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Good Job Apple, Now Back to Software?
Ok, Apple did a great job this week. A lot has already been said about Apple’s announcements. The MacBook Neo is a killer, even as an entry device. My wife is getting one. It’s the original Mac mini in a laptop shape. Apple did a great balancing act with the Neo. The only two quibbles: only 8 GB of RAM (I wanted 12 GB) and the lack of a MagSafe port. Continue reading →
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Dim that background for me, will ya?
★ HazeOver — Mac Utility for Highlighting the Frontmost Window: What HazeOver does is highlight the active window by dimming all background windows. That’s it. But it does this simple task with aplomb, and it makes a significant difference in the day-to-day usability of MacOS. Not just MacOS 26 Tahoe — all recent versions of MacOS suffer from a design that makes it difficult to distinguish, instantly, the frontmost (a.k.a. key) window from background windows. Continue reading →
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Micro.blog + RSS = ?
Micro.blog is set to launch soon what could be its most exciting new feature yet: an integrated RSS reader. If I’m not mistaken, this could significantly change how I use the service. I currently follow many Mastodon accounts from news sites, so their updates are pushed to my timeline. With a possible RSS integration, I could use the RSS feeds directly, eliminating the need to follow the Mastodon account. I don’t know how the new feature will integrate with the rest of Micro. Continue reading →
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More MacBook Expectations
Here’s what I want for the upcoming entry-level MacBook: Size and design: thin and less boxy than two iPad Pro on top of each other. Just under 13-inch retina display. Full-size keyboard flush with the left and right device edges. 8GB of RAM with a 12GB option available. 256 GB of fast storage (120 GB/s) with a 512GB upgrade option. One fast USB-C port and MagSafe. Very thin bezel around the display to minimize the overall device size. Continue reading →
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A Short Conversation with ChatGPT About The Upcoming Entry-Level MacBook
Is the Apple A18 Pro more powerful than the Apple Silicon M1 ? In a straight performance comparison, the Apple A18 Pro (a smartphone SoC used in the iPhone 16 Pro) and the Apple Silicon M1 (Apple’s first Mac/desktop-class chip) are closer than you might expect — but neither is strictly “more powerful” across all categories. The answer depends heavily on how you measure performance: 🔋 Architecture & Design Goals Continue reading →
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About This Tempting Light MacBook
If the rumors turn out to be true, Apple will announce a new entry-level MacBook line on March 4th. Why is this relevant to me? Well, I’m really curious to see what Apple will offer in terms of technical specifications and overall design, because I might be tempted to get one. But why? I already have an M2 MacBook Air 15"! The short answer: to use while travelling instead of bringing my M4 iPad Pro! Continue reading →
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When I Retire...
One of my nieces’ friends works in IT and recently contacted me for advice about his career in this field. This isn’t the first time I’ve received this kind of request. Over the past year, two other colleagues have also asked me for similar career advice. I have to admit, I really enjoy it. I like listening to the concerns of the younger generation and, to the best of my knowledge, advising them to help them flourish even more. Continue reading →
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We're Making a Big Mistake
I believe that IT workers who are also passionate about gen AI are making a major misjudgment. We wrongly assume that the advances we observe in our field, such as the autonomous or semi-autonomous development of applications, also translate to sectors like medicine or law. This is a false generalization. The field of IT heavily relies on strict formalism: the raw material consumed by LLMs. In the legal field, for example, this is not the case: it is much more complex. Continue reading →
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The Rise of Cognitive Dept
Margaret-Anne Storey introduces “cognitive debt” as a concept that may be more threatening than technical debt in AI-augmented development. Unlike technical debt (which lives in code), cognitive debt is the erosion of shared understanding that resides in developers’ minds. Drawing on Peter Naur’s concept of a program as a “theory” distributed across teams, the article argues that as AI and agentic tools push for development velocity, teams risk losing their collective understanding of why systems work the way they do. Continue reading →
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Traveling to Egypt and Jordan: Some of My Random Travel Notes
One of my favourite things while flying is seeing a plane go in the opposite direction at a distance, ideally close enough to feel the raw speed of the plane added to mine. I loved Egypt, but the chaos of Cairo can be overwhelming and tiring. I prefer the relative calm of Jordan’s cities. I may be getting too old for some scenery. WhatsApp is a dominant communication platform worldwide, except in North America. Continue reading →
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Something Is Going On
I’m still working on this, but I’m heading in the right direction. I realize that every blog post should have a title so that my RSS flow feed looks great. 👀 Continue reading →
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I'm rebuilding Flickr!
Well, maybe not, but here’s a description of my recently created photo-sharing webapp. And I have many more ideas to improve this. Photo Sharing WebApp - Feature Overview A modern, full-stack travel photo gallery built with Next.js 15, featuring intelligent photo management, interactive maps, and seamless cloud storage integration. 🌟 Highlights Zero-Database Architecture: Uses Vercel Blob for photos and Redis (via Vercel KV) for metadata Privacy Controls: Public, unlisted, and private album visibility options Interactive World Map: Displays photo locations extracted from EXIF GPS data Responsive Design: Optimized for all devices from mobile to desktop Admin Panel: Complete photo management without leaving the browser 🎨 Public Gallery Features Album Management Collapsible Albums: Each travel album can be expanded or collapsed independently Smart Defaults: Most recent album automatically expands on page load Album Metadata: Title, description, and date for each collection Privacy Levels: Public: Visible to everyone on the homepage Unlisted: Only accessible via direct link Private: Visible only to authenticated admins Photo Display Grid Layout Options: Three display modes to suit your preference Comfortable: Spacious 2-5 column grid with square thumbnails Compact: Dense 3-6 column grid for maximum photos per screen Masonry: Pinterest-style layout preserving original aspect ratios Layout Persistence: Grid preference saved in browser localStorage Newest First: Photos automatically sorted by upload date (newest at top-left) Rounded Thumbnails: Modern, elegant aesthetic with subtle shadows Hover Effects: Smooth scale and brightness animations on interaction Upload Date Display: Shows when each photo was added (in comfortable/masonry modes) Lightbox Viewer Full-Screen Experience: Distraction-free photo viewing Navigation Controls: Keyboard arrows (← →) for previous/next On-screen navigation buttons ESC key to close Photo Captions: Optional descriptions displayed below photos Smooth Transitions: Animated photo changes with loading states Mobile Optimized: Touch-friendly controls and responsive sizing Interactive Features World Map Integration: Leaflet-based interactive map Clustered markers for photos with GPS coordinates Click markers to view photos from that location Automatic bounds fitting to show all locations Album information in marker popups Random Featured Photo: Displays a random photo from all albums on homepage Changes on each page load Shows caption if available Mini Thumbnails: Collapsed albums show preview of first 5 photos Smooth animation on expand/collapse Photo count badge for albums with 6+ photos Content Syndication RSS Feed: Subscribe to new photo uploads at /feed. Continue reading →
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Building A Dedicated Photo-Sharing Website in Claude Code
Thinking about the upcoming trip to Egypt, I realized I still didn’t have a good solution for sharing photos and comments beyond the usual social networks. Drawing on my experience from the past few weeks deploying web applications on Vercel, I decided to try the same by building a website for sharing and viewing photos. The additional complexity here is that the viewing portion is separate from the photo upload section. Continue reading →
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Apple Creator Studio - A Few Comments
On today’s announcement by Apple: Now we know why it took so long for Apple to update Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Where is iWork? Why no iWork subscription without the pro stuff? I don’t understand this bundling of pro apps with consumer-generalistic apps. Is Apple trying to upsell Pro Apps to consumers via a new subscription? They might be. I don’t think pros want to get Numbers or Pages, though. Icons are utterly un-Apple, or Apple has become something I no longer relate to software-design-wise. Continue reading →
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On Scrollbars
After reading a recent Gruber article about the macOS Tahoe window-resizing issue, I found a setting in Appearance that keeps scrollbars always visible. It’s somewhat odd because of the scrollbar’s thickness. I wish Apple would make them thinner and less noticeable. I’m unsure if I’ll get used to this. Note: On Windows 11, scrollbars are always visible by default but are less obtrusive. 🤷🏻♂️ Apple was once known for leading with excellent design and great visual taste, but this is less obvious nowadays. Continue reading →
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On Apple’s Deal with Google
Back in November, Google announced Private AI Compute, positioning themselves to offer something like Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. It might be something that OpenAI wasn’t willing to do or didn’t see a fit in their business mission. By offering Private AI Compute, Google might have secured the business with Apple. Anyway, it’s becoming impressive how Google is taking back the lead in AI. Lastly, maybe we will see Google Gemini being added to this week’s next beta of iOS 26. Continue reading →
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When Things Go Wrong With AI-Generated Code
My first bad experience: the code generated by Claude Code made my dashboard unresponsive in my browser. Eventually, the data stopped updating. After a ten-minute debugging session, I asked Claude Code to revert the change, and it did so promptly. But then I started getting execution failure notices on Discord. A lot of notifications. Then I started investigating… It appears the browser was making frequent refresh requests to one of my workflows, which depleted my Claude pay-per-use credits. Continue reading →
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My Defaults as of 2026-01-10
Changes from the last edition are in bold. ✉️ Mail Client: Fastmail 📨 Mail Server: Fastmail 📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes ✅ To-Do: Things 3 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Photomator 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader 📇 Contacts: Contacts 🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac + ChatGPT Atlas 🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Claude AI 🔎 Search: Kagi Search 💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad) 🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox 👓 Read It Later: Inoreader 📜 Word Processing: Ulysses, Craft 📊 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: Apple Podcasts 🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain & Apple Passwords 👨🏻💻 Blog hosting: Ghost, Micro. Continue reading →
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On Tahoe Icons
Just finished reading “It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons”, which many UI design pundits and non-UI experts, as well as simple, passionate Mac users, have been referring to a lot recently. I appreciate the documentation effort. It’s really well done. Very convincing. But… Designers age and are gradually replaced by a younger generation. Whether you like it or not, they bring new beliefs (justified or not), design principles (better or not), and values (questionable or not). Continue reading →
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An Important Lesson
When I started my studies in computer science over 40 years ago, we learned to read functional specifications and then translate them into machine instructions (COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, etc.). It was the training of a programmer. I knew that one day I could become the person who writes functional specifications. I didn’t become a programmer, nor did I work in the development world. Due to my recent experience with Claude AI, Claude Code, and Vercel to create custom applications, I realize that I have become the one who writes functional specifications, but for processing by artificial intelligence. Continue reading →
