Apps & Services
I love apps and enjoy testing new services to improve my workflows. These posts discuss my experiences with them.
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I’ve been installing and applying app updates en masse for a few days. There is a clear trend. Big corporations like Medium, OpenAI, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. release notes that are like “We’ve been hard at work updating our app so you get a better experience, blah blah blah”. At the same time, indie devs will write, “We’re happy to introduce support for Apple’s latest innovations like Liquid Glass, transparent widgets and on-device Apple Fondational Model for a richer experience.” See the difference?
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It’s really fascinating how third-party apps adopt Apple’s Liquid Glass. For some apps, like Things, changes are minimal… but for Craft, it’s a godsend. Flighty seems to sit in the middle. Does it depend entirely on Liquid Glass, or is it an interpretation by the developer of how far to take this new visual metaphor? It’s probably mostly the latter.
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Today, Apple releases a slew of operating system updates, including Liquid Glass, an already controversial, divisive, and well-documented user-hostile unified visual language across all of their operating system. I’m pleased to announce the addition of a “Before & After” section in my now-famous website: “Where Apple’s Liquid Glass Crashes the User Experience”. Have a look and see how developers adopted Liquid Glass.
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Here’s a really strange thing: for some apps, adopting Liquid Glass seems to be a step back (lower information density, too much spacing in some areas), while for others, it appears to do the opposite and enhances the app. That’s the case for Craft. I genuinely believe Craft with Liquid Glass is much better. Craft’s take on Liquid Glass is well-balanced and executed. Bravo.
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Apple Liquid Glass not only creates usability issues (harder to read, user content conflicts with prominent UI elements), but also somewhat reduces information density as well as content space, as illustrated in the following example with 1Blocker, before & after animated GIF.
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Going Apple TV-Only?
Based on our experience earlier this year with Apple TV as the only way to watch TV content, along with rising costs and an unstable service, we are seriously considering cutting our cable service and keeping only our Internet service. Even though the apps on Apple TV are far from perfect, they generally allow us to replace cable service. Rumors suggest that Apple is working on a new iteration of the Apple TV, which could make the timing even more favorable.
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Why All This?
Read later services (Readwise, Pocket, Readwise, Inoreader, etc.), bookmarking apps and services (Anybox, Raindrop, etc.), downloading, summarizing, and tagging—whether used together or separately—the issue remains the same: I rarely revisit content. Content quickly becomes outdated and loses relevance. This pattern reflects a common challenge in digital content management. Despite the ease of saving and organizing information for future reference, the practical use of these saved digital tidbits often diminishes over time. As new information emerges and contexts change, what once seemed valuable or interesting can fade into obscurity, making the effort of saving feel less worthwhile. This raises questions about the effectiveness of these tools and whether they truly serve my long-term informational needs.
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While testing MyMind and reading this article, I discovered the existence of Recall. 😳😅
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While I’m testing and experimenting with MyMind, I realize that there is a lot happening these days in the apps and services space for reading and processing information. Besides the traditional read-later services that have existed for years, we now have AI-powered summarizers available through various platforms, including apps, websites, APIs, and browsers. The experience also differs between desktop and mobile devices. It’s hard to ever settle on a digital toolset and workflows.
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I don’t see many developers sharing details, such as screenshots of their apps updated for Liquid Glass, except in a few cases. Is it still too soon? Is this a result of a silent pushback? Or a bit of both?
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Josh Ginter in Sunday Edition 09-07-25 about MyMind:
I am obsessed with this app. It is unlike any other app on my devices. It uses AI in unique ways, has limitations that I wish it didn’t but which make good sense, and looks as beautiful as Things or Day One or Ulysses or Craft. I want to save everything in my life to MyMind — quotes, links, screenshots, thoughts, highlights, books — and I want to use the app all day long. I truly haven’t felt this way about an app in a long, long time.
It’s far from the first time that I read about MyMind, but I never experienced it. With Ginter’s words, I couldn’t help myself and opened a free account. It’s very early, but I like what I’m seeing. It’s not cheap, and I’m not sure there is a place in my digital toolset. I will see.
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Home sweet home. I’m back and working from my M4 Mac mini running macOS 15.6.1. Feels good to be out of this Liquid Glass turmoil. I’ll probably wai a long time before upgrading my Mac mini.
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I spent two hours today experimenting with Riverside.fm to see if this solution could replace ScreenFlow. So far, the experience is good, but I will need to try again at home with my M4 Mac mini and my usual recording setup.
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It seems that the browser war is heating up with Atlassian buying the Browser Company and all other AI startups working on building their own AI-browser, the future conduits to the next web.
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What is more depressing than spending the day inside Microsoft’s productivity suite, on Windows?
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Recent additions and improvements by Inoreader for podcast listeners and YouTube content consumption are game changer for me. It will take some time to process that and see how I adapt to this. Of course, AI is not far.
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ooh.directory appears to be dead, already. It didn’t last long. But the guy behind it is still active.
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Currently, I’m testing and experimenting with Inoreader’s Email Digests. I like what I’m seeing. But it’s not cheap.
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I began my writing project for the Apple Journal review. For this project, I will try a different approach1. I started experimenting with the Perplexity Comet browser to survey past reviews. I use genAI to create quick summaries of previous articles. I save text highlights in Inoreader for the most interesting past reviews. I use Craft to compile all my knowledge and copy-paste the genAI summaries. However, I’m unsure where this will lead.
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Dare I say ‘modern approach’? ↩︎
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I’ve been using Apple Journal this summer to record my experience at a chalet by a small, beautiful lake. It’s really an inspiring place. Now that I fully experienced Apple Journal, and Apple’s vision of personal journaling, it’s probably time for me to put together a write-up. Spoiler alert: Apple Journal is full of paper cuts.