For those who watched the Severance series on Apple TV+: sometimes I feel like those guys staring at their screen trying to manipulate numbers… don’t you have this feeling too, that our job is a string of numbers manipulation all day long?

Rant on. I love Apple’s Safari browser, but the lack of Safari Extensions support by many developers is starting to make me reconsider my love either of Safari or of Apple’s strict App Store policies. That is why, starting now, I’m switching to Firefox exclusively when I’m using Inoreader. Rant off.

Good morning! The third video in the series “Understanding Micro.blog” is out! It is about understanding the cross-posting feature of Micro.blog. This is something people are struggling with at first when they come to MB. I hope some of you will find it useful.

After so many iPadOS releases, these two gestures I suggested in 2019 were eventually added. This article was a timid entry in the user interface mockups world. It didn’t last long. Thanks to Apple for having listened. 🤣

Another big update to my complete toolset website: a new dedicated section for my current projects. Use the newly added table of content to navigate to the new section. Now you know more about how and why I’m spending my personal time.

Here is something that I really would like to do. Using Apple shortcuts, Charty for Shortcuts and Plausible analytics APIs: create an iPhone and iPad widget to display visitor statistics on my home screen. Another app like Actions would probably be needed too.

So, in a nutshell: Obsidian is a Markdown text editor on steroids with a fancy plugin ecosystem. Did I miss something?

Obsidian users: what do you use for syncing across devices if you don’t pay any subs to Obsidian? On the Mac, do you put your vaults on iCloud Drive and let the “magic” happen? Asking for a friend. 🤫

For the time of my life, I downloaded Obsidian and launched it. Wrote something. Clicked here and there. Then, I closed it. I’m afraid. 🫣

In May 2019 I published this:

Personally, I think this year is too early for ARM-based Mac. Why? Because, my thinking is that Apple wants iOS on these ARM-Based Macs, not Mac. And they want a lot of ready-to-use, yet well-known apps to be available. For this, they are working on Marzipan (which later became Catalyst) to entice developers to write more powerful apps for iOS, especially the iPad. These are the prime candidates to run on this future ARM-based Mac. We are four weeks away from knowing a bit more about Apple’s strategy. Source: Apple Is Done With Intel - Numeric Citizen Blog

The Apple Silicon was announced more than a year later.

Do you know MacUpdater? It’s a paid utility to keep your Mac up-to-date. I use it on my M1 Mac mini, but on my M1 MacBook Air, I use “Latest”. It’s open-source and free and a very well-crafted piece of software. I highlight recommend it. Download it here. You’ll thank me later.

21 years ago today, my first blog post. A bunch of promising social networks have come and gone in that time. Often feels like very little is permanent, so make sure to have your own space on the web.

I can barely remember what I was doing in 2002. I didn’t have a website. I didn’t know about website hosting. I didn’t really care about blogs, for that matter. I started blogging in 2009 when I started doing iPhone application development. I wanted to share my discoveries while learning Objective-C and publishing apps on the App Store. At some point, writing took more of my time than actually writing lines of Objective-C code.

Riccardo Mori wrote an interesting take about the possible future of the Mac with a touch screen Why do you want to touch your Mac screen so badly? | Riccardo Mori:

the people who’d love to have a touchscreen Mac are people who prefer having the iPad and iPhone as primary devices for work and leisure. It’s the iPad-first guys who on the one hand are frustrated by the still mediocre multitasking and still limited functionality Apple is providing on the iPad, and on the other hand realize the sheer versatility and multitasking dexterity the Mac still has in spades despite the general worsening of Mac OS over the past few years. In short, they say they’d love a touchscreen Mac, but what they mean is that they’d love a hybrid iPad/Mac device that could offer the best of both worlds.

Today at work, during a Zoom call, my colleague found out by error that she could touch the screen of her Windows portable to interact with it. She was totally mesmerized. Then she continued with the conversation. I don’t think it will make a big difference in her world. What people want is an iPad when it makes sense, a traditional computer, when it makes sense. Microsoft seems to have found an enduring combo with its Surface.

You are out: Newsy out. Newsify out. Raindrop.io out. Matter out. Readwise Reader out. Medium out. News Explorer out (soon). 😅 Substack Reader… jury is still out. 😂

The year 2023 is the year if cleanup for better focus.

I finally completed and published my article about migrating to Anybox, a bookmarks manager competing with Raindrop.io. I’m not looking back.

If you can talk about it, explain it, even write about it, then I guess you can call yourself knowledgeable about it. Thought of the moment.

@numericcitizen@me.dm is my new Mastodon address on Medium’s newly launched Mastodon instance. It’s without enthusiasm that I created this address when Medium opened the door to all Medium members today. I left the Paid Partner Program earlier this year. First, because I was no longer publishing articles over there. Second, because I’m not at ease supporting a closed platform like Medium. I’m not sure where I’ll go from here. That being said, I find it interesting that a closed and proprietary platform like Medium opens up to Mastodon, a distributed and open source network. Call it opportunistic, it will be interesting to see where this will lead in the future. I’ll certainly watch from afar.

If Twitter is broken, it might be a fix here and there, actually. Just saying.

Mind blown. 🤯

Daniel Jalkut on AI-based art and “prose”

Like everybody else, I was fascinated by AI art and prose. But I’m bored by it already. Why? Because it’s obviously not human. I like human things. Little quirks that make us laugh and cringe. That’s the beauty of life. AI is amazing, but it’s not human.

I don’t think that I’m bored yet, but I certainly feel the same about human-based creations. I’ll never be bored and always be fascinated by it.