Apple’s services help other Apple lines of products soften their respective crashes. COVID and work-from-home, learn-from-home was a boon for the iPad and Apple will suffer the post-COVID for quite some time. Knowing the longer-than-usual replacement cycle of the iPad, recovery is not for tomorrow. Great summary by Six Colors.

And gone is Microsoft Cortana. What a weird name that was (Bard is not better in that respect). Some are suggesting Apple should do the same with Siri. I don’t think so because Apple has no apparent alternative to Siri, so they cannot just dump Siri because others are dumping their assistant. They do because they actively work on alternatives. Microsoft is clear in that respect and already shows what the alternatives are. Siri is a high-value brand name. Apple should build any next-generation AI-based tool to replace or complement the current back-end.

I won’t bother linking to the original piece, linking to Math Birchler’s link post instead will be enough. Is the iPhone refined enough? It depends on how you define « refinement ». To me, the iPhone isn’t refined enough in a way that new tech can help make the iPhone even better. If this year’s rumors are true, this is exactly what will happen (faster processor, more power efficient, etc.). Craftmanship also is a big part of the refinement story (softer edges, etc.). I can’t wait for iPhone 15 Pro, coming from the 13 Pro, I’ll certainly enjoy all the refinements, big and small.

Oh and apparently, unlike Apple, other companies don’t bother keeping the refinement game going. Well, this is exactly why I love Apple, they care to refine and try to improve things, year after year.

I’ve been playing with Micro.blog’s new bookmark tags. At first, I thought the feature was underwhelming. I don’t think there is a way to add more than one tag to a bookmark. This might be a good thing after all. Still undecided on this. Then, I discovered how you can select a tag to display associated bookmarks. Hoping for the iOS app to receive an update soon. I updated a few dozen bookmarks to add a tag. I’ll see if it makes a difference. My bookmarks are not that many and many are deleted after a while.

Update #1: someone pointed me that we can have more than one tag, simply by adding commas. Update #2: I can see Micro.blog bookmarks as a complement to Anybox, but focused on content originating from people I follow on Micro.blog / Mastodon. I don’t see that replacing Anybox anytime soon.

“A man sitting in front of a retro computer doing some important work”. 👀

This is my first ever prompt sent to Midjourney. I think this image is an excellent representation of my current state. A guy experimenting with Midjourney in front of my computer. I’m blown away. What a great time to be alive! Discord, as a client of this back-end service, is fascinating. 🤯

I subscribed for one month to the basic plan. I’m not sure how I’ll use the service. One example could be to create illustrations for my blog posts on Numeric Citizen Space. Another use case would be for illustration purposes for my work. I’ll see and continue experimenting. I’ll report back here my discoveries and impressions.

Tweets on Twitter use to be 140 characters max. Later it was increased to 280 characters. Now, apparently, you can post a note with a maximum of 2500 characters.

Now, looking at MacRumors or similar sites, it seems we get shorter and shorter articles, almost the size of a note on Twitter. Isn’t it strange?

People are busy and their attention span has shrunk considerably. Twitter once was very popular and others tried to adjust to its modus operandi. The web is adjusting in unexpected ways.

Now that I’m a subscriber of Tapbots’ Ivory client for Mastodon, what’s up with the updates? Is it because it’s summertime? Why do I feel that the development of new features and improvements has considerably slowed in recent weeks and months? After all, the roadmap is clear here.

Tweetbot followed the same trend. Not all developers or companies follow the same product releases, but regarding Tapbots, the trend is slowing and is a pattern. Now, look at Mastodon’s official client; there is an update nearly every two weeks or at least monthly. Ok, there are more than 40 contributors to the open source project of r the iOS app while Tapbots is a three-person company.

I’m ok with subscriptions, but just like the subscription itself, the commitment from the developer has to keep up. The subscription model is everywhere and is here to stay. The software and services landscape has changed forever. Expectations from customers like me are changing too. It’s too easy to grab my money regularly without showing up in the App Store “Updates” tab.

I’m watching you, Tapbots. Don’t deceive me again.

Yeah, Tweetbot was a great app, just like Ivory is, but it lacked some love in the last few years before its demise.

Ranting off. Sorry.

I’m testing Paste, a clipboard manager software utility for Mac, iOS (link). I kind of like it. It has better management features than Unclutter, which also offers some clipboard management. I’m on a 14-day trial period, but 19 $CAN, a year for a utility without a one-time purchase option, is bugging me. Will see where it goes.

I’ve been working hard with Notion at work for a unique project. It’s a 14-database setup containing 18 database relationships, many calculations as well as a place for knowledge management. I think I’m pushing the boundaries of what Notion is all about. It’s still manageable, and Notion still is speedy. I’m really impressed by what this tool can help achieve. 🤩🤯

I recently read about the news that Evernote is currently downsizing its operations worldwide, especially in the US. It’s not the first troubling episode for Evernote. I remember when they “redesigned” their app, which created a massive pushback from the community.

I used Evernote in its early days and was appreciative of its capabilities. For some reason, I left for another solution. But for those who built massive data collections inside Evernote, now might be the time to think about going elsewhere. But there is a big gotcha: after searching for a way to export all the data, I discovered that it’s not that easy. And people are angry. This brings me to the data portability of modern software and services. Evernote’s ENEX export format was not a standard the last time I checked. A handful of apps can import ENEX files; Notion is one of them. HTML is also supported but is far from ideal. Options are limited and are seriously hindering the data portability of services like Evernote. Besides content, metadata is also critical (tags, dates, location, backlinks, etc.).

Is Notion suffering from the same potential issues? PDF, CSV, and HTML are the supported formats. 🤔