How Can Siri Automate Shortcuts When It’s so Opaque?

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Joe Rosensteel critiques Apple's Siri integration with Shortcuts automation, highlighting the lack of transparency, documentation, and debugging tools that make reliable automation difficult. He argues that without inspectable, deterministic workflows and proper logging, both users and AI assistants like Siri struggle to troubleshoot and refine automations, limiting their effectiveness and reliability.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/03/how-can-siri-automate-shortcuts-when-its-so-opaque/

The Apple Charging Situation

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This article analyzes Apple's device charging behavior, showing that charging speed varies in three phases—fast constant current up to 50%, tapered current to 80%, then slow trickle charge to 100%—with only the first phase significantly benefiting from a better charger. It highlights how iPhones and iPads have different optimal charging wattages, and stresses that heat and time at 100% charge impact battery health far more than charge speed, with features like Optimized Battery Charging designed to minimize battery wear by reducing time spent at full charge.

https://randsinrepose.com/guides/apple-charging-guide.html

Usher 2.4 Is Out

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Usher 2.4 has been released with interface updates for macOS 26, a new slider to set thumbnail spacing, and improved support for animated GIFs by temporarily converting them into movie files for editing. The update also fixes two crashing bugs related to cropping files with custom aspect ratios and menu changes in macOS 26.4, ensuring a more stable and user-friendly experience.

https://manytricks.com/blog/?p=6678

Automated Intelligence Reports for Insights Delivered to You

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Inoreader has introduced automated intelligence reports that analyze multiple articles using custom or predefined prompts on a schedule set by the user, helping to extract key insights efficiently. These reports are saved as new articles for easy annotation, sharing, or export, supporting various workflows like daily briefings, topic monitoring, and competitive analysis, and are available as an add-on for Pro, Custom, and Team Intelligence plans.

https://www.inoreader.com/blog/2026/03/automated-intelligence-reports-for-insights-delivered-to-you.html

Butler 4.4.9 Released

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Today marks the 25th birthday of Mac OS X, now known as macOS, and to celebrate, the developers have released version 4.4.9 of their oldest Mac app, Butler, which is 23 years old. This update includes several fixes addressing issues in macOS 14 and 26, such as menu interaction at the top edge of the display and submenu font inheritance, with full details available in the release notes. Users can update Butler directly within the app or by downloading a new copy without losing their settings.

https://manytricks.com/blog/?p=6666

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