Paying to Be a Beta Tester? Really?

Paying to be a beta tester: is this a new trend? Glass Series was available to patron subscribers only while being in beta testing. RealMac Software offers Elements in beta as a subscription but at a reduced price. Active beta testers are actually paying of their time to use a software still being debugged and refined. Isn’t that enough? I understand that building software is hard and requires resources… but paying to be a beta tester seems to cross a line here.

Bye Bye Omnivore, It Was a Short Nice Run

Omnivore’s future is not looking good, following the announcement received by email yesterday night, by one of the founder himself. Omnivore was the best read-later service after Matter and Pocket, two services I didn’t really like or were too expansive. But now, with Omnivore’s future and slow demise, I’m getting fed up with those one-man-shop open-source projects. Pixelfed is another one that I’m getting tired of1. So, I’m going to refocus on Inoreader for read-later functionality and text highlights. Following their recent redesign, which is actually much better than the previous iteration, I’m more than ever committing to Inoreader.


  1. More of that Pixelfed fatigue in a later post. ↩︎

For those using macOS 15.1 and have enabled Apple Intelligence, have you noticed a spike in your Mac CPU usage when requesting Apple Intelligence to proofread text? The longer the text, the more pronounced the spike. The CPU will reach 100% for a moment before slightly decreasing before receiving a response. Interestingly, I couldn’t identify an AI-related process associated with this spike. Instead, the kernel_task process is the one who consumes the CPU cycles. Apparently, Apple Intelligence runs in the kernel space.

Bye Bye 1Password, Hello Apple Passwords.

I’ve finally completed the arduous migration from 1Password and canceled my subscription. I didn’t encounter any issues with 1Password transitioning to an Electron-based application. While it was an excellent and overkill solution for managing my passwords and secrets, I generally prefer integrated solutions for fundamental products or features like password management. Is Apple Passwords the perfect solution? No, but it’s more than adequate for my needs. One positive outcome of this migration is an enhanced security posture, as I had to revisit many credentials and enable two-factor authentication for numerous services.

This morning, I’ve been experimenting with Apple Intelligence writing tools using a beta version of Ulysses. Initially, I’m torn between my feelings. The requirement to select specific text to activate the writing tools disrupts my writing flow. On the other hand, I find Grammarly’s continuous monitoring of my writing more preferable. I suspect Apple prefers the intentional nature of this feature over feeling constantly tracked.