Apps & Services
I love apps and enjoy testing new services to improve my workflows. These posts discuss my experiences with them.
-
The more I tweak my personal RSS reader, called “RSS Flow”, the more I like it. It wouldn’t scale to the level of Inoreader, though. But for a dozen of RSS feeds, it’s really nice.
-
Trying out Aeronaut for Bluesky. Very nice. I don’t actually visit Bluesky directly that often because I post to it and follow within Micro.blog. Good to have a dedicated app for things like feeds, though.
Tried it for five minutes on my Mac. Nice, indeed. Certainly better than Bluesky’s offering which is iPhone only. The only thing is that I never quite remember what to use as my Bluesky username.
-
Yesterday night I installed and configured ClawdBot on my M4 Mac mini sitting on my home office desk. Now, I’m remote-controlling it with Discord, preferring it over Telegram or iMessage because Discord support in ClawdBot felt more mature. I can ask simple things and get simple answer. It’s exciting. Yet, it was more complicated than I originally thought. ClawdBot is a nerdy thing for really nerd people. More comments about ClawdBot can be found on MacStories.
I see a lot of potential for learning and testing new things with ClawdBot. I’ll probably dedicate a lot of my spare time to it in the coming months. But for now, because I’m very close to leaving for a vacation trip to Egypt, I’ll put that aside for a few weeks.
-
Open source vs. open platforms — Manton Reece
Open source gives power to developers. An open platform gives power to everyone. The web needs business models that can sustain both.
Well balanced point of view, something we see less and less often these days.
-
Yesterday, I suscribed to Edovia’s Screens so that I could remote control my Mac mini upstair to configure ClawdBot where it is running. Like many other apps, Screens now comes with Liquid Glass support and it’s a mixed bag. Plus, this thing is a battery drain powerhouse! 🫣 I’ve been using Screens 3 a long time ago when we couldn’t remote control into other Macs via FaceTime. I’m happy to see it still around, especially that I know the developer behind it.
-
Asking Claude Code to suggest new features and improvements for my photo-sharing app is a lot of fun. Reviewing the list, I see several valid suggestions. However, as a “product manager”, I must decide what gets implemented and what does not. It’s kind of a power trip. You know “A thousand no for each yes”? 😎
-
Miniroll: what a great idea, and a well-designed one above all. Is it for me? I don’t know. I barely update my blogroll on Micro.blog. I’ll certainly keep an eye on the changelog to see where it’s going, and who knows…
-
Digg is finally in public beta. They also introduced a refreshed design (compared to what was available during the private beta), and I think it’s way better. Also introduced are user-defined communities. It’s currently limited to two per user, which I think is fair. This is my profile. I was looking to create a community, only to realize I was about to dilute myself again. My community is here.
-
Apple Creator Studio - A Few Comments
On today’s announcement by Apple: Now we know why it took so long for Apple to update Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Where is iWork? Why no iWork subscription without the pro stuff? I don’t understand this bundling of pro apps with consumer-generalistic apps. Is Apple trying to upsell Pro Apps to consumers via a new subscription? They might be. I don’t think pros want to get Numbers or Pages, though. Icons are utterly un-Apple, or Apple has become something I no longer relate to software-design-wise. Continue reading →
-
It appears that Photomator in MIA in today’s announcements which doesn’t bode well for its fate. 😔
-
I just discovered that Raindrop.io offers many integrations, including n8n! I might need to reconsider my bookmarking strategies, yet again. I’m currently using Anybox. 🤔 I’m exploring ways to move the data around. If you made a similar move, I’ll be more than happy to learn about your experience. For now, I’ll prompt ChatGPT for strategies.
-
My Defaults as of 2026-01-10
Changes from the last edition are in bold. ✉️ Mail Client: Fastmail 📨 Mail Server: Fastmail 📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes ✅ To-Do: Things 3 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Photomator 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader 📇 Contacts: Contacts 🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac + ChatGPT Atlas 🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Claude AI 🔎 Search: Kagi Search 💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad) 🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox 👓 Read It Later: Inoreader 📜 Word Processing: Ulysses, Craft 📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers 🛝 Presentations: Keynote 🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders 🧑🍳 Meal Planning: None 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers 🗞️ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news) 🎶 Music: Apple Music 🎧 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts 🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain & Apple Passwords 👨🏻💻 Blog hosting: Ghost, Micro. Continue reading →
-
I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am by the value Tinylytics is offering. Just finished configuring recently added options. What you see is my Blips analytics dashboard. Hat down to Vincent.
-
I’m making quite a bit of progress with my Micro.blog UI frontend to the point where I’m wondering how much of the whole experience I could rebuild using Vercel and Claude Code. Challenge?
-
I decided to try building a small website on GitHub Pages. I have no idea if I’ll ever make something useful out of it. Since I’m spending some time with GitHub, I have found some interesting side features.
-
I saw many times people talking about Ghostty for Mac, a terminal emulator. My question: why use Ghostty instead of Apple Terminal? I just downloaded it and my first reactions are: less window chrome, bigger windows, split-window mode, better font and better default colors scheme. Adopted.
-
MacUpdate Is Dead?
From MacUpdate website: Unfortunately MacUpdater 3’s promised lifetime of “until 2026-01-01” is now over. There will be no MacUpdater 4 or any continuation of the MacUpdater product from us. Our daily maintenance has been stopped and we don’t verify updates anymore. MacUpdater 3.5 is now unsupported but free-to-use including all previous “Pro” features. WTF?? 😩 Continue reading →
-
In 2026, I’ll Keep an Eye On…
I’m already turning my attention to 2026, in no particular order: Ghost.org next moves, now that are a better Fediverse citizen. Plausible Analytics, which seems to be overkill for my needs but I might find a use for their service exposure via their APIs. Craft because they finished the year with a bang and I’m super anxious to learn what’s next. Apple because of Apple Intelligence and Siri promised updates. Will they deliver? Continue reading →
-
In my piece this published this morning, I totally forgot to mention the possibility of enshittification of AI offerings by Anthropic and OpenAI, which could trigger some decisions on my part if this happens. For unknown reasons, I have better trust in Anthropic staying away of this for a longer time than OpenAI.