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Hands Down to Hand Mirror Plus
Just got my notice for the Hand Mirror update today. The latest release offers a paid version, for which I gladly paid. Why? Hand Mirror is a great example of useful software with attributes of the work of great craftsmanship. It was an instant buy because of this. The onboarding screen is simply gorgeous.Ā
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I just realized that to see the list of people I follow on Micro.blog, I need to visit my own profile page, right? Am I missing something @manton? If so, may I suggest having a link somewhere else, like in the Account section or the Discovery section?
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When Ukraine Is Home of Great Software Makers
I recently wrote my satisfaction about Readdleās Documents.app on-boarding experience on the iPad. Now Iām reading about Sparkās cleverness take on emails. Without being as opinionated as Hey.com, Spark is a serious professional email client. Readdleās home is Ukraine šŗš¦ too. Iām considering integrating both software in my toolset. All good reasons to show some support to them.
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Sorry for your timeline flooding about this Mac Pro thing… probably a big in MarsEdit 5.0. Returning to normal programming now.
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Twitterās Essentials
I read about so many people flocking to Mastodon, leaving Twitter behind. I actually started to see a definitive decline in my followers number. Something is really going on. I myself started to think about the possibility of leaving the platform too. Just like I did with Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr, only to leave a place where my content is simply cross-posted from another source without a real and active presence of mine. Twitter could be next. Really. I could live without the traffic influx from Twitter, which represents about 15% of all my visitors.
There is one thing that it would be hard for me to leave behind, though. If it wasnāt about the war in Ukraine, it would be an easy decision. The problem is that I follow a few people and news sources that diffuse their content on Twitter. Is there a Twitter equivalent for this type of small blips of nano content? I donāt see that in Mastodon yet. RSS feeds are not a platform but transport. The next Twitter has yet to emerge.
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If you read my Friday Notes series, then itās a good way to learn about me. Just sayin. Happy Saturday night!
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I donāt know what will happen with Musk at the helm of Twitter. Itās probably going to turn really bad before turning potentially better (no guarantee here) but I have a backup plan: Micro.blog.
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On This AI-Generated Podcast Interview Between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs
What. The. Fuck.
This podcast example about a fake interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs is a blatant example of where some more thoughts should take place before putting high tech to work. What is the purpose of this? Is this a tech demo or some bad-taste proof-of-concept? It’s not hard to imagine how it could derail in the future when used in politically-heated contexts. Oh, and no, I didnāt waste my time listening to this garbage, and I wonāt share the link to this podcast, either.
Image credits: generated using Dall-E with the following phrase: āan hand drawn Mac computer that never existed digital artā
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On Software Subscriptions
Tweetbot hasnāt been updated for over 6 months, I thought a subscription was going to mean more frequent updates? Source: Letting my Glass and Tweetbot subscriptions expire ā LJPUK:
This blog post triggered the following thoughts.
The movement to subscriptions in the software landscape is MASSIVE but is far from being a guarantee of more frequent updates from the developers. I’m utterly infuriated when I see a yearly subscription for a small utility with a limited scope when no “lifetime” options are offered with reasonable pricing. Many devs are lazy, and greedy and send you a big middle finger.
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AirTags Can Make a Difference
I want to chime in here, following the publication of this article from Om Malik about AirTags. I’m leaving for Italy in a few days. Knowing how bad the airport experience can get and reading those stories about airline companies’ inability to keep up and keep losing track of customersā luggage, AirTags can make a big difference. I’m going to double-down on AirTags. I already own four, and I’ll buy another four before leaving, so I get my base covered. AirTags already saved me a lot of trouble in the past on more than one occasion by reminding me that I left something behind. It’s well worth the money.
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No, no, no, and no.
I’m sorry, Dropzone, you’re good but not that useful. I mean, for such a narrow-usage utility, I’m not going to pay that much monthly. I’m the one who buys and rent software but come on. It’s becoming ridiculous. Provide a lifetime contribution, and I’ll make the deal. You’re a feature, not a product. Delete. š
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The Disconnected Country
We’re currently experiencing a major and nationwide cellular network outage here in Canada šØš¦, thanks to Rogers telecommunication company. It’s been going on since early this morning. Everything seems affected in one way or another: phone calls, internet access, emergency calls via 911, travellers, banking services via Interac, and lots of public non-urgent services, just to name a few. We will need a few days to comprehend the ramifications of what happened. It’s a major event illustrating that big telco companies concentration like we endure here in Canada isn’t a good thing. Also a good (and sad) example of how badly we’re dependent on technologies for everything.
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Is there any user of Craft in here? In any case, may I suggest that you take a look at my YouTube channel for videos about Craft? The latest is my take on the latest release, version 2.2.3.
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Thereās no such thing as time elasticity
Since early June, Iāve been quite busy working and producing YouTube videos about Craft which left me no time for posting here. As seen in the following graph, YouTube videos production is now the lion share of my spare time schedule. š
I expect things to return to normal in the coming weeks as my recording and producing setup is complete. Creating videos takes about 2-3 hours of my time. Subjects that I want to tackle will eventually dry out. If you are wondering whatās those videos are really about, feel free to pay a visit to my YouTube Channel. Tell me what you think here or over there in the comments!
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Special pre-announcement: I’m mostly done with my preparation for creating YouTube videos. Publishing videos isn’t new for me, but I’m working differently and on different hardware this time. Oh, and I’ll be touching on a different subject matter. I hope it will take off.
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A Week of Software Releases in Review
Some weeks are busier than others for software or service updates. This week saw meaningful updates to many applications that I used daily.
- Craft version got bumped to 2.2, a controversial update. Using the updated Share Page feature, my Craft wish list was completely reworked. According to the Craft community channels on Slack, people would rather prefer to see the core experience to be refined and straighten up. I’m one of them. It seems to me that there are many unfinished core features within Craft that are in need of attention. For example, the Share Page is super useful but we still miss the use of custom domain names or notifications from people who post comments. It’s not a deal-breaker but it is annoying and frustrating.
- Matter, the new kid on the block in the read-later service space was updated too. The team behind Matter made a decision to focus more the product by dropping the social portion of it. Good move. The new update makes a lot of sense and is a joy to use on all Apple platforms.
- Microsoft updated the beta version of Teams for Apple Silicon, latest public build May, 19th. Previous release provided a very buggy in-conference experience. According to people on Reddit, it seems to be fixed. I didnāt try it yet.
- Appleās platforms received a slew of updates. I was eagerly awaiting the Studio Display 15.5 firmware. I did a comparison of the image quality that I posted on Twitter. Itās not perfect but itās a noticeable upgrade. Some more detailed video on the update.
- Finally, I wanted to mention something about Glass. It wasnāt updated this week, but I had a chance to sit with the team behind Glass in a Zoom Q&A session. It was a nice talk. We had a chance to voice our delights or wishes for where the product should go next.
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My Reading Workflow Is in a State of Flux
First, I got back to Pocket and paid for the subscription. Then I added Readwise. Then I found Matter, and fell in love with it. Iām not sure why. Iām still waiting for Readwise Reader application. While waiting for it, whatās the point of Readwise, again? News Explorer is my go-to application for most of my readings via RSS feeds; I can save links as favourites, but I never do so. My reading workflow is in a total state of flux.
Which application or service should I use to bookmark articles that I want to read later? What should I prioritize in such application: organization of links or the reading experience? How is that fact that I collect more than I read should change my application selection? Comparing applications like Matter, Pocket, and Raindrop.io, I find many common features, which brings confusion to me. Matter seems better for reading, but Raindrop.io more complete at organizing links collections. Why canāt I have both in the same application? Craft is my goto application for drafting and writing my articles, but can save links with nice previews. Craft is lacking tags to organize objects and doesnāt offer a reading experience as it doesnāt save content from a link. Craft is of no help here in my reading workflow. And what about highlights, how do I create them and make use of them later? Matter is good at creating highlights, Raindrop.io recently added highlight support too, but thatās it. Oh, and RSS readers like Reeder or News Explorer can save links and add tags too. Finally, I wish I could find a great text highlighting extension for Safari, after all, itās my goto browser.
To some degree, read later applications or services are still maturing, no solution is complete. This explains that, I guess.
Help, please. š«
Photo by Javier Esteban on Unsplash
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Two quick questions: how do you cope with what’s happening in Ukraine? Are you watching the news?
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Venting My Frustration About Microsoft Teams
Itās March 2022. Spring is finally here. Moreover, among us, Apple Silicon, first announced in June 2020 and massively available since November 2020. Furthermore, also available is Center Stage, a new feature introduced with the 2021 iPad Pro and now available on the MacBook Pro and more recently the Apple Studio display.
Hereās the thing. Microsoft Teams, currently at version 1.5 still isnāt supporting Center Stage and worst, Apple Silicon. Running Teams on any recent Mac is an execrable experience: slow, bad image quality (compared to Zoom for example) and consume far too much memory. How is it possible for a company the size of Microsoft whoās so slow to move and fix Teams? I donāt buy the argument about Teams being built with the Electron framework. The latter already supports the M1 chip. Microsoft is supposedly working on Teams version 2.0 which will be presumably built on WebView2. Theyāve been working on this since June of last year.
Itās highly frustrating. Sorry for the bad mood, but Teams is one of the most used application for work giving me the right to vent my frustration.
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Dear Mobile Apps Developers
Dear iOS developers, dear @Substack, when building screenshots for the App Store, show us your software, not the device on which it is running. Thank you. With love. The Direction.
