Workspace Templating and Calendar Frustrations

Hello and welcome to another episode of App Stories. Today's episode is brought to you by Steam Clock and Claude. I'm John Vorhys, and I've got Federico Vitti with me. Hey Federico. Hello, John. How are you? Oh, I'm doing all right. Hey, welcome to a new era of Apple, the Turnus term, we're gonna call it. You know, his his term as CEO. Kinda. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh John, I I I So I've been thinking about this. We're recording this on the day after this was announced, which by the way was Monday, April twentieth, also Max Sorry's uh seventeenth birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to us. This was announced late in the evening for me. In fact, I was watching an Italian sitcom on TV, and you started texting me first that Johnny Shrugi was named Chief Hardware Officer. And later that uh Tim Cook uh made it official that he was gonna step down as CEO and John Turnus was gonna take over come September 1st. Uh I'll tell you, I feel pretty lucky uh about the fact that I have already met in person and talked in person to the current Apple CEO and the future Apple CEO and I have pictures with both of them so that's pretty nice. Um but I don't really I see a lot of our peers have plenty of thoughts about this. I don't really um this is a weird thing that I think you and I have in common. I really and always have disliked these like uh sort of self um celebratory things you know yeah to talk about yourself and to look back I don't if you pay attention to Mac stories , we barely celebrate Mac stories. Uh you know, we did something we did a few special things for our tenth anniversary, I think. And we did a couple of articles maybe for fifteen, or maybe we did nothing for fifteen articles. I don't think we did anything for fifteen. So yeah, um I really dislike this whole thing of like looking back and celebrating over and over. I just uh for me it's always been about for f I was texting you this last night. For me, it's always been a f about the fact that I think Apple is the one tech company with the most taste and the most style that makes the computers and the app ecosystem I like the most because they care about design, you know, and you can criticize Apple design. But let me tell you, having spent a lot of Euros and a lot of time uh testing other computers, let me tell you, you have no idea Especially now that we're doing NPC and we see all the weird handhelds and everything and all the UI. Like I mean if you like Android, if you like Windows, if you like Linux, more power to you. But for my taste, for my liking, yeah, Apple stuff is the best. There's yeah there's absolutely no parallel like compared to other competing platforms. Oh my god. Um so for me it's always been about the products and it's always been about uh about the output and it's always been about what's next, what's current and what's next. And what can you do with the things that Apple makes, right? Which is why Mac Stories is about what can you do with these things? What can you do with these phones? What can you do with these computers? What can you do with these with these apps and these automations? How can you save time working on the computer so you can spend more time touching grass outside and going to concerts and making friends, you know, making love, whatever, whatever it is that you do, spend time with your pets, spend time with your dogs, spend time, you know, go to the zoo or something. As long as you work less at the computer and you do more outside. So that's been my philosophy. Um and and and I'm pretty thankful about the fact that John uh also thinks along these lines. And so I really don't have any any any additional thoughts about you know Tim Cook a remarkable career, I would say. Yep. Um I'm happy about the fact that John Turner seems like a cool guy, is younger, is a product person. That will that thing I like, you know, makes me optimistic about the fact that maybe he will bring some of his product vision to Apple. But that's it. Like I don't really want to have a conversation with you about the inner workings of the Apple boardroom or you know. Yeah. Or the supply chain or anything like that. I I mean look, I'm right there with you. I think for me , the one thing I would add is that I really don't care so much about the inner workings details of it all. What I appreciated though was Tim Cook's note to the community because I think that unlike a I think that that kind of struck to the heart of what you and I care about, which is first of all, it showed Tim Cook as a human, as a person, not just a CEO of a big company and I think it it felt sincere, it felt heartfelt, and it really went to a lot of the kinds of things that we hold close to ours, you know, to Mac Story's heart. And I appreciated that and really enjoyed it. And if you haven't looked at it, I would I would definitely read it. I mean, I know there's a lot of ways you can criticize Apple. You can criticize Tim Cook. John Turnus undoubtedly also will be criticized for decisions he's yet to make. But I think that Tim Cook uh strikes me as a sincere, honest person who's trying to do the best for a company that he cares about. And I appreciated the uh the note that he that he publis hed. He's a company man through and through I think and and you know my experience with Tim Kuka was uh how long has it been? Has it been more than two years? John you're you're you're a former lawyer. Is there a statute of limitations on the things that I can disclose after 10 years? Uh no, but you can but you can just go for it. I mean, I think it was been like twelve years, hasn't it? Wasn't it like 2014? It's been eleven. Eleven years. I was invited I was invited to an Apple event in twenty fifteen and I was able to talk to Tim Cook in private for like five minutes with no PR person present. Which is very, very unusual. Very unusual and very one of the things that one of the stories that I can tell in real life. Remember last year we were uh WWDC just outside uh we were at the visitor center and it was you, me, um uh Noah Herman, uh great YouTuber, and uh Christopher Lolly, some other Dan Moran, and and I was just telling these stories and this this was one of them. it And's a such a uh uh uh uh if I think about it, it's an incredible story that I was able to talk to Tim Cook without a PR person present. I mean he's the CEO, and he explicitly asked his PR people to just be able to talk to me with no PR person around for five minutes. And it was about a about a article that I did at the time, you know, recovering after cancer using sort of the iPhone to get back in shape . And from what I know about that conversation eleven years ago, obviously lots of water under the bridge since, but it was just really I would say warm and and I remember just a calm person . Like it was very warm and calm and and it was I remember this and I was younger, obviously it was my first time being um being at an Apple event in any official capacity but I remember that he had this very inten se stare almost like um which isn't which it's not something that I can say c like Craig Federighi that I've been able to interview in person a bunch of times at this point. Um he's a very different person. Very different vibe. He's a he's an engineer, he's he's a nerd, and uh uh you know bursting with energy, I is how I would put it, right? Like he's got kind of electricity. And so that's what I remember about Tim Cook and obviously, you know, lots of things have changed and, you can criticize Tim Cook for the things that he had to do that he wanted to do with the current US administration. I personally would have done things differently, but hey, I'm not the CEO of Apple, and I will never be . So what do I know? But that's as far as I as I can say. I think I think he was able to drive Apple to exceptional heights , undoubtedly, in terms of revenue, in terms of numbers, is an is a is an operations person. And I think the past fifteen years as the as the CEO of Apple show that. And I think the trait that the trait that you explained is pretty unique when you think about it of somebody who is running the largest company in just about world history, right? Is that he was he's able to kind of maintain that personal connection. I mean, obviously he he he also is a CEO and has that laser focused stare of his, yet he was able to Right . Right. But but you know, to be a a warm and an and a warm person who was interested in talking to you and understanding what you had to say, which you know, I think that that's a it's a pretty unique person who can kind of balance both those things. And I think we should for now, we should enjoy the fact that John Turn is is the CEO to be because at some point he will be on the hot seat just like Tim Cook has been, and I'm sure that there will be plenty plenty of people who are unhappy with him as well. But uh I do think that he's a good choice personally. I don't have any other uh deep insights into it other than that. I don't know John Turnus. He seems like a nice person . But uh, you know, these are also CEOs of large companies in you know the largest companies in the world. And I don't really expect them to do anything other than what's best for Apple and its investors. Yeah. Two more things I will say. The first one is because of my personal experience and story, when I hear, when I read Tim Cook in his letter to the community, say how privileged he feels whenever an Apple customer sends him an email or a letter about like the Apple Watch, how he you know the Apple Watch saved you know their life or or helped uh uh a relative get back in shape and how he feels touched by that. I do believe that. I I believe that is the case. I think so too. And I do already have a John Turner's story. This is a funny one. So he has the same he's very Craig adjacent in terms of like overall vibe and and charisma and energy, at least from the brief interaction that I've had with him in London two years ago, uh, at the iPad Pro M4 event. And Mike can actually confirm this story because Mike was present in person right next to me. We we we we walk up to John Turnus, it was just at the hands-on area, so nothing is uh no secrets here, it was a public space. And I walk up to John Turnus, I say obviously a big fan of of uh of your work and and and and the products and I think there was a a PR person um uh in the room um sitting next uh you're just standing next to us. Uh I don't recall the details. Maybe Mike will be able to follow up with the actual details but basically the topic of the Macpad came up right and and this person said John is the is the the person who created the Macpad and he just looked at me and I and I'm not kidding you and Mike will be able to confirm the story. He looked at me and he's like, oh I know with this exact tone . And I was like I just said, oh my God, I am so sorry . That's great. I love it. I love it. So that's my John Turnus story. We'll see, we'll see what happens with John Turnus as CEO. Yeah, yeah. It'll be a nice long transition over the course of the summer. It's kinda nice. We'll get kinda I'm sure at WWDC we'll s give everybody will give Tim Cook a bit of a send off. Uh since it'll be the last time I think I do have a question for you, John. Okay. So you know you know that Tim Cook opens every every Apple keynote with his signature good morning. Yeah. If you were John Turnos, what would your signature opening uh salutation B. I'd switch it up and do something like make hey everyone or hey everybody. Maybe he could like you know you know the classic Apple hello? Like like the hello. Oh yeah, that's true. That's awfully formal. I like them more I I like I mean, I mean I'm here in the South where everybody says hey to everybody instead of hello. So uh yeah, I hey that that's a topic for unwind, I suppose. But yeah,, he heyy everybody. I don't know. I will see. What do you think? Would you have do you have one? I have no idea. I have put me on the hot seat now. Yeah. I don't even know where John Turnos is from. If he has an accent. He went to the University of Pennsylvania for college, which is in Philadelphia, but I don't know that that's where he necessarily is there I d I mean this is this we're touching it we're moving into unwind territory. Is there a is there a uh is there a Philadelphia accent? Is there a Philly accent? I think a Philly accent. I thought you're gonna ask like a like a way to say greet people in Philadelphia. You'd have to ask Gruber that. I don't know. I I don't uh But you cannot do a Philly accent . You cannot do any accent, by the way. You've never done any accent to me. Well, I grew up in the Midwest. We have no accents in the Midwest, at least parts of the Midwest. Yeah, at least parts of the Midwest. Like I came from Michigan, you know. There are parts of Michigan. There is if you're from like the UP, the upper peninsula. You know, this we gotta save this for unwind. We'll talk about this. John and I, if you're a listener of up sorry. John and I have another show that is also weekly comes out on Thursday n Thursday or Friday and it's called Unwind and it's a big chunk of it. So we recommend media for the weekend, hence the name Unwind. But uh the opening chunk of the show is usually about these cultural things that John maybe doesn't know about Italy or I most definitely do not know about America. And uh accents and local fauna are uh recurring things . Yes. Yes. The animal kingdom is we haven't done the animal kingdom in a while. Telling you. Yeah, I'll be touching grass because Federico . I'm using Codex. No, I'm not using Codex a lot. But I wanted a follow-up from our conversation uh about OpenAI and their Everything App Super App that we talked about a couple of weeks ago because the uh codex has been updated and boy is it full of features and it's been very clearly said to me when I was on a call with um with OpenAI that this is in fact the beginnings of their super app. It's not the it's not the end point. They're only getting started. They have other things they want to do. But Codex is going to be their super app and they rolled out a lot of really interesting features, including some of the underpinnings of what started life as Sky, which, as you probably recall, if you are been listening to this show for a long time, that is the uh the tool that came from the original creators of Workflow , which became shortcuts. And then Ari Weinstein and Conrad Kramer left Apple, started the software. What was it? The software Apple Applications Incorporated. Incorporated came up with Sky, which you wrote about a year ago exactly. We were both testing it last summer, and then the company got by bought by OpenAI, which wasn't super surprising. I mean, you had actually had predicted that in your story. And now we're seeing for the first time since the company was acquired in the fall of last year the first glimmers of computer use, which are driven by the uh the technologies and and code that those those two and their team created. Yeah. And uh I also wrote about computer use on Mac stories. I think it's an incredible uh piece of technology that sort of combines the classic screen recording capabilities that you've seen in other computer use tools. But that those can only get you so far. And so what's unique about Kodak computer use, which is based on Sky computer use, is how it uses the accessibility APIs and more specifically the accessibility tree that is effectively a stand almost like a standalone syn tax that is embedded within every macOS application that is is a bunch of really complex and long XML-like text that describes in detail the hierarchy and structure and contents of any application on your Mac. That is usually used by things like screen readers and voiceover to interact with any application if you are uh visually impaired or have have any other kind of physical impairment that prevents you from using your computer with a master keyboard, for example. And it was repurposed historically by program mer adjacent utilities like a UI browser, now discontinued, which was a utility to come up to to perform uh to write and test Apple script against any user interface on Mac OS. Even if that a particular application had no AppleScript dictionary definition, it was using the AX tree or accessibility tree framework. That's exactly what Codex Computer Use is also relying on. This is a very complex thing to do because it requires uh parsing a lot of text and being fast about it. Uh of course it helps using this with either the Spark model of Codex or fast mode in GPT five point four, which is what I use in Codex. But overall I am so impressed with the with I'm I'm impressed with a couple of things. One with the more focused open AI that we are seeing now. Uh I guess uh guess they must have gotten the wake up call from the Anthropic Revenue uh and decided to drop all of these other experiments that they were doing uh like uh Sora for example or GPT for science or or all the other things that sort of I I think I think OpenAI kind of dropped the ball in terms of understanding the potential for businesses and productivity. And wouldn't be surprised to see more previous features sort of get axed over time. I'm looking at uh GPT Pulse, for example. Uh that's the proactive thing that they have in Chat GPT. So I am I I am impressed with this new open AI that that is looking at codecs and they're s and they're thinking, well, this is making us money and it's uh it's actually pretty great for productivity use cases. Maybe we should focus more on productivity stuff rather than slop and yeah, and and I think that they can roll some of that into codecs obviously, right? I mean image generation makes sense, I think, in a in a coding product, for example. And two, I'm just impressed with codecs as an application in general. I think it's a it's a very different vibe from cloud code. Uh it's a very different pace of updates. Claude has like two or three updates every single day. Codex feels a little more, a little slower, a little more deliberate. And also in general, the models are very different. Codex is a nerd, a cold, professional, pragmatic nerd. And Claude tends to be a little more enthusiastic and eager to, you know, to fix things and to create things. I prefer Claude for the ecosystem of tools that you have. I prefer Cloud for UI design. UI design in GPT 5.4 absolutely sucks. I can tell you that. But we're according this a couple of days before the rumored release of GPT five point five. So who knows what's gonna happen? Yeah, who knows what's gonna happen. Sorry, is out. Um Yeah, I mean that's what things change so quickly in this industry. I mean, one week is like an eternity. I I think one thing that really impresses me about Codex Federico, that maybe you could talk about a little bit, is is the fact that this computer use happens in the background, which is very unusual to me. And I don't know how that Yeah, that happens because they're using these accessibility APIs and they're creating a virtual cursor on screen. So you don't the difference is that all the other computer use tools that you've seen in Cloud or Perplexity, for example, they are they are hijacking your actual cursor and they're simply relying on on screen recording features to see what's available on screen. So it needs to be in the foreg round, and they're simulating clicks using your actual cursor. Right? Uh, what happens here is that they don't need to see what's in the foreground. If they can if computer using codecs can successfully parse the accessibil accessibility tree contents of any window and any application on your Mac, it doesn't have to be open. It doesn't because Codex doesn't need to see what's v virtually in the foreground of your display. So that's why you can use computer use even if an application is minimized in the DOM, for example. It needs to be open, but it can be not visible or minimized. Right, right. And I think that obviously that's a big advantage because you can go about your work as a user on the same computer yourself while Codex is doing things in the background, which I think is a big advantage . Yep . This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Steam Clock. A lot of mobile apps get the job done, but they aren't exactly delightful . When an app is great though, you look forward to adding it to your home screen. Steam Clock Software builds mobile apps for companies that care about taste. They're a design and development studio based in Vancouver, Canada, and they've been shipping iOS and Android apps for over fifteen years. Their clients are growing tech companies that care about mobile but don't have the in-house team to build something great. Steam Clock works with companies to level up their app so they can go from its holding us back to its pulling its weight. Some of their clients have discovered the hard way that vibe coding your way to the app store isn't a product strategy. Steam Clock has deep experience shipping apps for iOS and Android, so they're good at helping companies figure out the right technical approach to their solution. Their client apps have been downloaded over 10 million times and they have helped five of their clients through acquisitions. If you're building something and need a mobile team that cares as much as you do, Steam Clock is where to start. Visit SteamClock dot com slash app stories to get in touch. That's steamclock.com slash app stories. Our thanks to Steam Clock for their support of the show . All right, Frederico, let's move on to the main event today. We thought it would be fun to figure out some ways in which we need new apps and give each other a little advice about what apps maybe we should consider, some some friction points in our workflows. And so that's what we're going to do today. I think we each have a couple of things that we want to talk about. Where where do you want to start, Federico? You go first. All right. So what what I need, Federico, is I really need a simple and reliable home kit automation app that does more than the home app. Because, you know, the thing about automations on the home app, they tend to be single if this then that type of automations now I know that there's you can you can stack things more more in shortcuts but I know that there are some really good home kit apps out there that do more than that uh and expose some of the uh the various variables and parameters that Apple in fact doesn't even expose in its own home app. I was wondering if you had any uh suggestions for me because it's been a long time since I've looked at these apps. I think I would need to understand what kind of automations you're looking for. I think it would be things like if a motion sensor sens es m senses motion and it's after 8 p.m. at night and oh so you want to have multiple conditions? Yeah, it's more of a multiple conditions thing than anything uh else. Uh it would be like yeah, that it's that kind of thing. It's like, is did the temperature rise above this temperature and it's during the day? Yeah, and I'm in my office. Like in other words, to turn on a fan, because I don't need that fan to turn off if I'm not in my office or if it's middle of the night, that kind of thing. I have the app for you. And I think you've played with this before. It's called control ler for home kit. Yes, I have. And I remember correctly, so I searched on the app store. Uh you can create automations with multiple conditions. And uh you actually have a layout to select all the conditions that you want to be true and then you can perform something. And uh they have a motion detector as one of the supported triggers, even in the screenshots in the App Store. So you can even create custom notifications and uh if you're into that sort of stuff you can map out your own your own home with floor plans so you can have a floor plan showing you all the different accessories that you have. Yeah no I'm gonna the the key feature is I would say the uh custom automations and the custom notifications that you can get. Yeah, I think that that would be good. I mean, I think I'm I'm dealing with a lot of notifications on my own these days using things like uh burr but uh that would that would that might be a nice addition to it I think the other thing I want to look at is I know that a cara is now doing some wireless presence sensors because one of the things that I set up is I found a little little nook in the stairs leading down from the second floor to the first floor of our place. And when I go down the stairs and it's dark, I want the lights to come on when I pass that sensor. When I go up the stairs, I don't need the lights to go on. I need them to, you know, they can stay off because I don't I'm going upstairs, I'm leaving the first floor. So that's the kind of thing I'm thinking about. I'm already starting to think about new gadgets. One thing that's been driving me a little nuts is that uh Hugh did some regressions in their software stack that is causing issues with the home app. And I don't know if if any um any listeners are familiar with this, but sometimes the all of the Hue stuff will fall off of the network simultaneously and be unavail able in the home app, but still be available in the Hue app because the the um the matter connection between the two apps is broken. And I think they just did a uh software update a firmware update for the for the bridge itself this is the bridge pro that fixes that but when mine broke and came back online it fell off once again so I'm not entirely sure it's totally fixed. Because last night, right before I went to bed, all the lights stopped working, which was really a pain. But by morning they were working again, so I don't know what's going on. The story is that HomeKit stuff is still kind of broken and you have to manage it more than I would like personally. But I'm I'm willing to go for it, Federica. I'm willing to dive back in and do more with HomeKit these days. I'm a little surprised and don't take this as a as a way for me to convince you. Because I actually would prefer if you didn't do this. But I am surprised that you haven't done it. Which is go down the home assistant rabbit hole w w especially with the help of cloud code. I haven't done it only because I've gone down the rabbit hole of coding it up myself without the help of home assistant. Very specific to my devices. And so home assistant is on my roadmap, but right now what I've been doing is because Hugh has an API, I have scripts that are running that are monitoring. Like this morning when those lights weren't working, I just got into I went into messages, texted my ClaudeBot saying, These things stopped working. Check it out. Tell me what's going on. It came back with a full diagnosis of the problem, pinpointing the exact network, networking issue it was having and suggesting three different things to solve it. Now it kind of fixed it yeah I don't know if it fixed itself. The first thing to do was to reboot the router, the um the bridge, which I did. And it didn't fix it immediately. And then I was like, well, I got other things to do. I'll have to deal with these other troubleshooting things later. And then it eventually just worked. So I think it was just literally waiting for that whatever that background process to get up and running again . But yeah, I mean that's what I've been doing, is been creating scripts myself that control everything, including a bunch of other things. Because like I've got some TP Link smart plugs, that has an API, me RO hasS an API , Anchor Batteries have an API. A lot of these devices have an API that you can you can use. So a lot of the stuff I've just been building myself. Okay, I think the next one you will probably have a suggestion for me . I am looking for a utility like a clipboard manager. That it doesn't have to be a clipboard manager, but so I'm taking a screenshot. I take a lot of screenshots on my Mac Studio server, which is in the living room. And I just want to be able to paste those screenshots on my MacBook Pro or my iPad Pro. Like so I take a screenshot, I copy it on the Mac Studio server, but I'm in the office on my MacBook Pro or on my iPad, and I want to be able to paste those. So Universal Clipboard, I'm one of those people where universal clipboard never worked for me. I don't know why. Um , but I'm wondering if if there's like a and this don't have these are like ephemeral things. Yeah, well it's a it's a range thing too with the universal clipboard. Like if you're far , which is why I mentioned the two separate rooms. Yeah. Um but I'm looking for something that lets me copy on one device, go to the other, paste, don't need storage, don't need complicated things , just seamless transfer of ephemeral data, text or images between devices that are on the same network but not physically close to each other. Well, I mean there are a couple of different ways you could go about it. One is you could use an app like uh like Paste . But that's a full blown paper manager. Yeah, do you not want you don't want a full-blown cape? All right. So all right, let's put that one to the side then. What if you one thing that I do is I use clean shot X to take my screenshots. Yeah. That's also what I'm saying. And I save them to Google Drive in a dedicated folder called screenshots. And that way they appear on all of my Macs no matter where I happen to be. And then I can just drag it in to that that other other Mac, and then you could set up just a script or an app to clean out your screenshots every so often. I mean, I think that that's like one of the simplest ways to handle that kind of thing . Hmm I keep my screenshots all in a dedicated folder. That way it's easy to clean up after myself . Instead of using the desktop, instead of using downloads, you know, that kind of thing. That's not a terrible idea. How do you set a screenshot location for cleanshot? Uh you in sc reenshot X, it's in the settings. Settings. Settings probably general. General. Yep. Export location. It's about halfway. Export loc ation. And they ooh, okay. So you just do Google Drive . Yeah. What if I did iCloud Drive? Yeah, you could use iCloud too. The thing about iCloud Drive is mine's too full to do it. I've got more room on Google Drive. Yeah, I gotta pay for additional storage, I think, also because I manage a family plan. So yeah. So here's what I'm doing here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do a f I'm gonna create a folder called pound so it lives at the very top of the case screenshots to this is one of the here's another one for you too I would I would suggest if you're using if you're using this with like codex or or clot or something like that. Is that if you use screen sharing on the Mac, the built-in utility screen sharing, you can drag a file from the Finder to the other Mac through through screen sharing. What ?ah Ye you, need to know this because none of the third party apps that you and I have talked about do this. If you take the Yeah yeah it does a file transfer it does a direct file transfer. So you open up finding it could have led with that And it's fast if you're on your local network. Okay, hold on, hold on. No , it's not working. Oh, it worked for me. No, it's not working. See? Yeah, it'll work. Do it when you've got time to play around with it. But but just drag from finder to finder. Not into like an app, but from finder to finder . Oh, so it needs to be finder to finder? Yeah, so you'll want to drag it to your downloads folder, your desktop, or something like that, on this on the remote Mac . Um but it it does a pretty good job. Now of course your my your video in Riverside is getting a little blurry, which I'm sure is because you're doing all kinds of dragging big files around short Yeah. I can tell you finder to finder worked. Thanks. That is an excellent tip, John. So using the Apple screen sharing app, which I continue to say, this application needs to find its way to iPad OS. Oh it, does . It's so good. It's easily of all the ones I've used, it's got the highest resolution. It it has the benefit of always being there. The problem with when you use a third-party app for this stuff is you have to have some sort of mini app running on the remote computer, either like a menu bar app or a full blown app. And if you forget to have that running, you're going to end up going into screen sharing anyway to turn it on. So you might as well use screen sharing in the first place. I think the third-party apps are very good for iPad and iPhone, but if you're on the Mac, it's hard to beat screen sharing really. This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. Would you be surprised if I told you that I have Claude code running in the background right now, building me a Mac app to reschedule my Apple Reminders tasks? Well, I am, and that's one of the great things about Claude Code. You can set it off to do some tasks and get other work done while it codes. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. If you're a developer spending half of your day on tasks you wish you could just hand off, Claude Code runs in your terminal, reads your code base, and can take on things like writing tests, refactoring, and debugging without you hand holding it through the entire process. You can forget about basic web searches. Claude is excellent at deep research. That means you can dig deeper with extensive sources, proper citations, and do it all in a fraction of the time. This is something I do all the time for background research when I'm starting out a new project on something I'm not familiar with. Plus, cowork can create polished documents, spreadsheets with working formulas, and presentations directly in your files system, not rough drafts that need heavy editing. I've used cowork quite a bit to create templates for various kinds of documents that I can use as starting points and to reorganize my files, such as clean out my downloads folders or figure out ways that I can get a little more organized with the way I store those materials. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude today at claude.ai/slash app stories. That's C L A U D E dot AI slash app stories, and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. That's claude.ai slash app stories our thanks to claude bianthropic for their support of the show what's next on your list all right next on my l list is that I need some sort of a workspace templating system. I'm talking about, you know, tasks that I have where maybe I need a couple of Safari windows open and another app or two all kind of arranged and one that I have tried but I haven't gotten too deep with yet is workspaces plus which is a Mac app. I'm talking about a you know Mac setup here basically. I was wondering if you had any suggestions of other things that do something similar. How do you want to organize your Windows? Uh different depending on the task. And do you use multiple desktops, like virtual desktops? Yeah, I generally do not use multiple desktops. So what I want to do is I'm gonna offend a bunch of research now for no reason. I do not want to join that club, Federico. The club that I want to be in is team one screen, but when I click on something, it minimizes or hides all the apps that I don't need without closing them because I want to switch to something else later. You're describing stage manager. Right? Kind of, but stage manager isn't very good . I d I lived with it for over a year and I abandoned it because it wasn't it wasn't uh what I wanted. So and you've been using this workspace plus . I've been trying it and it's okay. I I think my problem my problem I think well I I can't really judge it yet because I haven't used it enough. But my problem, I believe, is that my old habits have are hard to break, and what I tend to do is just have all the apps open at once, and I just kind of command tab between them. That's that that's getting a little old because I have too many things open at once and I've got all these layers and now we've got liquid glass and the windows aren't as easily defined anymore. So it looks more cluttered than it ever has on macOS. And so I was thinking, what if, now that I have this nice big 32-inch display, I had a way to just automatically open things the way I'd like for particular work, like you know, two screen, two Safari windows side by side, and my calendar open or something like that. And I think something like workspace is or workspace plus is the solution . I'm just not sure what the best solution is yet. I'd be curious if anybody I'm sure there are listeners who are using the I I had something in my head about this and now I understood why. So workspace plus is what you've been using. Yeah. But another application based on this idea of like project -based launching of Windows is called Workspac es , which is a separate app. Interesting. And it's available on setup. I'm gonna send you a link. Um and it's kind of confusing because what what you've been using is called workspace singular plus . Yeah. This one is called workspaces plural. But it's sort of that idea where you create multiple projects and then you kinda reinvoke Windows for that project. Kinda. And it's like an and a project can be both apps but also files and folders. Oh that's it. So maybe something like that. Yeah, no, I'll check it out. I'll check it out. I'm just at the very beginning stages of kind of checking this sort of thing out and trying to decide whether it's just one extra layer of fiddling around that I don't need or whether it would actually make things easier for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you should maybe check that out. Okay. Uh my other request is something impossible, but I figured I would bring it up . And it's more, I guess, more than an I don't know, make up make up this whatever you will. I would like to have the Apple Calendar app , but with the same integrations of Notion Calendar. So I really like the UI of Apple Calendar , but I want it to work like Notion Calendar. Or let me put it this way. Yeah, I like using Notion Calendar, but the UI sucks, and I very much prefer the design of the Apple Calendar app. So I guess an easier way to think about the uh to think about what I want would be: I want the the monthly calendar view from Apple inside the Notion Calendar app. So the monthly view, this is what I mean. Let me show you. So this is what I like. This is how I like to use the Apple calendar app so I'm showing it off on video the monthly calendar at the top you select a day and a list below yeah notion calendar which I like because it can pull from notion dat abases, and if in those notion databases there are pages with dates, you can see those pages on a calendar, right? So they're not calendar events, they're entries in a database with dates that you can see alongside your proper calendar events. The problem is that notion calendar only lets you choose between these views, which I don't understand, one day, two days or three days. That's it. You can choose a monthly view on desktop, but the iPhone app is kind of forgotten, and there's no iPad version either. So hey, maybe actually out there, there's a calendar app that integrates with Notion, like Notion Calendar does, and I don't know about it. Maybe John knows about it. Maybe you know about it, John? You know what? I don't know about it. I think calendars are like the new email, is what I've I've I think I told you. The title messages. Yeah, they're they're mostly terrible. I there are a lot of them. I actually unlike you, I I think I like I like the Apple Calendar app quite a bit, but there are aspects of it's too many taps and clicks to get an event in. I wish it had some kind of natural language uh field to enter tasks. I think that there's I think you and I sit at a weird intersection of calendar use where neither one of us has a lot of meetings to schedule with with Zoom links and things like that. I mean, if I have more than four of those in a month, it's a lot. And uh that that is, I think, the focus of a whole category of calendar apps like Fantastical, Notion Calendar, to a degree. You know, that kind of I spend my day going to meetings is a big part of the calendar scene. And then there's more of the like, then there's the whole time blocking type of calendars that are out there, which is really not my thing, and I know it's not yours either. And then there's somewhere in between, and I don't know that because what you're describing, I think, is you want a simple calendar app that has a special a couple of very specific advanced features like connecting to Notion, which I just don't think that those things exist. I mean I'm stuck kind of using a ver a hodgepod ge of calendars which usually it means that I don't use my calendar much at all. I have and I'll write something in like notion my notes daily notes or something about what I have to do that day. I have dot, which is a very nice menu bar app uh on the Mac because it has very much what you described with the Apple calendar app menu or monthly view which it has the month at the top and a list at below but it doesn't integrate with Notion so that's not gonna help you. Uh calendar 366 just came out with a new Mac app. Yeah yeah that that's one of the better ones that we've written about in the past . It used to be a separate purchase on like every single platform, iPhone, iPad, Mac. It's all universal purchase now. It looks really nice. Instead of on the Mac being something that was tied to the menu bar, it's now a standalone app. Looks great, but I don't think it has exactly what you're looking for. And I personally find I've been using Notion Calendar, but on the other hand, I also find Notion Calendar kind of confusing to use. I don't know what it is about Notion Calendar. It's just not it's never really clicked super well with me. Uh just even moving things around and changing dates. I don't know. I have no solution for you, Feder ico. Okay. Well maybe some of our listeners. Yeah, maybe some of our listeners will send us uh suggestions. You're you're welcome to do so. You can find us on Mastodon and Blue Sky. If you're a Cloud Max source Discord member, you can ping us on Discord. And uh I would rather I would prefer if the if the answer was not just vibe code your own. So yeah, if there's a if there's a pre-exingist product, I would prefer that. Yeah, I mean we're gonna talk a little bit about the things that we've given up on and made ourselves in the in the post show. Uh but I think that certain categories like calendars . Calendars is is a mess and complicated and a design nightmare. And I don't think that trying to do that yourself with a coding agent would probably result in something you'd be very happy with, so I I would would probably try to find something that you can just live with. Yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. That's it for today's episode of App Stories. I want to thank our two sponsors again. That's Steam Clock and Claude Bianthropic. You can find us over at max stories.net and as Federico said, we're on social media, Blue Sky and Mastodon. Look for us there. You can search for our names. Federico is at Feti che. That's V-I-T-I-C-C-I , and I'm at John Voorhees. J-O-H-N V-O-O-R -H-W S. Talk to you next week, Federico. Ciao, John