WWDC 2024 Predictions

Every year, Sigmund and I share our predictions for WWDC on our podcast Magic Rays of Light. This year was no different. On the latest episode, we gave our picks for what we think Apple will announce on Monday.

In the spirit of full transparency, I thought I’d also publish them here. That way, my shame (or glory!) can be on full display after the keynote.

Here’s what I think is coming at WWDC this year:

• Apps and widgets on the Home Screen can be placed arbitrarily on iOS 18.
• Siri will gain the ability to have context-aware conversations.
• Support for multiple simultaneous audio sources will come to iPadOS and visionOS.
• visionOS 2 will feature a revamped notification system, an app switcher, and the ability to group windows together and switch between groups.
• Hardware-limited features will be available on devices with the M1 chip, A14 chip, and later.
• The number of new changes that will debut for tvOS 18: nine.
• The number of times artificial intelligence will be mentioned: 35.

Will any of these come true? Who knows. But it’s fun to try to guess what will happen. Regardless, I’m excited to see what Apple has in store for us on Monday. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I’ll be helping cover all the announcements on MacStories if you want to keep up with things there throughout the conference.

Apple TV Go →

My friend and podcast co-host Sigmund Judge, writing at MacStories:

Somewhere in the Apple TV multiverse, there was a USB-C powered device that I could carry with me for quick reference, whether at Apple Park or a south London coffee shop during my writing process for last year’s tvOS review. Somewhere, there was an iPad-like device that could run tvOS, offering a superior software alternative to the plentiful supply of affordable, battery-powered Android portable projectors…

I needed to become the hero of my own story and create the on-the-go tvOS workstation I envisioned by braving the world of hardware modification and building my very own Apple TV Go.

What Sigmund has created – a portable tvOS workstation incorporating a modified Apple TV, an iPad Pro, a custom Magic Keyboard, Velcro, and much more – is so wonderfully out-of-this-world, you just have to read about it to believe it. Or if you prefer, you can listen to the latest episode of Magic Rays of Light, where we discuss it in audio form.

It was a pleasure getting to help bring Sigmund’s Apple TV Go story to the world in a small way. If you spend much time with him, you’re going to be challenged to think creatively and start making the change you want to see. That’s what this story reflects to me – in addition to an awesome bit of custom tech, of course – so I hope you’ll give it a read.

Bridges Adds a Reader View

I’ve been using Jonathan Ruiz’s link-saving app Bridges to put together show notes for my podcast for so long now, I can’t imagine getting my work done without it. I’m a big fan of its unique feature set for not only saving links, but also organizing and sharing them.

Recently, the app received a big upgrade in the form of a reader view. When you tap on a link you’ve saved in Bridges, it now shows you the content of the webpage in a nice, reading-focused layout. If you need to see more, you can tap a button at the bottom of the view to load the full page. It sounds like a small addition, but it’s quite useful in practice, and it rounds out the app’s feature set as a full link-saving solution.

This implementation has impressed me to the point that I’m now using Bridges as my go-to read later app. Reading articles from the web is an important part of my daily routine, so entrusting it to a new app is a big deal for me. But I really like the experience of reading articles in Bridges, and it even saves me a step when I want to add something I’ve read to the show notes for an upcoming podcast episode.

If you haven’t tried Bridges yet, now is the perfect time. Not only does it have this great new feature, but it’s also free for a limited time through the start of WWDC. I can’t recommend it enough, so I encourage you to give it a spin.

Watch History Journal 2

Today, I'm happy to share version 2 of Watch History Journal, the shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app. This update includes two major additions:

• the ability to use media-tracking app Sequel as your watch history source
• advanced options to adjust the shortcut's behavior to fit your needs

These features were added based on user requests and things that I wanted to add for my own use of the shortcut. I'm really pleased with them, and I hope others will enjoy them as well.

As soon as I found out that Sequel, my favorite app for tracking what I watch, was adding Shortcuts actions, I knew that I wanted to integrate them into Watch History Journal. While Trakt is a great way to log your watch history and will continue to be supported as a source, Sequel is my preferred tracking method, and being able to use it in the shortcut was a dream come true.

Swapping in Sequel for Trakt was quick and easy, but it resulted in two different verison of Watch History Journal, one for each source. This wasn't ideal because it would mean I'd have to maintain and release two separate versions of each update going forward, and I didn't want to add confusion for those who want to use Watch History Journal. So instead, I rewrote the shortcut from scratch to add support for multiple watch history sources.

Basically, I had to split Watch History Journal into two parts. The first part grabs your watch history from your chosen source and converts it into a format the shortcut can understand; this part differs based on whether you choose Tratk or Sequel. The second part takes that information and turns it into your journal entry; it works the same way regardless of which source you choose. The whole rewrite was an exercise in modularity, and it was a ton of fun. The end result is a shortcut that's more efficient, capable, and future-proof than ever before.

My original plan was for Sequel support to be the only new feature this update. But once I started digging into Watch History Journal again, I was inspired to keep going. After all, adding support for a new watch history source would make for a boring update for those who already use Watch History Journal with Trakt. So I decided to add something fun for everyone: advanced options.

These settings allow you to easily adjust the journal entry created by Watch History Journal to make it exatcly what you want it to be. Version 2 includes the following advanced options:

• Text List: Add a bulleted list of watched titles to your journal entry in addition to images.
• Posters: Use only a title's poster as its image rather than the standard compiled journal image.
• No Images: Create a journal entry that includes only a bulleted list of watched titles with no images.
• Leading Zeros in Episode Codes: If a title's episode or season number is below ten, add a leading zero before it (i.e., S01E01 instead of S1E1).
• Yesterday's History: Create a journal entry for yesterday's watch history rather than today's.
• Split Multiple Episodes: Create separate images for each episode of a series that has multiple episodes watched in a single day.

Thanks to these options, you can now make Watch History Journal work exactly the way you want it to. Do you prefer poster images instead of the default journaling suggestion-style ones? You can use those instead. Want to log your watch history from yesterday instead of today? It's just a setting away.

Advanced options can be configured by opening Watch History Journal in the Shortcuts editor and placing an "x" in the brackets next to the option(s) you want to enable. They can be mixed and matched to create the exact journal entry you're looking for. Personally, I leave the Text List option enabled to make my journal entries easily searchable in the future.

In addition to these major new features, this update includes options to change the default text that appears in your journal entry and to create entries in multiple journal apps at once.

My hopes for this new version of Watch History Journal are that it will offer something exciting for existing users and make the shortcut a viable option for a whole new group of people who use Sequel for tracking shows and films. As I've said before, I'm a big believer in the power of journaling, and this shortcut is my way of helping people round out their journaling practice by reflecting on what they watch.

You can download Watch History Journal 2 by following this link. If you give it a try, I'd love to hear what you think of it, how you're using it, and what you'd like to see in the next update. This project is such a pleasure to work on, and that's thanks to the awesome feedback from users like you.

Thank you for reading this writeup on the update. I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed making it.

Next Portable Console and Comfort Zone →

Yesterday, we announced two new podcasts joining the MacStories family. As Federico put it:

I’m incredibly excited to introduce two brand new shows joining the MacStories family of podcasts today: Next Portable Console (or NPC), hosted by me, Brendon Bigley, and John Voorhees, and Comfort Zone, hosted by Niléane Dorffer, Chris Lawley, and Matt Birchler. You can find both shows, along with links to subscribe, on MacStories’ Podcasts hub.

NPC covers the ever-growing world of portable gaming in all its many facets, and Comfort Zone pushes its hosts – and listeners, should they choose to participate – to try new things in their tech setups each week. Both shows sound very entertaining, and I can’t wait to listen in.

As excited as I am for these shows, though, I’m even more excited to welcome my new colleagues into the fold. I have so much respect for the work that Brendon, Chris, and Matt each do, and it’s so cool to now be working on the same team as them.

You can read the full announcement post on MacStories for all the details. The first episode of NPC is out now, with new episodes coming every other Tuesday. Comfort Zone starts its weekly release schedule this Thursday, but you can get a taste of the show by checking out its trailer right now.

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Side note: With these two new shows in the mix, there’s now a new episode of a MacStories podcast out every weekday. I mean, just look at this lineup.

• Monday: AppStories
• Tuesday: Ruminate / NPC (alternating)
• Wednesday: Magic Rays of Light (hosted by yours truly)
• Thursday: Comfort Zone
• Friday: MacStories Unwind