Numeric Citizen Blog

After the release yesterday of macOS Big Sur 11.2, Apple today released the first beta of macOS Big Sur 11.3. It does look like macOS is following the trails of iOS with updates that brings many small features, improvements and tweaks. We’re not used to that, as before Big Sur, macOS updates used to be mostly about bug fixes. I’m happy to see Apple change course for macOS, if this update is any indication. Continue reading →

And here goes beta 1 of iOS 14.5 (#apple #ios14.5)

February 1, 2021 8:01pm

iOS 14.5 beta 1 is out today with a slew of new features and small tweaks. Unlocking your iPhone while wearing a face mask, thanks to your Apple Watch, falls in the category of “finally” moments. In the tweaks category, the Apple logo of an iPad booting up iPadOS “finally” follows the device’s orientation. Updates to Apple Card too to support shared cards. Now, if only this could come to Canada! Continue reading →

Our secret? Optimizing workflows (#blogger #writer #tools)

February 1, 2021 1:24pm

I like to see other people talk about their own writing or blogging workflows. Here’s an interesting tidbit from Greg Morris about using Apple’s Shortcut to publish to WordPress: “Shortcuts is a really robust way to publish to WordPress and not have to use the WordPress app or third-party app.” Apple’s Shortcuts are also an important part of my blogger workflow. Since I’m using Ulysses, which supports publishing directly to WordPress, I don’t need a shortcut for that. Continue reading →

Design is how it works (#apple #design #ux #ui)

January 31, 2021 8:09pm

From John Gruber’s Apple report card: “I’m reminded of all the UI and interaction designs and changes in iOS and MacOS that are just bad. There’s a real sense that _ Apple’s current HI team, under Alan Dye, is a “design is what it looks like” group, not a “design is how it works” group_. Exhibit A: What MacOS 11 Big Sur has done to document proxy icons. Arguably it looks better to hide them. Continue reading →

Apple in 2020 (#review #apple #appletv)

January 30, 2021 8:50pm

Really insightful score card report from Six Colors. Take out for me: Apple TV is the new 2013 Mac Pro. Continue reading →

What the hell is going on with Flickr? (#Flickr #photography)

January 30, 2021 9:24am

Photography

This morning I got the most recent update to the venerable photo sharing service: Flickr. The only addition to this update, support for iOS 14 widgets. Finally! It’s quite a change from the usual “Bug fixes and improvements.”. Even if I’m no longer actively using Flickr, I was happy to see that widgets were finally supported. So, I frantically updated the apps to have a look at the possibilities. What a let down. Continue reading →

Today is about data privacy (#privacy #dataprivacy #privacyprotection #apple)

January 28, 2021 7:11am

Privacy

Today, January 28th, is data privacy day. I didn’t know that. Now I know, thanks to Mr. Phillip Schiller. I paid a visit to Apple’s privacy web page. What I found is a super nicely designed page with highlights of Apple’s ecosystem privacy focused features. To me, Apple’s privacy stance is a product, not a feature. “Privacy is a fundamental human right. At Apple, it’s also one of our core values. Continue reading →

I could play with this forever (#snowflakegenerator)

January 27, 2021 7:52pm

Please, do yourself a favour and go to this website, a snowflake generator. If you like winter, it will make you smile a bit. Continue reading →

What is worst than Facebook? (#privacy #privacyprotection)

January 27, 2021 7:22am

Privacy

Apple made mandatory privacy protection “nutrition” labels on its App Store. One guy refuses to update its apps since then: Google. Maybe they are even worst than Facebook if such a thing is even possible. Was Google caught by surprise? Highly impossible. They had many months to prepare for that. When your business model highly depends on sucking all users data, it’s hard to escape suspicion. Continue reading →

On Tweetbot 6 update (@tweetbot #update #subscription)

January 26, 2021 8:12pm

Really nice update (and unexpected) to my preferred Twitter client. Tweetbot version 6 received a refreshed design, full support for Twitter APIs v2 and cleans up unsupported features with latest APIs. Tweetbot startup is much faster than Twitter’s client and exposes a few features that aren’t available otherwise. Design-wise, Tweetbot contains a lot of nice touches throughout the app. Compared to that, Twitter’s own client feels uninspired. Like a growing number of apps recently introduced or updated, Tweetbot 6 now is subscription-based. Continue reading →

Being robbed, again (#stealing #robbing)

January 26, 2021 7:22am

Someone stoled my most recent article. I hate when this happens. I guess my article was good enough for this guy to bother. This morning, I got a pingback on WordPress for an article being published elsewhere as shown below. Someone copied my latest article “The Ultimate Twitter Tips and Tricks for Mastering Your Twitter Experience”. By doing so, he forgot to remove one of the URL pointing back to another previously published article, “My Review of Mailbrew: a Powerful and Time-Saving Internet Information Aggregator”, I was notified via a pingback. Continue reading →

The challenges with online speech and publishing (#socialnetworks #socialmedia #platforms)

January 24, 2021 4:02pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Privacy

Food for thought

A recent article by Benedict Evans exposes how hard it is to “fix” social networks. “The internet and then social platforms break a lot of our definitions of different kinds of speech, and yet somehow Facebook / Google / Twitter are supposed to recreate that whole 200-year tapestry of implicit structures and consensus, and answer all of those questions, from office parks in the San Francisco Bay Area, for both the USA and Myanmar, right now. Continue reading →

If true… (#apple #timcook #theclown)

January 24, 2021 3:55pm

… I want to scream, I want to puke. Not Tim Cook’s best gift. Continue reading →

That one was hard (#blogging #writing #article)

January 24, 2021 9:48am

I just published one of my most difficult to write article in a long time. It is about transforming your Twitter experience to make it more focused, enjoyable, tailored to your personal interests. I’ve been working on it for the last few months. Along the way of writing this long piece, my Twitter experience was profoundly changed. I’m pretty happy with the end results. If you’re on Twitter, consider giving a look to this guide. Continue reading →

@numericcitizen on Clubhouse (#clubhouse)

January 22, 2021 8:25pm

I’m always curious to try new things, especially in the numeric world. In the case of Clubhouse, I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I’m curious to try it out, anyway. I wonder how it will compare to Twitter’s Spaces, currently in limited beta. Now, waiting for an invite. Continue reading →

Dear bloggers, let’s not forget about the link posts (#blogging #writing)

January 21, 2021 7:02am

In “A Love Letter to the Link Post”, CJ Chilvers lament the lost of link posts from the blogosphere. Link posts marked the debut of so many websites raison d’être back in the nineties: “At that time, they weren’t even called blogs. You’d simply update the front page of your website every day with a few interesting links you discovered since the day before.” I love link posts. I follow many bloggers just to have a peek at their discoveries and comments about them. Continue reading →

My daytime job reality (#IT #computerscience #tech)

January 19, 2021 8:02pm

First, do me a favour, watch this YouTube video (less than 8 minutes of your time), then come back. You probably know that I’m working in IT as my official day jobs. I’ve been working on a project in the last 18 months to assist and direct one of our customer to implement a disaster recovery plan. This is not a trivial thing, generally speaking. In that particular case, it was an exercise of extreme frustration all along. Continue reading →

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication (#apple #airpodsmax)

January 19, 2021 7:44pm

iFixit completed their usual teardown of one of Apple’s latest product. This time, the AirPods Max were taken apart. This thing is so complicated! No wonder why we pay $550 for. It is fascinating to see how such a device from the outside is so complicated in the inside. This makes me think of the Apple Pencil exterior beauty but interior complexity. I still love mine, even if I’m not an audiophile. Continue reading →

Another Massive Update to @CraftDocsApp (#craft #writer #writing #blogging #tools)

January 18, 2021 7:38pm