Longer posts

October 4, 2025 5:05pm

Numeric Citizen

One of the most frustrating and hard-to-understand behaviours in the new iPadOS 26 multitasking is when iPadOS, for some reason, breaks all the running apps and window arrangements. I often find myself in need of relaunching the apps and doing window placement to my liking. Again, iPadOS 26 is exhausting to use. I think this happens if I disconnect the external display. Restoring computing state is a basic principle in UI and UX design. Am I demanding too much?

October 4, 2025 10:54am

Numeric Citizen

Locking the iPad while the iPad is using an external display is brutal. Dragging an app from the built in display to an external display is also brutal, forcing a full app content redraw, nothing compared to the Mac experience. I couldn’t record the experience with screen recording, so I used my iPhone.

October 4, 2025 10:30am

Numeric Citizen

Doing serious work on the iPad now feels… exhausting. The efforts that you have to deploy to avoid the too many paper cuts is exhausting. I don’t know who, at Apple, is working on Files.app but the team should get in touch with those who work (if they are still there) on the Mac Finder. I ended up doing many of the files management tasks on… the Mac.

Photomator doesn’t work well with files located on a remote SMB share, apparently. After granting permission to the root folder as requested, Photomator is stacked in a “Processing…” loop. Not good.

October 4, 2025 9:55am

Numeric Citizen

Working with Files.app is still very frustrating and unpredictable. For some reason, I cannot drag & drop a file from my iPad downloads folder to a specific folder (on my Synology). The only way to get around this is to go up in the folder hierarchy, drop it there then later move it inside the intended target folder. Also experienced one crash with numerous “Content Unavailable” conditions like shown on this screenshot. So far, no file management done. WTF? Let’s try harder.

October 4, 2025 9:28am

Numeric Citizen

I just started a one-hour work session with my M4 iPad Pro connected to an external display (LG 5K Ultra Fine) running iPad OS 26.1 beta 1. I should probably update this article I wrote more than a year ago: “Using the iPad With an External Display — Space Oddities”. Let’s see how it goes.

First issue: I started writing this blog post in Micro.blog client. Sadly, Micro.blog’s iPad app is buggy with an external display: I cannot set the blog post category… the little gear icon is missing and iPadOS 26 menus aren’t supported, yet. My fallback plan: Ulysses. Works great. Next step: doing some files management with Files.app using an SMB share on my Synology NAS. Let’s see how it goes. Oh, and ShareShot works… but not without strange visual issues.

September 29, 2025 8:56pm

Numeric Citizen

Accenture reportedly laid off over 11,000 employees, citing a lack of demand for workers without the necessary AI skills. Additionally, Accenture warns that further layoffs could occur if remaining employees cannot quickly acquire AI skills in a rapidly evolving world. I believe we should look beyond the headlines and question the real motives. What were the laid-off employees doing? What value did they bring to Accenture’s clients? Or is it simply because there is less demand for consulting services? Is it more appropriate to frame the layoffs as linked to “AI”? If you’re aware of some AI limitations in a complex business environment, where layoffs are supposedly driven by AI replacing workers, I would argue that they didn’t significantly impact the company initially. Alternatively, framing AI as a questionable strategy is a dubious approach. And it’s only the beginning.

September 26, 2025 6:44am

Numeric Citizen

Today, I’m completing a four-day course from Microsoft (AS-104 if you are curious). It’s all virtual, of course, through Microsoft Teams, and instructor-led. We’re a group of 50 people from all around the world, primarily from the US, from what I can see. The one fascinating thing is how pushy the instructors are for us to use… Copilot. They use it all the time to answer questions and paste the answers in the group chat. They offer ways to utilize Copilot to prepare for the certification exam. Etc. Copilot is really their assistant, the undergraduate who’s doing the dirty job, the gopher, if you will. The course is so strictly structured and formatted that I’m seeing a future where there won’t be any instructors. Only Copilot. 😳

September 24, 2025 6:49am

Numeric Citizen

Journaling and documenting my experiences while travelling has always been something that I wish I could do effectively, without too much friction. I did it in Italy in 2022 using Craft and again this past summer with Apple Journal. Two different kinds of vacations, totally different solutions. I’m still not satisfied with either of these options. Next time, maybe I should consider using the real deal: Day One?

September 9, 2025 8:32pm

Numeric Citizen

Finished watching the Awe Dropping infomercial from Apple. Quick thoughts. Impressive video production quality as usual. Apple Watch personal stories were touching. iPhone Air (not iPhone 17 Air) looks impressive without too many compromises. This iPhone 17 Pro Orange colour looks gorgeous, can’t wait to see that in person. Am I getting tired of Apple Headquarters shots? The jury is still out on that one. The AirPods Pro 3 is much better than rumours were predicting. I liked the new voice-overs for the iPhone Air design showcase as well as the iPhone 17 Pro. Somewhat similar to Jony Ive’s tone. Unibody for the iPhone 17 Pro, a first. Many features announced today are also available to previous-generation devices (hypertension for Apple Watch Series 11 is also available to Series 10). Cool. Same price as last year’s? Apparently, for a double the starting memory size configuration. Not bad. Who said Apple is greedy? Yet, I’ll probably pass this year and wait for next year. Thanks to Tim Cook’s relationship with some of the US government representatives.

September 9, 2025 6:40am

Numeric Citizen

Based on our experience earlier this year with Apple TV as the only way to watch TV content, along with rising costs and an unstable service, we are seriously considering cutting our cable service and keeping only our Internet service. Even though the apps on Apple TV are far from perfect, they generally allow us to replace cable service. Rumors suggest that Apple is working on a new iteration of the Apple TV, which could make the timing even more favorable.

September 8, 2025 8:14pm

Numeric Citizen

Read later services (Readwise, Pocket, Readwise, Inoreader, etc.), bookmarking apps and services (Anybox, Raindrop, etc.), downloading, summarizing, and tagging—whether used together or separately—the issue remains the same: I rarely revisit content. Content quickly becomes outdated and loses relevance. This pattern reflects a common challenge in digital content management. Despite the ease of saving and organizing information for future reference, the practical use of these saved digital tidbits often diminishes over time. As new information emerges and contexts change, what once seemed valuable or interesting can fade into obscurity, making the effort of saving feel less worthwhile. This raises questions about the effectiveness of these tools and whether they truly serve my long-term informational needs.

August 23, 2025 7:52am

Numeric Citizen

We’re getting close to the end of August and moving into September, which means Apple’s usual rush of new product launches. We already know quite a bit about Apple’s upcoming iPhone. We also know that Apple’s unifying Liquid Glass is likely to cause major issues when it encounters hundreds of millions of devices. We can probably expect Apple to be in damage control again. And I’ll probably have to explain why Apple did this to my friends and colleagues.

Usually, around this time of year, I would have one or two articles ready to publish about all this. But not this year. I won’t upgrade to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, even though I normally would every two iPhone generations. I’m voting with my dollars by skipping this year, because I disagree with Tim Cook’s (and Apple’s) stance on the orange clown.

Something is wrong.

August 19, 2025 8:23pm

Numeric Citizen

One of my rules for using generative AI is to avoid starting a creative project with AI prompts. Today, someone at the office challenged this rule, arguing that beginning with AI can effectively kick-start the creative journey. While that may be true, I prefer to keep the human touch at the center and use AI as a complement to the process. Starting with AI risks making us lazy in the long run.

August 12, 2025 8:02am

Numeric Citizen

Here’s a strange and frustrating issue with the Mac App Store on macOS Tahoe: I cannot re-download an app after testing it through TestFlight. This first occurred with Craft, which I tested this summer. When the version I was testing became official, I tried to download it, but the download froze at the end. Quitting the Mac App Store and rebooting my machine did not resolve the problem. Now, I am facing the same issue with Reeder. I tested the beta a few months ago, only to discover that the developer removed the build from TestFlight. When I went to the Mac App Store to download the official version, the download froze again and never completed. Now I’m unable to use an app for which I’m paying for. Submitted a feedback to Apple. Beta6 doesn’t fix the issue. I’m really hoping for a fix soon. See the behavior here.

August 2, 2025 8:25am

Numeric Citizen

My Medium membership is up for renewal on August 17th. I returned to Medium last year to share a special set of articles about my potential career pivot to freelancing. I wrote over a dozen articles on this topic, believing Medium was a suitable platform for personal and career-focused content. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Despite following all the SEO tricks, I earned only $1.64 in revenue, which I won’t receive since the minimum payout is $10. 😳 I expected my earnings to at least cover the cost of my Medium membership, but that didn’t happen. I also intended to read more content on the platform, but I didn’t. I thought I would gain more followers, but that didn’t occur either. I understand now that I need to move on¹, ².

Goodbye, Medium. It was one of my numerous experiments³. I’ll keep my account active but won’t write or share anything further.

July 21, 2025 7:31am

Numeric Citizen

When I read the news about Apple Intelligence, it is most often related to the perception that Apple is way behind their competitors in the field of artificial intelligence¹. It is rarely about what sets Apple Intelligence apart from its competitors: privacy protection. It’s as if this is not important to the majority of users or the tech press. However, it is an important differentiating factor that I believe will work in Apple’s favor in the long term. Fortunately, some articles highlight this fact, such as this article from 9to5Mac.

July 20, 2025 7:05pm

Numeric Citizen

I took a trip earlier this year, and my sister, a seasoned amateur photographer, asked when she could see my photos. Even if I’m on Glass and Pixelfed, I’m sure those two platforms aren’t what she would like to use to browse my photos. To makes things more complicated, I do use iCloud Photos where I could share an album but also depend on file-based organization for RAW photos. I need a place to combine my best photos and share as a website that could be put together quickly and easily while having a great design and look. One possible solution is to use Fastmail Files, which will allow me to upload files easily and build the static website automagically. More on that soon.

July 14, 2025 8:14am

Numeric Citizen

I received a reminder this morning about my upcoming Grammarly renewal. After reviewing past invoices, I decided to cancel my subscription on a whim. It’s an expensive service. As I’m planning some changes on other areas of my digital presence, I’ll reallocate the money to that instead.

For the next new weeks, my subscription ends on August 14th, I’ll be turning off Grammarly and see how things goes. I might use AI service from Raycast, ChatGPT or even Apple Intelligence Writing Tools to compensate. I do use the free version of LanguageTool, too. I’ll report my conclusions in due time.

July 2, 2025 9:39pm

Numeric Citizen

I overheard people at the office talking about their weekend activities. I wasn’t in the conversation, but I’m always prepared for those. I never talk about my writing hobby or the many websites I maintain. Most people would find this strange. They’d say things like, “What, you have a blog? Really?” Yes, that’s right. I prefer to skip all that and talk about a walk in the park, in the forest, and maybe about photography. Blogging is like people collecting stamps back in the day. Sad.

June 22, 2025 2:48pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Numeric Citizen

Jim Mitchell, on his blog:

As is customary after posting my own, I’m extending the challenge to Numeric Citizen (@numericcitizen) and David Johnson (@crossingthethreshold) to answer the same questions:

Here are my answers!

1. Why did you start a blog in the first place? It was when Apple had iWeb, part of MobileMe. It was a family thing only. iWeb died, so did my blog. Eventually, I returned to blogging on Blogger, now part of Google, while developing iPhone apps in 2009. It lasted until 2013. Then it all died. I returned to blogging in 2015, using WordPress, then migrated to Ghost and Micro.blog; both serve different purposes. The rest is history.
2. Have you blogged on other platforms before? Yes, all in all, I experimented with iWeb, Blogger, WordPress, Micro.blog, Write.as, Substack, Medium. Am I missing one? Oh yeah, Scribble.pages! Sorry, Vincent!
3. Why did you choose Micro.blog? Back in 2018, when it launched. Initially, I wasn’t sure about it and viewed it as an experiment (I shared some thoughts about this). I went all in during COVID. Couldn’t be happier.
4. Do you write your posts directly in the editor or in another application? It depends. Most of the time, I wrote on the web editor, but with recent updates to the Mac app, I do it more and more on the Mac app. Oh, MarsEdit is also one app that I use, from time to time.
5. When do you feel most inspired to write? All the time, mainly in the mornings when my head is still pristine (can’t tell if this is something we can write!)
6. Do you publish immediately after writing or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? Most of the time, I write and then publish, especially on Micro.blog. For longer posts, I let it simmer for a while.
7. What’s your favorite post on your blog? So hard to tell because what I write is so short. The whole thing is what I’m most proud of: having the time and the gut to think and write about anything away from big platforms, it’s something to be proud of IMO.
8. Any future plans for your blog? Since last year, I decided to focus more on what I already have. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So, Micro.blog forever! For now. I recently launched “Who Is Numeric Citizen?” website with the idea to replace another website built using Craft. 🤭

Thanks for calling me out on that, @jimmitchell ! How about @abc ? Will he catch the call?