Apple gear, side projects and the week's small talk.
MacStories Unwind is the looser corner of MacStories, with John Voorhees and Federico Viticci trading notes on Apple hardware, Shortcuts and AI coding tools between stories about roofers, a rocket launch and fried plantains. Picks come near the end, and an Unwind deal goes in the show notes.
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MacStories Unwind is where John Voorhees and Federico Viticci talk about Apple and whatever else is on their minds, as loosely as the name suggests. The episode titles give the method away: 'Frames, Finales, and Foreign Drama', 'Moonshots, Time Machines, and Workflows', 'Foldables, Hubs, and Weekend Picks'. These are grab bags, and the grab bag is the point. Openers run on small talk. One starts with a week of nail guns from roofers across the street and a joke about watching the crew like an old Italian gentleman, hands behind the back. Another admits the Artemis 2 launch was more exciting than Apple's 50th anniversary. Then the talk settles on projects. The Apple Frames shortcut gets a full rebuild story: 500 fewer actions, smaller images, near-instant framing, support for the MacBook Neo, every Apple Watch model and new iMac colors, and a command line version planned for developers. A HomeKit setup spread across three floors, scrambled by a Hue Bridge Pro upgrade and power outages, is being put right with Claude Code. AI is a steady thread, treated as a tool rather than a spectacle. Claude and deep research helped sort through conflicting forum advice to improve the show's own audio, with a few admitted hiccups along the way. Superpowers, from Jesse Vincent, earns praise for making Claude brainstorm, ask questions and plan before it dispatches sub-agents. Policy gets airtime too: in 'Xcode for Mobile: It's Time', the case is that Apple should shape safe ways to run code from other iPhone apps instead of blocking them. Gear arrives through the MacStories setups page, and one refresh adds a compact hub bought purely for more high-speed USB-C ports. 'A Brave Neo World' has a MacBook Neo produced in its opening exchange. The personal side stays in. Dogs, fish, fried plantains and an unusual burrito share an episode with that HomeKit saga. Screen picks close things out, For All Mankind among them, and one sign-off leaves a cliffhanger over whether a stalled progress bar has bricked Federico's iPad. Sign-offs also point to MacStories.net and to App Stories and NPC, other shows where the two can be found. The result is Apple talk with the people left in.
Made for: Suits a listener who keeps up with Apple hardware and apps and likes hearing Shortcuts builds, HomeKit repairs and AI coding experiments talked through casually, with room left for TV picks and personal tangents.
What sets it apart: It is less a news rundown than a report from the workbench: a rebuilt Apple Frames shortcut, a HomeKit rescue with Claude Code and AI-assisted polishing of the show's own audio, all wrapped in unhurried two-person banter.
MacStories Unwind is a fun exploration of media and more.
A USB-C hub before movie picks: John and Federico know your kind of Friday.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A relaxed catch-up turns a three-floor HomeKit problem into a concrete Hue smart-plug repeater fix.
MacStories Unwind stays in an easy catch-up rhythm as John Voorhees and Federico Vitticci move through haircut jokes, beards, dogs, empty-nester life, food, and television before settling into a HomeKit problem with practical stakes.
A relaxed Mac chat about rebuilding Apple Frames for speed, polish, and scale.
MacStories Unwind turns a noisy week of rooftop construction into a relaxed tour of the hosts' current fascinations, then settles into the real draw: Apple Frames 4.
A grounded, slightly wandering conversation about lunar ambition, tested audio workflows, and the appeal of tinkering.
The episode draws a clean line from the Artemis 2 lunar flyby to For All Mankind, then down into the more ordinary craft of keeping a podcast workflow reliable.
A practical setup check-in on desk gear, hubs, microphones, and the small tradeoffs behind everyday tools.
MacStories Unwind frames the quarterly setups update as an ongoing record of how a working desk changes as hardware, apps, tools, and gaming devices rotate in and out.
A clear, grounded conversation about mobile coding pushing against Apple’s platform boundaries.
Apple's reluctance to put full Xcode on the iPhone gets a useful pressure test here, as the hosts tie that absence to code execution through Telegram and Discord.
Fast questions, sharper game tangents.
Tech talk with useful detours.
Few questions, long tangents, wherever the conversation goes
Tech skepticism with geek-household fingerprints.
Engineer brain, tech culture, no polish.
Tech culture through working humans.
Hosts John and Federico discuss a personal anecdote about a nearby explosion causing a power outage and the humorous misinterpretation of a text message summary.
John and Federico discuss their daily note-taking habits in Notion and other productivity tools.
John and Federico discuss Federico's questionable Japanese T-shirt and his newfound love for kombucha before diving into the episode's topic.
John and Federico engage in casual banter about haircuts, beards, dogs, and goldfish.
John and Federico discuss a noisy construction week and tease a major update to the Apple Frames shortcut.
John and Federico discuss the Artemis 2 moon mission and their excitement for space exploration, mixed with Apple-related banter.
John and Federico discuss their quarterly MacStories Setups update, detailing changes in their gear, apps, and workflows.
The hosts discuss the possibility of Apple bringing Xcode to iPad and the rise of AI-powered mobile development tools that bypass Xcode.
John Voorhees explains how his internal tool turns an Apple newsroom link into a streamed spec summary, using Sonnet because Opus is slower and Haiku "had too many hallucinations." The app downloads and unzips each image folder, shows thumbnails, and uploads only the images he picks, replacing a four-step manual process.
The hosts discuss the exhausting process of writing an iOS review and reflect on past unhealthy work habits.
The hosts banter about a funny T-shirt incident and Federico's new love for kombucha before diving into a special topic.