This short behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s “Scary Fast” event is the highlight of a marketing masterpiece.

First, Apple, a highly-respected company for producing top-quality new product announcements, released new iPhones capable of high-quality filming in September. Next, in October, the company made another top-notch production and announced the first M3-based Macs. Not to be missed, and that is the key here, they slip the following at the very last moment of the presentation:

This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac.

What better way to make a point? Brilliant. Well done, Apple.

I love my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I feel that the creative world is at my fingertips. I feel empowered.

I’m fed up of Google’s search capabilities and business model. Search results quality has gone downhill in recent years. I don’t like the visual design of Google’s online products in general, especially Google Search results formatting. What search engine are you using? Are you willing to pay for using one, if yes, which one? 🤔

Surprised by this late-October Apple event (“Scary Fast”). Could this be about Mac gaming? Is this for the Apple Silicon M3? The timing is weird, in my opinion. What about the iMac with M2 and a new iMac Pro with M3? The latter wouldn’t make too much sense as Pros prefer more flexibility than an all-in-one Mac. But using the Mac happy face really points to a Mac-only event. And boy, do I like this animation that I’m including here for my own pleasure¹.

Glass feels right at home in Capture One. Long adored as one of the best platforms for editing and managing a photography workflow, we’re thrilled to include publishing to Glass in Capture One. The final step in the creative process is sharing the work you’ve made — making that as easy and frictionless as possible is what we’re both all about. Source: Capture One x Glass — Glass

I like where Glass is going. The choice of Capture One as the first to take advantage of Glass’s APIs is telling and sending a message. How long before Publish to Glass support is added to Adobe Lightroom? Months? Years? Ever? How long before we get Fediverse support?

Today, I’m removing my digital garden content. The most valuable parts were moved to my About Page, and the rest has been dropped. Both of these pages are created and maintained in Craft. I like the idea of Digital Gardens, but it’s not practical for me to maintain on top of this blog and my other websites. Again, it’s time to focus.

Next up, should I get rid of my Linktr.ee page?¹,² 🤔 And, why does my Micro.blog about page is empty? 🤨

I have an issue with Short.io. I want to contact their support to find a solution to something that partially works, but no contact information is available in the /Support section. The /Blog section shows a small “Contact Us” button leading to a page not found error. There is no mail address either. They ask for $ 250 / year for a “Personal” subscription plan. How can I trust them if I cannot contact them for support?¹🤔

The problem: not all links are leading to the destination page under the go.numericcitizen.me domain name. Why? This used to work for all links, but it’s no longer true. Why? Exhibit one: this link works. This one won’t.

Instead of 404 - Page Not Found, this should be 404 - Support Not Available 😔

Update: I got my answer after chatting with tech support through their chatbox on their website, which wasn’t initially showing because of content blocking in Safari. 🤦🏻‍♂️ All is fine now.

I finally found the right setup to definitively fix my audio record quality. The problem triggering this endless trial-and-error journey is that the Blue Yeti microphone can be too sensitive and pick up too much background noise¹. On paper, the macOS Voice Isolation recording should fix this. However, ScreenFlow 10.0.9 has issues with audio recording from a USB microphone while Voice Isolation is active².

The solution? Use Audio Highjack³ to record from the USB microphone with Voice Isolation active and output to the ScreenFlow audio capture driver. When recording, I start the Audio Hijack session, then switch to ScreenFlow and hit record. Voilà. I do use Adobe Podcast Audio Enhancer too. The results are quite good! You can hear it in my latest podcast episode. A screenshot of my Audio Hijack workflow is included so you can look at it⁴.

The timing was right, and the target was well-defined, but the potential traction was far from guaranteed. Would this project be worth all the effort? Someone said: for every yes, there are a thousand no. After many weeks of thought and pondering, I decided against doing a unique project.

Link: The Apple Rumors Hub

Objective: find a replacement for my lightning-based Finch Lavalier microphone¹. Did my research for a USB-C microphone. RODE microphones came up quite often. They received good reviews. I ordered the NT-USB model. It was hard to see which type of USB port it came with—I got the microphone². It comes with USB-A. Shit. It was tested on my Mac mini. Background noises are too easily picked up. Screenflow cannot use voice isolation³. It was tested on my iPhone 15 Pro Max with a USB-A to USB-C adaptor and Ferrite. Voice isolation isn’t possible, either. Not good. I tried to use the RODE companion app for Mac so I could adjust the microphone operating parameters. I downloaded and installed it but didn’t recognize the microphone when plugged in. Not good. It’s an expansive microphone, barely better than my Blue Yeti. Not good. After testing Screenflow, my iPhone connected via USB-C to my Mac, and with voice isolation activated once again⁴, I decided to return the product. It’s way better, close to what I had with my Finch microphone. Problem solved.

I’m finally publishing the details surrounding my reading workflow. It’s been long in the making. More than a year. The reason? Because this workflow was full of moving parts. One example: is the read-later service. First, it was Pocket, then came Matter, Readwise, to finally settle on Omnivore. All the details are here on the Numeric Citizen I/O metablog. Feel free to comment or ask questions! 😊