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These are the posts that will be summarized in the monthly digest.

  • How long will it take Apple to fix the Apple Watch setup process involving restoring from previous backups? It’s been an issue for many people for years! My setup process when I upgraded from Series 6 to Series 8 was hindered by this issue. Same when I upgraded from Series 8 to Series 10. Either the backup found wasn’t recent, or there was no backup to restore from. Michael Tsai is one such person. Anyone at Apple is setting up a new watch? 🤔

  • I completed implementing automated backups of all my n8n workflows to GitHub and documenting their triggering times in a compact format using Claude AI. The backup workflow is based on a template found in the n8n community.

  • Tomorrow, I’m planning to visit Apple’s new Ste-Catherine store in downtown Montreal. From the outside, it certainly looks much better than the previous store on the same street, 100 m further west. I don’t plan to buy anything; I just want to look at the architectural details, the crowd, and the mood. Expect some photos and maybe a short video.

  • Digg is finally in public beta. They also introduced a refreshed design (compared to what was available during the private beta), and I think it’s way better. Also introduced are user-defined communities. It’s currently limited to two per user, which I think is fair. This is my profile. I was looking to create a community, only to realize I was about to dilute myself again. My community is here.

  • Apple Creator Studio - A Few Comments

    On today’s announcement by Apple: Now we know why it took so long for Apple to update Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Where is iWork? Why no iWork subscription without the pro stuff? I don’t understand this bundling of pro apps with consumer-generalistic apps. Is Apple trying to upsell Pro Apps to consumers via a new subscription? They might be. I don’t think pros want to get Numbers or Pages, though. Icons are utterly un-Apple, or Apple has become something I no longer relate to software-design-wise. Continue reading →

  • I’m sorry but Apple no longer knows how to do icons. Serious downgrades. WTF is this? I could do better in a weekend.

  • It appears that Photomator in MIA in today’s announcements which doesn’t bode well for its fate. 😔

  • Simon Willison on experimenting with Cowork from Anthropic:

    “I had Claude Code reverse engineer the Claude app and it found out that Claude uses VZVirtualMachine - the Apple Virtualization Framework - and downloads and boots a custom Linux root filesystem.”

    Whoa, this is clever. This is a reminder, too: my next Mac must have more than 16GB of RAM.

  • Anthropic on Cowork:

    “That said, there are still things to be aware of before you give Claude control. By default, the main thing to know is that Claude can take potentially destructive actions (such as deleting local files) if it’s instructed to. Since there’s always some chance that Claude might misinterpret your instructions, you should give Claude very clear guidance around things like this.”

    and

    “You should also be aware of the risk of “prompt injections”: attempts by attackers to alter Claude’s plans through content it might encounter on the internet. We’ve built sophisticated defenses against prompt injections, but agent safety—that is, the task of securing Claude’s real-world actions—is still an active area of development in the industry. "

    A world of possibilities awaits you. 🫣

  • /rant on

    Can you believe it? I updated my M4 iPad Pro today to beta 2 of iPadOS 26.3, thinking I would see some much-needed fixes, but elas many visual bugs are still unfixed, bugs that were there in 26.1 or even 26.0. I mean, bugs that are very easy to catch and experience. I can’t believe I’m the only one experiencing those. One example: when sliding up an app to return to the home page, the background briefly disappears.

    Please, Apple, stop piling up new features and fix your shit.

    /rant off

  • On Scrollbars

    After reading a recent Gruber article about the macOS Tahoe window-resizing issue, I found a setting in Appearance that keeps scrollbars always visible. It’s somewhat odd because of the scrollbar’s thickness. I wish Apple would make them thinner and less noticeable. I’m unsure if I’ll get used to this. Note: On Windows 11, scrollbars are always visible by default but are less obtrusive. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Apple was once known for leading with excellent design and great visual taste, but this is less obvious nowadays. Continue reading →

  • On Apple’s Deal with Google

    Back in November, Google announced Private AI Compute, positioning themselves to offer something like Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. It might be something that OpenAI wasn’t willing to do or didn’t see a fit in their business mission. By offering Private AI Compute, Google might have secured the business with Apple. Anyway, it’s becoming impressive how Google is taking back the lead in AI. Lastly, maybe we will see Google Gemini being added to this week’s next beta of iOS 26. Continue reading →

  • I just discovered that Raindrop.io offers many integrations, including n8n! I might need to reconsider my bookmarking strategies, yet again. I’m currently using Anybox. 🤔 I’m exploring ways to move the data around. If you made a similar move, I’ll be more than happy to learn about your experience. For now, I’ll prompt ChatGPT for strategies.

  • Inspired by basicappleguy on Mastodon, here’s my rating of each Apple product. Design, usefulness, feature focus, maturity, and usage frequency are the key factors here.

    1. iPhone
    2. Mac
    3. iPad
    4. Apple Watch
    5. Apple TV
    6. AirPods
    7. Vision Pro
    8. AirTag
    9. HomePod
  • This diagram tries to illustrate the how modern AI, Claude AI in particular, compares to traditional computing paradigm. Models more or less are processors, Agents are more or less the operating system and Applications are more or less Skills. It’s interesting, but I’m wary about agents because they open up too many pandora boxes.

  • I made two important changes this morning for my automation-related operating environment:

    1. Using DigitalOcean monitoring, I created two resources alerts (CPU > 50% for 5 min, Disk usage > 70% for 5 min). Alerts will make me look into n8n automation misbehaviours.
    2. I switched my AI nodes to use Claude AI Haiku 4.5 instead of Sonnet 4.5 to reduce costs for comparable results. I don’t think my summarization tasks needs more powerful LLM.
  • When Things Go Wrong With AI-Generated Code

    My first bad experience: the code generated by Claude Code made my dashboard unresponsive in my browser. Eventually, the data stopped updating. After a ten-minute debugging session, I asked Claude Code to revert the change, and it did so promptly. But then I started getting execution failure notices on Discord. A lot of notifications. Then I started investigating… It appears the browser was making frequent refresh requests to one of my workflows, which depleted my Claude pay-per-use credits. Continue reading →

  • Ten days into 2026, I have achieved much more than I anticipated. If I maintain this pace, I will complete my list of wild ideas soon. It’s not just about checking items off the list, but also about learning a lot along the way. It’s very fulfilling.

  • One of the frustrating aspects of LLMs is their lack of consistency unless you develop specific skills, which can take time to implement effectively. For example, I wanted to generate documentation for my most recent n8n automation workflow, but Claude was unable to do it, and I can’t remember the prompt that finally made it possible. I should have saved it somewhere for easy retrieval. I’m wasting precious credits. 🤦🏻‍♂️

  • Simon Willison on AI-assisted programming:

    The more time I spend on AI-assisted programming the less afraid I am for my job, because it turns out building software - especially at the rate it’s now possible to build - still requires enormous skill, experience and depth of understanding.