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Quick Ranting On Medium App Updates
Consider this screenshot of the Medium.app updates streak. It’s not a joke. At least one update a week for reimagining their app. I used to like Medium but their app, probably a major conduit to their content, is broken on the iPad and it never gets fixed (mainly layout issues).
How are we supposed to take online publishers seriously when for months they let bugs hinder the user experience of… reading their content? I greatly reduced my use of Medium for reading content, partly because of this.
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I’m mostly done with my next issue of The Numeric Citizen Introspection newsletter. Get ready to get it in your inbox, subscribe, it’s FREE. It’s the best way for you to show support! Even better, share the word about it if you already are subscribed! Thanks! 👍🏻
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Gosh, importing my stuff from Notion into Craft is not funny. There has to be a better way. 😵💫
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Documenting past home screen arrangements
Matt Birchler had an interesting blog post this week about a screenshot of his 2013 iPhone home screen. There are a few interesting things to note. In 2013, it was the arrival of the controversial iOS 7 redesign. It’s interesting to look at the Camera+ icon design which was still not updated for the new style. The dock design style was pretty basic and felt out of place. A few apps are not longer among us these days: Path (which was really a great design example) but most of the third-party apps are still available today.
I wish I had kept screen shots of previous home screen arrangements in the past. Something that I have kept is many screen shots of my password manager user interface dating back pre-iOS 7 era. Here is an example below. When I saw iOS 7, I didn’t have the courage to rework my design. The development of my app stopped right there. I made five thousands dollars with this adventure, between 2009 and 2013. Now I’m using a combinaison of 1Password and Apple’s passwords vault.
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Four days week day? We can only dream it seems
Again, Matt Birchler:
technology and improved general productivity always had the promise of letting us work less, and yet today we work more than ever and have less than before Source: A Four Day Work Week? Yes, Please!
I sure wish we had this four days work week. I cannot see the day it will become reality. The problem in IT where I work, there is a worsening trend of a lack of qualified people for many IT fields. This trend puts pressure on those who are qualified to do more working hours.
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Hey, @Medium, what are these updates all about? Are you counting weeks, days? Meanwhile, on my iPad, using splitview… this has been an ongoing bug since forever… If you want to be taken seriously as a reading platform, get your act together and fix your app, once and for all. ❤️
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Thought of the day: you know that you are entering a post-COVID world when you’ve had your two vaccin doses for a while and when you get your first cold in nearly two years. 😳🤧
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Moving from Castro to Pocket Cast: 100% completed. 👨🏻💻⌛️👍🏻😁
I waited for close to a year for Castro to bring its podcasts app to the iPad. Today, with the announcement of Automattic buying Pocket Cast, it came back on my radar. It didn’t take too long to make the switch. Pocket Cast is a real multi-platform player, feature rich and has an as good design as the other players. After Tumblr, DayOne, now Pocket Cast, I want to give it a try and see how Automattic will build on it. Meanwhile, I’m really enjoying it.
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On PC in the cloud
Microsoft announced their PC in the cloud offerings this week. While it is probably based on their previous offering, Windows Virtual Desktop service, it does look like a milestone to me. I’ve been in IT for more than 25 years. I saw the migration from the mainframe to the client-server applications architecture. After that, it was about virtualization taking over with the popular VMware hypervisor. In the last five years, I saw the cloud taking over the IT world. The latter has a much more profound impact than any trend I witnessed or was part of in my career.
PC in the cloud is only offered to business customers, for now. I can see Microsoft offering the service to the general public in a not too distant future. I’ll probably subscribe to an instance for my personal needs. Being able to run the PC in a browser means being able to use it on any of my current Apple devices, from the M1 Mac mini to my iPad Pro. This is something Apple will never enable itself, certainly not within Safari. The future looks interesting.
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Going to space… to watch a burning planet.
So Richard Branson went to space. Next, Jeff Bezos. And then, what? Is there any scientific purposes in these flights to space? Nope, not directly at least. Is this a publicity stunt? Yes and no. I’m not at ease seeing billionnaires spending their pretty money on something that don’t bring value to a community except for themselve. Oh, they want to start a new commercial flight in space business apparently, for billionaires:
Branson’s flight — which came just nine days before Amazon bilionaire Jeff Bezos is slated to rocket into suborbital space aboard his own company’s spacecraft — is a landmark moment for the commercial space industry. The up-and-coming sector has for years been seeking to make suborbital space tourism (a relatively simple straight-up-and-down flight, as opposed to orbiting the Earth for longer periods) a viable business with the aim of allowing thousands of people to experience the adrenaline rush and sweeping views of our home planet that such flights can offer.
Is there a better way to spend our resources to see the burning planet from space? Gosh.
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Instagram Plans to Take on TikTok With Full-Screen Video Content
Ridiculous. Facebook: the Instagram destructor. www.macrumors.com
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Another coat of paint to Windows UI mess? (#windows11)
So Windows 11 is a thing. Is it a revolution to Windows? Maybe, maybe not. It depends if you can install it on your PC, which is far from certain. But let’s say you can, how deep goes the UI refresh? Is it like it was for Windows 10 which was supposedly a redesign of Windows 8 which was tweaks to Windows 7 UI that came before it. Here is a simple question: Did Microsoft really clean up the Windows UI mess that it has become over the years? I don’t care too much about windows transparency level, toolbars, icons. Getting rid of UI legacy feels a more useful and laudable endeavour.
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When hackers strikes personal NAS-type devices
Pool Western Digital My Book Live NAS owners… many of them woke up to find out that their content was gone from their devices. Apparently, hackers came in by using an unpatched vulnerability on devices where the last update was issued in 2015 by Western Digital. This brings me to ask the following questions: were those devices directly connected on the internet? If yes, that dumb. If this was a known vulnerability, why WD didn’t issue a patch? Companies should be required to publish security-only fixes for far longer than they do right now. I’m sorry but 2015 isn’t that old for such a type of devices. Finally, I personally own a Synology NAS, obviously not directly connected on the Internet, yet, I have to wonder if it is still secure. I’m planning on enabling 2FA to add another layer of protection, though.
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Count me OUT then - Twitter Blue #twitterblue
Here is why I won’t subscribe anytime soon (another reason on top of many, btw):
But what is interesting is one thing that you won’t get with Twitter Blue: an ad-free experience. Advertising is still the biggest chunk of Twitter’s revenue, and they’re not going to replace that with direct subscriptions anytime soon. Source: Twitter Blue subscription launches in Australia, Canada – Six Colors
Paying to be a beta-tester and give feedback? Can you imagine paying to get beta releases of Apple’s OSes? No way.
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Another solid update to Craft!
Another solid update to Craft released today. This time, Calendar view was added for those who would like to take daily notes or write meeting notes as this update integrates with Apple’s calendars.
If you pay attention to the Craft’s update page, you’ll see Craft rapidly evolving over time. Who knows what’s next for this essential tool in my blogger and writer workflow.
Oh, and Craft has made it to the Apple Design Awards finalist! Congrats to them!
