For some time now, I’ve had a question that keeps coming back to my mind because I often use Bluesky to express my distress or frustration against Trump, Musk, and the entire little clique of authoritarians at the head of the United States. If, in the near future, the situation in the U.S. deteriorates to the point where government groups start hunting down activists like me, who openly denounce Trump’s authoritarian policies and his inner circle, should I censor myself to avoid any form of persecution when I decide to return to the United States?

I fear the day when bloggers will be hunted down to silence them—or worse, to have them arrested in the name of disrespecting the American presidency. Is it precisely the presidency’s game to instill fear so they can continue their authoritarian actions by manipulating people like me?

BREAKING NEWS: a foldable iPad prototype was found on a table… at an IKEA store in Canada. The prototype was turned on and was running a special version of macOS Touch™. Tim Cook wants it back, but the guy who found set two conditions: you must resign because of Apple Intelligence fiasco, but before you must ask Trump to remove tariffs against Canada. Canadians can be nasty, too.

Here is an observation about Apple Intelligence (yet another one you might say?): Image Playground was announced at WWDC2024. It finally made its debut with iOS 18.2, in December 2024. Since then, we got iOS 18.3, now iOS 18.4 is in beta. Did Image Playground improved? A new image style was introduced, in 18.3, I think. Does it provide better results? Not really. Is it easier to use? Nope. On this subject, I must confess that I personally find Image Playground not to be the best UX Apple ever created. I find it clunky and not always intuitive to use. After two releases, Image Playground is basically the same. Isn’t it surprising, coming from a company who’s playing catch up in AI space? The same questions could apply to Writing Tools. I didn’t test text proofing with each release of Apple Intelligence, but I would bet that it didn’t really improve. Strange.

One quick question tonight: those people who worked for a government agency in the US and got laid-off by DOGE or anyone close to them or because of them, what are they doing now? Where will they find their purpose? I’m thinking about the scientists, social workers, phycologists, Are they going to work for the private sector or simply increase the unemployment rate? I mean, there are so many human dramas unfolding right now.

I’ve been an Apple fan since 1983, and everyone I know—my friends, colleagues, and family—understands my enthusiasm for the brand. Recently, they’ve been calling me more than ever to ask about my thoughts on Tim Cook’s support for Trump. “Apple is becoming like the others; what do you think?” they all inquire. I struggle to express my sadness about this situation. Tim’s poor judgment in supporting the Trump presidency is disappointing. I hope he regrets his decision. Until then, I want him to step down. It’s as simple as that.

The latest post from @gruber@mastodon.social about the delay of Apple Intelligence and the ongoing fiasco serves as a reminder that Apple needs to change soon. It’s another big red flag something is rotten at Apple. Should I mention that Tim Cook’s financial support for the Trump presidential inauguration, whether personal or not, was another mistake? Apple could have and should have acted differently than Meta, Amazon, and others. They did not. We had all the warning signs regarding Trump, and now Tim is associated with this nonsense. There is no possible excuse. It was a poor decision on Tim’s part.

I believe it’s time for Tim Cook to take responsibility and step down.

I love my 2024 iPad Pro, but there is a clear regression in hardware+software for palm rest detection. Each time I put my hand on the screen when taking notes using the Apple Pencil in Apple Notes, the content scrolls up, sometimes not by much, but sometimes quite a lot… I always need to lift my hand, reposition the content and try again. This is utterly frustrating; this is something that I never experienced with my 2018 iPad Pro… this is something that Apple used to be good at.

So many things changed since my previous update.

• ✉️ 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 (Personal Life) + Fantastical.app (Work Life)
• 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud
• 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader
• 📇 Contacts: Contacts
• 🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac
• 🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Perplexity
• 🔎 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

Did you know that you can use iCloud+ with a custom email domain? Yep, that’s right. This is what I was doing for hello @ numericcitizen.me until this week when I started my migration to Fastmail. But there is one challenge that I didn’t expect: I wanted to bring this custom email to Fastmail, too. Custom email domains with iCloud+ is managed only on the iCloud website.

Having Apple Advanced Data Protection (ADP) is cool and nice but can make managing iCloud+ Custom domains a pain. As a reminder, to use ADP, you must turn off iCloud web access. I’m not really sure why. As soon as this is turned off, you can no longer manage your custom email domains that you might have configured for use with iCloud+. To complete my migration to Fastmail, so that I could write and respond from that custom email address from Fastmail, I first had to remove that domain from iCloud+, but it’s only possible on the iCloud website. To do that, ADP must be turned off. Once done, you can re-enable iCloud website access, then remove the custom email domain. After some cleaning up of Apple-related DNS records, you can re-enable ADP and disable iCloud website. Only then I can go on Fastmail Settings and configure my custom email domain.

Now you know.

Spent a few hours in Fastmail to get it ready to fully replace my HEY Mail subscription. Got my new email domain name set up in Cloudflare. The Screener functionality that I liked in HEY is now fully operational and is based on a Contacts Group. The Paper Trail is also set up and based on another Contacts group. Basically, if an email uses a contact not in the Screener, it will be moved in The Screener label. The same happens for the Paper trail. If I want a specific email to go to the Paper Trail, the contact is created and added to the right contacts group. One email account (Gmail) has been configured for Fastmail to pull content from it (no need to use email forwarding, so everything is configured from Fastmail. My Gmail account is a low-volume account so that I can tweak things before connecting my primary email accounts (both are Apple-provided).