As I wrote earlier today, I’ve been wondering about a possible use case for Scribbles¹. It took me about 5 minutes to get my idea, and it is called Blips, Numeric Citizen Blips, to be more precise². Blips will enable me to share… short blips of my digital life. I should be fun, noisy at times. But not too much. Enjoy. Or not. 🙃

I have been a happy user of Apple Safari for the last decade. If possible, I prefer using Apple’s browser, thanks to its privacy protection and features. If something doesn’t work in Safari, I will try Firefox. I’ll do everything possible to skip Google Chrome. I use Microsoft Edge because of its integration with Microsoft 365 at work. But Safari is never too far, just in case. It’s now my fall-back plan. Why this change? Because of the Arc Browser, which is now my main browser.

I’m the type of user who always tries to find a use case for an app that I really like, even if it is superseded with a better one. I love Craft. I always use it in my creative hobbies, but I found a great use case for Notion at work. I like Apple Reminder for family-related tasks but use Things 3 for my creative hobbies. I like Apple Calendar for my personal life but prefer Fantastical for the office. I keep both. I like HEY mail but must use Outlook at the office.

This constant duality in my choices about which app to use sometimes looks like psychological trouble. 😬🤷🏻‍♂️

When I look at the Apple Vision Pro, I see a device with many software and hardware technologies that Apple took years to create, develop and refine. They did it in plain sight with the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac. Each of these devices played a significant role as a test bed for what would come next, a portion of what we can find in the Vision Pro. I can see many examples: windows management introduced on the iPad via the Stage Manager paved the way for window management on the Vision Pro, Three-dimensional and object placement in an augmented reality view in the Apple Store app when placing a virtual Mac on a physical desk, LiDAR Scanner with FaceID paved the way to Personas, continuity on all Apple OSes, and so much more set the playground for a robust ecosystem that takes all its meaning in the Vision Pro. And there are probably hundreds of more technologies that I cannot see. I guess the Apple Vision Pro was in development for a decade at Apple, and with each new feature Apple put into their devices, the headset benefitted from it.

I just completed recording my next YouTube video (my YouTube channel), which will come out early next week. It’s probably the one I’m the most proud of at many levels. The release will match the release of a new version of an app that I like a lot 🤫. Technically, the sound is good. I’me using Bezels to demo the app on the iPad and the iPhone, a first for me. The video structure seems logical and should help the viewers in learning new things. Can’t wait to share that one. I hope it will get the attention I’m hoping for. 🤞🏻

Of all people who reviewed or are now active users of the Apple Vision Pro, some are mentioning, rightfully, that this is not about AR¹ but 95% about VR². Apple doesn’t want to admit it, but this is a VR headset. Why is that? Is is because it is “easier”³ to recreate something from the ground up (the virtual world enabled by visionOS) than taking the reality and adding meaningful and useful stuff to it? I see much more limited use case for augmented reality than for virtual reality. It might change in the future, now that people are now exposed to it through other people using the headset sharing their experience.

I’m wondering about this upcoming Micro.blog “big new feature” quite often. What new feature could require its own section on the left sidebar? What could mandate the release of companion apps on iOS and Android? Let’s try to think about it for a minute.

So, MB already covers text (as blog posts), more generic content (as pages), photos, books, newsletters, and podcasts. What’s missing here? Videos? Movies? Something else? Could Podcast be more explicitly exposed where the Transcript section becomes Podcast? Is MB building its own podcasting player app? Or a podcast recorder? Can AI play a role in this new feature?

But what else is missing from Micro.blog? Instant messaging? I own a Wavelength group of Micro.blog users. The group is currently hosting 50 users. Here’s the invite link. Near real-time interactions are something I wish Micro.blog had for supporting discussions about specific events¹. Frankly, instant messaging is probably the closest thing I can think of that would require a dedicated section and a dedicated set of apps on mobile devices.

Your thoughts? Please join in! 🙏🏻

I have this thought right now as I’m watching the first reviews of the Apple Vision Pro: it is utterly fascinating to see all the basic technological elements (both hardware and software¹) that are at play here and put together in this headset. Besides a product still looking for its use cases, I find this product to be the most ambitious one to be launched by Apple to date. Bravo for trying. And I’m pretty sure it’s only the beginning. You bet Apple is going to iterate on this for quite some time. I feel excited for this thing.

1. Choose your subdomain name¹. 2) Create a CNAME pointing to it². 3) Switch to your full custom domain. 4) Write content³. 5) Install a few plugins⁴. 6) Create pages in the navigation structure to organize content⁵. 7) Create page footer⁶. Voilà. 🔥

Numerous applications and services now incorporate AI features. For instance, consider Notion Q&A or Raycast AI. Companies view this as an opportunity to boost revenue by offering these additional features for a fee. However, I recently pondered the possibility that if Apple integrates generative AI into Siri, as rumored for iOS 18, they may not charge for it. This could give Apple a significant advantage, as the revenue from iPhone sales could cover the associated costs. This could become an enormous advantage for Apple.

The notion of “avoiding vendors lock-in” in information technology is interesting. I would argue that it’s impossible to completely be without some sort of vendor lock-in¹. At some point, there is always a required commitment level. You commit to open-source software. You commit to a cloud vendor. You commit to a platform. I often give the example of a company building an application internally with a team of developers. In that scenario, the company is committing to something: the application, the data tied to it and its operational model. Applications are hard to replace in many environments. When you decide to invest in software development, you commit to the end product for many years, if not decades, until the organization decides it’s time to transform the application into something else². There is this concept of “security by design” and of “portable by design,” which should apply to any technical or application architecture. The rest is marketing nonsense.