Longer posts

March 14, 2021 7:41am

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Numeric Citizen

What does the iMac Pro and the HomePod, two entirely different products, have in common? It’s not the fact that they are no longer being sold. The iMac Pro and the HomePod were created by Apple when they were caught off guard by market trends. In the case of the iMac Pro, Apple tried to answer pro users who were demanding a replacement to the aging trash can Mac Pro. Continue reading →

March 13, 2021 8:13am

Numeric Citizen

For those who didn’t know, I have two newsletters. One available from Substack available at https://numericcitizien.substack.com on a monthly basis and the other one entirely made with Mailbrew. On every Saturday morning, a newsletter is built using the RSS feeds of my blogs as a source to create a summary of all my publications in the last week. So, take a look at the latest issue of “Numeric Citizen Newsletter”. There are currently 30 subscribers to this newsletter. Continue reading →

March 11, 2021 8:08pm

Numeric Citizen

Greg Morris on digital consumerism: The level of consumerism and marketing tricks being used to sell apps and services is growing over time. They all promise to fix that gap in your work life, just like adverts promise to fix the one in your love life, or improve your happiness, or whatever it is. It’s all lies. I cannot talk for others, but for me, when I’m jumping on another service or a new app, it’s because it offers a seizable improvement. Continue reading →

March 7, 2021 7:18am

Numeric Citizen

WebP image format goal, according to Google: WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster. WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index. I’ve seen more and more WebP images in recent months when I try to download an image from Safari. Continue reading →

March 4, 2021 2:49pm

Numeric Citizen

They flipped the switch to ON. HEY World is LIVE! I’m so glad, curious and already excited to use this other channel to share my written content with the world. I’m already thinking about my first post on this new platform. Furthermore, I think this addition brings even more value to an already useful service, on which I depend every single day. Recently, I asked: How many websites can a blogger have? Continue reading →

March 4, 2021 6:42am

Numeric Citizen

I recently published a long piece about transforming your Twitter experience by using Twitter lists instead of following a bunch of accounts. As noted in the article, one side effect of this approach is that services that look for your Twitter account’s list of people you follow won’t really work. That’s the case for a new service called “Spoonbill”. Keep updated on your friends’ and family members’ bios, websites, locations, and names. Continue reading →

March 3, 2021 8:12pm

Numeric Citizen

In a surprising move, Apple starting today allows people to export their iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos. Why not provide a download to a local computer, outside the Photos app. I can see many use cases for doing so: backup purposes or simply to dump photos in a structure of directories for archiving purposes. Continue reading →

March 1, 2021 4:53pm

Numeric Citizen

Breaking news from 9To5Mac, but official announcement here: In recent months, we were approached by a buyer. They saw the uniqueness of Weather Line and the strong foundation we’ve built. While we aren’t able to provide further details on their future plans for the app, we hope you can understand, and will look forward to it. I’m kind of in shock right now. I recently posted an article about my “go-to” weather applications. Continue reading →

March 1, 2021 1:49pm

Numeric Citizen

This shouldn’t be this way. Thanks to the numerous ads, my YouTube experience was a calculated nightmare. As my usage grew in the last few weeks because of my daytime job, my time on YouTube felt light a nightmare with no end. I decided to put an end to all this by subscribing to YouTube Premium. I feel in full contradiction to my values. YouTube Premium so much better. But it shouldn’t be this way. Continue reading →

March 1, 2021 6:49am

Numeric Citizen

Here is the current state of yet to be updated apps to fully support Apple Silicon Macs. It’s been close to six months now and yet, those apps aren’t yet universal. Surprising to see things like 1Password 7 still not there yet. Notion, an Electron-based app, not surprising. The Mac client for HEY hasn’t been updated for a while. Many of those apps are subscription-based, a model toward development sustainability. Continue reading →

February 28, 2021 7:51pm

Numeric Citizen

Two very telling graphs from Apple’s development portal: A few takeouts. First, iOS 13 is close to become a bad souvenir. Second, people keeping their iPad longer, it is reflected in the percentage of people still using devices with iPadOS prior to version 13. Continue reading →

February 28, 2021 7:24am

Numeric Citizen

Today, I would like to do a quick poll among my blogger / writer friends here on Micro.blog. How did the pandemic influence your writing habits? Do you write more? Less? What could be the reasons behind the change of habit? To help you out and start the thread, I’ll answer to my own poll. The pandemic brought me closer to be what we call “a writer”. I write a lot more. Continue reading →

February 25, 2021 6:58pm

Numeric Citizen

Today, I tested HEY World. This is my non-review. It could have worked great, but it’s not ready yet. One could say “Nice try, buddy”. I love their response to my test message. One thing stands out from their response, though: “For now, HEY World is just an experiment. … “Assuming there’s demand, we’ll begin opening it up for more people soon. And then, hopefully, for all HEY for You customers. Continue reading →

February 25, 2021 6:36pm

Numeric Citizen

After reading “Ghost on the iPad, a Review” from Tablet Habit, I tried to remember my experience when I tried the service myself. It wasn’t a good one for the thing I wanted to do with it: create a photography-oriented blog. In recent days, it seems that the “Ghost” name is gaining traction in the blogging arena. I have to wonder if Ghost is better at this than what I experienced for photography. Continue reading →

February 25, 2021 7:02am

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Numeric Citizen

How many websites a blogger can have? Good question. I do have (too?) many, each filling their own niche. On that subject, something caught my attention yesterday in the public announcement of HEY’s experiment: “Hello, World!”. Jason Fried explaining why he never had a blog: “It was primarily because setting up a personal blog was just too much of a hassle. It felt formal, it required yet another tool, yet another place to write, yet another platform to pay for just one feature. Continue reading →

February 24, 2021 5:09pm

Numeric Citizen

Steve would have been 66 years old today. Even if I love what Apple has become over the years since he died, I miss him dearly. What a great picture of him. It is nice to see Apple and Tim Cook paying a small tribute each year. Continue reading →

February 23, 2021 5:43pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Numeric Citizen

Each day, it seems there is always something new happening in the world of newsletters. When it’s not someone famous who joins Substack, a company out of nowhere offers a brilliant idea built around supporting newsletters in one way or the other. I’m thinking of Hey in particular. “Email is the internet’s oldest instant self-publishing platform. Except you have to define a small audience every time you write. But what if you didn’t? Continue reading →

February 22, 2021 9:25pm

Numeric Citizen

9to5Mac published a nice comparison between the iPad Air and the 2020 iPad Pro. The latter still hold the crown with its 120Hz ProMotion display and LiDAR. Rumours are pointing to an update for the Pro line in March. The question that comes to my mind is: what’s missing from the iPad Pro, from the hardware point of view? I mean, speed, screen, form factor are just close to “perfect”. Continue reading →

February 22, 2021 8:56pm

Numeric Citizen

My go-to email client got an update today. Hey version 1.2 brings a few tweaks in the compose mode. In recent weeks, updates are more frequent as they finally delivered support for corporate email. Now, the other thing I’d like to see is a collapsible view in the feed view. I don’t see how pinch-to-zoom can be added without implementing the opposite to bring a collapsed view. Continue reading →

February 21, 2021 7:53pm

Numeric Citizen

In my quest to better understand the full potential of note taking application « Craft », I’ve come up to something different, a website about Apple’s related rumours. You can hit this link to have a look. You can leave comments, no registration required. Enjoy. Continue reading →