What Happened to the Shortcuts Editor?

I’ve been working with Apple Shortcuts editor recently1, on my iPhone and on my iPad, and boy, what a shocking experience! This editor is nearly unworkable, thanks to scrolling sluggishness, object ordering bugs, object variables becoming empty, constant freezes, keyboard masking input fields, changes not being saved and plain and simple editor crashes. 😤 What is happening with this, Apple?2 I can’t believe Viticci is able to endure this for all his work around shortcuts.

  1. I’m working on something new, involving Plausible APIs, Charty for iPhone, and Apple Shortcuts. Stay tuned for that one. ↩︎

  2. I don’t expect a response from Apple, of course. ↩︎

These Are My Entry Points to AI Usage

I’m working on something related to using AI in my creative work. I came up with this. AI is used through these front-end clients within my creative workflows:

- ChatGPT website
- Raycast AI Chat
- MidJourney
- Whisper
- Micro.blog podcast episode transcription
- Audio Hijack Transcription block
- Kagi Summarize Results, Summary Document, Ask Questions
- Craft Assistant
- Grammarly

And I expect this list to grow in the coming months.

NSUserDefaults defaults = [NSUserDefaults NumericCitizenDefaults];

Following the episode (#097) of Hemispheric Views, it’s my turn, I guess, with a little twist for the post title. 😜

  • ✉️ Mail Client: HEY mail
  • 📨 Mail Server: HEY mail + iCloud Custom Email Domain
  • 📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes
  • ✅ To-Do: Things 3
  • 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app + Halide.app (for travel)
  • 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Adobe Cloud
  • 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app (Personal Life) + Fantastical.app (Work Life)
  • 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud
  • 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader
  • 📇 Contacts: Contacts
  • 🕸️ Browser: Safari (more and more using Kagi for searching)
  • 💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad)
  • 🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox
  • 👓 Read It Later: Omnivore
  • 📜 Word Processing: Ulysses
  • 📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers
  • 🛝 Presentations: Keynote
  • 🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders
  • 🧑‍🍳 Meal Planning: None
  • 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers
  • 🗞️ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news)
  • 🎶 Music: Apple Music
  • 🎧 Podcasts: PocketCast
  • 🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain (also 1Password, I should merge with default)

Ok, I may be late to the Mac automation party, but Keyboard Maestro is really nice and powerful. And approachable. It’s an almost instant buy me! 1 It’s super handy to automate portions of my newsletter creation and many tasks in Craft, too!

  1. And it’s a one-time purchase! No subscription! ↩︎

👉🏻 I’m thinking about parking my “numericcitizen” name on Threads. Just in case1. 😳 But, then, after doing a quick research, I was reminded pretty quickly that I need an Instagram account. It was at this exact moment that I thought that I should move on to something else2.

  1. Yes, I know; I repeatedly said that I hate Meta. ↩︎

  2. Or maybe just create a dummy account on Instagram with my name and then create that Thread account? ↩︎

In Search of Augmented Capabilities Using AI

I want to augment my creative capabilities1. I’m considering the best way to pay for Augmented Intelligence (AI) services2. I’m currently subscribing to MidJourney for imagery. ChatGPT with GPT-4 is not cheap at 20 $US a month, but I get Dall.E 3. Raycast enables GPT-4 for 8 $US on top of my 8 $US, totalling 16 $US monthly, but I don’t get Dall.E 3. I prefer MidJourney over Dall.E 3 as it seems to allow more diversity in requests. And there is the ChatGPT client to consider. Raycast is one of them. MacGPT is another one. Even Grammarly and Craft are ChatGPT clients3. I need to continue my analysis. Ideas? Suggestions?

  1. Go faster, go further, explore better creative ways. ↩︎

  2. Yes, I’m okay with taking advantage of modern tools like AI, just like I was okay with using a spell checker in Microsoft Word 1.0. ↩︎

  3. But you cannot configure Grammarly to use the GPT-4 model. ↩︎