Numeric Citizen Blog

WSJ: Goldman Sachs wants to bail on Apple Card partnership after $1B loss, in talks with Amex

Goldman Sachs is in talks with American Express about transferring its Apple partnership

Could this be the needed change for Apple Card to come to Canada? It’s a long shot but who knows… As a reminder, American Express was the very first partner to bring Apple Pay to Canada. They had a six-month exclusivity deal with Apple at that time.

I’m feeling upbeat about returning to a more normal blogging schedule. It’s part of my life and I miss it when I’m off-grid for a long time. Of course, I kept my travel journal up-to-date, so writing was still a thing.

Thought of the day: I rarely use my photos as a source of wallpapers on my devices. I’m wondering why.🤔

The only time my M1 Mac mini with 16 GB of RAM struggles is when using Adobe Lightroom Classic. Even after all those promised and supposedly delivered “optimizations”, the classic version of Lr is still sluggish. Adobe Lightroom, being a brand new codebase, is actually way much faster in my experience.

Does Apple know that, with the Apple Vision Pro, they have a unique opportunity to reinvent weather apps? Imagine experiencing a thunderstorm forecast in this immersive environment. Can’t wait but I’m not holding my breath.

Call it whatever you like, design it whatever you want, release today, tomorrow, in a year, if there is one simple link with Meta, I’m out. Enough of this platform / Zucherburg. 🤮

Hunting vs ChatGPT

Hunters are not allowed to use drones to locate their prey. It is seen as an anti-competitive measure or an unfair practice. While “real” hunters who chase their future prey for fun aren’t allowed drone usage, what about those who hunt to eat meat because it is their way of living? Is it still forbidden?

Now, let’s do a parallel with LLM-derived tools like ChatGPT. Is it ok for fun but not ok for actual work? When are the lines crossed? Is the content the only determining factor?

Bad News for Weather in Canada

Yesterday, weather report summary for June in Canada was released and it is ugly. Much higher temperatures in the wrong places and at much earlier time this year. Many records broken by wide margin (since 1871). Lot’s of discrepancies in rain distribution with lack of rain in the north of Quebec which then allowed much widespread forests fire than usual.

One month is not a trend but when you look far back, there are many worrying trends.

Planning a visit to the Apple Store after work today. Reason? To experience the 15-inch MacBook Air. 🕵🏻

Threads is just another trick by cyberspace to divert my attention to being focused, creative, happy, hopeful, and more importantly to use me as another data point by scrapping my privacy. I say NO.

I wish I had a blog about my professional life. I rarely share anything work-related here. Yet, there are soooo many juicy stories to talk about in professional life in general. I won’t do it because a few people at work know about “numericcitizen”… it could be prejudicial.

Wondering something this morning: if Threads was to offer “free” APIs, would developers embrace them or think again and remember about Twitter and Reddit snafu? I bet they would embrace them.

Thought of the day: blog readers might not like negativity-tinted post or being told the truth they don’t want to read. I published my observations and opinion regarding our hyper-dependency on being connected all the time, so much that we don’t really connect in-person anymore. A few subscribers unsubscribed. 😒 Or maybe they just agree with my take and are looking for ways to regain more time in-person by unsubscribing from my blog? 😂

I guess there is always a positive side of an event. 🙏🏻

We Must Do Something About Meta’s Monopoly

In my mind, every new platforms should start from 0 user base. Meta, just to name that one, have a monopoly of social graph. This is anti-competitive. Should Bluesky sue Meta? Should the open source community sue Meta? Yes. And yes.

Remember Microsoft and Internet Explorer back in the days? Remember Apple and the App Store?

We are not ready to accept this but here we are. Meta is a monopoly in my book. Time for regulation. I casted my vote: no Threads for me.

I’m Still Liking HEY Email But…

I’ve been using the HEY email service since its introduction. This week I had to search extensively in my email history to find transaction receipts and contracts. HEY email client has a unique take visually on emails and the inbox, and you either like it or hate it. I still like it, but I feel let down by the software for operations like searching, content rendering and attachment processing. This is where I wish HEY had a more standard take on email display and attachment preview. There is a lack of information density in this app which annoys me.

If there was another similar service but with a native client, I think I would switch.

Writing an email to a long-time friend. What a joyful experience. I like the slowness of the process. It’s like blogging. ⌨️

🤔 Pondering installing iPadOS 17 beta 3 on my 2018 iPad Pro. This is not my primary driver. There will be another beta before I leave for Canary’s Island in late July, in case Beta 3 is a disaster. I should be good to go with a more stable release and experience overall. Decisions decisions decisions.

Using Day One for Travel Journaling

When I decided to use Day One for my travel journal, I had the following requirements:

• Data portability is paramount (markdown, text, or textbundle);
• It must work offline;
• Integration into my existing workflow to share travel moments on Micro.blog;
• Easy data entry with as much metadata automatically filled out for me as possible;
• Look at my current toolset before using something entirely new.

I tried Craft last year, and it wasn’t up to the task. Apple Notes was a candidate, but it was dropped since notes’ metadata is nonexistent. Day One met all requirements. I’ve been using Day One for more than five years. It worked wonderfully for my last trip. Sometimes, the solution is right in front of our eyes.

I’m curious about Pixelfed. I’m also cautious about joining another service (I already have too many). I see two issues. One: the lack of an iPhone app (still in beta, no TestFlight slot available). Two: I’m curious as to why Micro.blog doesn’t support cross-posting to Pixelfed. @manton ? Also, who’s on Pixelfed here?

A New Start: Pixelfed

It didn’t take long. I’m now on Pixelfed (profile page). The reason it was a quick decision: I found a very specific use case for it. Since returning from my trip to Morocco, I have been looking for a way to share my best pictures with my family and friends. I prefer not to use Instagram / Facebook / Glass for different reasons. So here I am. Enjoy.

Fediverse is so fascinating and so much interesting. I searched for my handle (@numericcitizen) on the Pixelfed main page and found my account here (marked as “Remote”), on my Mastodon instance and on Pixelfed, too (obviously)! So cool.

Apple is now on Threads? Really? It didn’t take long. There is something profoundly ironic to see a company like Apple promoting privacy now subscribing to Thread. Apple is not on Mastodon, though. Why? Because it’s not a platform, Threads is. Apple is a platform company.

I spent quite some time on Pixelfed today. I shared a few photos but also started writing an article about my experience with the service. So far, I do like the experience. Much more than I originally thought. Is it because of its polished design? Or is it because of its openness and its citizenship of the Fediverse landscape? I still don’t know. I do sense a few red flags here and there, though. More on that later. But for now, I enjoy the beginning of the ride.

These are my first downloads and purchases from the App Store in July 2008. Since the iPhone 3GS came to Canada the year after, those downloads were done on the iPod touch. For many people, the iTunes Remote was the first download. I have a hard time explaining the remaining ones. I mean, I never was a reader of the New York Times after having completed my university degree back in 1993 and yet, this is the second download.

My experience with Pixelfed goes so well that I’m in the process of migrating my old photos from Instagram. And what comes after this migration? The IG account closure. While everyone goes wild about Threads and going in drove to Threads, I’m turning my back to this privacy nightmare and fully embracing Fediverse.

The next time someone tells me that Mastodon is complicated, I’ll respond: try Discord. You ain’t see nothing yet.

That is going away soon. #Instagram

After reading this article from Filipe Esposito from 9to5Mac, about the iPhone 14 Pro Max, I’m happy to have skipped last year’s iPhone release. He complains about the shortened battery life compared to the previous generation and the lack of meaningful camera improvements. Those two things could significantly change in the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max (Ultra?). I can’t wait.

Don’t be surprised by my relentless posting of photos… I’m playing with my new toy: Pixelfed. Who’s on Pixelfed, here, btw?

A year from now, my photo-sharing digital landscape will look like this: Pixelfed + Glass + Unsplash + Exposure. Gone will be Instagram, Smugmug.

Tornado warning. We mostly never get those in our region. WTF?

Wow, we are just in the last moments of a “three-wave” storm with heavy rain, winds and lighting. I guess we got between 50mm - 100mm of rain in three hours. Power failures all around are reported. One might say: well, it’s summer; it is expected. Yeah, but when you look at the trend this summer, we got way too much rain, too fast compared to the average rainfall.

YouTube put this video suggestion in my feed this morning. I was curious and watched it. Then, I realized that without knowing it, I’m actually using the PARA approach in Craft. Now I’m wondering if I should rearrange and rename a few things in there to better align with the PARA naming convention. 🤔
{{< youtube “T6Mfl1OywM8” >}}

My First (And Unexpected) FaceTime Moment on My Apple TV!

I just had my first experience with FaceTime with one of my sons on my Apple TV. My son called me on FaceTime. I picked up the call. A few seconds later into the conversation, my iPhone suggested putting the call on my Apple TV. I really didn’t expect that. The iPhone instructed me what to do with my iPhone so it could catch me on camera. It was such an “Apple” moment! Flawless. Barely no lags. 🤯

My iPhone runs iOS 17 beta 3, and the Apple TV tvOS 17.0 beta 3.

A 60-minute Video Tour of Pixelfed

I’m finally ready to share my 60-minute video tour of Pixelfed. If you’re contemplating the idea of creating your account on Pixelfed, I encourage you to do so, but after watching this video. You’ll learn about Pixelfed’s capabilities. It’s not a comparison analysis with services like Flickr or Smugmug, though.
{{< youtube “NXn7MYFxbGU” >}}

This screenshot is from Patreon about my profile page there. You can share a page on social networks when creating a page there. It’s a common thing to do, right? I’m wondering when Facebook and Twitter will stop to be the only two options for sharing stuff on the web. Pinterest is nice but what about the open web like Mastodon? Or Bluesky…?

My week-end so far

Exploring Pixelfed✅. Producing a 60-minute video about Pixelfed✅. Writing an article about Pixelfed✅. Learning about Tinylytics✅. Learning about templates in Micro.blog and custom themes✅. Adding Tinylytics to my blog✅. Subscribing to Tinylytics. ✅

Next up: going to see the latest Mission Impossible.

It’s funny how much effort I put into writing a small description for each image shared on Pixelfed. I did not do this while on Flickr, 500px and Smugmug. I’m even writing an ALT description. It’s great for reading in an RSS reader. Your thoughts?

The Apple Vision (Bible | Knowledge Base | Hub)?

I’m thinking of building a central web portal gathering information and everything related to the Apple Vision (Pro). Think of this as something similar to a digital garden but targeted to a specific product line. I do maintain one about Apple rumors (the Apple Rumors Hub). I have a few possible names in mind:

The Apple Vision Bible /
The Apple Vision Knowledge Base /
The Apple Vision Hub /

The concept of an “information hub” seems popular. Which one sounds better? What other name suffix could I use?

Note: since it is clear that Apple will release a lower-end version of the headset, I won’t include the “Pro” moniker, hence Apple Vision xxx.

For those interested in what others are using in their workflow, I spent some time this early morning updating My Complete Content Creator Toolset. Added Plausible + Tinylytics, among other things.

Apparently, Russian officials are now banning iPhone because they believe there is an espionage ops using American tech. 🕺🏼

George Monastiriakos: The only way to save Russia is to dismantle it:

“To be clear: The Russian Federation is the third iteration of the Russian Empire. Spanning 11 time zones and comprising hundreds of ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and culturally distinct societies ruled by, from, and for the benefit of a small circle of kleptocrats primarily based in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, the Russian state has been unviable for centuries. Like empires of old, the only way to save Russia from itself is to dismantle it,“ writes George Monastiriakos, a fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security, in his recent op-ed.

Photo: Getty Images

Feeling Helpless About Climate

Due to Canada’s forest fires and easterly winds, bad air quality is returning to my town for the next few days. With all the bad climate-related news coming up from everywhere on Earth, trying to understand what is happening is essential, so we can better adapt our lifestyle. I like to read many things on a subject that I find interesting, but climate change topic is utterly depressing. The planet is clearly slowly burning. All indicators are going in the wrong direction. How can we not feel helpless? It’s hard to stay informed and keep faith in humanity. Prove me wrong.

Github Offers a Fascinating Look at Software Development

I learned to use GitHub for the repo of my Blot website last year (read more about my experience with Blot here). I didn’t want to use Dropbox. I’m no longer using Blot, but I’m still visiting Github occasionally to keep track of project development like Plausible, but more recently for Pixelfed and a few plugins for Micro.blog. Peeking at change logs, commit comments, files changed, etc. offers an intimate look at software development. It’s also a great way to learn something.

When I decided to subscribe to Exposure, it was because I wanted to write short stories using my photos. I did share six of them so far (see my profile page here). Now that I’m on Pixelfed, I find myself writing more with each shared image than I did on Exposure. 🤷🏻‍♂️

On Data Portability in the Modern Digital World

I recently read about the news that Evernote is currently downsizing its operations worldwide, especially in the US. It’s not the first troubling episode for Evernote. I remember when they “redesigned” their app, which created a massive pushback from the community.

I used Evernote in its early days and was appreciative of its capabilities. For some reason, I left for another solution. But for those who built massive data collections inside Evernote, now might be the time to think about going elsewhere. But there is a big gotcha: after searching for a way to export all the data, I discovered that it’s not that easy. And people are angry. This brings me to the data portability of modern software and services. Evernote’s ENEX export format was not a standard the last time I checked. A handful of apps can import ENEX files; Notion is one of them. HTML is also supported but is far from ideal. Options are limited and are seriously hindering the data portability of services like Evernote. Besides content, metadata is also critical (tags, dates, location, backlinks, etc.).

Is Notion suffering from the same potential issues? PDF, CSV, and HTML are the supported formats. 🤔

Notion Can Be Impressive

I’ve been working hard with Notion at work for a unique project. It’s a 14-database setup containing 18 database relationships, many calculations as well as a place for knowledge management. I think I’m pushing the boundaries of what Notion is all about. It’s still manageable, and Notion still is speedy. I’m really impressed by what this tool can help achieve. 🤩🤯

I’m a big fan of Inoreader. Make no mistake. But one quick comment. Consider the following screenshot where you can see the article-sharing option. You can see options like Blogger, Evernote, and Twitter. The first two options are dead horses. I mean, Blogger, really? Evernote is the next in line to die. The third is soon to be a dead horse, too. No other options are provided. I’m surprised that we don’t get to send an article by Fax, too.

I’m excited and upbeat about the upcoming weeks/months. I’ll have a bunch of images to process (from my trips to Morocco & Canary Islands). Plus the migration out of Smugmug to Pixelfed will keep me busy. Finally, the upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro Max(Ultra?) will be an occasion for a few photowalk sessions. All contribute to a more photography-intensive fall. 🏞️🏙️📷

I wrote that for myself. I always like comments! 😊

A new ad by Apple. I never share this but this one made me smile many times. Very entertaining too. Interesting how Apple highlights many features of its products in s single ad.
{{< yt “asKvPLmjxXY” >}}

Poof Vanmoof!

July 17, 2023: “VanMoof was declared bankrupt in the Netherlands on Monday by the Amsterdam District Court, following the company's pandemic-time boom”

Sept 1, 2021: ↓

Read: mastodon.social

Too bad for them. It was THE electric bike I was looking for since I heard about them. Sadly, they never expanded in North America. They don’t do business with partners. I always regarded Vanmoof as the Apple of the ebike.

On Clipboard Management & Subscription Model

I’m testing Paste, a clipboard manager software utility for Mac, iOS (link). I kind of like it. It has better management features than Unclutter, which also offers some clipboard management. I’m on a 14-day trial period, but 19 $CAN, a year for a utility without a one-time purchase option, is bugging me. Will see where it goes.

I'm Subscribing, Now What?

Now that I’m a subscriber of Tapbots’ Ivory client for Mastodon, what’s up with the updates? Is it because it’s summertime? Why do I feel that the development of new features and improvements has considerably slowed in recent weeks and months? After all, the roadmap is clear here.

Tweetbot followed the same trend. Not all developers or companies follow the same product releases, but regarding Tapbots, the trend is slowing and is a pattern. Now, look at Mastodon’s official client; there is an update nearly every two weeks or at least monthly. Ok, there are more than 40 contributors to the open source project of r the iOS app while Tapbots is a three-person company.

I’m ok with subscriptions, but just like the subscription itself, the commitment from the developer has to keep up. The subscription model is everywhere and is here to stay. The software and services landscape has changed forever. Expectations from customers like me are changing too. It’s too easy to grab my money regularly without showing up in the App Store “Updates” tab.

I’m watching you, Tapbots. Don’t deceive me again.

Yeah, Tweetbot was a great app, just like Ivory is, but it lacked some love in the last few years before its demise.

Ranting off. Sorry.

On Articles Size & Twitter

Tweets on Twitter use to be 140 characters max. Later it was increased to 280 characters. Now, apparently, you can post a note with a maximum of 2500 characters.

Now, looking at MacRumors or similar sites, it seems we get shorter and shorter articles, almost the size of a note on Twitter. Isn’t it strange?

People are busy and their attention span has shrunk considerably. Twitter once was very popular and others tried to adjust to its modus operandi. The web is adjusting in unexpected ways.

One of the reasons I’m leaving Smugmug is the fact that most of their improvements in the last year are geared toward selling your images. I’m not into this business. I tried selling some of my images on Stock a few years back and made a few dollars. I do have some images for sale on Adobe Stock. The revenue I get for selling an image is RIDICULOUS! I’ve sold 12 images, generating more than… 17$ in revenue. Who’s buying images these days? There is so much free content available (looking at you, Unsplash! 👀). Why bother?

A new camera app for the iPhone. Photon. 📸 By the makers of Camera+. I’m currently subscribing to Halide since my last trip in late June. I will skip that one, but Photon feels simpler to use yet more powerful. And I like the name.

Right from Glass’s highlights website:

We’re wrapping up the final touches on our AI-powered Search beta that we’ll be releasing soon to Early Access. Early Access is an included perk for a new level of Glass membership that we’re announcing soon. Once we’ve tested it thoroughly over the coming months, it’ll be released to everyone. Source: New Member Search in Beta — Glass

In other words, Glass will add another subscription level where you’ll get pre-release features for testing. Subscriptions are not enough. Now we must pay to be beta testers. Great. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I was six years old. In my early days with computers, I was exposed to some of that stuff: fast line printers, disk packs, and punch card readers.
{{< youtube “HMYiktO0D64” >}}

The Beginning of My Journey to Midjourney

“A man sitting in front of a retro computer doing some important work”. 👀

This is my first ever prompt sent to Midjourney. I think this image is an excellent representation of my current state. A guy experimenting with Midjourney in front of my computer. I’m blown away. What a great time to be alive! Discord, as a client of this back-end service, is fascinating. 🤯

I subscribed for one month to the basic plan. I’m not sure how I’ll use the service. One example could be to create illustrations for my blog posts on Numeric Citizen Space. Another use case would be for illustration purposes for my work. I’ll see and continue experimenting. I’ll report back here my discoveries and impressions.

This 👇🏻

The most prolific thinkers aren’t thinking with external brains.
If you’re a photographer, take more pictures.
If you’re a writer, produce more text.
The tools will work themselves out. Source: RIP: The External 🧠

I don’t really like the idea of a “second brain”. My brain, the only one that I got, already requires all my energy. Why bother creating another “brain”?

(…) the best way to improve your photography is to focus on your ideas, not your technique or gear Source: About — CJ Chilvers

I couldn’t agree more. To everyone who came up to me and asked what camera they should buy to start their photography journey, my answer always has been this one: Don’t focus on the camera model and let’s start discussing possible photo subjects.

Speak up. When something doesn't work. When someone is being hurt. When you don't agree. Speak up. Someone has to. It's a burden to see more, it's a duty and a privilege. So take care and speak up. You would be surprised how many people think the same and are equally afraid to speak up. Someone has to be the first.

It’s not always easy to speak up, even more, if you’re the first. Good for you if other voices join yours. But if not, that’s ok too, even though some people might not like what you are saying.

I’m forcing myself to a Midjourney session daily to learn more about this fascinating service. I could spend all day on this thing. What a stimulating environment for a new kind of creative work. A few years from now, we could get an instant response to any requests. There is so much untapped UI addition that could be added to improve the UX, though. One such example would be to have in a palette all styles that can be asked in a prompt, just like filter examples in the Camera app.

With the future demise of Vanmoof, I decided to look elsewhere for my ebike. I found it. And bought it. My first new bike in more than thirty years. It’s probably my last one, too. Today, a perfect bike day in Montreal, I ran for more than 28 km for my first test drive. 🚲🚴🏻‍♂️😎😅😊

Paying $44 billion to literally break a popular website, strip it of any recognizable brand, and drive all the users away. Remarkable.

What else to add? And do all that in less than a year? 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

My analysis of Craft‘s latest announcements for the summer. They think they are announcing a roadmap. They don’t. No words about eXtensions. No words for better automation support via Shortcuts. You must look at what isn’t announced to get a real view of what they did.

Introducing Patron! https://glass.photo/highlights/introducing-patron

Reader: mastodon.world

I decided to support Glass as a patron because I think these alternatives are important. They help create some sort of equilibrium. It’s the same reason I’m investing my time migrating 95% of my photos into Pixelfed. I believe in the open web and in honest alternatives like Glass. More than ever we need them.

Pixelfed is way more interactive and busier than Glass. My feeling is that the federative nature of Pixelfed helps be discovered. This is something Glass developers should consider if they want to expand their reach, IMHO.

I’m super excited about this upcoming trip to the Canary Islands. First time over there, for nine days. The weather is expected to be “perfect”. Once again, I’ll use Day One to document my trip, as needed. I’ll take a bunch of photos too! I’ve been West Africa a month ago, in Morocco. The islands are close! But I couldn’t combine those two trips, unfortunately.

Seems a good time to fly! 😀

If you take more than two flights per year, Flighty becomes a must-have, IMO. What a great app. So many things could be said about it. Not cheap, though. Quality and craftsmanship have a price.

Woah. Bad weather northern US causes inbound flight postponed. We won’t make it to the next flight. Rebooked everything. Going to London instead of Newark. Then to Tenerife. All good now. 😅

Oh nice, we missed our connection flight to Tenerife🫤. We will have to spend the night in London. At the hotel. 😕

Killing some time while waiting for diner time by processing and posting my photos on Pixelfed. Too bad they don’t seem to show up in my timeline here on Micrp.blog. Doing all this from my aging 2018 iPad Pro. That’s my traveling device, leaving the MacBook Air behind. Speaking of which, I ordered my 15-inch MBA yesterday and it should be ready just in time when I’m back home! 😎

My next MacBook Air will have 16 GB of RAM (up from 8 GB), 1 TB of storage (of from 512 GB), all this in a 15 inch configuration. I decided to give my previous 2020 M1 MacBook Air to Apple for a 580 CAN$ credit, plus the 200$ credit for the “back to school” promotion. And… 1500 CAN$ of Apple Store credit, thanks to my job bonuses! This could be the cheapest upgrade ever!

Thoughts on Micro.blog Tags

I’ve been playing with Micro.blog’s new bookmark tags. At first, I thought the feature was underwhelming. I don’t think there is a way to add more than one tag to a bookmark. This might be a good thing after all. Still undecided on this. Then, I discovered how you can select a tag to display associated bookmarks. Hoping for the iOS app to receive an update soon. I updated a few dozen bookmarks to add a tag. I’ll see if it makes a difference. My bookmarks are not that many and many are deleted after a while.

Update #1: someone pointed me that we can have more than one tag, simply by adding commas.
Update #2: I can see Micro.blog bookmarks as a complement to Anybox, but focused on content originating from people I follow on Micro.blog / Mastodon. I don’t see that replacing Anybox anytime soon.

In a few days, on August first to be exact, the next edition of my blog posts summary newsletter will be sent out to all my subscribers (millions of them…. not really, just a few people). Maybe it’s the right time for you to subscribe too, especially if you are a new follower of mine, so you get a better view of what I’m up to! Link below.👇 You’re welcome. 🙏🏻

I started testing Safari’s Profiles feature that comes with iOS 17. And judging from my initial experience, just like Focus modes, it takes a lot of management and understanding to make it work to my liking. I’ll make it work, but not today.

On The Refinement Game in Tech

I won’t bother linking to the original piece, linking to Math Birchler’s link post instead will be enough. Is the iPhone refined enough? It depends on how you define « refinement ». To me, the iPhone isn’t refined enough in a way that new tech can help make the iPhone even better. If this year’s rumors are true, this is exactly what will happen (faster processor, more power efficient, etc.). Craftmanship also is a big part of the refinement story (softer edges, etc.). I can’t wait for iPhone 15 Pro, coming from the 13 Pro, I’ll certainly enjoy all the refinements, big and small.

Oh and apparently, unlike Apple, other companies don’t bother keeping the refinement game going. Well, this is exactly why I love Apple, they care to refine and try to improve things, year after year.

Numeric Citizen Blog

Getting ready for WWDC keynote. This WWDC23 button on my Stream Deck mini triggers a screenshot of my Mac screen using Cleanshot X. Each file will be saved automatically and later processed by Hazel rules and moved to my Synology Photos library for future reference and use. 😎

My morning so far. Just finished and shared my thoughts on iA Presenter. Got myself ready to watch the WWDC 23 keynote using this handy shortcut. I tried to set up a mail address for numericcitizen.me (something like hello@numericcitizen.me) using iCloud+ Mail custom domain feature. Sadly, I won’t be able to do so as my numericcitizen.me root domain needs to be aliasing Ghost hosting website for my blog to work. This is conflicting with iCloud+ Mail custom domain requirements. Oh well, nobody use emails these days, right, right? Any suggestion on this if you are reading this? Finally, updated my Ubiquity DreamMachine to the latest release of UniFi OS.

And just like that, I discovered that my original Mastodon account is enabled and active. I didn’t know my account was finally made active after I submitted my request in Dec, 2019. Now I’m up to three Mastodon addresses. I wonder if I could drop my account at techhub.social and switch to the official Mastodon instance? And how should I do that, actually?🤔

What would you do?

From the release notes of the May 30th version of Hazel:

Added missing arm64 support for certain auxiliary binaries. Not having these meant that certain specialized functions were being run using Rosetta on Apple Silicon Macs.

That is something so important on an 8GB MacBook Air like mine. The less memory consumed by system services like Rosetta, the better. And I applaud the developer for mentioning it in the release notes.

365 Days Later

A year ago, I shared my first YouTube video on my YouTube channel. My initial goal was to share videos about using Craft, but later came videos about using Micro.blog. Here are some notable facts:

• 52 videos about Craft were produced;
• 5 videos about Micro.blog were produced;
• All videos totalling more than 13.5 hours of watch time;
• My YouTube channel has 813 subscribers as of now;
• Two subscribers gave me money as a sign of appreciation.

I feel I’m now on par with all the things I wanted to talk about regarding Craft. Future Craft videos will touch on new features and tweaked workflow. I still have much work to do for Micro.blog video series, though.

At the initial pace of new subscribers, I set the goal of hitting a thousand subscribers in the first year, but I’m sad to report that I won’t make it. The pace of new subscribers has slowed quite a bit.

This video production journey is full of learning and lessons. Over time, I settled on a production style I’m happy with. I finally found a way to get better sound quality. I recently added iA Presenter to get cue cards showing on my screen while recording (read “iA Presenter — A Different & Clever Take at Presentation Software”). My workflow is stable now and is supported by this Craft template (you can download and use it if you are a Craft user, BTW). Finally, I started using Play.app to gather all my video links in one place. This provides a quick way to refer to past videos whenever needed.

I also produced videos about other apps like Capacities, Inoreader and Anybox. Some of these videos take the form of a 60 minutes session with the app as a first-time user. It’s fun as there is no script supporting those experiences.

Today, I will record a video about the WWDC 23 conference. The video will complement my recently published article on the same subject. It will be my first foray into tech news and commentary. I’m not planning to do many of these, but WWDC is significant and needs some of my production time attention.

Getting ready for my trip to north west Africa. Halide FTW!

Reflecting on My Photo Processing Strategy

For my next trip, I will bring my Nikon D750 and my iPhone 13 Pro (of course!), and my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro. How am I going to process my images? Will I continue using Lightroom for images from my Nikon? I usually use the iPad to import my photos into the Lightroom catalogue. What about pictures on my iPhone, which should be mostly in RAW format and shot with Halide? I like Photomator a lot; it is nicer than Lr and more approachable too. However, using Photomator to process images from my Nikon poses a challenge in file management. I’ll need to import the .NEF files from my SD card into my iPad in an iCloud Drive folder so I can work on imported files from any device (iPad, MacBook Air or iPhone). I prefer using iCloud Photos Library instead of managing files manually. I guess this will be this combo: Photomator + Halide for my “shot on iPhone” images!

Just writing this blog post made things a little bit less fuzzy. I’ll take any suggestions!

Here’s a short “life at the office” story. Our VP of sales never stops bragging about how ChatGPT is cool and how it works for him for many use cases. I’m uncomfortable with his stance on ChatGPT & generative AI in general. I think about it each time he sends an email that was obviously created with ChatGPT.

Why is it a problem for me? Who am I to judge him and his “new way of working”? I think I have found the root cause.

First, it’s not the results of his work. It’s the work of something else. He takes something “as is” without adding any value, any personal opinion, or a personal twist. Second, the fundamental problem is that he works in IT but is not a tech guy. He is a salesperson. He’s the type of guy who surfs on buzzwords a lot. Using ChatGPT makes him circumvent his lack of confidence because of a lack of IT knowledge and culture. He probably feels better and more “into the game” like most of my other colleagues, who studied computer science before getting to work in IT.

How many more people lack my colleague do the same, for the same reason?

😱I just realized that for the first time in quite a while, I’ll be following WWDC news outside of Twitter. I’m unsure if I’ll go on Mastodon or Bluesky to read the room temperature. I’ll see. Maybe I’ll just make up my own mind, too, which is a good thing. 🤔💭

I don’t know if it is because I’m getting older, but I have more and more trouble and aversion with high-velocity feeds coming from platforms like Mastodon (when following tags like #WWDC during the dub dub week). I prefer the slowness of Micro.blog’s feed or a simple articles reading session.

Watch Out Reddit

🤨 Because of recent Reddit behaviors towards their API consumption models, seeing Apollo go, just like that, plus similarities of behavior with Twitter, I may drop my cross posting to Reddit as a first step of protests. Then, stop manual posting (in /r/craftdocs for example). Ultimately, closing my account could become a possibility. 🫤

RSS > Reddit. That is all.
Think twice before telling me that I’m wrong.
Spoiler alert: contribute to your own destiny instead of other corporations’ destiny.

I’m still slowly digesting Apple news of this week (think of a cow 🐄 in the field 🌿). About macOS Sonoma widgets 🖼️: it’s surprising that Apple is showing widgets to be perfectly aligned when they are dropped on the desktop background. According to some YouTuber’s early reviews, you can be messy with them and drop them wherever you want. People will get messy, for sure.

There is one thing that I’m really looking forward to on our trip to Morocco🇲🇦. For the first time ever, we will have a private guide for the whole trip. I’m usually the main driver when going on such a vacation. Now, I’ll be quietly sitting in the van and be free to take pictures while on the move. 📷

As much as I’m invested in Craft Docs, I’m not sure I’ll use it for my travel notes this time around. It’s not very good when working offline. Maybe Apple Notes? Why not Day One? 🤔 The latter could be a fun experiment, and it’s easy to export journal entries into Markdown for reuse elsewhere!

Still working from the coffee shop. 😅 While reading a technical document, I wish I could take notes and keep bookmarks about my readings. I discovered that, as well-thoughtful my personal creative workflow can be, I’m under-equipped for my work life🤦🏻‍♂️. OneNotes from Microsoft is great but so dull at the same time. This leaves me with Notion and Craft Docs. 🙄🤔 I really have to up my game at work; I’m way too lousy. I should use lessons learned from my blogger life.

📺 I always keep two Apple TVs: an Apple TV HD for the main bedroom that I gave to my brother-in-law, and an A12-based Apple TV 4K was my main ATV for the living room. Today, I bought the 2022 Apple TV 4K with Ethernet. The older one is now in the bedroom, and the new one is in the living room. Not what I call exciting upgrades. Had to redo all the apps setup. 😒 But it does feel faster in a more compact package.

In Photography, the iPhone Can Be a Killer

My nephew, a semi-pro photographer, recently sold 90% of his photography gear (Canon). He only kept one body and one 50mm lens. 😱 He upgraded his phone to the iPhone 14 Pro. 😏He couldn’t be happier, he told me. Even with the iPhone, he essentially kept his photo-processing workflow as-is (Adobe Lightroom). This makes me pause a bit. Sure, he spends much less time doing professional photography work, but still. I call this the iPhone-photography killer effect.

He got his first exposure (pun intended) to the art of photography with me when he was still a child, more than thirty years ago, when he accompanied me for a short photowalk. He demonstrated that he could be a photographer, even at this young age, just by his numerous questions and suggestions.

I’ll bring my small (but heavy) camera gear (Nikon) on my trip to Morocco and when I visit the Canary Islands later this summer. Will these trips be the last ones where I use the big one? 🤔 I know that I’m going to upgrade my iPhone 13 Pro to the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max later this fall. This could trigger a similar fate to my camera bag.

A day at the office. Today, I had a meeting with my client’s external IT resources. One of them had a strange name, hard to pronounce. While waiting for everyone to join the meeting, wanting to fill in the silence, I asked where he was from. He responded, “Russia.” I said, “Oh.” 😱 This was followed by a big silence while I could see in mack back my Tidbyt display showing a prominent Ukrainian flag. 🇺🇦👊🏻We moved on to the meeting’s first subject. 😏😂

A colleague of mine told me after the meeting that not all Russians are ok with this war in Ukraine. Yeah, right. I guess. This is not a valuable excuse in my book. Where are the diaspora demonstrations, in Canada? In the US?

Women in Iran have more courage to defend democratic values than those men in Russia to defend what is blatantly right from what is wrong. This is utterly frustrating.

Glory to Ukraine. 🇺🇦🇺🇦

Am I the only one who thinks that Adobe is slowly but surely morphine Lightroom Classic into Lightroom? From a distance, I sense that all the cool stuff appears in Lightroom first. The latest example: the capability of exporting a photo-processing session in a video file is available in Lightroom (iPad, iPhone only) but not in Lightroom Classic. 🤔

On 15-inch MacBook Air: Is It Too Big?

When the 15-inch MacBook Air 💻 was officially announced, I was excited and knew it would replace my M1 MacBook Air. Since then, I read many reviews and watched many unboxing videos. People seem to enjoy the new bigger MBA, and all is good, right? But, is it?

Nobody talks about the device’s size when you use it on your lap like I do with my MBA right now as I write this post. It’s an important factor to consider for such laptop category which the MBA is targeting. Are 15 inches too wide? Is it still comfortable? For some reason, I have a few doubts. This 15-inch MacBook Air is… big, but is it too big for me? 🤔

When I come back from vacation, a visit to the Apple Store will help me decide once and for all.

Are We Ready for This Dystopian World?

Warning: it’s not about the Apple Vision Pro headset, which many people think will bring a touch of a dystopian future to our life. Something else more serious will.

I read this week somewhere that, to get climate back into the normality zone🌪️ to ensure the sustainability of the human race and life in general, everyone on earth would need to live in an oppressive world where everything would be controlled by laws and government all the time and for decades. From buying food to cars to travelling to entertainment services, we would be under constant quotas, which would bring our quality of life much lower than we currently enjoy. In fact, developed countries’ quality of life would join the much lower quality of life of the vast majority of the earth’s population in less developed countries. This would be the only way to get around this climate crisis. Not convinced? The COVID pandemic brought massive and repetitive confinements that weren’t enough to bend many climate change indicators downwards. It lasted two years, more or less. 😱

Oh, and should we talk about forced birth control everywhere? Because we should, even if this is a taboo subject.

Are we ready for this dystopian world? 😷

I can see a great Vision Pro use case right here where people watch daylong movies about what used to be a much more enjoyable world in 3D. 😒

Day One creator Paul Wayne, on Apple’s foray into journaling app:

Rather than seeing this as competition, we embrace Apple’s entry into digital journaling as a testament to its growing importance. This evolution is not just beneficial for Day One, but also for our valued users. Source: Apple’s Journal App and Day One’s Evolution

I applaud the positive attitude here. There is one thing that is missing from Day One: the capability to share a journal entry as a web page.

I’m really looking forward for this trip...

Date:	June 16, 2023 at 8:05:30 PM EDT Weather:	20°C Rain Location:	Aéroport International de Montréal-Trudeau, Dorval, QC, Canada 

From a photography experience perspective… My backpack 🎒 is so heavy with this camera and “only” two lenses. My hope is to use my big camera as much as my iPhone, so that I don’t think that I brought this with me for nothing. 😜

Leaving Rabat

Date:	June 18, 2023 at 7:28:55 AM GMT+1 Weather:	22°C Mostly Cloudy Location:	Rue Jamaa Mourino, Rabat, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Morocco 

Great city. Many photo opportunities. Like this wall and door. Unprocessed image.

Using Day One to document my trip in Morocco is so refreshing🥰. This app is so well designed and executed. Strangely enough, I rarely use Day One other than for peeking at past memories of my publications (automatically added through IFTTT automation with RSS feeds). I rarely add to my personal journal. That might change from now on.

When staying at a five star hotel equipped with a slow internet, you want to… 😡 sync your stuff, share photos but it takes like fovever.. 🤬 well, never mind. I shouldn’t complain. 🤦🏻‍♂️ But don’t expect any photos soon. Sorry. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Long Day Spent Visiting The Big Medina of Fez

Date:	June 21, 2023 at 5:54:55 PM GMT+1 Weather:	29°C Mostly Clear Location:	Derb Salaj, Fes, Fès-Meknès, Morocco 

What a strange, busy, surprising place. Strangely, I didn’t take as many pictures as I could. I guess I was too busy looking around me, up, down, everywhere. 🤯

Visiting this Medina was like reliving the past, like going back in 800. Our guide told us that not that many things has changed since the early years. But man, everything is so coupled with the Islamic religion. I’m not used to that.

The Medina is a city in a city. You’ll find everything from food, clothes, and fake Apple gear (a lot). Oh, and, the young generation of sellers are all tied to their smartphone, all the time. I’m not sure this helps do good business. 🤔

Oh and boy we eat too much in Morocco.

Thought of the moment: to those who think that AI will cause human extinction, we must fight against it, is the wrong way to tackle the debate. It is borderline demagoguery.

I’m trying out “Weather on the way” (App Store link) for today’s road. Interesting take on weather forecasts. Carrot Weather should add this feature! We’re leaving Marrakesh one day earlier because of 🥵🥵🥵

Numeric Citizen Blog

From Weekly to Monthly Digest

Following the announcement of the tweaked Micro.blog newsletter functionality, I’m switching to a monthly digest instead with a specific category as the sole source for its content. Three reasons for this change: first, the digest will become a more intentional set of creative gestures instead of being the result of a weekly and automatic content spit out without any distinction. Second, monthly means less noisy than weekly. Third, less is more. Let’s try that. 🙂

Eventually I’ll have to make a few decisions … 🤔🤦🏻‍♂️

Follow up to my previous post.
I’ll probably keep Ivory and buy the bundle subscription: one app, for all Apple platforms. Also, It’s a way to show support for their journey out of Twitter. I’ll scrap Ice Cubes and Mammoth.
Micro.blog, Ivory, Bluesky it will be. 😊 For now. 🫢

For the first time in a long time, I’m satisfied with my online publishing setup. I don’t see changes in the future. This is relieving. This mean I can focus a writing projects. The only moving part around Mastodon/Bluesky clients. Nothing to call my (late) mother.

As a fan of meteorology, I was fascinated today by this visible satellite imagery sequence of east North America. We can observe clouds at different levels in the atmosphere for the same geo area that travel in different directions. Just look at the cursor for where to observe the phenomena. This is not exceptional, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

I’m fascinated by the lack of visual updates to Gruber’s Daring Fireball website. I mean, he has been using the same design like forever! And then I look at Micro.blog users here constantly trying themes or even building their own and tweaking it often. I’m not particularly fond of his design choices but hey, who am I to judge! Content wins over form?

Today’s thought: by accepting the idea that blogging is writing for myself, I would probably write more often.

I’ve been following Apple since 1982. At that time, Apple was selling the highly successful Apple ][+ line, the much less successful Apple ///. The Lisa was still a project. The Mac was not even on the drawing board. I find it cool to see the young generation of tech guys today who are fervent admirers of Apple. These people weren’t even born in 1982.

Targeting the First Thousand YouTube Subscribers

My goal when I started doing YouTube videos about Craft (and now Micro.blog) was to reach a thousand subscribers during the first year. At the current rate, I won’t make it. Am I sad about this? No. Is it nagging me? Yes. Why?

I think there are a lot of Craft users out there, and I think they could benefit from watching a few of my videos. That’s the whole purpose and “raison d’être” for my YouTube channel which was (and still is) to help users get better at using Craft or learning about Craft if they are not currently using it. Is my absence from Twitter to promote my content making any difference? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows.

I still have some time left before June 6th, but I’m being realistic here.

On Slowing Down AI To Stay in Control

I had a discussion about AI yesterday with my wife. She came back from a two-day conference in Toronto. One of the sessions was about the place of AI in society and how it is time to engage in promoting and organizing some AI regulations.

The more I read and learn about AI capabilities as exposed in tools like ChatGPT, the more I think we will eventually need some regulation. For example, one thing we discussed (and on which we couldn’t agree) is the introduction of a delay in AI training. What I’d like to see is that AI companies are imposed a 2 or 3 years delay for their model training. And why would this be necessary? How would it change the game?

Remember that current training is lagging simply because we lack the processing power to digest all the digital information produced daily. But, eventually, it will come, just like Google replaced Yahoo when index content was initially entered manually by a group of people and then by a community. Sooner or later, ChatGPT or similar tools will digest the web in near real-time. And this is where this is going to be even more scary and could really get out of control.

Imposing delay on models training would help public knowledge and content to settle down and let consensus emerge in any research field, for example. Short-term noise would be reduced. In my opinion, it would be more challenging for ChatGPT to be infected by bad actors who will eventually try to influence results with toxic data.

My wife and I couldn’t agree on the effectiveness of this simple measure. She thinks that it would make ChatGPT useless or less relevant. My take goes the opposite side where, like in real life, things like encyclopedias are still helpful even though they were written and got frozen as soon as they were printed. So there is a need for them, like there is a need for more dynamic knowledge content like Wikipedia.

More than ever, we need to define what makes us unique, how we protect how uniqueness and consider slowing things down a bit, so we can have more time to understand what is going on and where things could go if we let things go without proper framing.

Now there are 42 members (Micro.bloggers) on Wavelength! Keep joining if you want! Invite link.

On AI & Content Creators — So many Questions — So Few Answers

Should I care if my content is used to train AI models? How is it different than someone who uses part of my content in a citation to write a linkpost, for example? Is it ok for a portion of my content to be used elsewhere as opposed to the full content? Should I be able to opt out of any AI training, just like we can opt out of search engines when posting content online?

One of the best activity-tracking apps focused on steps tracking is StepsApp. I always find something new each time I use it. It is such a well-crafted piece of software. A vast array of widgets come with the app too. I paid for it. That being said, I’m not proud of my activity trend for the last two years. 😒

My Morning So Far

What an intense morning.

I learned about the existence of iTelescope, thanks to this blog post from Christopher Curtis, a service where you can rent astronomical observation time from the comfort of your home.

I read about the Eternal Recurrence, thanks to a post from Gr36. I would be ok with the idea of reliving my life as is. Over and over again.

Thanks to this superb article about Fediverse from Glenn Fleishman for Tidbits, I learned that we could follow anyone on Mastodon using an RSS feed, which we could do with Twitter. I’ll be able to re-add accounts to Inoreader to get news in one place, just as I was doing when I was on Twitter. Cool.

All this because I was searching for ideas to write a few linkposts. I wrote none except this post, but I learned quite a lot. I updated my Digital Garden accordingly.

As reported by Om Malik, automation is the next evolution step for fast food chains. Should I care?

Am I missing anything? I think so, and this is where Rewind could help me a lot.

What about your morning?

I never share my food over here but god this was delicious: aspergus, lobster for a risotto! Nothing left on the table. Sorry.

YouTube reminds me every day why I hate algorithmic timelines. Suppose I open up YouTube and click on one video about long-range airplanes. The minute I’m done watching the video, my timeline becomes full of airplane-related videos. YouTube completely washes out my timeline with what the algorithm was programmed to show me based on my consumption behaviours (and probably based on some other weird and highly questionable factors). I hate it. One video and boom, my YouTube universe flips elsewhere. Disclaimer: I’m a paying subscriber so I never see an ad. This behaviour is infuriating.

Where I’ve Been

To follow the trend started with Manton from Micro.blog, here’s my list of countries I visited.

• 🇺🇸 United States
• 🇲🇽 Mexico
• 🇨🇺 Cuba
• 🇩🇴 Republic Dominica
• 🇯🇲 Jamaica
• 🇦🇷 Argentina
• 🇧🇷 Brazil
• 🇺🇾 Uruguay
• 🇫🇷 France
• 🇪🇸 Spain
• 🇵🇹 Portugal
• 🇦🇹 Austria
• 🇨🇿 Czechia
• 🇳🇱 Netherland
• 🇬🇧 England
• 🇮🇸 Iceland
• 🇦🇪 UAE
• 🇮🇹 Italy
• 🇧🇪 Belgium
• 🇸🇪 Sweden
• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇨🇭 Switzerland
• 🇬🇷 Greece
• soon 🇲🇦 Morocco

Mentally, my creative hobbies take as much energy as my daytime work. I find it surprising how easily I can go from one world to another and back so easily.

On Reddit API Access Pricing

So, apparently, just like Twitter, Reddit is entering into a “kill-third-party-apps” by charging an enormous amount of money to use their APIs. It looks like it. Apollo isn’t happy, and for good reasons. Unless there was a calculation error from the makers of Apollo, it just makes no sense for them to continue. Maybe Reddit made some calculation errors, too. Perhaps they fail to read the room’s temperature. But maybe they are entitled, to some degree, I guess, to charge for their APIs, right?

I’m tempted to make a parallel with Apple’s dreaded 15%-30% App Store commission. Is Apple’s stance on its App Store different from Reddit’s stance on its APIs? Is charging a commission to be on the App Store and take advantage of all Apple’s technology to get a chance to be distributed on hundreds of millions of iPhones similar to consuming a platform APIs? If not, what is different, actually? Is free API usage a dead end in today’s world? There are whole business models built around APIs these days. API speaks intellectual property in my book. Only companies with business models supported by massive ad distribution or expansive paid subscriptions can think of thriving by giving away their API access. It will be interesting to see how Reddit is reacting to third-party developers’ pushback.

Oh, and if they actually kill the third-party Reddit client ecosystem, unlike Twitter, Reddit platform alternatives are not obvious to me.

I guess it’s time to remember: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Thanks to some people on my timeline (they recognize themselves, I’m sure 🙂), I’m giving a shot at FeedPress. The idea behind this experiment: have a way to consolidate all my RSS feeds into one tied to my custom domain. Let’s see what happens with that. Feel free to subscribe to the feed here: https://feeds.numericcitizen.me. You’ll get Long Posts, Blog Posts, Photos and Videos.
2023-05-14

In my last two YouTube videos, I decided to stop using cross-fade between segments. It’s a bit visually harsh (I’m not getting used to that), but it seems like the general trend among YouTubers these days. Plus, when using bookmarks, thumbnails get a better preview.
2023-05-14

I wanted to publish my long post about Inoreader this weekend so much, but it’s not ready yet. Tomorrow it’s probably the day. Being patient and knowing when something is not ready is a virtue of the writer.
2023-05-15

For the first time in a long time, I’m starting to think I’m finally catching up to 90% of the things I wanted to write and share. It’s a good sentiment to have a month before a two-week summer vacation. I know it’s a bit of a cryptic post.
2023-05-15

My full review of Inoreader is finally out, with exclusive content for those who subscribe (free) to my website. I hope you find it useful.
Empowering My Reading Workflow With Inoreader.
2023-05-15

Thought: Read-later services or applications are a consequence of too much content availability and a lack of time for consuming that content.
2023-05-15

My creative goals are all met, and it’s Monday. 😅 Maybe I wasn’t aiming high enough? 🤔
2023-05-15

Played with FeedPress this evening. The one thing that I like about it is the ability to merge many of my feeds into one and put it behind a custom domain. But at 10$ a month, it freaking expansive. Oh and I get analytics…. And yet…
2023-05-16

The next little challenge related to FeedPress will be deciding if I want to share individual feeds also or only the merged one. What if someone is only interested in my photos or videos?
2023-05-16

I finally completed and shared the last part of my story “Moving out of WordPress”, this time, it’s the DNS side of the story, where I explain the process of moving out of GoDaddy to CloudFlare so that I can keep using my root domain numericcitizen.me. Go on my Numeric Citizen I/O website for all the details if you’re curious.
2023-05-16

I really can’t wait to see this movie about Apple’s Lisa computer. My journey with computers started with the Apple ][+, then came the //e, the Mac. But I do remember the Lisa… on paper, and I never had a chance to touch one.
2023-05-16

Thought: read-later services should be called read-never because, for me, most of the time, I rarely come back to read my saved articles.
2023-05-16

Two Thoughts On Apple’s New Upcoming Accessibility Features

Today, Apple announced upcoming features for people with critical disabilities. Here are some thoughts.

First, Personal Voice is incredible! I can’t wait to try this out. I always feared being diagnosed with ALS, but I can see this new accessibility feature, coupled with Live Speech real game changer for people with ALS.

Second, looking at some user interface samples, especially the iPhone with iMessage (see below), we can see the return of shadows, depth, and better contrast, compared to what we have now. So my question is: why not have these UI traits everywhere instead?

2023-05-16

I wish I had something interesting to share so I could be part of Micro Camp someday. Maybe next year? This is something I wanted to do last year, and yet… I won’t be able to listen live either… I cannot take off from work on Friday, so it leaves only Saturday, but I’ll be on the move that day too. Oh well.
2023-05-16

Important Housekeeping Announcement

If you consume my work through RSS, read carefully. I’ll be transitioning to FeedPress to act as the entry point for all my RSS feed publication needs. Consider updating your RSS client to use this new “superfeed”. Anything coming from long articles (Ghost), blog posts like this one (Micro.blog), photos (Glass) & videos (YouTube) will appear on this feed. I call this rather convenient, don’t you think? I’ll share the individual feeds soon if you prefer to be selective when consuming content. What will happen to the native/original feeds? They won’t go away, but in the future, If I decide to move to another publishing platform, you’ll probably be impacted if you are not making the change now. That’s the main reason why I’m moving to FeedPress.

Returning to normal programming. 🙂
2023-05-16

On Photomator 😍

Currently using Photomator for a small project. I love this piece of software. I bought it for 99CAN$ for a lifetime purchase. I prefer Photomator design in general when editing a photo. It’s more approachable to me. Editing with masks is super easy to use, and it creates great results. The Mac version was the one last piece of the puzzle missing. Now we get the full picture (pun intended).

It makes me wonder if I will ever get out of the Adobe subscription trap. The one missing piece from Photomator is the library management. I cannot rely on iCloud Photos Library for this.

This wasn’t a review, obviously. Just a glimpse of my enthusiasm for this great Mac app.

2023-05-17

I’ve got one Bluesky invite available. Just saying. 🙂
2023-05-17

The case for Ethernet on Macs: Here’s how much speed you lose with WiFi Source: Ethernet vs WiFi: How much speed is lost? - 9to5Mac

At home, in my office room, my Macs are wired through 1GB Ethernet. It’s been only recently that I cabled my office so that Macs get a direct connection to my router. No more Wifi. I never look back.
2023-05-17

Pocket’s new features make it even easier to discover and organize content | The Mozilla Blog:

Pocket is rolling out a new mobile and web experience so you can easily find the stories and topics you care about

and

Moving forward, Pocket on iOS will be updated every two weeks. In the next few months, we’ll be bringing back the ability to create and view highlights on your saved articles, improving the quality of the articles that we recommend to you, and bringing additional functionality to our Listen feature, through which you can listen to your saved articles.

Is Pocket being “rebooted”? I recently closed my Pocket account because I didn’t use it much. This renewed interest in its platform by its owner won’t make a difference. Inoreader + Anybox are meeting my needs.
2023-05-18

On Android Switchers Coming in Drove to the iPhone

Report reveals Android users switching to iPhone at 5-year high

15% of new iPhone owners report having an Android device as their last smartphone. That’s a 4% increase from what CIRP saw last year, and 5% higher than the data seen in 2020 and 2021.

The last time new Android switchers made up 15% of new iPhone buyers – according to CIRP – was back in 2018. The highest rate of switchers in the last nine years was 21% back in 2016.

The market is full of previously-owned iPhones for sale. You can find used iPhones from 2 to 3 years ago at reasonable prices these days. People who were using an Android phone probably can now afford to buy an iPhone much cheaper than a brand-new one. Moreover, according to this chart, iPhones from the last few years can still run the latest releases of iOS with most of the features available. It’s very tempting for switchers. This is how I would explain this phenomenon. The study covers the US market. The dynamics might be different in other parts of the world.

One question: what percentage of iPhone owners who buy a new iPhone are returning their iPhone to Apple to get a credit instead of selling their iPhone themselves?
2023-05-18

Apple’s Headset — Alarming or Not?

A recent report on Apple’s upcoming headset:

Key figures including software chief Craig Federighi have also kept their distance from the headset during its development and have seemed wary of it. Apple’s senior vice president for hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, is believed to privately be a skeptic of the device, comparing it to a science project. He has warned that designing the high-performance chips that the headset requires could distract from new iPhone chips that drive more revenue. Source: Report: Apple Executives Cautious of Mixed-Reality Headset Amid Compromises - MacRumors

Everything will be fine, right? If Mr. Srouji is skeptical because the current product is too far from the original vision, I wouldn’t call this alarming. But overall, the signals coming out of these reports aren’t encouraging either. Is Apple headed in a bad direction?
2023-05-18

We used to be excited about new iOS releases, weren’t we? Even for small bug fixes releases like iOS 16.5 today, we would be drooling about any small improvements or additions to what constitutes the logic that brings the iPhone experience to life! The excitement over the slow progress bar on a black screen he behind us.
2023-05-19

Started testing Omnivore. 🫢
2023-05-19

Here’s a project (another 🤦🏻‍♂️😵‍💫) that I’d like to work on. I’m curious about the impacts of AI tools in our lives. In fact, I’m more fascinated by their impacts and the debates they generate than the power of the tools themselves. I’d like to spend time learning about these tools, document myself about them and forge my own take on them and their potential impacts on our lives. I’d like to work on it at the university-level research (not post-graduate, but bachelor degree-level would be a good challenge).
2023-05-19

Being full of projects is being alive ™
2023-05-19

On Apple Stores Evolution

After 22 Years, Apple’s Very First Retail Store Is Reopening Its Doors in a New Location Source: After 22 Years, Apple’s Very First Retail Store Is Reopening Its Doors in a New Location | Inc.com

I re-watched the video, where Steve Jobs is touring the very first Apple Store. It’s fascinating to see how things evolved over time. Software titles disappeared from shelves, thanks to the App Store. It’s no longer possible to put all Apple products on a single table. Macs, iPads, iPhones, watches, HomePod, and device cases took over the place and then more. Thankfully, the Genius bar is still there in many stores because, you know, people still have questions and broken devices to get fixed.
2023-05-20

Photomator is an alternative to Lightroom. Pixelmator Pro is an alternative to Photoshop. Source: The Difference Between Photomator and Pixelmator Pro

That’s probably the best way to understand the difference between Pixelmator Pro and Photomator. I’m a big fan of the latter. I plan to use Photomator exclusively to process my iPhone photos for my upcoming trip to Morroco.
2023-05-20

A Seemingly Mundane Visit to the Apple Store — Random Thoughts

It’s been quite a while since I visited an Apple Store. Last I went for a quick stop after work since I was working at my downtown offices.

There are soooo many iPad models to choose from! Too many? The 12.9-inch iPad Pro screen is unbelievably gorgeous!! I wish it would come to the 11-inch version. Maybe next year?

Of all the iPad models that I looked at, Stage Manager is not enabled. So what’s up, Apple, with that? Isn’t the Stage Manager good enough for the showroom?

I wish I had bought the Studio Display with the articulated arm. Expensive but give the most flexibility. Too bad it’s not possible to replace the monitor’s stand.

I tested the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air and tried to imagine what a 15-inch version would be. Not an easy thing to do. Speaking of MacBook, when I looked around on the MacBook table, they all look about the same; only the thickness makes it look slightly different, oh and the “colors”.

I love the latest version of the iPhone display stands. Less dangling wires. Easy to grab and put back in place.

In the previous image, I am holding the iPhone 14 Pro Max. I was still testing the device’s overall size. This is my next. I mean, the 15 Pro Max (Ultra?).

It was the day Apple released their FY2023 Q2 results. The store was unusually quiet. The illuminated decorations on the walls are getting old. I never really liked them.

I’m out after having spent twenty minutes there.

2023-05-06

Wait what? Even millennials don’t like algorithms 

I don’t fight the future — we need all the help — but as someone who has made the transition from no technology to some technology to always technology — no matter what I do, there is a tiny bit of me that is still holding on to the analog world.

Om Malik is probably my age. And I feel the same all the time. I know what it was like before the Internet. I prefer chronological over algorithmic timelines. I enjoy human curation. I certainly remember and value the “human touch”.
2023-05-07

Hot AI Summer (or, my practical uses for AI generators)

This is the sort of empowering interaction I love to experience with these new technologies: I’m not being replaced, I’m getting help, much in the way spellcheck and grammar checks in word processors have been doing for decades.

Interesting parallel here with spell checkers and generative AI. At what point the help we’re getting becomes troubling or questionable? The same goes in real life. Suppose there is something that needs your attention in your house, and a fix is required. Either you know from the get-go what to do and fix it yourself, either you go o YouTube and find a visual guide on how to fix it, or you call someone to your house to fix it for you. What’s wrong with the latter approach?

If there is something that generative AI brings to the table is the inevitable discussion in society of what is the human touch and when is asking for help crosses the lines and what those lines are.

2023-05-07

A Peek Into My Typical Creative Week

Have you ever wondered what my typical creative week looks like? Here you go, courtesy of Things 3’s Logbook. As I was completing this week’s stretch, I had a look at the logbook, I thought it could be fun to share with you a behind the scene look. I love Things 3 logbook because it gives me a look at my past work.

If you want a closer look at my Things 3 usage in my creative workflow, you might want to watch this video. Oh, and don’t miss my documented micro-workflows.

Now, it’s time to prepare for the upcoming week by duplicating the project template and setting my three goals for the week. 😅

2023-05-07

In case you didn’t know: there is a small group of Microbloggers on the messaging app Wavelength. You can get on board and join the other 38 other members. Here is the invite link. The idea behind this group is not to replace Micro.blog, far from it, but to add a complementary option for discussing any subjects that you might find interesting in near real-time.
2023-05-07

Wow, the Opal C1 camera software is still in beta… after so long on the market?? The last beta dates back to February. I have such a camera… still in my drawer. Happily using the Continuity Camera with my iPhone 13 Pro.
2023-05-08

Like Anything Else, The World is Hybrid

DHH wrote “In defence of the office”:

I salute Apple, for example, for sticking to their in-person culture now that the pandemic is long gone. They’re making that choice knowing that some, talented portion of their workforce will leave as a consequence, yet have the confidence that others will fill those chairs. Isn’t this what we wanted? The freedom to choose how we’d like to work by picking between a plentitude of companies offering the style of our preference?

We’re better served by diverse choices because of the diversity of people (profile, aspiration, culture, etc.).

2023-05-08

I got my first two paying members (annual subscription!) on my website (numericcitizen.me) hosted on Ghost! Two people are willing to give me their money for my work. I feel blessed. 😊
2023-05-09

The best UI, the ultimate interface, is the one that you don’t see.
2023-05-09

Watch this space. This week is FCP and Logic for the iPad, next week? If Apple keeps releasing new things each week leading to WWDC, it certainly could mean that they have a packaged agenda for the Keynote. We already know that iOS 16.5 is coming out next week, but what else?
2023-05-09

By making FCP finally available on the iPad, is Apple getting ready to bring more flexibility to iPadOS audio handling too? I read somewhere that there are missing pieces on iPadOS to make it comparable to macOS for handling complex audio setups. Answers are probably coming in iPadOS 17.
2023-05-09

It took like 10 years to get FinalCut Pro on the iPad and now we’re reading that it could run on the upcoming VR/AR headset??? Really? Come on.
2023-05-10

Fun and interesting fact: I have four times more followers on Bluesky than on Mastodon, even though the latter has much more users like in the millions instead of in the thousands for the former. 🤔
2023-05-11

Can’t Wait for the Upcoming Publishing Weekend

This weekend, I will publish a 6000 words thousand article about my migration to Inoreader. I’ve been working on that one for at least three months. While doing so, for the first time, I used Ulysses’ “multi-sheets” feature, where each sheet is a different section tied together as a long article that I can publish as a whole. Pretty handy stuff when working on very long articles. Thanks to Ghost’s publishing feature, it will also be the first time that a portion of my article (the last three sections) will be made available to my subscribers only.

I can’t wait to share with my readers the long journey that led me to Inoreder. Watch this space.
2023-05-11

I’m wondering how good MacWhisper will be at decoding my English with my accent. Will try for my next YouTube video ad I always wanted to add video captions.
2023-05-11

If you’re on Inoreader, this is a link to my profile page. I’m not sure there are many subscribers here, but in any case, you can follow me there if you want!

2023-05-13

This blog post was created, edited and posted using the venerable and excellent MarsEdit text editor. Before switching to Ulysses, MarsEdit was my go-to choice for writing posts of a certain length and complexity because of its simplicity and for supporting posting to Micro.blog.

This blog post was used for recording an upcoming video about apps that I use for posting content on Micro.blog. The video will be published soon on my YouTube channel.
2023-04-29

For each video about Micro.blog that I make and share, I lose subscribers.😔 People don’t like the mixing of videos about two different things I guess: Craft & Micro.blog. 🤷‍♂️
2023-04-29

While spending some time in the Anybox bookmarks manager this morning, I was thinking of restarting my monthly newsletter because they are fun (but time-consuming) to build. I should find a way to better automate the production process, though.

2023-04-30

I’m still wondering where I’ll spend my Sunday afternoon for my creative activities. Should I go out to a coffee shop near my house or should I stay home, make myself a coffee and go in my home office? 🤔🙄

I like the ambiance of the coffee shops, looking around me and furtively watching some people in their own bubble, in front of their screen, with their AirPods on, typing, pausing, etc. It’s a stimulating environment.

2023-04-30

I made my decision. The coffee shop it is. It’s a brand new place near my home. Not too busy yet because there aren’t well-known.

2023-04-30

I had such a busy creative weekend, to the point where I wonder if I did too much. I mean, I didn’t see most of the weekend. It was raining most of the time, and I had those videos and articles that I wanted to move forward. On the positive side, I feel that my ideas backlog is more than ever in control.

2023-05-01

Thanks @manton for the auto-complete! It works great on the iPad!
2023-05-01

I am currently learning to use Hookmark. This thing is so, how I could say that, powerful? It’s the kind of app with a slow learning curve that will take some time to use to its fullest potential.

2023-05-02

I updated my main website to add a banner at the top, using Ghost’s new “Special Announcement” feature. 🇺🇦👀
2023-05-03

So that sales pitch of “it’s just a coffee per month” really doesn’t hold water when you think that most people will subscribe to multiple services. Source: It Only Costs a Coffee per Month - Kev Quirk

This is why I maintain a spreadsheet of my monthly (and yearly) spending. And frankly, even with my recent subscriptions cleanup, you wouldn’t want to know my monthly spending on apps and services. Experimenting is not a free ride. Far from it.
2023-05-03

I own 3 YubiKeys that I have for personal use. There’s one that I keep connected to the USB hub on the desk in my study, another that I keep in my work bag, and a third that I keep in the safe at my mum’s house. Source: I Won’t Buy A YubiKey - Kev Quirk

When I read stories like this one, I’m reminded of how bad I am at managing my security posture. I depend on 1Password (less and less) and (more and more) on Apple’s Keychain. Will passkeys suppress the need for YubiKeys?
2023-05-03

Who’s actually using Apple’s Quick Notes feature? I never do because I always forget about its existence. It’s probably because it’s not useful or because it is tied to Apple’s Notes.
2023-05-05

I’m going to Morocco this early summer for two weeks. I’ll bring my big camera gear but I wish I had the iPhone 14 Pro or better yet, the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max for this trip. The iPhone convenience is hard to beat and the big camera gear is heavy and the benefit from me getting this thing around is probably not much worth these days. It could be one of my last trip with the discreet camera. On my to do list: get my captor cleaned!

2023-05-05

Another YT video for the “Understanding Micro.blog” series coming soon. But, you know already what you need to know, right??
2023-05-05

I’m a big fan of Raycast, and I cannot wait to get my hands on Raycast AI, but there is one thing that I cannot stand about it: the app icon. 🤢 I’m wondering if @mattbirchler has the same opinion here.
2023-05-06

Arm-based notebooks will gain share over Intel and AMD, almost doubling their shipment share to 25% by 2027 from 14% today.

Arm-based PC SoCs are highly customizable. Unlike x86 CPUs, which are designed to be general-purpose processors, Arm-based SoCs can be tailored to specific use cases. This means that SoCs can be designed with a greater number of high-performance CPU cores and highly integrated memory, enabling them to compete with x86 CPUs

Arm-based SoCs offer several advantages over x86 CPUs, including lower power consumption and improved thermal efficiency. Additionally, their integrated AI-feature cores make them superior to x86 CPUs.

Source: Arm-based PCs to Nearly Double Market Share by 2027

One question: how is Intel going to fight back against ARM? Is this even possible without starting over? ARM advances are, simply put: massive.
2023-04-23

There’s a lot of talk about how AI can get facts wrong. That’s fair, but in my experience it’s correct most of the time. Even when it’s slightly off, there’s usually some useful truth in the answer. Much more frustrating is voice assistants who can’t even begin to give an answer. Source: Manton Reece

You may be mind blown or not with ChatGPT and the like, but comparing these tools to Siri’s capabilities makes Siri look really bad. Not sure if comparing Alexa makes any difference. These assistant were leapfrogged.
2023-04-23

How Amazon put Ukraine’s ‘government in a box’ — and saved its economy from Russia

Since the day Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24, Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge, then funnelling the data into Amazon’s cloud computing system.

As a guy working in IT for nearly 30 years, I can imagine how complex and critical this project was for Ukraine. Transferring a vast amount of data doesn’t happen overnight. Preparing a landing zone in a cloud provider is a complex project. AWS’s (Amazon) contribution is essential, and I wonder if their contribution covers the subscription fees too. I wish I could work on this kind of project myself.
2023-04-23

And Just Like That Micro.blog Syncs with Readwise.io

Today, I unexpectedly came across this announcement from Micro.blog: Highlights are now synced to Readwise.io, provided that you have an account with them and that you are on an Micro.blog Premium plan! How cool is that!

I immediately configured my Readwise.io connection in the Bookmarks section and exported past highlights in a CSV file. Next, I tried the feature on an article from MacRumors.

After a few minutes, I could read the archived version of the article and highlight some portions. And sure enough, my highlights were saved to Readwise.io in a snap.

The nice thing is that Inoreader also supports saving my highlights to Readwise.io. Everything going at the same place. Occasionally, I export and then import my highlights into Craft. Readwise remembers the point of my last export session.

2023-04-23

Hello, Bluesky. Nice to Meet You.

In my Friday Notes edition #102, I shared my thoughts about my last four months without Twitter and how calm and quiet my digital life has become. I even wrote that I might ignore Bluesky. But that was last week.

Well, it didn’t take long to contradict myself! As you might have guessed, I’m now on Bluesky as @numericcitizen (of course), thanks to a generous donator of an invite link (looking at you @Maique).

Please make no mistake; it’s an experiment. I’m not planning to spend too much time on Bluesky, but I’m genuinely curious about its evolution and the traction it gets, if any.

I’m allowing myself to get on board for a simple reason: Manton from Micro.blog added support for cross-posting content to Bluesky. It didn’t take long. For me, it’s like getting a seal of approval from him. I highly value his opinion on Bluesky and the open web in general. So, I made the jump without really knowing what to do next except to enable the cross-posting of my content posted on MB.

Now, I wish Bluesky doesn’t get filled up with too many dark clouds. My fingers are crossed.

PS. I’m curious how Micro.blog will push that post onto the Bluesky universe. See you on the other side.

PPS. I’m gathering my thoughts and observations for an upcoming experiment status report. Stay tuned.

2023-04-25

Blank. At first, I thought it was a joke. It’s not.
2023-04-26

And now, I’m seriously considering closing my Substack account and migrating this to Ghost (using their excellent concierge service). 🤔
2023-04-26

Major Updates Coming to WriteFreely And WriteAs

Matt, the founder of the WriteFreely ecosystem, recently wrote a promising post:

It’s become clear over time that in order to make WriteFreely (and Write.as) as useful as it can be, it needs to have a much more unified experience.

…

I don’t think it makes sense for our self-hosted product to be chopped up into multiple components like our hosted tools are. Instead, I want to bring all those tools into a single application in WriteFreely.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article (“The Write.freely Ecosystem Explained”) trying to explain the WriteFreely ecosystem because I thought that, in its current form, it was a bit hard to grasp. It’s one of my most popular posts on Write.as. I think there is a need for unification and consolidation into a seamless experience. I’m glad the see that it’s coming.

2023-04-26

I have pulled the trigger: the concierge at Ghost(pro) is already working on importing my Substack content. It’s another nail in the coffin for Substack. If all goes well, bye bye Substack this weekend.

I must admit that this one is mostly an impulsive decision compared to my exit of WordPress. The migration is much more simpler compared the moving out of WP. In the end, I know I won’t regret it. Moving between platforms shouldn’t be a source of anxiety.
2023-04-26

Message to Those (Still) on Twitter

After seeing this post by Chris Hannah:

It’s incredible to see the effect of the various recent changes on how the “blue checkmarks” are given out and what they seemingly represent to different demographics of people.

Here’s my take on this. It’s straightforward: you don’t need to be verified by Twitter (or any of these centralizing platforms) to feel that you exist, are relevant and be fabulous! Just be. If you’re uncomfortable with recently introduced changes at Twitter, move on elsewhere. That is all.

I’m fed up with these stories about Twitter removing previously verified check marks! This is stupid. It was bound to bound to fail from the start. Now, here we are. It failed. Look ahead.

2023-04-26

Grammarly just enabled Grammarly Go on my account. I think that’s cool and could prove to be handy occasionally. Grammarly isn’t perfect, far from it, but for someone like me who’s not an English native, it helps a lot. Now, with Go, I feel even more in good company for all my writing. I get 500 requests per month with my subscription, which is way more than enough. Are any Grammarly users out there?

Disclaimer: I wrote this text entirely on my own, without any assistance or modification from AI technology.

The previous sentence is a false statement, Grammarly Go rewrote it for me. 😂

2023-04-28

I started writing my 2023 year summary, and I must candidly admit that I’m proud of my digital accomplishment so far. 😊 You won’t notice, but a lot is going on… you know, this iceberg 🧊 image where most of it is underwater, only to see a small portion on the surface?
2023-04-28

Something that bugs me with Micro.blog. Nothing serious, but still. The questionable sidebar arrangement. Why is Replies at the near bottom? Why not have a “Website” category with Plug-ins + Design inside of it? Why plans not into Account? Why “Feeds” sits inside Accounts? Why not rename “Feeds” to “Digital hub”? I’m just wondering out loud, @manton!

2023-04-28

Coming back from vacations. 🛬 Returning to normal programming this week. Vacations are always a great opportunity to disconnect and let new ideas pop up.
2023-04-15

RIP Twitter 2007-2022 is now live (well, mostly live as tweets are still being processed and imported). Thanks for this @manton!
2023-04-16

Just curious here, is anyone paying OpenAI to get one of their apps (like Raycast AI) to work with ChatGPT?
2023-04-16

iPhone 15 Pro ‘Action’ Button to Replace Role of Volume Buttons When Performing a Power Off/Force Restart

the leaker also claimed that the “Action” button will replace the volume up button for taking photos in the Camera app, with force-sensitivity enabling a light press to auto-focus the camera, a hard press to take a picture, and a hard/long press to record video.

Ok, this is a rumour, but it’s an interesting one. If Apple does this, it would bring the iPhone 15 Pro / Max closer to traditional camera behaviour. Coupled with the upgraded cameras and possible addition of the periscope lens, Apple seems geared to make the next iPhone iteration another potential winner.

2023-04-17

I read the “Making Something Wonderful” book during my vacations. It’s full of great reading moments, for sure. Albeit not as personal as I would have liked, that last picture of Steve Jobs glasses took me off-guard and got me on the verge of crying. Go and find them.
2023-04-21

Apple Entering the Journal App Landscape Soon? Hell Yeah, Count Me In!

As reported by the Wall Street Journal (since it’s paywalled, look at MacRumors report instead), Apple is supposedly working on its own journaling application. Code named « Jurassic », many interesting details are emerging from this report.

As an avid user of Dayone (read « Documenting My Numeric Life With Dayone »). , I find the prospect of having Apple entering the journaling apps landscape quite exciting. The idea of using journaling to help users with mental health issues is pretty clever. There is so much information available on our devices from which, I guess, we can infer some mental states. I’m guessing machine learning can be of some tremendous help here. Coupled with Apple’s stance on privacy, this provides a potentially very compelling story for a lot of people. Me included. Yet, some people could find this move to be crossing a line that is not acceptable for them. We will see.

The WSJ story is referring to very specific detailed aspects of the rumoured app. For example, journaling suggestions would be based on call history and iMessage conversations, and be ephemeral. After four week they would vanish from suggestions. I’m guessing this would help automate some aspects of daily journaling.

I asked this question to ChatGPT: « _Is the young generation into journal as much as older generations? _». Here is what it has to say:

_ There is no definitive answer to this question, as attitudes towards journaling can vary widely among individuals of all ages. However, some studies suggest that younger generations may be more likely to engage in forms of expressive writing such as blogging or social media updates, which could be seen as a form of journaling._

The debate might still be out if the youngsters generation is very into the writing journey, but having some part of the journaling automated would alleviate some rebarbative aspects of maintaining a journal.

Can you imagine having the journal app assembling photos, messages, phone calls, geo locations into pre populated journaling suggestions? Wow. I’m really looking forward into that one.

2023-04-21

BasicAppleGuy writes about his website turning three:

Today marks the third anniversary of basicappleguy.com. A challenging but also very successful year; I want to continue the tradition of recapping the year and thanking you all for the tremendous support.

I worked from home for the first two years of the site because of the pandemic. That meant 19,200 minutes saved on commuting each year alone, which afforded me hundreds of hours to write and work on new wallpapers. This also meant I had around-the-clock access to a Mac (and a good internet connection), giving me abundant opportunities to work on projects with much more freedom. Source: 3 — Basic Apple Guy

His blog post resonates with me a lot. Since March 13, 2020, I have worked from home, and I also save a lot of commute time. I couldn’t do all that content creation that I did since then if I was returning to the office downtown. I’m super appreciative of that, and I hope that it will stay that way. I don’t see why it would change.
2023-04-22

Still alive. Only on vacation. 😎

Make Something Wonderful | a book from the Steve Jobs Archive

Coming to digital platforms on April 11.
A curated collection of Steve’s speeches, interviews and correspondence, Make Something Wonderful offers an unparalleled window into how one of the world’s most creative entrepreneurs approached his life and work. In the pages of this book, Steve shares his perspective on his childhood, on launching and being pushed out of Apple, on his time with Pixar and NeXT, and on his ultimate return to the company that started it all.

Can’t wait for this. I guess this is a way to get as close to him as possible?

2023-04-01

Finding software bugs at the least expected place and time while recording long YouTube videos, it’s always fun! #not #craftisbuggy
2023-04-01

Some Numbers

🚨 This is post #2000. I have already written more posts in 2023 than for the entire year last year. I’ll probably write more than 2021. The record year, 2020, will be hard to beat. This post was written using Ulysses on my MacBook Air which is the most used device, with 73%. My Mac mini comes second with 20%, and lastly, my iPad with 7%. I love numbers. Returning to normal programming.📺

2023-04-02

Introducing “My Micro-Workflows Explained” Series

I’ve been working on this for a while and now I feel it’s time to share with the world. Follow this link, then expand each question to read the answer. It was a lot of fun to put together.

This site is going to be updated as new micro-workflows are documented or tweaked. This document is now joining my Complete Content Creator Toolset.

If you have a question, feel free to ask, using the commenting feature of the website as shown below. I welcomed suggestions for workflow improvements too! Enjoy and I hope you learn a few things along the way or that it triggers some ideas for your own workflows!

2023-04-02

I find Rewind to be very fascinating. Now, it comes with ChatGPT integration where I can ask for a summary of the things that I worked on last Friday, for example. It’s a great way to document my numeric life. There is a free-tier, but at 10$ a month for the paid tier, I mean, it’s a lot of money. Anyone tried it?

2023-04-02

If the Beta switch is OFF, why do I get offered the latest beta of iOS 16.5? 🤔 Bug? Nope, because I had the beta profile from iOS 16.4 still in place.

2023-04-03

Even if Apple releases a HomePod with a screen in a form of a “iPad-like” device, I don’t see them beating Nixplay digital photo frames anythine soon. I recently got one for my home office and I’m really impressed with this very focused product. From the unboxing, to the frame setup and to the moment of my first uploaded photos started displaying on it, it was a great user experience. Very Apple-like.

2023-04-03

I’m late in my readings. I’m not sure what to think of this weird take about the iPad and Mac future from Jason Snell.

The key to the Mac’s survival isn’t a new Air–it’s the next iPad Pro

Would it be such a cataclysm if I could simply reboot that iPad into macOS or run macOS inside a virtual machine?

Yes, it would be. What a weird idea. I’m nearly baffled by this article. How many of these ideas and requests are age-dependent? How does the younger generation view those perceived limitations of the iPad or the Mac?

For us who have experienced both computing paradigms, it is tempting to ask for one paradigm to borrow some of the other paradigm traits. Does it make them better? I’m resigned and unexcited to the prospect of getting the touch screen trait on the Mac, but having to reboot an iPad to get the Mac experience is ludicrous, IMO.

2023-04-04

My wife recently told me how she was looking and considering tools like ChatGPT in her work. She considers ChatGPT like having an intern working with her. The intern will do the work she asks, but she knows she will have to give it a critical eye on the results just in case any errors creep in. If using interns in companies, why is ChatGPT not considered at the same level? Open for debate.

I like this intern analogy.

2023-04-05

👉 I’ve been testing iA Presenter for a short while, and boy, I like this app. It’s not that often that we get new native apps on the Mac these days. I wonder if it is built with AppKit or other tech. Back in the day, before using Ulysses, I was a fan of iA Writer for its simplicity. iA Presenter feels so familiar and yet so rightly different. I’m impressed.

Now, looking for a use case for it! 🤔

2023-04-05

Going on vacation for a week. Leaving my MacBook Air behind, but bringing my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard with me. It’s the only time that I use the iPad Pro with its Magic Keyboard since getting my MBA in 2021, otherwise, it’s my MacBook Air while at home.

2023-04-05

Somehow, I forgot to include my devices in my creator toolset website. Done now.

2023-04-06

Percentage of the moment: 4%
https://9to5mac.com/2023/04/04/4-percent-of-teens-use-vr-apple-headset-challenges/

2023-04-06

Still in my spring cleanup phase, I’m archiving all my bookmarks and references to build a Hugo-based static website. I’m happy to keep my focus on content instead of trying to understand and configure a web site built on Hugo tech.

2023-04-06

I’m currently testing Little Snitch mini. I had the Little Snitch app on my radar for a while, but this week they released what could be a better & lighter solution for me. The problem? As an IT guy, I like to know what is happening in my machines, and this little piece of well-crafted software could be the answer. So far, I really like what I’m seeing. It makes me think of Flighty from a visual design perspective. It could replace a portion of Stats, an open-source replacement for iStats Menu. I’ll decide once I’m back from vacation.

2023-04-06

When AI Failed to Inspire Me

I was looking for inspiration all week to write my next Friday Notes edition. Early morning yesterday, I was still unsure if I could make it, but at lunchtime, I tried ChatGPT with “Give me some blog post ideas about the positive effects on creativity of going on vacation for a week”. It came back with phrases that looked taken from a travel agency ad. I tried again with different variations of my question. It failed to impress and to inspire me. I’ll pass this week’s edition.

2023-04-07