The New Reeder

Ever since I started using RSS to read articles from my favorites sites, Reeder has been my go-to app for catching up on my feeds. A brand new version is out today, and it takes the app in a whole new direction. From my review on MacStories:

The best word to describe the new Reeder is "ambitious." Its purpose is not just to be your RSS reader, but your inbox for keeping up with feeds of many different kinds from various sources across the Internet – text from websites, sure, but also videos on YouTube, audio from podcasts, posts on social media, and more. It's a one-stop shop for the feeds you follow online, collecting them together into a single timeline that you can seamlessly browse across all of your devices.

For more details on the update and my thoughts after using it daily for some time, check out the full review. It was a privilege to get to cover the app for the site, and I had a lot of fun putting the story together.

Headphones (Again)

I’ve been known to have some pretty big feelings about headphones. But after years of failed attempts, I finally found the right set for me: Beats Solo 4. I even got a chance to review them in the latest Club MacStories Monthly Log. It’s a happy ending to a long story, so I invite you to check it out if that sounds like your kind of thing.

A Couple of Podcast Appearances

Over the past week, I've had the privilege of guesting on a couple of my favorite podcasts.

On MacStories Unwind last Friday, I chatted with John Voorhees about media-tracking apps and a few shows that we recommend people check out. Any time I get to talk about Sequel and Mr. Robot is a good time in my book.

And then on yesterday's episode of Vision Pros, Tim Chaten and I dove into my use of the Apple Vision Pro, especially as a device for getting work done. It's the most in-depth conversation I've had about the Vision Pro since it launched, and it was a lot of fun.

Of course, no week would be complete without a regular dose of Magic Rays of Light. It doesn't count as a guest appearance since I'm a regular host, but Sigmund and I released a fun episode that covers Apple Intelligence, Continuity Camera on Apple TV, the latest Apple Original releases, and more.

My thanks to the kind hosts who had me on their shows this week and to everyone who took the time to listen. It truly is an honor to get to share.

AI Writing

David Sparks, aka MacSparky:

Writing is more than just a means to convey information; it’s a way to connect on a deeply personal level. Whether celebrating a milestone with loved ones or sharing insights in this newsletter, these moments are opportunities to express our unique perspectives and emotions. When we delegate this task to an AI robot, no matter how sophisticated, we lose a piece of that human connection. It feels like a form of erasure — a diminution of our individuality and the personal stamp we leave on our work and the world.

I've been hesitant to step into the AI conversation because I find the whole thing fraught and, honestly, not all that relevant to my life at the moment. I use these tools on occasion for specific tasks, and I do appreciate when they're integrated well into apps I use every day, which is why I will be keeping an eye on Apple Intelligence. But I don't consider them an essential part of my work in any sense.

David's point here resonated strongly with me, and it speaks to why I don't use generative text tools when I'm writing. I consider this blog to be an extension of myself. It's the place I go to share my thoughts with the world and hopefully start conversations with others. People come here for my perspective, not a robot's. And I believe the same applies to my writing and editing elsewhere, as well as to my personal conversations.

Writing – and, I would argue, communication itself – is not a means to an end. It's a way of conveying information, sure, but it's more than that. It's a connection between people, a back-and-forth that reflects each individual involved, and I don't believe that inserting an AI layer in the middle adds any value.

These tools have their place, but you won't be reading any AI-generated content here.

Batch Editing Values in Collections with Shortcuts

When I wrote about Collections last month, I also shared a few shortcuts for adding items to a database. Those shortcuts were a bit lengthy because they required me to add two actions for each value I wanted to update. There wasn’t any way to update multiple values at once.

It was a minor pain point, but I’m happy to see that it’s been addressed. The app’s latest update includes a new Update Values with Dictionary action that allows you to set multiple values at once. It’s as simple as adding a Dictionary action, setting the attributes to be updated as the dictionary’s keys, and adding each attribute’s data as its corresponding value. Then a single Update Values with Dictionary action will make all of those changes in the database.

This makes it quicker and simpler to create shortcuts for Collections. Here is the original shortcut I shared for adding a new item to my database of MacStories articles I’ve edited:

And this is what the shortcut looks like now:

As you can see, the updated version of the shortcut is much cleaner, and it took me no time at all to set up the dictionary for updating values. This is an action I’ll be taking advantage of a lot in my future use of Collections.

If you’d like to take a closer look at how this new action works, you can download the updated version of my Collections shortcut.