• Why is it so slow to read content in Apple News in general? Opening an article in News takes 2 to 3 times longer to render than its equivalent through the RSS feed in News Explorer (my RSS reader). Another case for RSS feeds.

  • I cannot count how often I select an image, thinking it will look nice as wallpaper. Most of the time, it sucks. Would it be cool if Apple added a smart album with selected photos based on their potential to be great as wallpaper? This could be something done using on-device AI, just like face recognition.

  • With the introduction of an always-on display in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, many users have wondered how much impact the feature has on battery life. A new video takes a careful look at just how much battery drain there is with the always-on display and whether turning off the wallpaper reduces that drain.

    And

    it was found that by having the wallpaper enabled for the always-on display, an iPhone 14 Pro will drain around 0.8% per hour, compared to 0.6% an hour for the wallpaper disabled on the always-on display. Source: Test Shows How Much Battery Drain Your Wallpaper Causes on the iPhone 14 Pro’s Always-On Display - MacRumors

    People asked for an always-on display because Android had it for a long time, and they got it. Be careful for what you wish for. This is something that Apple could improve with a more power-efficient A17 this coming fall in the iPhone 15 Pro line.

  • Today, you can choose not to drive a Tesla if you don’t want Elon Musk, Inc. knowing everywhere you go.

    Tomorrow, you might have to limit where you live because you won’t live in a Google Home and reconsider having 20/20 vision again in exchange for the artificial lens company seeing everything you see.

    Privacy is not something you can “vote with your wallet” on. We either protect it as a human right or we lose it altogether.

    #privacy #humanRights #BigTech #peopleFarming #capitalism

    👀🤔

  • Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars. Most manufacturers are switching to touchscreens – which perform far worse in a test carried out by Vi Bilägare. The driver in the worst-performing car needs four times longer to perform simple tasks than in the best-performing car.Source: Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds | Vi Bilägare

    I’m not surprised by these results. My wife always told me she wouldn’t buy a car with a touchscreen-only dashboard. Not only that is the fact that it is far less secure to use a touch screen simply because we need to look at the screen for a long period of time, diverting our attention to what is happening in front of us.

    My gut feeling is that, eventually, we will return to a hybrid model when screens have to cohabit with physical dials and buttons. I’m paying close attention to what Apple will do in that space. The next generation of CarPlay that we got to see last June at the WWDC conference points in the wrong direction. But who am I to judge, you might ask!

  • If reports and rumors about Apple’s upcoming products this years are to be believed, 2023 looks to be pretty boring. I’m ok with this only if Apple spend more time fixing things instead of constantly adding up and pilling up unfinished features. What worries me is that Apple’s Reality Pro (what a weird and uninspired name) becomes a resources draining hole within the company for a product that is so niche.

    Personally, I’m 99% sure to upgrade to the iPhone 15 Ultra. The next possibility is the 15-inch MacBook Air.

  • Now, I’m wondering if I should keep a “Replies” page on my microblog website. I don’t think people care to see what and to whom I’m replying. Your thoughts?

  • I recently wondered if I should put a title to a Microblog post or not (see my post). I finally came up with an easy decision process.

    Most of the time, my post won’t include a title. Much longer and feature posts will get a title. I don’t expect many of them here, though.

    Can you imagine that at some point in the past, I included #hashtag in the title because MB would cross-post my content to Twitter, hoping to get traction from those on Twitter searching with #hashtag? It was a bad idea in retrospect.

    This post had no title. 🤣

  • Today is the day I turned my Twitter accounts (apple_observer & numericcitizen) into private mode. It’s the last step before disabling them altogether.

  • Dear @manton, How can I get the “reply with Micro.blog” on my post details?

  • Can someone tell me what this iCloud Drive status means? I don’t appear to have any synchronization issue and yet, the icon seems to indicate the opposite. A special thanks to Apple here for the obscurity of their UI. 🫤

  • This is my current content creator workflow and tools. I recognize that it is more focused on the tools but not the flow between them could be better explained.

  • During my trip to South America, I decided to shoot every photo in RAW (using iPhone 13 Pro). If the picture isn’t worth editing or publishing, I can easily use my “RAW to JPEG” shortcut to convert the image into JPEG and delete the RAW version. If the photo has real potential, I leave it in RAW for later editing in either Apple Photos, Pixelmator or Lightroom, depending of the editing required. Those photos are added to a dedicated album, for easy retrieval. I no longer use Camera+, Halide or Lightroom Camera module. I want the iCloud Photos library integration.

  • This one for @maique from Punta Del Este. 😉

  • I wish I had prepared a year in review post. Not this year. Maybe next year.

  • As we get closer and closer to 2023, with announcements surrounding Mastodon ecosystem, the latest being the creation of an instance by the creators of Mammoth, a Mastodon client, my challenge will be to not succumb and get my own account. I want to focus in 2023, that’s why it is a challenge. That said, creating an instance to ease the adoption of Mastodon with a simple setup and sign up procedure is clever.

  • I always wonder if I should put a title to my posts. Short post = no title. Longer post = with title? Long post without a title gives a preview of the post content which is good for readers to see what the post is all about? Decision decision decision.

  • Editing the framing of a photo in Apple Photos.app is tricky. Initial framing suggested by Photos.app is always tight compared to the maximum possible. I generally prefer to relax Apple’s assumptions here. This is something important when working with relatively low resolution images at 12 MP, the native resolution of my iPhone 13 Pro.

  • Should Apple Offer AI-based Services at the OS Level?

    In recent months, we’ve seen the addition of many AI-based features in apps like Notion and Craft, two apps that I know pretty well. Now I’m wondering if it would be a good idea that Apple integrates such features at the operating system level. Just like we can double tap a word in a text and get its definition from the dictionary, wouldn’t be cool if we could select a whole text and ask for a summary or anything involving the selected content? Apple would have to decide which AI sources to use or provide users a choice, just like for search engines. Any apps manipulating text would instantly benefit from this added capabilities. Your thoughts?

  • It’s funny how I’m rediscovering people on Mastodon (via MB) who I first met on Twitter in 2009, 2010 or 2011. People moved away from one platform to go elsewhere.