As you can imagine, writing in Applesfera requires you to be fully aware of what’s going on in the Apple world. The truth is that long before devoting myself to writing about the company, I was already following everything that was published about it, and my way of doing it has evolved remarkably over the years. Today I do it from the Shortcuts appthe same one I use to open any application with a simple keyboard command, and I’m really happy with it.
Thousands of options, and each with its pros and cons
Getting informed, in the broad sense of the term, is a very personal thing, so there will be almost as many ways to do it as there are people. We will each have our preferences and we will value more or less certain items from the list of pros and cons
Before there was Twitter, changes and new media posts were tracked via an RSS feed. Something that, in fact, still exists. Yes, Twitter is immediate, but sometimes it can be distracting with various other news. From promoted posts to notifications to related tweets or content that strays from the Apple world itself. I’ll admit I still use Twitter to get notified about certain accounts, but it’s not by far my primary means of getting notified.
Depending on how many sources we want to track, it’s easy enter the respective coverage and see what happens, but when you follow 10, 20, 25 different media, the process takes quite a long time. This is where, for me, the shortcuts came in like a glove.
I’m looking f or a universal app or service, something I can use on my Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch indiscriminately. I am also searching something that respects my privacy
Shortcuts, the tailor-made answer to all my needs
This is where Shortcuts shines. Just as it allows us to automate our office, I can use this shortcut on all my devices, it fully respects privacy and I can customize it easily and quickly. So which shortcut should I use? Just the one seen in the picture above these lines.
What this shortcut does is something as simple as grabbing the RSS feed from all the sources you want, grabbing the last 12 articles published by each one, collecting all the articles, sorting them from new to the oldest and display them in a list. Right here I select the ones that interest me and they automatically open in Safari
Then, if I want to save them, I go to the reading list or share them directly to a list of reminders or similar resources. And yes, it allows me read full articles directly on Apple Watch. It’s not something I do regularly, but several times a week, no doubt.
As I already started by saying, there are many applications and services to follow an RSS feed. For me, for how much I appreciate and the use I give it, the application Shortcuts gave me the best solution. A tailor-made solution for me, on all my devices, that I don’t have to update or monitor to prevent it from collecting more data than I want to deliver. A change that I am very, very happy about.
