Apps & Services — Numeric Citizen Blog

My Apple Intelligence Writing Tools Mixed Experience

My experience with Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools is mixed. One significant issue is the absence of a feature to compare the original text with the revised version. In contrast, Grammarly excels in this regard, as its suggestions are contextual. Additionally, the constant need to select text to “feed” the Writing Tools becomes tedious. Another challenge arises when using Writing Tools with markdown content or links. These get mangled in the revised version. Finally, speed is also an issue. Even for simple text to process, it can take quite some time to get a response.

For now, Grammarly remains my preferred writing assistant, and I have no intention of switching to Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools anytime soon.

Will we ever see some generative AI or AI-based features added to HEY Mail? 🧐

Adobe Lightroom for Mac is the best Mac app of the year? In light of Apple buying Pixelmator, I find this a bit surprising.

I got an email from Ghost to participate in the ActivityPub beta for my blog. I’m not sure how my blog will be named in the fediverse, but I can imagine being able to get comments from people here on Micro.blog and having those comments appear at the bottom of my blog posts. Will see soon enough.

For all Craft users out there looking or already using Craft Collections, I made a video about that this past weekend. It’s a longer-than-usual one, but the subject is dense.

I’m reading good comments about the new subscription from The Verge. I’m not a fan of their website design, but I do read their articles from time to time. I’m tempted to give it a try. Yet, “serving better ads” to subscribers is not exactly a turn on. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’ve seen a drastic increase in new followers on my Bluesky account (+50%) in the last 3 weeks while no new followers on Mastodon in the last six months. 🧐🤨

I’m 90% of the time posting on both (from Micro.blog), like this post.

If only Bluesky had an iPad version of their mobile app. Is this in the works? (Posted from Micro.blog but asking the Bluesky community).

How does an app get updated on a weekly basis without any new features or apparent bug fixes? Exhibit A: Medium. Is someone trying to game the App Store?

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.