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 made many updates to my Complete Content Creator Toolset to reflect recent additions and removals. If you are curious about the apps and services that I’m using, this is the place to watch!
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Creating a Custom Branded File Sharing Service for Free mattlangford.com
Reader: mattlangford.com
Thanks to @Mtt, I completed my version in about an hour.
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I decided to add a small collection of mini reviews that I read from time to time to my digital garden. The first two to make it to the collection: Matt Birchler’s comments about Ulysses and possible free and similar alternatives. The second is Manton’s comments on text editors for developers or other text manipulation.
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I’m thinking of creating an email address like hello@numericcitizen.me using iCloud+. I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle, though. I’ll had to tweak the setup a bit for it to work with my current DNS settings at CloudFlare.
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Every single day, I read a new post by Pixelfed about upcoming features, additions or redesign. The list is too long to write here (and to build!). All apps are in beta. It’s a maturing platform / service for sure, but man, ship it already, stop the talk!
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Running beta5 of Sonoma on my soon-to-be returned MacBook Air. I’m not so sure this thing is quite ready yet. I’ll wait a few more betas before installing Sonoma on my new MacBook Air.
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I think I’ll use my previous MacBook Air to test Sonoma this week-end before returning it to Apple! Who knows what will break.
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I just enabled cross-posting from Micro.blog to my Pixelfed account. I’m not sure I’ll use it, simply because I don’t post that many photos here. I prefer to use a dedicated service for photography. But who knows, it might come in handy at some point. Thanks, @manton, for being so quick to add these features!
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On Apple's Migration Assistant
Ok, can we agree that Apple’s Migration Assistant is magical? 🤯 After the new Mac got updated, it was required to match the version of the source Mac. It took about 45 minutes to transfer 375GB of data (with a peak speed of 650MB/s over Thunderbolt 4 cable), and boom. Of course, I had all those required permissions to be set again. But, wow, writing this on my brand new 15-inch MacBook Air this morning. It was my first experience with this process of getting a new Mac set up. I already feel at home on this machine.
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My Non-Review of Apple's Latest Betas
Earlier this summer, when Apple’s OSes were at Beta 3, I installed iPadOS 17 on my iPad to test the latest improvements and additions to a maligned OS. Maybe I was bored too. I started gathering my notes, thinking that it would be part of a mini review. Then I upgraded my iPhone because my experience with iPadOS 17 was good for a beta. Then I upgraded both of my Apple Watch (Series 4 and Series 8). Then my two Apple TVs. All is good, and generally speaking, these are all great improvements to what can be considered a set of mature OSes. I tried to put my observations together, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Besides having the general impression of getting a new Apple Watch, thanks to Apple, who dare to revisit many fundamental aspects of the UI and many micro-interactions with watchOS 10, for all other platforms, most of the changes are great and show that Apple is headed in the right direction. Your mileage may vary, and this is ok. The end.
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It took Adobe Lightroom on my iPad Pro all morning to upload all my 350 photos to Adobe’s cloud. That is SLOWWWW! How does semi-pro photographers (or even amateurs) endure this? My upload experience always has been consistently slow with Adobe’s products. Am I alone?
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Each passage in an airport is a reminder of how useful Flighty can be.
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Thought of the day: if only we spent as much time on great rollouts (Apple) than we do on really bad ones (X)… oh wait, we do actually! Seriously, I’m tired of those comments about X…
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Oh nice: the Citroen car info system reboots as soon as we try to use Car Play. 🤣 can’t use Apple Maps or Google Maps. ☹️🫣😨 It takes 5 minutes for the whole process to complete. 😩
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I started testing Safari’s Profiles feature that comes with iOS 17. And judging from my initial experience, just like Focus modes, it takes a lot of management and understanding to make it work to my liking. I’ll make it work, but not today.
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Thoughts on Micro.blog Tags
I’ve been playing with Micro.blog’s new bookmark tags. At first, I thought the feature was underwhelming. I don’t think there is a way to add more than one tag to a bookmark. This might be a good thing after all. Still undecided on this. Then, I discovered how you can select a tag to display associated bookmarks. Hoping for the iOS app to receive an update soon. I updated a few dozen bookmarks to add a tag. I’ll see if it makes a difference. My bookmarks are not that many and many are deleted after a while.
Update #1: someone pointed me that we can have more than one tag, simply by adding commas. Update #2: I can see Micro.blog bookmarks as a complement to Anybox, but focused on content originating from people I follow on Micro.blog / Mastodon. I don’t see that replacing Anybox anytime soon.
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I digg iOS 17 beta 4: much smoother. I’m guessing we will start to get new betas weekly from now on or maybe from beta 5. I still have to test iPadOS 17 beta 4, though. Are you having a similar experience?
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My analysis of Craft’s latest announcements for the summer. They think they are announcing a roadmap. They don’t. No words about eXtensions. No words for better automation support via Shortcuts. You must look at what isn’t announced to get a real view of what they did.
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Putting the final touches on my analysis of today’s announcements by Craft. I’m not sure they will like my take. I tend to be very critical of them. I’m still happy with Craft, but I’m honest in my sentiments.