads can spawn their own threads.
John: There's load balancing between Macs,
John: which is one of the things that I love because I can be prompting from the
John: computer that I'm working on for my day-to-day work,
John: but the work's happening on another Mac. It's really, really well thought through.
Federico: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What's next on your list?
John: All right. I want to get one for when you're a little stressed out because
John: you've been working a little too hard on your projects.
John: I want to talk about Ajar, which is, I guess it's a soundscape app.
John: You know, like the apps that have rain noises or forest noises or white noise or
John: whatever. It's that, but it's a window into another world.
John: And the default view is like a street of picturing of, uh,
John: with a view of row houses and cars occasionally going by.
John: It reminds me of looking out onto like a street in England or Ireland or something.
John: And it's raining and the windows open and you can hear the rain.
John: So it's just that kind of soothing noise.
John: And you can put the window up and down by tapping it.
John: If you put your duo in landscape mode,
John: it will show the window at the top and on the bottom,
John: there'll be a little desk with a coffee and a book and a pen.
John: Uh, and you can switch, just swipe between different scenes.
John: There's like a Japanese garden. There's a view outside of a train that you're on.
John: There's a view outside the window of an airplane,
John: all sorts of different environments on like a snowy, like a snowy countryside,
John: that sort of thing.
John: And it's just kind of a nice fun fidget toy in a way,
John: but also combined with a soundscape that is very kind of quiet and soothing.
John: And you could just like set up your, your little environment in laptop mode,
John: put it on your desk and listen to the rain come down as you work.
Federico: Nice. Nice. All right.
Federico: I want to mention something that I love using with the Apple Pencil on the iPhone
Federico: Duo, which is the new app by Marco Arment,
John: Fineliner. Very good.
Federico: So this is a sketching app for the iPhone Duo here, John. wrote ciao, John on
John: my
Federico: screen.
John: Very nice. Well done. I'm sure Marco will be pleased.
Federico: Beautiful handwriting on my
John: end.
Federico: It's
John: very good. That's not Marco's fault. It's just that part's Ticci's fault.
Federico: Yep. Yep. Look, what's not to love?
John: Okay.
Federico: No,
John: that's good.
Federico: It's fonts. Okay. And here's what I love about Fineliner.
Federico: When you set it up the first time, I don't know if you've ever,
Federico: if you've played with it at all, John.
John: A little bit.
Federico: When you set it up,
Federico: you can actually draw the UI
Federico: elements of the app yourself.
John: Oh,
Federico: that's
John: cool.
Federico: The app asks you, do you want to draw the back button?
Federico: Do you want to draw the font icon?
Federico: Like, so it almost reminds me of a Nintendo game as an onboarding
Federico: process. Like the app is teaching you
Federico: about the app by using the app itself.
John: Yeah.
Federico: Like, and so you can
John: practice.
Federico: It's really clever. And then of course, if the icons that you draw suck, like mine,
Federico: you can just say, draw them for me, please.
John: Fix it for me, please, Marco.
Federico: Fix it for me. But yeah,
Federico: I love it because you can create multiple notebooks like this and you can have all
Federico: your pages and like, I'm not a, I'm not a handwriting person,
Federico: but there's something about like having an iPhone Duo like this,
Federico: having an Apple Pencil and sketching with the Apple Pencil, like a little notebook.
Federico: So yeah, I think, and also like, it's just fun to see Marco, you know,
Federico: experiment outside of Overcast.
John: Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's a fun app.
John: Let me, since we're talking about notebooks, Federico,
John: let me talk about TypeDraw. Have you tried TypeDraw?
Federico: Oh, I, I, I haven't, but I know that it's pretty popular.
John: is pretty popular and it is quite well done.
John: If you open it up, it is just like, if you can look on the camera, it is,
John: it's a notebook, right?
John: And so you can use this to type, obviously, or,
John: and it has a nice kind of handwritten font,
John: or you can use the Apple Pencil since the duo supports the Apple Pencil.
John: You can attach photos to your stuff.
John: It has the full support of Apple Pencil, as I mentioned. This
Federico: looks nice. Looking now.
John: Yeah. Like here's, here, I'll show you the,
John: this is kind of the intro screen that they give you with the instructions.
John: That gives you people a sense of the font that's being used there. It's nice.
John: It's really well done.
John: And when you shut the, you shut the device, it says TypeDraw.
John: It looks like a closed notebook. It's got my name on there, which I added.
John: And you can look at the animation. You can even kind of move this.
Federico: Oh, I love like the little.
John: You can move the little rubber band that like you would have on some notebooks.
John: And when you do that, there's haptic feedback too.
Federico: I was going to ask about that. That's perfect.
John: Yeah. It's super well thought through. All that stuff works really well.
Federico: Oh, that's very nice. And, uh, oh yeah. I'm just looking now. Fineliner.
Federico: Just got an update with even better shape recognition and the ability to hide
Federico: layers. So, like, you can create pretty complex drawings.
Federico: I want to mention something that I will probably include in my next roundup.
Federico: So, this is called FLIT. F-L-I-T.
John: I saw this
Federico: somewhere on social media. Yeah, because I reposted it last
John: night.
Federico: So, this is an RSS reader that takes
Federico: a very iPhone Duo native approach.
John: Right.
Federico: So, you have this RSS reader where you can swipe.
Federico: So, these are your articles and you can swipe your cards to the left if you want
Federico: to discard them or to the right if you want to read them later. Oh,
John: all right.
Federico: it's especially impressive when you read
Federico: stuff like this in landscape mode. Oh,
John: yeah. That's nice.
Federico: swipe through your stories.
John: Yeah.
Federico: And the way that this works is,
Federico: which is both something that I like and something that I dislike.
Federico: And so, maybe this can also serve as feedback to the developer.
Federico: The app can import your sources during the setup
Federico: process from popular services like Inoreader, Feedbin, NewsBlur.
Federico: But then, it uses its own iCloud sync.
Federico: Whereas, I love this UI to be more
Federico: of a client for those services.
John: Right, exactly.
Federico: Because don't want to stop using Feedbin as my RSS source of truth.
Federico: But I want to have a UI like this for my RSS service.
Federico: So, I think this app is doing a bunch of things really, really right.
Federico: Like, for example, you can just navigate the entire app with your thumb.
Federico: And you can just open a story, read it. You can use Apple Intelligence summaries.
Federico: Like, if you just tap and hold, right?
Federico: Siri is going to summarize the story for you.
Federico: You just tap and hold on the story and you get a summary.
Federico: So, like, it's very intuitive,
Federico: but I would love it to be in sync with my Feedbin account.
John: Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right.
John: I have a couple different ones I want to mention still.
John: One I want to mention is PopFold, which I think anybody who has kids,
John: they will really like this.
John: Although, you know,
John: think twice before you give an iPhone to a really small child.
John: But PopFold turns photos into, like, a pop-up book.
John: Now, this is the default image that comes with the app.
John: It's of a little stuffed fox.
John: And if you take the picture of the little
John: stuffed fox and you fold your phone horizontally.
Federico: Let me see.
John: He starts popping out of the page. And it makes a little background.
John: So, it blurs the background.
Federico: Oh, I see. It gives, like, a 3D effect.
John: Yeah. What it's doing is it's doing the subject
John: extraction and putting the little board. Can
Federico: you hold it a little higher so we can see? Oh, thank you. Oh, that's very nice.
John: Yeah. It's really neat. And you can do that with any of your photos.
John: Actually, it helps to have something that has a good contrasty definition around the
John: edges. But, yeah. I wonder if this one works.
John: This is a picture of you and me doing our podcast.
Federico: Okay. Sure.
John: Sure. It does elongate
Federico: you a little popping off the screen over there.
John: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you can then create.
John: Then they're, like, when you close it up, it's
John: like a little card. So, yeah. It's kind of fun.
Federico: I want to mention this calendar app that it's very different
Federico: from what I usually use, which is either, like,
Federico: I alternate between Apple Calendar and Notion Calendar.
John: Yeah.
Federico: So, this app is called Calendaria.
Federico: And it's more like a calendar companion utility.
John: Yeah.
Federico: You can use it if you're so inclined as your main calendar.
Federico: But it doesn't have all the features that you would expect from your main calendar.
Federico: So, this is more of a planner based on your calendar.
Federico: And it has these four views.
Federico: It's meant to show you your entire year.
Federico: And so, you have this first sidebar with all of your months.
John: Right.
Federico: And for each month,
Federico: it kind of pulls the highlight of what it thinks are the key events for each month.
Federico: And then in the middle panel, which is a screen
Federico: that I love more, like this one, I really like.
John: Right.
Federico: You have your whole month and a vertical list of all the days of the month and the
Federico: events for each day. Then when you tap it, you advance horizontally again. can
John: actually
Federico: do
John: this in
Federico: the app. Exactly. So, you advance to the day.
Federico: And then on the day, you can tap on an event and you advance to the actual event.
John: Right.
Federico: I love the horizontal navigation of this app.
Federico: I think it works well for me as something on top of my calendar.
Federico: Rather than a replacement for my calendar.
Federico: And I think there's a lot of, because of the duo,
Federico: there's a lot of experimentation, I think,
Federico: in the category of like calendar apps, planner apps.
Federico: Because you can have something very small and compact that can give you an overview.
Federico: But also something quite expansive that can show you, you know,
Federico: more days and more weeks at once, for example.
Federico: So, yeah, this one is interesting.
John: I mean, it's really interesting because it's a paradigm that's not totally
John: different from what we've seen in the past.
John: Like when you think of like RSS readers,
John: you go from your sources to your list of articles to the details of the article.
John: And that's true with a lot of different forms of apps like calendars.
John: But because the device folds in half,
John: it gives you a different way to kind of experience that.
John: You can have on the small screen,
John: you can have a detail view or maybe that's your big overview.
John: But there's a lot of ways to explore how having it shut and then opening it
John: transforms the way the layout works. And then you navigate through from there.
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Federico: All right. What do you want to mention next?
John: All I'm going to mention Fold and Squish.
Federico: Fold and Squish. Oh, I want to see this in action.
John: All right. So this is Fold and Squish. It is a painting app.
John: And what you do is you pick a color over here,
John: and you drop some paint onto the canvas.
John: I'll do a few colors. All right.
John: So now I have colors on my canvas,
John: and I'm going to fold up my phone like this.
John: See, you can kind of see the paint through it.
Federico: Yeah.
John: And I'm going to rub, rub, rub, rub.
John: And then I'm going to open, and you'll see what I made.
Federico: Okay.
John: All
Federico: right.
John: It's kind of interesting what I made there, Federico.
John: But they have, besides that, that blank canvas version,
John: they also have, like,
John: outlines of butterflies and owls and hearts and things that you can kind of
John: roughly fill in with the paints, do the squishing,
John: and then see what the results look like.
Federico: Yeah. That's fun. I like that idea. Let's see.
Federico: Oh, have you seen, what's the name?
Federico: See, what I don't,
Federico: here's something I don't like about having large Home Screen icons.
John: What?
Federico: It doesn't show you the name
John: of the apps.
Federico: Flip Corder. Have you seen Flip Corder?
John: I have seen this one.
Federico: Okay. So this is a, I'm going to show my cell phone video, I guess.
John: Oh, yeah. Get your hand in the way.
Federico: Okay. Like
John: this.
Federico: Hello. It's a retro video recording app for the iPhone Duo.
John: That's the VHS version of Ticci.
Federico: On the outer screen, you can see the preview,
Federico: and on the inner screen, hello, hello.
John: Love it.
Federico: And it's got that, like, VHS look, which is, like, done really well,
Federico: I should say. Like, if you used to have, like,
Federico: one of those video cameras in the 90s,
Federico: like the texture that you have on the images,
Federico: you can actually choose to record in either VHS mode or DVD mode, and DVD mode,
Federico: it's, like, standard, like, no texture. And you can choose your tapes.
Federico: You can save your videos as tapes. I don't know. It's really fun.
Federico: And if you ever want to shoot, like, a retro-looking video, you can do that,
Federico: and you can send it to your friends.
Federico: So, yeah, that's Flip Corder for the iPhone Duo.
John: All right. I've got kind of a fun one for you.
John: It's called Snapshots. Have you seen this one?
Federico: No.
John: So, it's an instant camera where you take a picture.
John: I'm going to, is it doing a preview? No, it doesn't do a preview.
Federico: There's no preview with this.
John: So, you take a picture, and then it has a few controls there,
John: and it pulls out of this slot.
John: I have to discard that picture so I can do another one.
John: I don't know how I'm going to do this where people can see.
John: I don't think I really can.
John: But what you do is you hit the button to take the picture.
John: I'm going to take a picture of Federico on my computer,
John: and I'll try to turn it around quick. See it, Federico?
John: It's coming out of the slot, and then it takes a while to develop like a Polaroid.
Federico: Yeah. And
John: slowly comes into view.
John: And then you can keep it or do, you know, different things with it.
John: You can even write like a little note on the back,
John: like AppStories recording November, whatever, you know? Oh,
Federico: that's
John: fun.
Federico: Let's see. Let's see. I will mention, this is a new one that I'm testing.
Federico: And it's in my notes somewhere in my database.
Federico: It is called, let me find it, let me find it, let me find it. Super Easy Timer.
John: Okay.
Federico: Okay.
John: Oh, I've seen this one. I've seen this
Federico: one
John: too.
Federico: Yeah. So this one I will also include in my next roundup. So Super Easy Timer.
Federico: Quite ingenious idea.
Federico: You create a timer,
Federico: and the timer is always going to float on top of
Federico: any app. It's never going to be dismissed into the Dynamic Island.
John: Oh, okay.
Federico: Because it uses a custom picture-in-picture.
Federico: Oh, This is an API that Apple made for developers a few years ago.
John: Yeah.
Federico: can yoink the Clipboard Manager.
Federico: Use Clipboard Picture-in-Picture to always float on top of your apps and always
Federico: monitor your clipboard. This is the same idea. Looks like this.
John: Okay. A
Federico: giant timer. I love this interaction. Let me get closer.
Federico: So to set up an amount of time, you grab the plus button.
John: Let me show
Federico: you here. So you grab the plus button, and you drag it up
John: like Oh,
Federico: that's
John: nice.
Federico: And you set the time.
Federico: three minutes. And it's started, right? So I'm going to exit, and it's floating.
John: See
Federico: that
John: it's
Federico: floating?
John: You
Federico: can actually make the picture-in-picture.
John: Yeah, or it's just like if you were watching YouTube, basically.
Federico: Exactly. So you're always going to be able to keep an eye on your time because you're
Federico: always going to have the picture-in-picture window.
Federico: And when the timer is done, it can also use the AlarmKit technology,
Federico: which is new as of iOS 26 last year,
Federico: to actually bring up like a full-screen alert that tells you that your timer is
Federico: done. So I just love the idea that, you know, since the iPhone Duo is bigger,
Federico: and you can actually multitask, you can set up your iPhone Duo,
Federico: have a keyboard, set up a timer, say,
Federico: I want to write on the iPhone Duo for 25 minutes.
Federico: Like if want to do the Pomodoro technique, for example,
Federico: you can start 25 minutes in super easy timer.
Federico: You know, it's going to start the timer, make the picture-in-picture smaller,
Federico: put it off to the side, open, I don't know, Notion or Notes,
Federico: write for 25 minutes,
Federico: and then you're going to be able to keep an eye on your timer.
John: Works really
Federico: well.
John: Yeah, it's a little bit like having slide over,
John: even though the iPhone Duo doesn't have slide over, right?
Federico: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's super easy timer.
John: All right. I think I'm going to close out with one more, which is Duo Paper.
John: Duo Paper is a wallpaper app that takes advantage of the different size screens so
John: that it's got a big collection and they're nicely illustrated. Here's a good example.
John: It's of an astronaut sitting on a string, right?
John: And then you can, this is the preview version of it.
John: And if you hit open, it animates open and you see the planets around the astronaut.
John: There's this that you can look through.
John: There's all kinds of styles, all kinds of collections that are available.
John: And they all have that kind of effect where when you open the iPhone Duo,
John: it expands the scene almost as though you're zooming out because you've got more
John: screen real estate. And you see it kind of reveals a little bit more of the picture,
John: which is kind of a delightful thing, I think.
John: It's a, you know, I've seen a lot of them like this, but I really like the artwork.
John: There's a really fantastic illustrations
John: here of all sorts and it's a cool little app.
Federico: Hmm. Nice. Ooh, I need to close with something.
John: I want to see, I'm going look at your, I want to look at your story.
John: Maybe you have one from your story that is worth.
Federico: Yeah. There's one more that I can highlight.
Federico: So I've mentioned Calendaria and T3 Code. I will mention Seal.
John: Oh good. I was going to
Federico: ask
John: you.
Federico: I
John: was going to ask you to do this one.
Federico: So it's going to be hard for me to choose by the end of the year between Seal
Federico: and the upcoming update to Screens by Edovia,
Federico: which I am going to cover on MacStories.
Federico: And I'll just leave it at that because when this episode comes out,
Federico: that update will not be out and I don't want to spoil it.
Federico: It's going to be hard to choose between these two remote screen sharing apps.
Federico: Obviously remote screen sharing is having a moment because of agents and remote Macs
Federico: and remote computers.
John: Including with our sponsor Workbench from Astropad.
Federico: Yep. Yep. Yep. So it's a whole
John: category.
Federico: also very
John: good. Yeah.
Federico: It's a whole category. And each of them is trying a few different things.
Federico: And all of these devices, like there's actually a story here, John,
Federico: I think about like these apps as a new design playground.
Federico: Remember that old expression?
John: Yeah. All driven by how awful it is to try to remotely control a Mac with
John: coding agents going.
Federico: Yeah. And so Workbench does a few things that are really interesting,
Federico: not because they're a sponsor.
Federico: Like I generally appreciate this category of apps.
Federico: Like in the latest update Workbench,
Federico: they have like the segmented control that lets you switch between screen and
Federico: terminal. Like that is a very clever idea.
Federico: Screens is going to do a few different things in the next update. Right.
Federico: Still does things again differently.
Federico: So in this case,
Federico: so you install this little host app on your Mac and you connect to the
Federico: host app with your iPhone Duo and you get your full desktop. Right. Pretty standard.
Federico: What's unique is that at the top of the screen,
Federico: you will see there's a row of thumbnails.
Federico: Those are your individual windows that are open on the Mac right now.
John: This is something, Federico, just to pause you.
John: This is something I had no idea was possible, but now I've seen
Federico: two
John: or
Federico: three apps
John: do it.
Federico: Yeah. Yeah. Beam by the same developer of Calendaria, by the way.
John: Oh, didn't realize it was the
Federico: same person. yes. But Beam is like still in alpha or beta,
Federico: like it's not on the App Store,
Federico: which is why I picked still because still is on the App Store.
Federico: When you click on one of those thumbnails,
Federico: you will just stream that specific window and
Federico: it will resize to match the resolution of the iPhone Duo.
Federico: So for example,
Federico: here I clicked on T3 Code and here I'm streaming just a T3
Federico: Code with iPhone Duo resolution.
Federico: It's using ScreenCaptureKit behind the scenes.
Federico: It's using HEVC video,
Federico: which is something that you will hear more about from me soon.
Federico: And yeah,
Federico: you can just pick whatever window you want or any point you can just say, yeah,
Federico: I want to go back to the regular desktop.
John: Right.
Federico: You click here and a second later you go back to the full desktop.
John: That's really cool.
Federico: What's even more impressive is what happens when you close the Duo.
Federico: You get this mini trackpad mode and like, I'm just going to show it to you.
Federico: Like you get a mini trackpad here that actually lets you move your cursor and
Federico: you get your desktop at the top.
John: Amazing.
Federico: This has to be one of the best outer display
Federico: design I've seen for the Duo to date.
John: And more and more of this sort of design where there's a strip along the top that
John: allows you to go horizontally because the vertical spaces is so tight on the Duo.
John: You really have, I think developers really have to start thinking horizontally more.
Federico: So we mentioned a bunch of apps. I honestly lost track of them.
Federico: But there's a pretty good way to keep track of them,
Federico: which is to check out the show notes of this podcast,
Federico: which you can find in any podcast player.
Federico: And you can just click those apps and get them from the App Store.
Federico: So, and obviously go check out the roundups that we do at MacStories.
Federico: We're going to try and have one or two on a weekly basis for,
Federico: we don't know for how long.
John: Yeah. I mean, Apple's been keeping us busy,
John: which has made it harder than we had hoped.
John: But yeah, we're going to keep doing it. We've got a bunch.
John: I've got another one planned for next week already.
Federico: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm saving already.
Federico: have a list of apps that I want to cover in my second productivity roundup.
Federico: So it's going to be a while. But yeah, we hope that you enjoyed this episode.
Federico: We're going to do a few more of these on AppStories because like I said,
Federico: MacStories is largely comprised of three things.
Federico: The website, the membership program, and the podcasts.
Federico: So we're going to be using all the avenues we have to work through our backlog of
Federico: iPhone Duo apps.
John: And I mean, look, apps have been our thing since the very beginning,
John: since the very founding of MacStories.
Federico: I know that we've been busy.
Federico: Like eventually I'm supposed to write about the iPhone Duo.
Federico: I'm supposed to write about the new MacBook Pro.
John: Right.
Federico: But I just love writing about apps.
Federico: And I haven't felt this way in a sustained manner
Federico: since the iPad days.
Federico: Because with the Apple Watch and with the Vision Pro, like after a couple of weeks,
Federico: you're like, okay, you know, the novelty effect is worn off.
John: I'm done.
Federico: This thing is sticky. This thing, this thing.
John: It's different. It's really, it's a different animal altogether.
Federico: Yeah. All right.
Federico: We forgot to mention AppStories Plus.
John: Oh, I was going to mention. I was just waiting for you to finish up.
Federico: Well, there you I'm
John: trying to be patient.
Federico: It's all yours. It's all
John: yours. All right. So in AppStories Plus,
John: we're going to talk about Siri AI because Apple has revealed some pretty big
John: developments for Siri AI.
John: And we're going to, we're going to kind of dig into them because I, what was that?
Federico: Can I be the guy?
John: Be the guy.
Federico: But John, but John, what is AppStories Plus?
John: Well, Federico,
John: AppStories Plus is the extended version of this very show that's ad free, right?
John: And it comes out a day early and it's even in higher quality audio, all those things.
John: And you can either get it as a standalone subscription or as part of Club MacStories
John: Premier, which is what Federico discussed at the beginning of the show.
John: So we'll put a link in the show notes.
John: You can go figure out what that's all about if you want.
John: But we, this is where we talk about super nerdy stuff.
John: And today, you know, as much as we want to keep talking about apps,
John: we do have other things to talk about.
John: And Siri AI is what it's going to be about today.
Federico: All right. Let's
John: do it. right?
Federico: All right.
John: All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us.
John: You can find us over at MacStories.net, cranking away on the apps.
John: And of course, we're on social media where Federico is @viticci.
John: That's V-I-T-I-C-C-I. And I'm @johnvoorhees.
John: J-O-H-N-V-O-O-R-H-E-E-S. Talk to you next week, Federico.
Federico: Ciao, John.