site: reviews — Say hey (Message Memory), Fidelia (graduate from finds)

2026-07-07 01:57:22 -04:00
parent e66e06fb8a
commit 289013480d
7 changed files with 78 additions and 2 deletions
@@ -1855,3 +1855,19 @@ Bundles created:
 - 2026-07-07-carry-with-a-trick: "Everyday carry that hides a trick" (6) — belomo-10x-triplet-loupe, iumiun-whistle-lighter-combo, bell-ross-br03-helipad-watch, roxon-mbt3-compact-bbq-tool-set, pb-swiss-tools-precision-screwdriver-set, goal-zero-lighthouse-600-lantern.
 Coverage: 39 finds placed (8 of today's 10 non-review shortlisted captures + strong recent backlog). Deliberately left for reviews (reachable from the homepage without a bundle): say-hey-message-memory, fidelia-audiophile-player. Uncovered finds that will wait for the next weekly catch (~07-12) or a future themed bundle: today's coast-fire-tracker, command-keeper, anymoney-auto-expense, orzma-webview-terminal, love-is-art-body-paint-kit, whitcomb-shaftesbury-washable-jacket, and the three new quotes (quote-boulding-got-that-way, quote-thich-nhat-hanh-deep-listening, quote-tokarczuk-tenderness) — plus the older June backlog (not re-clustered; those had their chance in prior runs). Not padded to force coverage, per skill.
 ## 2026-07-07 — review: say-hey-message-memory
 Graduated from find captured 2026-07-07, source: r/macapps.
 Hero: pulled a real App Store feature screenshot (`01-hero.png`, 1280×800) showing the "Today" list UI — richer than the find's own hero (same-source screenshot).
 Category: messaging (new — no existing category fit an iMessage-mining relationship/follow-up app; should recur for messaging/contact tools).
 Fact-check (App Store listing, developer Spark LLC): the find held up but undersold it. It's not just "people you've drifted from" — the app tracks six signal types (promises made, questions left on read, debts owed, dated plans, birthdays/anniversaries, and people gone quiet), plus a natural-language query box that answers with tappable citations back to the thread, a menu-bar quick view, and an "inner circle." On-device claim confirmed by store copy ("messages never leave your Mac… even the AI runs locally"); corrected the review to state the privacy precisely — the app's privacy label is "Data Not Linked to You / Diagnostics," so it's "only anonymous diagnostics," not literally zero collection. Dropped the find's unverified "no Full Disk Access" claim from both the review and the find (store never mentions permissions). Corrected commercial facts: $19.99 one-time, Mac-only macOS 14+, Productivity category. Flagged the real limitation honestly: brand-new, version 0.0.2 (~2 weeks old), pre-1.0, 0 user reviews — an early bet, not a proven tool. Also lightly corrected the find's frontmatter/body to drop the FDA claim.
 Amazon: n-a (software).
 ## 2026-07-07 — review: fidelia-audiophile-player
 Graduated from find captured 2026-07-07, source: TidBITS.
 Hero: App Store carousel screenshot (`fidelia-shot1-v8.png`, 1200×750) showing the skeuomorphic player, three loaded Audio Units, the library, and the Fidelia Remote companion — better than the maker site's stylized marketing image.
 Category: music (existing).
 Fact-check (maker site audiofile.engineering + App Store id416135376): confirmed bit-perfect/exclusive-mode playback, three out-of-process Audio Unit slots in the listening path, "HeadSpace" headphone crossfeed, and precise signal controls (Reference SRC, 9th-order Pro Dither). Two corrections to the find: (1) "shipped fresh this month" is wrong — the ground-up rewrite (Fidelia 2.0, new C++ engine) relaunched April 2026; what landed this week (v2.9.7, Jul 6) was an incremental internet-radio update plus the TidBITS coverage. (2) "new ownership" is old news — Patrick Krekelberg acquired Audiofile Engineering in 2017. Pricing corrected/tightened: free download + 14-day trial, then a one-time $49.99 "Full License" IAP (rising to $69.99 soon), Mac App Store only; macOS 14+. Noted the honest caveat that Fidelia 1 owners don't get a free upgrade. Repointed the review's canonical link from the TidBITS article to the App Store listing. Not vaporware — actively shipping/supported.
 Amazon: n-a (software).
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ shortlist: true
 link: "https://tidbits.com/2026/07/06/appbits-fidelia-offers-audiophiles-precise-control-over-music-playback/"
 linkText: "tidbits.com"
 source: "TidBITS"
 promotedTo: fidelia-audiophile-player
 topics: [macos-apps]
 tags: [music, audio, audiophile]
 description: "A skeuomorphic, bit-perfect audiophile music player for the Mac with Audio Unit hosting and headphone virtualization, rewritten from scratch under new ownership."
@@ -6,9 +6,10 @@ shortlist: true
 link: "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-hey-message-memory/id6767099766"
 linkText: "apps.apple.com"
 source: "r/macapps"
 promotedTo: say-hey-message-memory
 topics: [macos-apps]
 tags: [messaging, on-device, privacy]
-description: "A Mac app that indexes your iMessage history entirely on-device and surfaces a short daily list of the people you've fallen out of touch with, with no cloud, account, or Full Disk Access."
+description: "A Mac app that indexes your iMessage history entirely on-device and surfaces a short daily list of the people you've fallen out of touch with, with no cloud and no account."
 ---
-Say hey indexes your entire iMessage history entirely on-device — no Full Disk Access, no cloud, no account — and each day surfaces a short list of the people you've quietly fallen out of touch with, alongside the last thing either of you said. It turns the archive you already have into a gentle prompt to reach out, without ever sending your conversations anywhere. A $19.99 one-time purchase, built in native SwiftUI.
+Say hey indexes your entire iMessage history entirely on-device — no cloud, no account — and each day surfaces a short list of the people you've quietly fallen out of touch with, alongside the last thing either of you said. It turns the archive you already have into a gentle prompt to reach out, without ever sending your conversations anywhere. A $19.99 one-time purchase, built in native SwiftUI.
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
 ---
 name: "Fidelia"
 subtitle: "A bit-perfect Mac music player, rebuilt from scratch on a new engine for people who want to control the whole signal path"
 date: 2026-07-07
 category: music
 tags: [music, audio, audiophile, playback, mac]
 link: "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fidelia/id416135376"
 linkText: "apps.apple.com"
 description: "Fidelia is a skeuomorphic, bit-perfect Mac audiophile player rebuilt from the ground up — three Audio Unit slots in the listening path, modeled headphone crossfeed, and a signal chain you actually control. Free with a $49.99 full-license purchase."
 source: "TidBITS"
 fromFind: fidelia-audiophile-player
 ---
 import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
 import hero from './hero.png';
 <Image src={hero} alt="Fidelia — a skeuomorphic Mac music player with a large volume knob and sample-rate display, three loaded Audio Unit plugin slots, a library list, and the companion Fidelia Remote iPhone app." />
 *Brushed-metal player, three loaded Audio Units in the listening path, and the free Fidelia Remote companion.*
 > Fidelia is a bit-perfect Mac music player that hands the audiophile back the one thing streaming apps take away: an exact, inspectable signal path from file to output — with room to drop your own processing into the middle of it.
 Most playback software treats the path from the file to your ears as a black box: it decodes, does whatever the OS mixer does, and plays. Fidelia treats that path as the product. It runs a bit-perfect, exclusive-mode output that hands the DAC the samples untouched, follows each track's native sample rate, and exposes the fiddly, high-end bits an enthusiast actually wants — a Reference sample-rate converter and a 9th-order psychoacoustic "Pro Dither" noise shaper — inline where you can see and toggle them.
 The differentiator is that it isn't a purist dead end. Three Audio Unit slots sit *in* the listening path, so you can insert a graphic EQ, a mastering-grade limiter, or a bit of tape saturation between the file and the output — and, notably, Fidelia hosts those plugins out-of-process, a harder engineering feat inside the Mac App Store sandbox than a typical AU host attempts. Its "HeadSpace" feature adds frequency-dependent crossfeed modeled on real head acoustics, collapsing the hard left/right split of headphones into something closer to speakers in a room. The whole thing wears a proudly skeuomorphic face — brushed metal, a real volume knob — that's a deliberate throwback to 1970s stereo gear, and a free companion app, Fidelia Remote, drives it from an iPhone or iPad.
 A note on lineage, since the original find got it slightly wrong: Fidelia first shipped in 2011 under Audiofile Engineering; Patrick Krekelberg acquired the company in 2017 and has since rebuilt the app from the ground up on a new C++ real-time engine with no legacy dependencies. That rewrite — Fidelia 2 — relaunched in April 2026, not this month; what actually landed the week it resurfaced was an incremental update adding internet-radio streaming. So it's a genuinely modern rewrite that's had a few months to settle, not a day-one gamble.
 The honest specifics: it's Mac App Store–only, requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, and is free to download with a 14-day full-feature trial, after which the "Full License" is a one-time $49.99 in-app purchase that the developer has said will rise to $69.99 soon. One thing to know going in — owners of the old Fidelia 1 don't get a free upgrade; version 2 is a separate purchase (the developer points affected owners to support). For anyone who cares where their bits go on the way to the DAC, though, it's among the few players that make that path the whole point.
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
 ---
 name: "Say hey: Message Memory"
 subtitle: "A Mac app that mines your iMessage history — entirely on your Mac — for the people and promises you've let slip"
 date: 2026-07-07
 category: messaging
 tags: [messaging, on-device, privacy, mac]
 link: "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-hey-message-memory/id6767099766"
 linkText: "apps.apple.com"
 description: "A $19.99 Mac app that reads your iMessage history entirely on-device — no cloud, no account — to resurface the people you've gone quiet with, the promises you made, and the questions you left on read."
 source: "r/macapps"
 fromFind: say-hey-message-memory
 ---
 import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
 import hero from './hero.png';
 <Image src={hero} alt="Say hey: Message Memory — a Today view listing seven people to reach out to, each with a short reason and the last thing said in the thread." />
 *The "Today" view: a handful of people to say hey to, each with the reason it resurfaced them and a jump back to the actual thread.*
 > Say hey reads the enormous archive of iMessages already sitting on your Mac and, without any of it leaving the machine, hands you a short daily list of the relationships you're quietly letting lapse — and the specific loose ends inside them.
 The premise is a relationship CRM that you don't have to feed. Every follow-up tool wants you to log the contact, tag the promise, set the reminder; Say hey instead reads what you've *already* typed. The find framed it as "people you've drifted from," which undersells it: the app actually watches six kinds of signal — promises you made, questions someone left on read, things people owe you, plans with a date attached, birthdays and anniversaries, and, yes, people who've simply gone quiet. Each morning it distills those into a handful of prompts with a one-line "why now," so the list is a set of concrete re-openings rather than a guilt-inducing address book.
 The cleverest part is the query box. You can ask it plain-English questions — "what did I promise Dana about the offsite?" — and it answers with tappable citations back to the exact message in the thread, so you're never trusting a summary you can't check. A menu-bar quick view keeps the day's list one click away, and an "inner circle" lets you weight the people you actually mean to keep up with above the noise.
 What makes it worth a look over the pile of contact-nudger apps is the architecture. The store copy is unusually blunt about it: *your messages never leave your Mac — no cloud, no account, no servers, and even the AI runs locally.* For a category that normally means uploading your entire social graph to someone's server, an app that does the same job while being built so it *can't* phone your conversations home is a genuinely different proposition. (To be precise: the only thing it reports at all is anonymous diagnostics; your messages themselves are never collected or linked to you.)
 The honest caveat is maturity. This is a brand-new app — version 0.0.2, a couple of weeks old, with no user reviews yet — so it's an early bet on a good idea rather than a proven, battle-tested tool, and the pre-1.0 versioning is a fair warning to wait if you want polish. It's Mac-only (macOS 14 or later) and a $19.99 one-time purchase. But the idea underneath it — a follow-up assistant principled enough to keep your messages on your own machine — is the rare one worth betting early on.