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Here at Cult of Mac’s shiny corporate headquarters in the heart of San Francisco (my musty basement), we often make use of shortcuts to simplify workflows.

Take Federico Viticci’s Apple Frames shortcut, for example, which places a nice picture of the appropriate device around a screenshot (iPhone screenshots are framed by a picture of a physical iPhone, for example). The resulting images are great for illustrating our how-tos.

It sounds simple, but the underlying logic of the shortcut is surprisingly complex, as revealed by its code, which you can dig into in Apple’s Shortcuts app.

Shortcuts can be surprisingly powerful. In fact, I wish I could automate all of my work and shortcut myself into irrelevance, although I’d better be careful what I wish for with the rapid rise of AI.

One great feature of shortcuts that isn’t well-known is that they can be triggered by simple voice commands.

It’s pretty easy to set up Vocal Shortcuts, which can trigger all kinds of handy automations, from quickly adding items to your shopping list to interacting with ChatGPT.

Here’s everything you need to know to use Vocal Shortcuts.

Also in today’s newsletter:

• Heavy WhatsApp users like my niece are gonna love this: WhatsApp can now be set up as your iPhone’s default calling and messaging app. Zuckerberg’s likely rubbing his hands, too.

• Updates to the Final Cut Pro video-editing app add Image Playground integration, portrait mode for iPad users and other cool features.

• Amazon’s Big Spring Sale event will run through the weekend with pretty good discounts on a lot of Apple’s latest gear, including the latest Macs, iPads, Apple Watches and more.

• And this deal in particular is worth calling out because it’s perhaps my favorite Apple thing: AirPods Pro 2 are back to just $170 (regularly $250).

• If you ever looked at your water bottle and thought, “This thing needs Find My and a built-in iPhone stand,” then boy, this $90 water bottle may be for you. As the company hilariously puts it: “As eco-conscious people increasingly favor bottle monogamy, they’re investing in better quality bottles.”

• Today’s the day in Apple history when the company recorded the biggest loss in American corporate history, which, obviously, looked very bad at the time. However, it started the wheels turning for Apple’s unlikely resurrection.

• I like the look of today’s featured setup, but I wonder how many times a day I’d bang my head on the stairs?

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

^{A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team}

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One more thing ...

Today’s poll

Results from yesterday’s poll: What's better for kids these days? iPad or MacBook?

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