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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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. Continue reading →
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Why All This?
Despite using various digital tools to save and organize content, the effort often feels futile as saved information quickly becomes outdated and irrelevant. Continue reading →
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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.
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Here is a strange issue in Photomator: during photo editing, an .XMP file is created, which likely contains the editing steps applied to the photo. Additionally, a Photomator native file is also generated. Some of these files are very small, while others are quite large. For example, one file is less than 300 KB, while another is nearly 120 MB. Despite using the same editing process, the file sizes vary significantly. These files aren’t package files, it’s impossible to peek inside them. This is strange.
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If you have digital assets on GitHub, if your software dev workflows depend on GitHub, you might want to read this. Should we trust Microsoft, now?
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AI as a Complementary Tool
One of my rules for using generative AI is to avoid starting a creative project with AI prompts. Today, someone at the office challenged this rule, arguing that beginning with AI can effectively kick-start the creative journey. While that may be true, I prefer to keep the human touch at the center and use AI as a complement to the process. Starting with AI risks making us lazy in the long run. Continue reading →