Apps & Services The RSS feed for Apps & Services.

  • According to Grammarly, ChatGPT is really bad at English.1


    1. Or is it Grammarly that is really bad? ๐Ÿค” ↩︎

  • Raycast is cool. I’m cool. And because we’re cool, here is a rebate. One month free of the Raycast Pro. 1


    1. But the app icon is really ugly! ๐Ÿคฎ ↩︎

  • So, how is** iOS 17.2 beta3** going? Stable? I’m asking for a friend.๐Ÿคญ

  • I started subscribing to ChatGPT today so that I could experiment with Dall-E and GPT-4. I’ll probably cancel my MidJourney account if all goes well with ChatGPT. I like the idea of having one place to do many things.

  • What Happened to the Shortcuts Editor?

    I’ve been working with Apple Shortcuts editor recently1, on my iPhone and on my iPad, and boy, what a shocking experience! This editor is nearly unworkable, thanks to scrolling sluggishness, object ordering bugs, object variables becoming empty, constant freezes, keyboard masking input fields, changes not being saved and plain and simple editor crashes. ๐Ÿ˜ค What is happening with this, Apple?2 I can’t believe Viticci is able to endure this for all his work around shortcuts. Continue reading โ†’

  • These Are My Entry Points to AI Usage

    I’m working on something related to using AI in my creative work. I came up with this. AI is used through these front-end clients within my creative workflows: - ChatGPT website - Raycast AI Chat - MidJourney - Whisper - Micro.blog podcast episode transcription - Audio Hijack Transcription block - Kagi Summarize Results, Summary Document, Ask Questions - Craft Assistant - Grammarly And I expect this list to grow in the coming months. Continue reading โ†’

  • NSUserDefaults defaults = [NSUserDefaults NumericCitizenDefaults];

    Following the episode (#097) of Hemispheric Views, itโ€™s my turn, I guess, with a little twist for the post title. ๐Ÿ˜œ โœ‰๏ธ Mail Client: HEY mail ๐Ÿ“จ Mail Server: HEY mail + iCloud Custom Email Domain ๐Ÿ“ Notes: Craft + Apple Notes โœ… To-Do: Things 3 ๐Ÿ“ท iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app + Halide.app (for travel) ๐Ÿ“š Photo Management: Photos.app + Adobe Cloud ๐Ÿ—“๏ธ Calendar: Calendar.app (Personal Life) + Fantastical.app (Work Life) ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ Cloud file storage: iCloud ๐Ÿ“ฐ RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader ๐Ÿ“‡ Contacts: Contacts ๐Ÿ•ธ๏ธ Browser: Safari (more and more using Kagi for searching) ๐Ÿ’ฌ Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad) ๐Ÿ”– Bookmarks: AnyBox ๐Ÿ‘“ Read It Later: Omnivore ๐Ÿ“œ Word Processing: Ulysses ๐Ÿ“Š Spreadsheets: Numbers ๐Ÿ› Presentations: Keynote ๐Ÿ›’ Shopping Lists: Reminders ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿณ Meal Planning: None ๐Ÿ’ฐ Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers ๐Ÿ—ž๏ธ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news) ๐ŸŽถ Music: Apple Music ๐ŸŽง Podcasts: PocketCast ๐Ÿ” Password Management: iCloud Keychain (also 1Password, I should merge with default) Continue reading โ†’

  • Ok, I may be late to the Mac automation party, but Keyboard Maestro is really nice and powerful. And approachable. It’s an almost instant buy me! 1 It’s super handy to automate portions of my newsletter creation and many tasks in Craft, too!


    1. And it’s a one-time purchase! No subscription! ↩︎

  • For those who are curious, I just updated “my Micro-Workflows Explained” page to list all my ChatGPT and AI use cases. I’m not shy to expose when I’m using AI in my creative work1. The list of use cases is growing and reflects the relative invasion of AI in our digital landscape.


    1. Who’s shy of telling people about using Spell Checkers or Lightroom filters? ๐Ÿค” ↩︎

  • ๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿป I’m thinking about parking my “numericcitizen” name on Threads. Just in case1. ๐Ÿ˜ณ But, then, after doing a quick research, I was reminded pretty quickly that I need an Instagram account. It was at this exact moment that I thought that I should move on to something else2.


    1. Yes, I know; I repeatedly said that I hate Meta. ↩︎

    2. Or maybe just create a dummy account on Instagram with my name and then create that Thread account? ↩︎

  • ๐Ÿ’ก Thought of the moment: owning my own Pixelfed instance would be cool1. But how much work does this imply? ๐Ÿค”


    1. Imagining: photos.numericcitizen.me! Can we use a sub-domain with Pixelfed? Would I be able to migrate from my current instance? ↩︎

  • In Search of Augmented Capabilities Using AI

    I want to augment my creative capabilities1. I’m considering the best way to pay for Augmented Intelligence (AI) services2. I’m currently subscribing to MidJourney for imagery. ChatGPT with GPT-4 is not cheap at 20 $US a month, but I get Dall.E 3. Raycast enables GPT-4 for 8 $US on top of my 8 $US, totalling 16 $US monthly, but I don’t get Dall.E 3. I prefer MidJourney over Dall.E 3 as it seems to allow more diversity in requests. Continue reading โ†’

  • I wish Inoreader offered some form of article summarization via AI for some of my feedsโ€ฆ

  • Looking for a Useful and Secure Search Engine

    I’m fed up of Google’s search capabilities and business model. Search results quality has gone downhill in recent years. I don’t like the visual design of Google’s online products in general, especially Google Search results formatting. What search engine are you using? Are you willing to pay for using one, if yes, which one? ๐Ÿค” Continue reading โ†’

  • ๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿป I just finished updating my complete content creator toolset with recent changes in my workflows. Enjoy the ride!

  • Since iOS 17.1 in Music.app, Favourite ๐ŸŒŸ replaced Love โค๏ธ? What if I love a song but it is not one of my favourites? ๐Ÿค”

  • I spent some time on Bluesky this morning… found out that I have 6 invite codes. Is anyone looking for one of them? Let me know.

  • A recent addition to Mailbrew made me discover Brief.news1. So far, I like what I’m seeing. News briefs are generated with AI (with LLM models, I’m guessing). It’s a great use case of AI, right here. The combination with Mailbrew makes perfect sense, too.


    1. It’s a free service for now. I wonder what is their business model? ๐Ÿค” ↩︎

  • Iโ€™m a subscriber of Inoreader, but I read the feeds using Reeder 90% of the time. I only wish that Reeder could update the engagement stats on Inoreader. Is that even possible from a RSS client perspective? I highly doubt it. Youโ€™ve got an opinion on this subject? Let me know.

  • Appleโ€™s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 17 by Timac:

    Objective-C is still at the core of iOS and is used directly or indirectly by most apps

    The adoption of Swift and SwiftUI continues to grow rapidly

    The share of Objective-C, C and C++ continues to decrease

    It’s a must-read for the curious around here.