What happens when you run Micro.blog.app and the web app side by side? Here is a peek at Activity Monitor on the memory consumption tab. There’s the native app. Fine. But, for each web app, Sonoma seems to spin three other processes (Graphics, Networking, and some root process using the web app URL name). Fascinating. Native apps don’t consume as much memory.

Already at Four Web Apps in My Dock, and You?

So far, I have created four web apps on my Dock in Sonoma: Micro.blog1, Pixelfed2, Tinylytics, and Omnivore. I like this a lot3. For Omnivore, the web app provides a better experience than the “native” app, which is probably not really native4. What other apps could I set in my Dock now?🤔

  1. For Micro.blog, it doesn’t make too much sense as there is a native Mac app already. ↩︎

  2. It’s better than having a Safari tab for that. It’s fast and feels native. ↩︎

  3. I know, it’s already possible on Windows. ↩︎

  4. It feels like an iPad app on the Mac. ↩︎

The Mac is the last platform to get my trust for an upgrade of macOS. I do iPhone and iPad in a heartbeat, but the Mac, no. I wait a few weeks so that my must-have apps receive updates. I don’t want to ruin anything by upgrading to Sonoma so soon. I’ll probably wait until November.

I’ve recently been using Apple’s Freeform for different articles I’m working on. I’m really falling in love with this app. It’s a sleeper hit for me. Its apparent simplicity shouldn’t put you off. Freeform is capable of supporting the creation of rather sophisticated diagrams. I really feel Apple’s designers brought all their craftsmanship and attention to detail here. Everything feels in the right place.

I read in recent days that the Craft team is supposedly very interested and invested in AI for Craft. I’m not sure if this is good news. Notes and document-writing apps should focus on the core experience and capabilities to support the writing process. Today, I don’t see AI at the core for most people (yet). AI should be a complementary feature. There are so many things to be improves and fixed in Craft; I’m afraid they spend too much time on the AI stuff while neglecting the bugs and highly requested basic features, again.😔

I finally found THE use case for the Action Button: running a shortcut1 to 1) take a screen capture and 2) run the Apple Frame shortcut. It’s super handy. The camera already has a button on the screen that is easier to grab when I want to take a picture.

  1. Haptly named “Action Button”. ↩︎

I Rarely Visit the App Store

I opened the App Store this Monday to see how Apple would promote new app releases supporting iOS 17. Then I realized that I rarely open the App Store except to go and get app updates. When was the last time I went to browse the productivity category? When did I last browse the store for popular photography apps or new utilities? I can’t even remember when I last bought an app discovered in the App Store1. I wonder if this is only me or reflects a more general trend.🤔

  1. I usually make my discoveries by external reference. ↩︎

Playing with recently updated apps and their respective interactive widgets. They all come out to their default view. Rebooting the iPhone is mandatory to fix this issue. Adding another widget and again defaults to the blank screen.🤦🏻‍♂️ iOS 17.0.1, I guess, will help fix this.