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 don’t like the idea that a service like ChatGPT tries to present itself as a friend, an agent, or a human. With instructions, I can ask it to avoid this type of behavior. But I like the service’s appearance to be warm. Perhaps that’s why I prefer Anthropic’s Claude. Claude, even though it’s a proper name, presents itself better; its visual style seems friendlier to me. I feel like this is a contradiction.
I asked Claude about this possible contradiction. Here’s what he responded:
“I don’t think it’s actually a contradiction. You’re distinguishing between two different things: false intimacy (an AI pretending to be your friend or a person) versus pleasant design (a warm, welcoming aesthetic and tone). Wanting the latter without the former is perfectly coherent—it’s the difference between a tool that’s agreeable to use and a tool that’s trying to deceive you about its nature.”
Thanks, Claude.
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I’m experimenting with Claude for a month because I want to test MCP connections with Craft. ChatGPT does support MCP connections but the experience is not as mature as configuring an MCP connection with Claude. Claude is not cheap: pricing is similar to ChatGPT’s but plan usage limits are easy to reach.
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Three Years Already
Three years of ChatGPT. Time flies. A few thoughts on that are mandatory it seems. ChatGPT certainly turned things upside down not only for me as a writer but for many creators. The entire software industry also was turned things even more upside down. It’s hard to imagine what would have been software roadmaps or new features pipelines without generative AI. See? We almost forgot about what it was like before ChatGPT. Continue reading →
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I made a new video about the latest release of Craft (v3.3.1), which I think it’s a game-changer. Long live to Craft!
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I found a video of mine in my archives showing a full edit session with Snapseed on my iPad. The resulting image was part of an old blog posts collection called The Perfect Imperfection series initially on Instagram and later on Exposure. Sadly, this photo collection no longer exists because I closed both my Instagram and Exposure account. You’ll understand why I chose this naming when you see the resulting image. Enjoy the short ride here in the video below.
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As I’m spending 70% of the time on ChatGPT Atlas, I decided to go further with ChatGPT Atlas and set it as the default browser on my MacBook Air. 20% is with ARC Browser, 5% is Safari.
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AnyBox
I’ve been a long time user of AnyBox, after leaving Raindrop.io, and Pocket, but I was a light user until recently. I revisited the app thoroughly and now it’s sitting at the center of my newsletter preparation workflow. I love this app so much; it feels native, fully-featured, and offers the right information density. The only missing thing would be to have a cloud-based version… Continue reading →
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Using Micro.blog’s upgraded video features, here’s my latest video round-up highlighting this year’s Micro.blog improvements. Previous videos were posted on my YouTube channel. I hope you find this to be useful.
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As hard as I wanted to get extensibility in Craft (with APIs, for example), I still fail to see a practical use case for me. The APIs are really simple, but what am I going to do with them? I just don’t know. 🤷🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
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With just-released support for vertical tabs and Passkeys, ChatGPT Atlas is two more steps closer to replacing the ARC Browser.
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iPadOS 26.2 with External Display: Are We There Yet?
I’m giving the iPad Pro with external display another try (under 26.2 b3). As far as I can see, it’s not all Apple’s fault if there are many paper cuts: third-party apps support with external display is lacking. Make no mistake: iPadOS 26.2 as come a long way… but iPad-only rules still make the iPad a bit too far from the macOS experience. Borderless-windows in dark mode makes it hard to distinguish which app is which. Continue reading →
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Something must be going on with Apple’s iWork not being updated with Liquid Glass at this time of year. Apple might be working on better integration with Photomator and PixelMator Pro beyond Liquid Glass adoption. What is your take?
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A bug in the Apple Shortcuts editor on the Mac. One of so many. Can you imagine if Apple allowed third-party Shortcut editors to create shortcuts? That would be awesome.
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Bye Bye Zapier, IFTTT, Still a Keeper
I have finally deleted my Zapier account after a few years of inactivity. It’s significantly more complicated than IFTTT and much more expensive. IFTTT is far from perfect. It seems to be stagnant even. But, for my needs, it’s ok. I have two applets: 1) Save all posts on my RSS superfeed into a **Day One **journal, 2) Save a link into a Google sheet of a YouTube video that I like. Continue reading →
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Like I said, things never work the first time. And rarely the second time, too.
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Currently testing Craft API capabilities to save this blog post via my blog’s RSS feed via IFTTT. Let’s see what happens. Things never work the first time.