This week, Federico and John look ahead to 2026 and what it will mean for apps, smarter Siri, and more.

On AppStories+, Federico and John update listeners on their latest app experiments and holiday hardware projects.

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• Mentioned:

• Google AI Studio

• Index 01 Ring

• Google Gemini

• NotebookLM

• MCP (Model Context Protocol)

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This week, Federico and John reveal the winners of the 2025 MacStories Selects Awards, which celebrate the exceptional design, innovation, and creativity of apps across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.

On AppStories+, John has some Apple Music discovery tips for Federico, and they reveal the iPhone features they don’t use.

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• RevenueCat – It’s the easiest way to add in-app subscriptions and native paywalls into your mobile apps, and getting started is free.

• Read More on MacStories here:

• MacStories Selects 2025: Recognizing the Best Apps of the Year

• Best New App: Quick Reviews

• Runner-up: Wispr Flow

• Runner-up: Supercharge

• Runner-up: µBrowser

• Runner-up: Bridges

• Runner-up: Not Boring Camera

• Runner-up: Athlytic

• Read more on MacStories:

• The MacStories Selects 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award

• Lifetime Achievement Award: Unread
  

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This week, Federico and John explain how they go about creating personal productivity tools with the assistance of AI and walk through some of what they have created.

On AppStories+, we talk about our Black Friday tech purchases.

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• Simon Willison’s blog

• Vibecode

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This week, Federico and John dig into some of their favorite apps that have adopted Apple’s Liquid Glass design language.

On AppStories+, it’s John’s 10th anniversary at MacStories, so he and Federico look back at the last decade.

Also available on YouTube here.

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• Denim

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This week, Federico and John explore current changes to the world of apps through the lens of its past evolution.

On AppStories+, we build “money’s no object” holiday wish lists for ourselves.

Also available on YouTube here.

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• Some of our 2025 coverage about the changing app environment:

• Apple Recreated the App Store on the Web with No Way to Download or Buy Apps

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This week, Federico and John kick off their holiday app and automation experimentation season a little earlier than usual with a mix of apps, automations, and services.

On AppStories+, Federico and John look ahead, considering the future of Shortcuts and automation.

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• Follow Up

• Claude Skills

• Typing Mind

• Ticci article on MS

• Bloom

• Firecrawl

• Notion

• Drafts

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This week, Federico and John clean house, deleting old apps, screenshots, half-built shortcuts, huge downloads, and more. A look at the workflows and apps we use to stay organized and clean up our digital messes.

On AppStories+, Federico’s Typing Mind experiments continue, while John shares his experience of Claude Code to build tools to run MacStories.

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• Backups

• Backblaze

• Bloom

• CleanMyPhone

• Federico’s Sky Preview

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This week, Federico and John look at the hype surrounding AI browsers to see if there’s any there there.

Then, on AppStories+, Federico explains his experiments with lightning fast alternative AI models in Typing Mind.

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• The Browsers

• ChatGPT Atlas

• The lethal trifecta for AI agents private data, untrusted content, and external communication

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This week, Federico and John consider whether Apple made the case for running local LLMs and gaming on the M5 iPad Pro and discusss who should consider buying it.

On AppStories+, we explain how Claude Skills work and why they are one of Anthropic’s most exciting features in a while.

Also available on YouTube here.

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• M5 iPad Pro Review An AI and Gaming Upgrade for AI and Games That Aren’t There Yet - MacStories

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This week, Federico and John discuss what might be next for Apple Intelligence and how it fits into the broader AI market.

On AppStories+, Federico and John cover the fallout from the Sora app and why AI can’t replace human creativity.

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• Claude: Get 50% off Claude Pro, including access to Claude Code.

• Apps and Services Mentioned

• Zapier

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