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365 Days...
365 days of destruction. 365 days of murdering. 365 days of looting. 365 days of terror. 365 days of raping. 365 days of horror. 365 days of lies. 365 days of absolute nonsense because of one man’s ego. Continue reading →
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👉🏻 Day One, now available on the web. Woah! This is cool.
I’m a big fan of Day One. I use it 99% of time for documenting my numeric life (details here if you are curious). When Automattic bought them a while back, I was curious to see how it would influence its future. Now we get a much better idea. The web access maybe was an obvious “next step”, but they did a superb job of transposing most of the Day One experience on the web.
What could be the next step for Day One? Well, what about being able to blog from Day One? A dedicated “public” journal could be created and any entry saved into that journal would go online. Boom.
Now, if only I could spend more time writing personal thoughts in it.😒
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Glass introduces “Highlights”. Oh I like this a lot. They keep adding more and more dimensions to an already solid, simple, honest, photo-sharing service. I’m glad to be supporting them.
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And here we go again with the new Mac Pro “problem”. Jason Snell writing about the challenges Apple is facing with the unfinished Apple Silicon transition of its Mac line:
And all that custom work, all those distortions to what makes Apple silicon so successful, would be done for a product that’s a niche of a niche–and it’s work that Apple’s chip design team could have spent on a next-generation chip for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Remember the Trashcan Mac? The black cylinder Mac Pro was a closed system with very limited internal expandability beyond memory and SSD drive. Criticism from pro users lasted so long that Apple reverted his take on the Mac Pro with the return of the expandable machine in 2019. Pro users rejoiced as they could again add the PCI cards of their choices as well as adding as much memory they could afford. Problems fixed? Think again.
Now, enter the Apple Silicon chip: a highly regarded and efficient system-on-a-chip design with fixed amount of RAM and GPU (except for Pro, Max, Ultra flavours). A Mac Pro built around this chip would go against having 1 TB of RAM or external GPU without sacrificing latency and performance with support for RAM or eGPU. Apple Silicon makes the Mac a more closed system, just like the 2013 Trashcan Mac was. How ironic this is.
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Attorney General Ashley Moody:
“We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security. The existing lack of transparency in app stores can create a significant risk for American citizens, and could cause their personal information to be exploited by foreign entities of concern. That is why I am calling on Apple and Google to bring more transparency to their app stores—so consumers know what products are owned or developed by nations that may pose a national security risk.”
I think this is a great idea. In challenging times, I want to know if an app is created or owned by someone who brings money into bad actor pockets. I do have internal debate about this issue from time to time, having such labeling in the App Store would certainly help in my buying or subscription decisions.
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What Comes After Missiles and Fighter Jets?
I walked today with my dear wife and quickly chatted about the Ukraine war. My wife asked me a question I didn’t expect: what if Western countries who had already sent armaments to Ukraine were sending soldiers with a promise not to attack Russia on their territory? Is this what should happen after sending fighter jets if we ever get there? I don’t recall Zelensky asking for boots on the ground. Continue reading →
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I’m still pondering about cross-posting everything from MB to my @numericcitizen@techhub.social mastodon account. Why should I, why shouldn’t I?
Hint: I don’t want to de-focus from Micro.blog as my hub for feeling part of the larger fediverse microcosm.
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I don’t know if it is a popular opinion or not, but Telegram is such a well-designed messaging app. It looks cool, and it has the right amount of gamification. Telegram.app feels native on all Apple platforms.
I use Telegram passively to subscribe to channels that publish news and information about the war in Ukraine essentially. Many of the publishers were on Twitter too, but I left this shitty platform. I don’t use Telegram for chatting with others.
I’m pondering about subscribing. there are things that I don’t like about Telegram (like insisting on getting access to my contacts and being owned by Pavel Durov). I don’t like the owner’s attitude toward Apple’s App store rules in general. He’s Russian with Ukrainian origins. Thankfully, is fled Moscow a long time ago to live in Dubai, a safe haven for many Russians these days. The fun fact is that Telegram is hugely popular in Ukraine and serves both sides in good and bad ways.
Are there any Telegram users here? Do you share my sentiment? Are you subscribing to the Premium tier?
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I rarely post my photography work here on Micro.blog, as I prefer to focus on dedicated photo-sharing services like Glass. But tonight, while doing some cleanup on my WordPress website, I stumbled on this post, “Confinement – A Visual Essay”, published on April 13th, 2020, in the early months of COVID-19. I almost instantly remembered and felt what it was like during these dire moments of confinement.
If pictures can trigger memories of challenging moments, I think they are good enough. This is why I am sharing this montage here tonight. Look carefully at each of them, they each contain a specific message.
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The Computer is Wrong — Stay Critical & Curious
This evening, using an Apple Shortcut called Clips, I imported the « Apple in 2022 The Six Colors report card » by Six Colors into Craft. It’s a 25 000 article that I started reading on my iPad, within Craft. Then, fifteen minutes into my reading, I asked Craft assistant to summarize the Mac section. It came out with this summary: « In 2022, Apple released the M2 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Studio Display. Continue reading →
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😕 Installing iPadOS 16.4 beta1 on my iPad Pro. This cannot be worst than anything since iPadOS 16.
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Nothing more to add.Micro.blog things I like:
- No ads
- No likes
- No brands
- No metrics
- No algorithms
- No influencers
- No follower count
- No suggested/sponsored posts
- Reverse chrono social timeline
- Bookshelves feature
- Simple, clean, UI
- Customizability
- Photos feature
- Friendly folks
- Blog hosting
- iPhone app
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OK, I’m excited. According to recent leaks, the iPhone 15 Pro could be ultra interesting (puns intended). I’m ok with USB-C; the time has come for standardization. The thing that gets me excited is the softer, slightly rounder hedges. I like the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro flat edges, but they are too rough for my taste. So flat edges with a softer corner radius will be a welcomed tweak.
Next, still about the edge, is the titanium brushed finish, similar to the titanium Apple Watch finish. I Digg this choice if that’s the case. I don’t like the Pro line’s current flashy chrome finish.
This leak of the possible iPhone 15 Pro also reminds me of the iPhone 4, which was a great design, BTW.
Oh, and the black bezels are becoming even thinner, which is also cool. Sure, some Android phones go way further than that, but on the iPhone, it’s a mandatory evolution, in my opinion.
For someone like me who takes his iPhone as a camera, these design changes could make a real difference in holding the iPhone like a camera. I’m really looking forward to this iPhone.
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Mailbrew still works but sadly feels increasingly abandoned by its founders fooling around with TypeFully, a writing tool for Twitter. Now Twitter is dead. TypeFully too. And Mailbrew is dying too. How sad this story is.
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👨🏻💻I’ve spent quite some time recently on Inoreader, and I must say that I like it a lot. I’m on their generous three-month subscription. I can test everything without worrying too much about hitting the paywall. I must say that I’m more of an RSS-type-of-guy which fits Inoreader’s mission perfectly. I’m seeing fewer and fewer reasons to consider Matter or Readwise’s Reader… who knew.
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🤔👀👇🏻
Apple is exploring a stand-alone device that combines an iPad with a speaker hub. The idea is to offer something that users can place on a kitchen counter, in the living room or on their nightstand. But Apple also has worked on an iPad docking accessory that it could sell separately and would accomplish much of the same thing. Source: Apple Working on Whole New Way to Use iPad at Home - MacRumors
Nearly every day, I use my iPad in the kitchen while preparing food to listen to the news or to YouTube videos. I can imagine the iPad UI to be something like CarPlay UI (or HomeKit UI?) with tiles where I could see a video source, some HomeKit controls, the weather, etc.
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The rumoured launch of a 15-inch MacBook Air this early Spring brings me joy and excitement. As an M1-MacBook Air owner, I understand the actual value of a lightweight and mighty Mac. I’m not looking for a much more powerful machine, but a bigger screen in a still-light package is something that I’m looking for. One of the reasons, you might be surprised, is the notch presence which removes some real space in the menubar to display menubar icons. Even with Bartender, a bigger screen could help reduce competition for the menubar on the left portion of the screen. That’s a small detail but an important one for me. I still have over a year of active Apple Care coverage, which should help resell my Mac.
Now, about the possible pricing. After spending some time on the Apple website looking at the current MacBook Air and MacBook Pro offerings, I expect the new 15-inch MacBook Air to be priced at around $1499..$1699 for an 8 GB of RAM, 8 cores CPU, 10 cores GPU and 256 GB SSD. So the starting price would represent a $300-$500 difference.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the 13-inch MacBook Pro to be dropped from the product line too.
Spring can’t come soon enough.
