It's Time for Tim to Go

The latest post from @gruber@mastodon.social about the delay of Apple Intelligence and the ongoing fiasco serves as a reminder that Apple needs to change soon. It’s another big red flag something is rotten at Apple. Should I mention that Tim Cook’s financial support for the Trump presidential inauguration, whether personal or not, was another mistake? Apple could have and should have acted differently than Meta, Amazon, and others. They did not. We had all the warning signs regarding Trump, and now Tim is associated with this nonsense. There is no possible excuse. It was a poor decision on Tim’s part.

I believe it’s time for Tim Cook to take responsibility and step down.

Another Frustrating Thing with 2024 iPad Pro

I love my 2024 iPad Pro, but there is a clear regression in hardware+software for palm rest detection. Each time I put my hand on the screen when taking notes using the Apple Pencil in Apple Notes, the content scrolls up, sometimes not by much, but sometimes quite a lot… I always need to lift my hand, reposition the content and try again. This is utterly frustrating; this is something that I never experienced with my 2018 iPad Pro… this is something that Apple used to be good at.

My Updated Defaults as of 2025-03-12

So many things changed since my previous update.

  • ✉️ Mail Client: Fastmail
  • 📨 Mail Server: Fastmail
  • 📝 Notes: Craft + Apple Notes
  • ✅ To-Do: Things 3
  • 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app
  • 📚 Photo Management: Photos.app + Photomator
  • 🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app (Personal Life) + Fantastical.app (Work Life)
  • 🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud
  • 📰 RSS: Reeder connected to Inoreader
  • 📇 Contacts: Contacts
  • 🕸️ Browser: Mobile Safari + ARC Browser on Mac
  • 🧠 AI: ChatGPT + Perplexity
  • 🔎 Search: Kagi Search
  • 💬 Chat: iMessage (WhatsApp when abroad)
  • 🔖 Bookmarks: AnyBox
  • 👓 Read It Later: Inoreader
  • 📜 Word Processing: Ulysses, Craft
  • 📊 Spreadsheets: Numbers
  • 🛝 Presentations: Keynote
  • 🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders
  • 🧑‍🍳 Meal Planning: None
  • 💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: Numbers
  • 🗞️ News: La Presse (Apple News for English news)
  • 🎶 Music: Apple Music
  • 🎧 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
  • 🔐 Password Management: iCloud Keychain & Apple Passwords

I don’t know how to feel about the rumored visual redesign of Apple’s upcoming OSes summer releases… I’m still traumatized by the iOS 7 redesign. Not sure what I’m talking about? Here’s a reminder. What I do know is that I like visionOS visuals quite a lot and having that trickled down to the iPhone would be cool. Unifying macOS look and feel with mobile OSes? Not so sure. I also don’t want gamification of these OSes. I know that a younger generation is slowly taking over, and that is fine, but…

For me, Siri evolution, or the lack of evolution, is so tied to Tim Cook’s tenure. A lack of decisiveness from him and his close team led to resources spoiling on the Titan project and to some degree to the maligned Apple Vision Pro. Not all is lost and I agree with this post from Basic Apple Guy, but time is running out and this is another red flag for Tim Cook.

The Unexpected Challenge of Moving a Custom Domain From iCloud+ to Fastmail

Did you know that you can use iCloud+ with a custom email domain? Yep, that’s right. This is what I was doing for hello @ numericcitizen.me until this week when I started my migration to Fastmail. But there is one challenge that I didn’t expect: I wanted to bring this custom email to Fastmail, too. Custom email domains with iCloud+ is managed only on the iCloud website.

Having Apple Advanced Data Protection (ADP) is cool and nice but can make managing iCloud+ Custom domains a pain. As a reminder, to use ADP, you must turn off iCloud web access. I’m not really sure why. As soon as this is turned off, you can no longer manage your custom email domains that you might have configured for use with iCloud+. To complete my migration to Fastmail, so that I could write and respond from that custom email address from Fastmail, I first had to remove that domain from iCloud+, but it’s only possible on the iCloud website. To do that, ADP must be turned off. Once done, you can re-enable iCloud website access, then remove the custom email domain. After some cleaning up of Apple-related DNS records, you can re-enable ADP and disable iCloud website. Only then I can go on Fastmail Settings and configure my custom email domain.

Now you know.

Now that my migration from HEY Mail to Fastmail is essentially completed, I started writing an article about the whys, the hows and the gotchas. That’s the type of article that I love to put together. It will take time, but it will be well worth my time. My goals are to help others quit HEY Mail because it’s a great way to send a message to their owners. I’ll use the Fastmail referral program to get some form of potential compensation to pay for the service (I hope). While you wait for that article, I’ll share my referral link here and tell you this: if you are on the fence, trust me, Fastmail is really good.

And just like that, AI summaries arrives in Inoreader and they are called Inoreader Intelligence! While you can’t ask to generate summaries automatically for a specific RSS feed (yet?), the addition of manually triggered customizable summaries is super handy.

From time to time, while scrolling through my Micro.blog timeline, I’ll pause, read a particular post, peak at someone’s profile and previous posts, remember that this guy exists and wonder why in the first place I was following him or her. Then I sometimes hit the unfollow. Why do I think this is some sort of failure ?