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On Mimestream Going 1.0 & Native Mac Apps
Mimestream, a native Gmail email client, is out of beta and looks quite good if this video, by Matt Birchler, is any indication. As a subscriber to HEY, I can only salivate when I see such great Mac apps being launched for such a mature category. The guys behind HEY brag a lot about having a unique take on email, but they seriously lack in their take on being native because their software is not and is one of their biggest problems IMHO. If only they had the guts to rebuild their client like Mimestream, it would be a real killer for me.
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From Authenticity To Attention and Eventually to Connection
I recently heard the notion of blogging for ourselves as opposed to writing for other people to read. I like this idea a lot, and after giving it some thought, I think I know why. If Iām being honest with myself in life and decide to share something like a thought about something, my guess is that writing for ourselves helps a lot in being authentic. I think itās one of the best ways to attract attention and, eventually, maybe, make a connection.
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On Apple Stores Evolution
After 22 Years, Apple’s Very First Retail Store Is Reopening Its Doors in a New Location Source: After 22 Years, Apple’s Very First Retail Store Is Reopening Its Doors in a New Location | Inc.com
I re-watched the video, where Steve Jobs is touring the very first Apple Store. It’s fascinating to see how things evolved over time. Software titles disappeared from shelves, thanks to the App Store. It’s no longer possible to put all Apple products on a single table. Macs, iPads, iPhones, watches, HomePod, and device cases took over the place and then more. Thankfully, the Genius bar is still there in many stores because, you know, people still have questions and broken devices to get fixed.
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Apple's Headset ā Alarming or Not?
A recent report on Apple’s upcoming headset:
Key figures including software chief Craig Federighi have also kept their distance from the headset during its development and have seemed wary of it. Apple’s senior vice president for hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, is believed to privately be a skeptic of the device, comparing it to a science project. He has warned that designing the high-performance chips that the headset requires could distract from new iPhone chips that drive more revenue. Source: Report: Apple Executives Cautious of Mixed-Reality Headset Amid Compromises - MacRumors
Everything will be fine, right? If Mr. Srouji is skeptical because the current product is too far from the original vision, I wouldn’t call this alarming. But overall, the signals coming out of these reports aren’t encouraging either. Is Apple headed in a bad direction?
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On Android Switchers Coming in Drove to the iPhone
Report reveals Android users switching to iPhone at 5-year high
15% of new iPhone owners report having an Android device as their last smartphone. Thatās a 4% increase from what CIRP saw last year, and 5% higher than the data seen in 2020 and 2021.
The last time new Android switchers made up 15% of new iPhone buyers ā according to CIRP ā was back in 2018. The highest rate of switchers in the last nine years was 21% back in 2016.
The market is full of previously-owned iPhones for sale. You can find used iPhones from 2 to 3 years ago at reasonable prices these days. People who were using an Android phone probably can now afford to buy an iPhone much cheaper than a brand-new one. Moreover, according to this chart, iPhones from the last few years can still run the latest releases of iOS with most of the features available. It’s very tempting for switchers. This is how I would explain this phenomenon. The study covers the US market. The dynamics might be different in other parts of the world.
One question: what percentage of iPhone owners who buy a new iPhone are returning their iPhone to Apple to get a credit instead of selling their iPhone themselves?
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On Photomator š
Currently using Photomator for a small project. I love this piece of software. I bought it for 99CAN$ for a lifetime purchase. I prefer Photomator design in general when editing a photo. Itās more approachable to me. Editing with masks is super easy to use, and it creates great results. The Mac version was the one last piece of the puzzle missing. Now we get the full picture (pun intended).
It makes me wonder if I will ever get out of the Adobe subscription trap. The one missing piece from Photomator is the library management. I cannot rely on iCloud Photos Library for this.
This wasnāt a review, obviously. Just a glimpse of my enthusiasm for this great Mac app.
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Important Housekeeping Announcement
If you consume my work through RSS, read carefully. I’ll be transitioning to FeedPress to act as the entry point for all my RSS feed publication needs. Consider updating your RSS client to use this new “superfeed”. Anything coming from long articles (Ghost), blog posts like this one (Micro.blog), photos (Glass) & videos (YouTube) will appear on this feed. I call this rather convenient, don’t you think? I’ll share the individual feeds soon if you prefer to be selective when consuming content. What will happen to the native/original feeds? They won’t go away, but in the future, If I decide to move to another publishing platform, you’ll probably be impacted if you are not making the change now. That’s the main reason why I’m moving to FeedPress.
Returning to normal programming. š
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Two Thoughts On Appleās New Upcoming Accessibility Features
Today, Apple announced upcoming features for people with critical disabilities. Here are some thoughts.
First, Personal Voice is incredible! I canāt wait to try this out. I always feared being diagnosed with ALS, but I can see this new accessibility feature, coupled with Live Speech real game changer for people with ALS.
Second, looking at some user interface samples, especially the iPhone with iMessage (see below), we can see the return of shadows, depth, and better contrast, compared to what we have now. So my question is: why not have these UI traits everywhere instead?
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Can't Wait for the Upcoming Publishing Weekend
This weekend, I will publish a 6000 words thousand article about my migration to Inoreader. I’ve been working on that one for at least three months. While doing so, for the first time, I used Ulysses’ “multi-sheets” feature, where each sheet is a different section tied together as a long article that I can publish as a whole. Pretty handy stuff when working on very long articles. Thanks to Ghost’s publishing feature, it will also be the first time that a portion of my article (the last three sections) will be made available to my subscribers only.
I can’t wait to share with my readers the long journey that led me to Inoreder. Watch this space.
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Like Anything Else, The World is Hybrid
DHH wrote āIn defence of the officeā:
I salute Apple, for example, for sticking to their in-person culture now that the pandemic is long gone. They’re making that choice knowing that some, talented portion of their workforce will leave as a consequence, yet have the confidence that others will fill those chairs. Isn’t this what we wanted? The freedom to choose how we’d like to work by picking between a plentitude of companies offering the style of our preference?
Weāre better served by diverse choices because of the diversity of people (profile, aspiration, culture, etc.).
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A Peek Into My Typical Creative Week
Have you ever wondered what my typical creative week looks like? Here you go, courtesy of Things 3ās Logbook. As I was completing this weekās stretch, I had a look at the logbook, I thought it could be fun to share with you a behind the scene look. I love Things 3 logbook because it gives me a look at my past work.
If you want a closer look at my Things 3 usage in my creative workflow, you might want to watch this video. Oh, and donāt miss my documented micro-workflows.
Now, itās time to prepare for the upcoming week by duplicating the project template and setting my three goals for the week. š
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A Seemingly Mundane Visit to the Apple Store ā Random Thoughts
Itās been quite a while since I visited an Apple Store. Last I went for a quick stop after work since I was working at my downtown offices.
There are soooo many iPad models to choose from! Too many? The 12.9-inch iPad Pro screen is unbelievably gorgeous!! I wish it would come to the 11-inch version. Maybe next year?
Of all the iPad models that I looked at, Stage Manager is not enabled. So whatās up, Apple, with that? Isnāt the Stage Manager good enough for the showroom?
I wish I had bought the Studio Display with the articulated arm. Expensive but give the most flexibility. Too bad itās not possible to replace the monitorās stand.
I tested the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air and tried to imagine what a 15-inch version would be. Not an easy thing to do. Speaking of MacBook, when I looked around on the MacBook table, they all look about the same; only the thickness makes it look slightly different, oh and the ācolorsā.
I love the latest version of the iPhone display stands. Less dangling wires. Easy to grab and put back in place.
In the previous image, I am holding the iPhone 14 Pro Max. I was still testing the deviceās overall size. This is my next. I mean, the 15 Pro Max (Ultra?).
It was the day Apple released their FY2023 Q2 results. The store was unusually quiet. The illuminated decorations on the walls are getting old. I never really liked them.
Iām out after having spent twenty minutes there.
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Message to Those (Still) on Twitter
After seeing this post by Chris Hannah:
It’s incredible to see the effect of the various recent changes on how the “blue checkmarks” are given out and what they seemingly represent to different demographics of people.
Hereās my take on this. Itās straightforward: you donāt need to be verified by Twitter (or any of these centralizing platforms) to feel that you exist, are relevant and be fabulous! Just be. If youāre uncomfortable with recently introduced changes at Twitter, move on elsewhere. That is all.
Iām fed up with these stories about Twitter removing previously verified check marks! This is stupid. It was bound to bound to fail from the start. Now, here we are. It failed. Look ahead.
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Major Updates Coming to WriteFreely And WriteAs
Matt, the founder of the WriteFreely ecosystem, recently wrote a promising post:
Itās become clear over time that in order to make WriteFreely (and Write.as) as useful as it can be, it needs to have a much more unified experience.
ā¦
I donāt think it makes sense for our self-hosted product to be chopped up into multiple components like our hosted tools are. Instead, I want to bring all those tools into a single application in WriteFreely.
Earlier this year, I wrote an article (āThe Write.freely Ecosystem Explainedā) trying to explain the WriteFreely ecosystem because I thought that, in its current form, it was a bit hard to grasp. Itās one of my most popular posts on Write.as. I think there is a need for unification and consolidation into a seamless experience. Iām glad the see that itās coming.
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Hello, Bluesky. Nice to Meet You.
In my Friday Notes edition #102, I shared my thoughts about my last four months without Twitter and how calm and quiet my digital life has become. I even wrote that I might ignore Bluesky. But that was last week.
Well, it didnāt take long to contradict myself! As you might have guessed, Iām now on Bluesky as @numericcitizen (of course), thanks to a generous donator of an invite link (looking at you @Maique).
Please make no mistake; itās an experiment. Iām not planning to spend too much time on Bluesky, but Iām genuinely curious about its evolution and the traction it gets, if any.
Iām allowing myself to get on board for a simple reason: Manton from Micro.blog added support for cross-posting content to Bluesky. It didnāt take long. For me, itās like getting a seal of approval from him. I highly value his opinion on Bluesky and the open web in general. So, I made the jump without really knowing what to do next except to enable the cross-posting of my content posted on MB.
Now, I wish Bluesky doesnāt get filled up with too many dark clouds. My fingers are crossed.
PS. Iām curious how Micro.blog will push that post onto the Bluesky universe. See you on the other side.
PPS. Iām gathering my thoughts and observations for an upcoming experiment status report. Stay tuned.
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And Just Like That Micro.blog Syncs with Readwise.io
Today, I unexpectedly came across this announcement from Micro.blog: Highlights are now synced to Readwise.io, provided that you have an account with them and that you are on an Micro.blog Premium plan! How cool is that!
I immediately configured my Readwise.io connection in the Bookmarks section and exported past highlights in a CSV file. Next, I tried the feature on an article from MacRumors.
After a few minutes, I could read the archived version of the article and highlight some portions. And sure enough, my highlights were saved to Readwise.io in a snap.
The nice thing is that Inoreader also supports saving my highlights to Readwise.io. Everything going at the same place. Occasionally, I export and then import my highlights into Craft. Readwise remembers the point of my last export session.
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Apple Entering the Journal App Landscape Soon? Hell Yeah, Count Me In!
As reported by the Wall Street Journal (since itās paywalled, look at MacRumors report instead), Apple is supposedly working on its own journaling application. Code named Ā«Ā JurassicĀ Ā», many interesting details are emerging from this report.
As an avid user of Dayone (read Ā«Ā Documenting My Numeric Life With DayoneĀ Ā»). , I find the prospect of having Apple entering the journaling apps landscape quite exciting. The idea of using journaling to help users with mental health issues is pretty clever. There is so much information available on our devices from which, I guess, we can infer some mental states. Iām guessing machine learning can be of some tremendous help here. Coupled with Appleās stance on privacy, this provides a potentially very compelling story for a lot of people. Me included. Yet, some people could find this move to be crossing a line that is not acceptable for them. We will see.
The WSJ story is referring to very specific detailed aspects of the rumoured app. For example, journaling suggestions would be based on call history and iMessage conversations, and be ephemeral. After four week they would vanish from suggestions. Iām guessing this would help automate some aspects of daily journaling.
I asked this question to ChatGPT: Ā«Ā _Is the young generation into journal as much as older generations?Ā _Ā». Here is what it has to say:
_Ā There is no definitive answer to this question, as attitudes towards journaling can vary widely among individuals of all ages. However, some studies suggest that younger generations may be more likely to engage in forms of expressive writing such as blogging or social media updates, which could be seen as a form of journaling._
The debate might still be out if the youngsters generation is very into the writing journey, but having some part of the journaling automated would alleviate some rebarbative aspects of maintaining a journal.
Can you imagine having the journal app assembling photos, messages, phone calls, geo locations into pre populated journaling suggestions? Wow. Iām really looking forward into that one.
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When AI Failed to Inspire Me
I was looking for inspiration all week to write my next Friday Notes edition. Early morning yesterday, I was still unsure if I could make it, but at lunchtime, I tried ChatGPT with āGive me some blog post ideas about the positive effects on creativity of going on vacation for a weekā. It came back with phrases that looked taken from a travel agency ad. I tried again with different variations of my question. It failed to impress and to inspire me. Iāll pass this weekās edition.
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Introducing āMy Micro-Workflows Explainedā Series
Iāve been working on this for a while and now I feel itās time to share with the world. Follow this link, then expand each question to read the answer. It was a lot of fun to put together.
This site is going to be updated as new micro-workflows are documented or tweaked. This document is now joining my Complete Content Creator Toolset.
If you have a question, feel free to ask, using the commenting feature of the website as shown below. I welcomed suggestions for workflow improvements too! Enjoy and I hope you learn a few things along the way or that it triggers some ideas for your own workflows!
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Some Numbers
šØ This is post #2000. I have already written more posts in 2023 than for the entire year last year. Iāll probably write more than 2021. The record year, 2020, will be hard to beat. This post was written using Ulysses on my MacBook Air which is the most used device, with 73%. My Mac mini comes second with 20%, and lastly, my iPad with 7%. I love numbers. Returning to normal programming.šŗ
