Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest
Numeric Citizen Blog
It’s cool to use iPhone Mirroring on the train because of the space constraint… but I find the experience a bit a hit or miss. Sometimes the Mac refuses to connect to the iPhone, or I need to unlock the iPhone or the iPhone is already in use… highly unpredictable… but when it works, it’s really great and handy.
2025-05-01 ∞Phrases of the week on my news timeline: “Apple loses to…”, “Apple must pay…”, “Apple will challenge…”, “Apple disagree with…”.
Dear Apple: maybe you’re doing something wrong? 🤔
2025-05-01 ∞I’m surprised that no YouTuber or tech pundits talking about the iPhone 17 Air didn’t look at what it is like if you put two iPhone 17 Air dummies on top of each other to see how thick this would feel in the hands because, I really think that is going to be close to the foldable iPhone.
2025-05-01 ∞Thinking Outside
Thinking right now: people love to consume content the closest to their platform of choice. People on Substack wants to consume content over there, people on Medium, the same, on Medium. That’s why the idea of manually cross-posting my newsletter to Substack often comes back haunting me. This newsletter is currently only available from Ghost (and RSS + email, of course).
2025-05-02 ∞Bring What Device on My Next Trip?
I’m going for a trip in southern Europe at the end of next week for two weeks. I’ll visit Italy and Spain from a cruise ship and the many stops that are planned. I’m still undecided as to what device should I bring: my iPad or my MacBook Air? The former is highly portable and much lighter, but the latter would allow me to spend more time learning Elements during flight time. I may be overestimating how much free time I’ll have to use these things… 🥴🤷🏻♂️
2025-05-02 ∞I’m playing around with Realmac software Elements these days, and I’m working on a new website (to replace an existing one). One of the most difficult tasks is to select the right fonts for headers and body. So hard to choose from all those fonts. Google Fonts website is a great tool to help me achieve that.
2025-05-04 ∞You know your country is in deep turmoil and trouble when the president isn’t sure if it has to respect the constitution. Lawers are working on it, he says. Think about it. WTF is this clown?
2025-05-04 ∞Since Apple bought Pixelmator, here’s what happened so far: No new features. No new subscription. No more release notes. Enjoy the silence. Couldn’t be more excited about the future of Photomator and Pixelmator. 😒
2025-05-06 ∞ Five Years Ago - Confinement
Five years ago. COVID was hitting hard after two months of confinement. Distant memories already. Hard to believe. I still wear emotional injuries from that time. It wasn’t easy, and nothing really returned to normal since then. With current geopolitical events, things seems different and somewhat worse to some degree. Difficult times, indeed.
2025-05-06 ∞Astute comment by @mattbirchler on iPad multitasking. Having to keep an app open like Final Cut Pro to export a long video doesn’t make sense in today’s world. We need to be able to switch to other apps while this export is happening and doing its magic. An addition to the Entitlements.plist to allow long-running tasks won’t cut the deal.
2025-05-06 ∞Apple, Safari and AI: Eddy Cue is the guy who convinced Steve Jobs to do an iPad mini. AI replacing Search seems a nobrainer to me in the near term. It’s already happening for me.
2025-05-07 ∞Apple App Store rules are challenged in the US and so many other places around the world, except in Canada. Will we keep the original version of the App Store with all the constraints forever?
2025-05-07 ∞On Managing Digital Good Purchases
I just spent some time trying to find the payment provider for a specific app that charged me the wrong amount (paddle.net, which I won’t name). I realized I used different emails for different apps, so my purchases are scattered across those addresses. It’s a mess and hard to manage. The Apple App Store has many questionable rules, but having one place to manage purchases and subscriptions is invaluable.
2025-05-07 ∞Here’s an interesting idea from Parker Ortolani: portable memory format so that we can move our ChatGPT memory across generative AI service providers. THAT would be innovative. I think generative AI is so profound that preventing lock in would be seen as a positive sign of good will from the tech world, something we are missing these days.
2025-05-07 ∞Apparently, Microsoft released updated Surface devices. Not much buzz about them, even with this questionable CoPilot+ moniker and branding. I don’t see them a lot in my professional life either.
2025-05-08 ∞Last day of work before a two-weeks vacation where I’ll spend some time visiting Rome, Pompeii, Ibiza, Valencia, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Taormina, Valletta and Palma; places that I’m eagerly waiting to visit! 😀
2025-05-09 ∞I simply don’t understand the value proposition of the rumoured Apple homeOS. I mean, most people got a smartphone in their hands which is always connected. If you happen to have HomeKit devices in your home, everything is close at hand with the Home app. We don’t need a specialized tablet to change lights and look at the doorbell camera, right? Are we?
2025-05-09 ∞It’s 2025 and I’m still fascinated by the lack of efficiency of barcode or QRcode reading equipments at airports or train stations which greatly reduce the flow of people trying to catch their flight or train.
2025-05-13 ∞Currently in Catalina, Sicile. Rainy day. Brought my camera with me but got no inspiration to take photos, except that one which is in line with the current weather.
2025-05-15 ∞
Travel update: I’m currently in Valencia, Spain, still figuring out if we will go off the ship today for a walk in a city that we already visited back in 2017. One idea would be to revisit some places but with this idea of trying different photo takes with more modern photo gear (was using an iPhone 7, Nikon D80 back then if I remember correctly).
2025-05-19 ∞Who’s rooting for adding or integrating Apple Intelligence models into their apps? Apple Intelligence is not well regarded, not many is going to rush to add this to their apps after WWDC2025.
2025-05-20 ∞Reading a lunch menu in Spanish with Apple Translate. First experience with live translation. Pretty cool and useful. I know this has been available on the other platform for a long time but using in a real situation is handy. No need for an English menu.
2025-05-21 ∞I’m getting ready to pack my things and offload 559 photos from my Nikon Zf to my MacBook Air for in-flight processing with Photomator (8 hours, mind you). It should be fun to relive my just-completed trip.
2025-05-23 ∞
I think we over estimate Jony Ive design capabilities in general if you consider that design is also how it works. We have plenty of examples with bad design choices after Jobs death. Ports removal in a pro laptop, butterfly keyboard are just of them.
2025-05-24 ∞Catching up recent Micro.blog updates and I really like the new AI-generated categories feature. Coupled with filters, it’s a great way to organize posts not only for me but for the readers. It’s tempting to add many categories, but it could make my blog homepage a little bit crowded. 😅
2025-05-25 ∞Will Apple’s Solarium UI refresh make us forget about Apple Intelligence and Siri’s lackluster performance or App Store litigation or developers mounting disdain for Apple or Tim Cook questionable leadership in the age of AI?
2025-05-25 ∞If Apple’s ‘Solarium UI’ is the UI unification of all Apple platforms, which platform will give up the most of its personality the most? 👀🤔
2025-05-25 ∞After reading John Siracusa’s articles about Apple current issues and possible remediations this morning (1, 2), I wish I had enough time at my disposal to create timetogotim.org1, a website promoting the need for a change of leadership at Apple.
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The domain name is available! ↩
Asking for a summarized review of reviews of a product like the NIKKOR Z 70-180mm f/2.8 with Perplexity pro prompt is super cool to get the gist of a product quality and capabilities (here are the results1). We live in exciting times, even if challenging.
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I’m not sure if you can open that link, though. ↩
Ordered and received an Ubiquiti G6 Instant surveillance camera only to discover that UniFi Protect which is required to manage and use that camera isn’t supported on my UniFi Dream Router from 2020. 🙁 I would need to replace my router with a Dream Router 7 if I want to keep the camera. But replacing my router would probably require replacing my two network extenders, too. 😔
2025-05-26 ∞Follow-up to my previous post: I’ll be returning the Ubiquiti G6 Instant camera. It’s a really nice designed device, very Apple-like. But I can’t justify replacing my Dream Router with the Dream Router 7 only to add Wifi 7 and support for Ubiquiti Project. Too bad.
2025-05-26 ∞iPhone 26, iPhone 26 Air, iPhone 26 Pro, iPhone 26 Pro Max, then. I called it first.
2025-05-28 ∞Since coming back from vacation, my morning routine is simple and is always the same: wake up, make coffee, open up the Mac, read Micro.blog timeline, update the current issue of The Ephemeral Scrapbook, do some photo-processing work, tweak my secret work-in-progress-soon-to-be-revealed website with Elements, and read some news before having breakfast.
2025-05-30 ∞Close to a personal turning point… I find this to be both exciting and unsettling. I’ll probably share more very soon. 🤞🏻
2025-05-30 ∞Are people just discovering that Apple is a corporation, a big one, part of a capitalist system? Really? It’s sad. It is what it is. Empires come and go. That’s not always fun to watch, but it is what it is.
2025-05-31 ∞