Food for thought

Owning media > streaming services

On paper, yes, but how do you cope in a "streaming-only" world?

In the last few months, on Twitter and on Micro.blog, I’ve been witnessing something that takes the shape of a small phenomenon: people are moving from one place to another in the digital space. Many are writing about their experience of moving from one hosting site to another. Some are leaving WordPress to return to Ghost. Others are proudly putting together their hosting solutions. The same happens in the newsletters hosting space: people are leaving Mailchimp to go to Substack or Revue. Continue reading →

As much as you can like to work on the iPad, there are edge cases where the iPad falls short. Since I got an Apple Silicon powered Mac, and thanks to many nifty Mac utilities, I rediscovered what it really means to be productive and efficient on a computer platform. This blog post by Matt Birchler is an example of an edge case being better served by a traditional yet powerful computer. Continue reading →

A recent article by Benedict Evans exposes how hard it is to “fix” social networks. “The internet and then social platforms break a lot of our definitions of different kinds of speech, and yet somehow Facebook / Google / Twitter are supposed to recreate that whole 200-year tapestry of implicit structures and consensus, and answer all of those questions, from office parks in the San Francisco Bay Area, for both the USA and Myanmar, right now. Continue reading →

Let’s start with a quote from Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger (as reported by The Oregonian) “We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino. We have to be that good, in the future.” The fundamental problem with Intel is that they will never make the whole widget (the products) like Apple does. That’s the key for insanely great products. Continue reading →

What does it take to be a hood programmer? Or better yet, what does it take to like programming hence writing or reading algorithms? Math? Language? Arts? A combination? When I started in computer science at the University, my friends thought that I was good at maths. It wasn’t the case. Before deciding which field I would like to study, I was afraid of computer science, thinking myself that we had to be really good with mathematics. Continue reading →

What happens with your numeric assets when you die? I mean, think of your online presence: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Where all that stuff ends up a few years after you die? That’s the type of question “Where Does Our Data Go When We Die?” tries to answer. It’s something that I find interesting and a big challenge, something that I wrote about in my piece titled “A Guide for Preparing to Leave Your Numeric Legacy”. Continue reading →

Who knew COVID-19 would have a very positive side effect on me. It started on March 13th of 2020, and it’s still going on nearly uninterrupted. What is it? I have more time than ever to focus on my writing and publishing activities. Why? As I’m working from home from mi-March of this year, I no longer have to commute. I save countless hours per week just because of this. Continue reading →

Wait for the previous gif to load and animate. What the fusk is wrong with the owners of iPhone in Canada website? This animated gif shows how wrong the web can become. There are 21 trackers on this website. The more trackers, the more ads, the less content there is. What a pity. For this reason, I don’t visit their website, I only subscribe to their RSS feed and Safari notifications. Continue reading →

In a blog post “Your Move, iPad”, by Becky Hansmeyer, the author asks “So if raw power isn’t enough, and new display tech isn’t enough, where does the iPad go from here? Will it be abandoned once more, lagging behind the Mac in terms of innovation, or will Apple continue to debut its latest tech in this form factor?” In light of the massively successful M1-powered Macs, what can we infer for the future of the iPad Pro? Continue reading →

Someone on Twitter shared this YouTube video in which the guy tries to explain why and how Apple is not what it used to be. In a few words: now, they actively compete with others. It’s a massive difference where before they seemed to act alone without caring about the surrounding competitive landscape. Highly recommended. Continue reading →

Carefully look at this add by Microsoft bellow. The phrasing of this ad clearly shows the roots of the company making the product. “Pen supported” is one example. Why not write something like “Touch interface” or “Touch screen”. The word “supported” sounds wrong and makes me feel Microsoft is not fully confident about the real nature of this computing environment. The other thing is the removable SSD option. That’s typical geeky-PC-world-thing. Continue reading →

In light of Apple’s recent products introduction, consider the recently introduced Microsoft Surface Go. A Windows laptop that starts with 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB SSD, 12.4” touch screen using the Intel Core i5 which will get you 13 hours on battery for 550$. If you want a 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, the price goes up to 899$, but you keep the same lame CPU. Now, compare this to the new MacBook Air (a much more powerful laptop) for 899$ (education pricing), same amount of RAM and SSD, 5 hours more of battery life, a much better non-touch display. Continue reading →

PC laptops introduced pencil support, touch screen, screen-based touchpads, et. al. because these are the only things they could do to try to stay on top in a commoditized technology platform. I will take in a heartbeat 3X or 5X performance gain and 6 more hours of battery life over the gimmicky features. This is one of the many reasons I’m so upbeat with the M1-based Macs. Photo credit: Alexander Andrews on Unsplash. Continue reading →

Well, I can breath a little bit better now that this clown is on the way out. Good riddance. As a Canadian, I’m so happy to see this clown go. If there was a way to start fixing 2020, it would be it. Yeah, I know, he won’t concede victory, he probably won’t do a concession speech. Who cares.. we knew all that, already. Now, let’s hope Americans start to unite a little bit and fix their shit, because, it’s pretty ugly out there. Continue reading →

A recent tweet from @LeaksApplePro made me think about the significance of the iPhone 12 in the grand scheme of things. Apple is about to remove the last port on the iPhone, so they are training us with the MagSafe. Next year’s version will fix many of the issue we’re facing today. 5G may not be ready, but next year it will be much better. LiDAR is fascinating, but next year we will depend on it. Continue reading →

Interesting post from @Gruber about Facebook application design. The lack of support for basic things like dark mode, more than a year after its introduction is a simple example, but very telling about something: Facebook doesn’t give a shit about those things. They don’t give a shit about privacy protection either. They don’t give a shit about democracy. They are are bad at design. They are bad at everything. And their growth is slowly declining which is a bit of fresh air to know. Continue reading →

Here is a fascinating chart: brand value calculated by Interbrand. Apple is on top again this year. They have been there since 2012. What I find interesting is the first row is occupied by companies reflecting our new way of life as we depend on smartphones (Apple, Samsung), online shopping (Amazon) and the cloud (Microsoft). What about Google you might ask? Well, first, as we don’t like to pay for online stuff, we prefer to be the product of advertisers. Continue reading →

“Work can’t solve for all the things we’re missing right now, but a shared sense of purpose goes a long way. A belief that we can do more together than we can alone, that people of good will, driven by creativity and passion and that certain itch of a big idea, can still do things that help other people in our own small way to teach, to learn, to create, or just to relax at a time like this. Continue reading →

An image is worth a thousand words. We are still paying the price of this shift in design, every single day, for every single interaction we have with our iPhone… who asked for that? Why? Will we return to normalcy? I’ll never forget the “before” it was so shitty. Never. Continue reading →