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Twitterās Essentials
I read about so many people flocking to Mastodon, leaving Twitter behind. I actually started to see a definitive decline in my followers number. Something is really going on. I myself started to think about the possibility of leaving the platform too. Just like I did with Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr, only to leave a place where my content is simply cross-posted from another source without a real and active presence of mine. Twitter could be next. Really. I could live without the traffic influx from Twitter, which represents about 15% of all my visitors.
There is one thing that it would be hard for me to leave behind, though. If it wasnāt about the war in Ukraine, it would be an easy decision. The problem is that I follow a few people and news sources that diffuse their content on Twitter. Is there a Twitter equivalent for this type of small blips of nano content? I donāt see that in Mastodon yet. RSS feeds are not a platform but transport. The next Twitter has yet to emerge.
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If you read my Friday Notes series, then itās a good way to learn about me. Just sayin. Happy Saturday night!
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I’ve been quietly testing Exposure recently, an excellent visual storytelling service. I could probably replace my Smugmug page. That’s the goal of my experiment anyway: testing Exposure service’s ability to replace Smugmug. Stay tuned. This is my first short story.
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I donāt know what will happen with Musk at the helm of Twitter. Itās probably going to turn really bad before turning potentially better (no guarantee here) but I have a backup plan: Micro.blog.
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Clear Thoughts on a Confusing iPad Lineup
There we have it, a new iPad, a new iPad Pro, joining a growing and more confusing iPad lineup than ever. I wonāt repeat the best comments from MacStories (āApple Announces Strange New iPad and iPad Pro Lineupā) and Six Colors (āThe iPadās erratic odyssey continuesā). How are this weekās announcements influencing my buying decisions?
Iām currently using a 2018 11-inches iPad Pro. Going to the 2022 M2 iPad Pro would be a significant step, at least from a processing power perspective. Should I stay on the 11-inches size or go to the 12.9-inches version and get a big screen upgrade? Using this new iPad as a photo-processing machine and as a second screen to any of my Mac would undoubtedly support the bigger iPad. But what a weird setup this would make to use a much-better secondary screen like the 12.9-inches iPad Pro on a 2020 M1-based MacBook Air machine. There is no comparison to be made.
In its video clip of fewer than five minutes, Apple is positioning the latest iPad Pro weirdly and surprisingly: the best machine to experience the āexcitingā Stage Manager. What a strange way to present the iPad Pro. It will undoubtedly help but having to buy an expensive iPad to get a different and questionable way to multitask on a tablet is doubtful.
Oh, and what a missed opportunity to have Freeform ready simultaneously and present it as the best way to collaborate in a creative environment! We will have to wait until ālater this yearā to come to get a sense of Appleās vision of collaborative work. Oh, and Final Cut is still MIA. Instead, Apple continues to rely on third-party apps to show how powerful the iPad Pro actually is. Thanks to DaVinci Resolve or Affinity, when they ship their new beast of software. Later. Eventually.
I donāt know why but my feeling is that the 2022 iPad Pro is only a transition machine, and the real deal will be next yearās update. Oh, and these keyboard choices are as strange as all the rest.
Iām unsettled. š¤
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Adobe, Lightroom and the Camera
The Adobe Max conference was held this week. With each conference comes a slew of new application update releases. Iām not really into Adobe ecosystem except for using Adobe Lightroom on the Mac and the iPad Pro. This is my main photo processing engine, coupled with the excellent Pixelmator Pro. For About a year, Adobe spent some of its development money to āaugmentā Lightroom, a photo-processing application, with video-processing features. Why? I donāt get it. I donāt want it.
As Adobe is adding video-processing features to Lightroom, I fear they are making it less focused and slowly becoming a bloated piece of software, on the outside but also the inside. Adobe Lightroomās mission was to start over and make a new solid foundation apart from its aging Adobe Lightroom Classic.
I want Adobe to focus on photography; they already have video-processing apps like Adobe Premiere!
Iād love Adobe to focus on making the camera feature compete with a dedicated camera app like Appleās camera app or Halide or Camera+. I cannot remember when the last release of Adobe touched this portion of Lightroom in significant ways. Why is it important? As a subscriber of an Adobe photography plan, I would use the Lightroom camera more, and my images would directly go to the Adobe Cloud, just like the Apple camera app saved photos in iCloud. It would be so much more convenient. I prefer Adobe cloud for my RAW images instead of having to transit my RAW photos through the Apple Photos library. The more Adobe improves the built-in camera module of Lightroom, the more Iāll stay within Lightroom while in a photography moment.
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On This AI-Generated Podcast Interview Between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs
What. The. Fuck.
This podcast example about a fake interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs is a blatant example of where some more thoughts should take place before putting high tech to work. What is the purpose of this? Is this a tech demo or some bad-taste proof-of-concept? It’s not hard to imagine how it could derail in the future when used in politically-heated contexts. Oh, and no, I didnāt waste my time listening to this garbage, and I wonāt share the link to this podcast, either.
Image credits: generated using Dall-E with the following phrase: āan hand drawn Mac computer that never existed digital artā
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When the iPad Is No Longer a Novel Device
As I write this, rumours are pointing to an imminent release of some updated iPads today. What is novel this time is not the CPU to be used, the screen attributes, or the long-awaited app called Freeform. What is novel is the fact that there wonāt be an Apple event for the announcement but a few well-crafted press releases. Apple judges the updates as not worth tech punditsā time, flight to Cupertino, or even a secret press briefing.
I would argue that we are officially entering the iPad commodity era. Thanks to Apple, who neglected to show the iPadās true potential with a ported version of powerful apps like Final Cut Pro, a real multitasking experience, the iPad is becoming a mundane device. Putting an M2 processor in it wonāt change the story here. Freeform, a low-profile app that Apple quickly demonstrated at the WWDC conference last June, wonāt probably appeal to many, being late in the game of collaborative work and creativity. Even long-time bloggers and iPad believers like Matt Birchler are no longer waiting for the iPad to ignite the personal computing segment.
We will see shortly if Apple has a few surprises in-store today.
Photo credits: Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash
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The Waiting Game
In case you didnāt know, Iām a big fan of Apple (from the corporation, the products to the companyās history). Hereās a little secret: I maintain a document of possible upgrade paths for all my current Apple products. Itās fun. Yes, Iām a bit crazy.
Each year, during the fall, Apple releases a slew of new products. Each year, I spend some time updating my document to reflect my analysis of possible product upgrades. Take the iPhone for example. Iām currently using last yearās iPhone 13 Pro. Iām super happy with but Iām pondering the idea of upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. So, I list all the reasons why I should do it and all the reasons why I should refrain from doing the upgrade. Itās the same drill for my aging 2018 11-inches iPad Pro. Or my Apple Watch Series 6. Itās quite fun and educative because for each product, I spend quite some time studying it and pondering their technical advances over my current product. Itās really fun. And crazy.
This year, itās a bit different for some reasons. Thereās still nothing in the Apple tech landscape that could trigger a purchase. Not yet. Rumours about an upcoming iPad Pro refresh and a more powerful Mac mini with an M2 are aplenty. Things could change in a few weeks.
But, seriously, what is more fun than anything else is the waiting game. Pleases come while waiting for something to happen. I read somewhere that people who wait patiently to get something are more happy in life than those who succumb rapidly to fill their immediate needs. I must be quite happy then.
Header photo credits: Photo by Zhiyue on Unsplash
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Russian's Strategy ā Possible Response
šŗš¦It is becoming clear that Russians are angry about the near collapse of their army in south and east Ukraine. The strategy now seems to bomb all over Ukraine, mostly civilian infrastructures, to terrorize the civil population, double down with Belarus, and get ready for another take from the north for a second time. They probably hope to disrupt the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south by diverting precious Ukrainian army resources back to the north. Devilish.
Hereās what would be my plan:
First and foremost: officially declare Russia a terrorist state. Then:
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Apply all possible remaining sanctions against Russia;
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Apply all possible sanctions against Belarus;
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Fully Isolate Kaliningrad economically and commercially;
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Kick out Russia from the Security Council at the UN;
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Bring more military resources to Nato countries in Europe;
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Send all requested anti-air, tanks and long-range missile launchers to Ukraine ASAP.
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On the Dynamic Island Inception and Possible Future
A recent Twitter thread about the possible iPhone Dynamic Island inception by Matt Birchler caught my attention a few days ago but couldn’t find the required time to write my take.
How long could Dynamic Island have been in gestation at Apple? A few weeks, a few months? I think this has been in the works for quite some time. Besides the visual appearance, the API goes with it and needs a design period too. I’m sure Matt understands and knows about that. I would argue that Apple worked on this way before this year’s announcement. Best integration between hardware and software takes time because of how Apple is internally structured. Secrecy plays a significant role in making things longer to achieve too. Apple plan’s for the long run, and I think the pill shape was set in stone last year.
The second thing that caught my attention is this: How long will Dynamic Island be with us? What if Apple can make the camera disappear under the iPhone’s display? Would this make Dynamic Island pointless? No. My take is that the feature is here for the long run, even though the camera and all other sensors could disappear entirely. Apple is training us to accept Dynamic Island as a fundamental part of the iPhone experience. We may even expect the feature to be the de facto standard of the best iPhone user experience. I don’t think we will revert to the previous design that Dynamic Island is taking care of. The black pill share could be dynamically removed when not required but could then pop up to respond to the current context dictated by the user interaction.
The Dynamic Island is such a terrible name but the feature in itself is brilliant, so Apple.
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Press Releases it will be ā Next Round of Apple Products Releases
The way I see it, there is nothing in an updated MacBook Pro line with M2 processors and a tweaked iPad Pro line to warrant a keynote. There has to be something special, really special. iPadOS 16.1, macOS Ventura aren’t enough. The rumoured Mac Pro? Maybe, but no signals on its imminent release either. An updated Apple TV hardware? Nah. A larger MacBook Air (like 15")? Why now? That is why I agree with Gurman’s view and the next product release will go through a set of press releases later in October.
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On Software Subscriptions
Tweetbot hasnāt been updated for over 6 months, I thought a subscription was going to mean more frequent updates? Source: Letting my Glass and Tweetbot subscriptions expire ā LJPUK:
This blog post triggered the following thoughts.
The movement to subscriptions in the software landscape is MASSIVE but is far from being a guarantee of more frequent updates from the developers. I’m utterly infuriated when I see a yearly subscription for a small utility with a limited scope when no “lifetime” options are offered with reasonable pricing. Many devs are lazy, and greedy and send you a big middle finger.
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Putin, the loser
šŗš¦ Putin is showing signs of being a loser (as if it wasnāt clear yet), because he is losing, slowly but surely. Sure weād like things to happen quicker to save lives and infrastructures. But with yesterdayās āspeechā, Putin is signing for more collaboration across western countries, hoping for reinforcements of support for Ukraine.
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So, if you want to push your career and your life in a new direction then take care of your blog. Because it all adds up. Source: Take Care of Your Blog
Yep, it all adds up pretty quickly and moves your life in the direction of your own choosing.
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Let Apple Fix All Bugs, Will Ya?
MacRumors in iPhone 14 Pro Owners Complain of ‘Slow’ Camera App - MacRumors:
Affected users are seeing the Camera app take four to five seconds to activate after the Camera app icon is tapped, with the problem occurring after the camera has been opened once already.
Coupled with other issues related to the camera and AirDrop, even though I’ll probably upgrade to the 14 Pro Max, I’ll gladly wait a few months before taking the plunge. But, fixes are coming very soon, apparently.
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On iPhone Internal Design - as Important as the External Design
iFixit writing about the internal redesign of the iPhone 14 in “The iPhone 14 Feature Apple Didnāt Tell You About”:
This is the most substantial iPhone redesign since the X. Itās hard to understate how big a change this is. For a reference point, Samsung hasnāt changed their phone architecture since 2015.
So, with the biggest update in years, weāre upgrading the iPhone 14 to a repairability score of 7 out of 10. Thatās the best score weāve given an iPhone since the iPhone 7. This is the most repairable iPhone in years.
Who wrote that smartphones, iPhone in particular, have peeked? A fundamental redesign of the iPhone to make it more repairable seems not only a good move but a much-needed change of thinking. If Apple is serious about environment protection and carbon footprint, they not only have to think about the choice of materials but also the way iPhones are built so they are more easily fixed. Kudos to Apple. Why this design is only for the iPhone 14, not the Pro, is a mystery to me.
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The more I think about it...
The more I look at reviews, watch YouTube videos and visit Apple.com, the more I realize that considering my current hardware setup, there aren’t many reasons to upgrade to the iPhone 14 Pro (currently with 13 Pro), the Apple Series 8 (currently with Series 6) or the AirPods Pro 2 (currently the original Pro version). The Apple Watch Ultra could be a reason, but I’m not the target customer for that one.
Waiting for October releases and going to the Apple Store tomorrow. Just for fun.
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The Unexpected Pain That Comes With Lock Screen Customization
So, Iāve been testing iOS 16 since its early beta stage, and I love it so much. One of the best features is the customizable Lock Screen. But it also creates an issue, the same with Apple Watch watch faces: how to decide which widgets to use and place in those limited slots. There are more and more widgets available each day, but the space is so constrained. I cannot find a strategy to create a Lock Screen that Iām fully satisfied with. I end up creating many of them, but switching among them isnāt smooth, except if they are linked to a focus mode. Itās not a first-world problem, but it is annoying. Iām left with a sense of constant dissatisfaction.
