Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest
Numeric Citizen Blog
Using an external display with iPadOS 26 beta4 is still very problematic, especially when invoking the Control Center, the Notifications Center and dragging windows from the iPad to the external display.
2025-08-01 ∞Some are doing vibe coding but me, I’m having a good vibe because of the view. 😬😜
2025-08-01 ∞ Bye Bye (Again) Medium
My Medium membership is up for renewal on August 17th. I returned to Medium last year to share a special set of articles about my potential career pivot to freelancing. I wrote over a dozen articles on this topic, believing Medium was a suitable platform for personal and career-focused content. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Despite following all the SEO tricks, I earned only $1.64 in revenue, which I won’t receive since the minimum payout is $10. 😳 I expected my earnings to at least cover the cost of my Medium membership, but that didn’t happen. I also intended to read more content on the platform, but I didn’t. I thought I would gain more followers, but that didn’t occur either. I understand now that I need to move on1, 2.
Goodbye, Medium. It was one of my numerous experiments3. I’ll keep my account active but won’t write or share anything further.
Here’s the latest edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. About this edition: “Amid Apple Intelligence delays, Apple still makes money, a lot of it. Doomsayers will have to wait. This edition isn’t AI-news free. Sorry.”
2025-08-03 ∞I wrote these articles on Medium under the Numeric Citizen Journey in the last year and I wonder how different my readership would have been if I wrote these articles on Substack. Substack isn’t having a great time these days…
2025-08-03 ∞Mornings are great for these scenes.
2025-08-03 ∞
Please Apple, do me a favor, and ship beta5 today because I want to see the light but not through this Liquid Glass.
2025-08-05 ∞Yesterday I showed my iPhone running iOS 26 to my son. I was scrolling through my notifications on the lock screen. The first thing he said was: woah… that is so… much harder to read.
Not cool. Not impressed. Just harder to read. He is 21. 🤷🏻♂️
2025-08-06 ∞Looking at the latest dev diary video from The Realmac software company, Elements CMS is progressing well, in my opinion. I can’t wait to try it out on Who Is Numeric Citizen website. But before that, I’ll have some more work to do, particularly on the highlights section that will be broken up in a few subsections. Stay tuned.
2025-08-06 ∞I see a big increase in subscribers to my blog on Ghost since Ghost 6 was released this week. I don’t know if that will last, but hey, I’ll take it!
2025-08-06 ∞Updated my “Remembering The Story Behind Every Apple Computers I Ever Owned” page with more up-to-date info.
2025-08-10 ∞In my opinion, the best place for Liquid Glass is on the Apple Watch, because the overall graphic content is much more standardized and controlled. You rarely get weird backgrounds under UI elements.
2025-08-10 ∞People are excited with generative AI and this is legitimate but this excitement overshadow a question we should ask more often about genAI (and about any new tech trends): what do we lose in return? My guess is that we lose a lot but we’re not sure what exactly. When we start to learn about the losses through experience and studies, we will question, hopefully, our use of AI in general. That’s my hope.
2025-08-11 ∞Am I starting to like Liquid Glass for the good and the bad things? Like they say: with beta6, it might be growing on me.
2025-08-11 ∞A Strange & Frustrating Mac App Store Issue
Here’s a strange and frustrating issue with the Mac App Store on macOS Tahoe: I cannot re-download an app after testing it through TestFlight. This first occurred with Craft, which I tested this summer. When the version I was testing became official, I tried to download it, but the download froze at the end. Quitting the Mac App Store and rebooting my machine did not resolve the problem. Now, I am facing the same issue with Reeder. I tested the beta a few months ago, only to discover that the developer removed the build from TestFlight. When I went to the Mac App Store to download the official version, the download froze again and never completed. Now I’m unable to use an app for which I’m paying for. Submitted a feedback to Apple. Beta6 doesn’t fix the issue. I’m really hoping for a fix soon. See the behavior here.
2025-08-12 ∞Discovered a fun Easter egg in iPadOS 26 beta6 Preview.app. It’s documented as exhibit #50 right here.
2025-08-12 ∞I started documenting before-and-after comparisons of different betas of Apple Liquid Glass. Search for “beforeandafter” in the document to locate those comparisons. Honestly, things are improving. That wasn’t expected.
2025-08-12 ∞I am curious to explore other providers of generative artificial intelligence services. I am a paying subscriber to ChatGPT, but I haven’t seriously explored other alternatives yet, though I plan to do so. I fear missing things out if I ever leave OpenAI behind. I tested Perplexity, but I don’t believe in their business model. I think Claude from Anthropic seems to be the most interesting candidate. They have an iPhone and iPad app, just like OpenAI. From now on, I will systematically query both ChatGPT and Claude for my research needs and compare their performance.
2025-08-13 ∞Do you remember the SETI program? I think this is what it was called. Anyway, it was about providing or contributing personal computing resources to help find extraterrestrial life from background noises or signals coming from space. You would install an app on your computer and when you weren’t using it, its processing power was diverted to the app for computing purposes. Now, fast forward to 2025: could something similar be done e for running LLMs on personal computers? This could then generate usage credits applicable to the AI provider.
2025-08-13 ∞If Liquid Glass is about unifying all Apple’s platforms, why is it so toned down on the Mac? Asking for a friend.
2025-08-14 ∞Learning to use Confluence when you already know a lot about Notion feels like a major step back. 🥴
2025-08-15 ∞I began to unpublish several posts from numericcitizen.me, mainly those imported from Substack. It’s fascinating how quickly content can become irrelevant in our rapidly changing world.
2025-08-15 ∞When creating backlinks in apps like Craft, if there is no automatic suggestions based on current document’s content, as the number of documents grows, it becomes mostly impossible to select related documents to potentially link to.
2025-08-15 ∞Fun fact: I keep a log (or a journal) of everything I do in a day at work. I’ve been doing this for decades. I always used digital tools for that but the guy who gave me the inspiration for doing this when I started my career was doing the same but on paper. I thought Incould improve his process. I did.
2025-08-18 ∞AI as a Complementary Tool
One of my rules for using generative AI is to avoid starting a creative project with AI prompts. Today, someone at the office challenged this rule, arguing that beginning with AI can effectively kick-start the creative journey. While that may be true, I prefer to keep the human touch at the center and use AI as a complement to the process. Starting with AI risks making us lazy in the long run.
2025-08-19 ∞If you have digital assets on GitHub, if your software dev workflows depend on GitHub, you might want to read this. Should we trust Microsoft, now?
2025-08-19 ∞Out of curiosity, are you considering getting more RAM with your next computer to run local LLMs in the future?
2025-08-20 ∞Something Is Wrong
We’re getting close to the end of August and moving into September, which means Apple’s usual rush of new product launches. We already know quite a bit about Apple’s upcoming iPhone. We also know that Apple’s unifying Liquid Glass is likely to cause major issues when it encounters hundreds of millions of devices. We can probably expect Apple to be in damage control again. And I’ll probably have to explain why Apple did this to my friends and colleagues.
Usually, around this time of year, I would have one or two articles ready to publish about all this. But not this year. I won’t upgrade to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, even though I normally would every two iPhone generations. I’m voting with my dollars by skipping this year, because I disagree with Tim Cook’s (and Apple’s) stance on the orange clown.
Something is wrong.
2025-08-23 ∞I’m spending a lot of time online and on my computer each week for my blogs, probably around 10 to 25 hours. I wonder how skilled I could become if I dedicated those hours to learning a new field like psychology or music.
2025-08-23 ∞As a blogger and someone curious about many topics, I often feel I miss opportunities to become an expert in certain fields. Generative AI is one example. It gained public attention in the fall of 2022. At that time, when generative AI started to gather attention in the public, I should have recognized this important moment. I should have taken the chance to gather knowledge and organize it like a true researcher. I’m very analytical in general. I ask good questions. I have the tools and the motivation to do this work. Now, it feels overwhelming to catch up.
2025-08-24 ∞Here is a strange issue in Photomator: during photo editing, an .XMP file is created, which likely contains the editing steps applied to the photo. Additionally, a Photomator native file is also generated. Some of these files are very small, while others are quite large. For example, one file is less than 300 KB, while another is nearly 120 MB. Despite using the same editing process, the file sizes vary significantly. These files aren’t package files, it’s impossible to peek inside them. This is strange.
2025-08-24 ∞
I’ve been using Apple Journal this summer to record my experience at a chalet by a small, beautiful lake. It’s really an inspiring place. Now that I fully experienced Apple Journal, and Apple’s vision of personal journaling, it’s probably time for me to put together a write-up. Spoiler alert: Apple Journal is full of paper cuts.
2025-08-24 ∞I began my writing project for the Apple Journal review. For this project, I will try a different approach1. I started experimenting with the Perplexity Comet browser to survey past reviews. I use genAI to create quick summaries of previous articles. I save text highlights in Inoreader for the most interesting past reviews. I use Craft to compile all my knowledge and copy-paste the genAI summaries. However, I’m unsure where this will lead.
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Dare I say ‘modern approach’? ↩
iOS 7 > Liquid Glass. There, I said it.
2025-08-26 ∞With my new job, I get to use a Windows 11 laptop. It’s not a powerhouse, but it is decent—except when it’s not plugged in. As a Mac user at home, I take for granted the speed and battery life that an Apple Silicon Mac offers. It’s night and day. I don’t notice any difference when using the Mac on battery; I never hear the fan because there isn’t one. It’s night and day. We should always remember that.
2025-08-27 ∞Currently, I’m testing and experimenting with Inoreader’s Email Digests. I like what I’m seeing. But it’s not cheap.
2025-08-27 ∞Can’t wait to see Apple Liquid Glass on a Pro Display XDR. 👀😳🫣
2025-08-29 ∞When posting a new photo on Glass, I always look at my previous posts on my profile page to see my previous posts. I like to create a nice visual rhythm in my feeds for those who follow me.
2025-08-30 ∞ooh.directory appears to be dead, already. It didn’t last long. But the guy behind it is still active.
2025-08-31 ∞Thought of the day: writing with AI is not writing, it’s something else. Eventually, there will be a word for it, but meanwhile, let’s not call this writing. Looking at you, Tiago Forte.
2025-08-31 ∞