Here are two simple but very useful tricks using an iPhone with a U1 chip, iOS 14.4 and an HomePod mini. Trick #1: set a timer with Siri on your HomePod mini to, let’s say, 10 minutes. Then, bring your iPhone close to the HomePod mini, the iPhone will show how much time is left on the timer (make sure the iPhone screen is on). Trick #2: let’s say music is playing on your HomePod mini, and that you want to, silently, see what’s playing. Continue reading →

It is a bit of a sad day: I decided to delete the excellent expense tracking app Spend Stack from my devices and revert to using a simple Numbers spreadsheet to track my subscriptions. Why did I delete this app? First, the developer sold the app to somebody else. Since last September, no more updates. Second, there is no clear roadmap announcements by the new owner. Nothing. I can’t rely on ephemeral applications even for simple things. Continue reading →

Quick question to @jack : Is “baty.net” a micro.blog? If so, what’s your theme?

I dug out my ancient Inside Macintosh reference books from storage. Remember when Apple’s developer documentation came as paper books? Volumes I-III on the original Mac APIs, IV on Mac Plus, V on color Macs, and the truly massive volume VI on System 7. 📚 David Sinclair https://dejus.com/2020/12/21/0927/ I did some 68000 assembly using my 512Ke Mac back in the days. Can't remember what was the development environment, though. And I remember these Inside Apple Macintosh books so well. Continue reading →

Yes, the title says it all: I’m looking for new friends to follow on Micro.blog. After my big Twitter cleanup, the noise in my numeric life has dramatically decreased. I feel zen and I think this is what Micro.blog is all about: a zen place to meet virtual friends sharing the same passions. So, I’m looking for friend suggestions. Let’s call this “the community-fed referrals day!”. To help you make such referrals, please do remember about my passions: Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change. Continue reading →

I don’t know what happened to my Twitter usage. It fell off the cliff recently. Since I’ve completed my Twitter experience transformation as fully documented here, I barely open Twitter once a day. Do I miss it? Nope. Why? Probably because I’m getting a distant view by using Mailbrew which draws the most relevant tweets for me on a daily basis. Continue reading →

As far as I’m concerned, PopClip is part of macOS.

I think he meant that PopClip should be part of macOS! Instant buy for me!

Here is a simple one: Apple, please, no. I don’t get the idea of such product. The audience for this seems to be too small for Apple. I do understand that Apple research in VR can have broader ramifications, but to build such a limited appeal product for the mass, I don’t get it. I think Apple’s interests has much more potential in augmented reality products, services or features. Their work is already bearing fruit with AirPods spatial audio and transparency mode. Continue reading →

Apple Maps is so much better than it was when it first launched back in 2012. It’s my go-to apps when in comes to finding my way. I never use Google Maps. Over the years, Apple upped its game. Recently, Apple added the detailed mapping and the look around feature for Canada, and it made such a big difference. But how much different? Well, look no further than Justino Beirne’s latest essay: “WHY DOESN’T “LOOK AROUND” COVER MORE AREAS? Continue reading →

Writing, like so many creative acts, is hard. Sitting there, staring, mad at yourself, mad at the material because it doesn’t seem good enough and you don’t seem good enough. (Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy)

I know this feeling really really well.

Woah, I didn’t know we could have a test blog on Micro.blog. It’s free! Thanks to https://custom.micro.blog, I’m starting to learn more about CSS and how MB works to make its magic!

Greg Morris recently on his blog about trying hard as a blogger to make something out of all this: “I asked, I’m giving, and I am still blogging — now more than ever.” Strangely, pure coincidence I guess, I wrote this last week-end “The journey is the Reward” in which I said: “It doesn’t really matter if nobody comes and reads my stuff here or there. What matters is the process and the thinking that took place behind my writing. Continue reading →

I think Intel could have done better than this in a world without the M1 chip. But the problem is that the M1 chip is among us. Obviously, the carefully selected benchmarks results are published to people who doesn’t know about Apple. It’s an issue of perception manipulation. Apple is only getting started. Intel is freaking out and look desperate. 2021 will make matters even worse. Another one with a look of desperation: Facebook because of iOS 14. Continue reading →

Matt Birchler is writing yet another post about the iPad. The last paragraph (emphasis is mine): “We live in a world where we’re surrounded by computers. People have a home computer, a work computer, a phone, a watch, a smart TV, and smart speakers. Hell, even the iPad’s harshest critics often have one that they use for watching video and playing games. The iPad is the only device in that list that some people mandate has feature parity with another item on that list. Continue reading →

According to a recent small survey by AppleInsider, 53% of apps are running natively on M1-powered Macs. What about the remaining 47%? Well: “Without native support, they’re run in Rosetta 2 emulation. That may conceivably turn out to mean that they run faster than they did on old Intel hardware, but it’s not why you’ve bought an Apple Silicon Mac.” One of the problem is that Apple’s Rosetta 2 is too good at running non-native apps. Continue reading →

It’s becoming quite frustrating to see Apple’s Safari not being supported for browser extensions. Safari is now reportedly supporting standard web extensions but with an Apple twist making it cumbersome for developers to add support. Apple being Apple, I think it is related to the requirement of having to download an application in order to be able to expose an extension to Safari’s engine. Thanks to privacy protection, Apple is forcing the game here, but this has real consequences. Continue reading →

Since running macOS Big Sur, I quite often get these “Unable to Download App” error when trying to update my apps on my M1-based Mac mini. I need to try a few times or even reboot the machine in order to fix this issue. The app is being downloaded, but the installation phase is failing at the very end. Version 11.2 of Big Sur didn’t fix the issue. And it’s not related to an app being open or in use. Continue reading →

Here is something absolutely fascinating and surprising to me. According to my main blog’s visitors statistics, thanks to my recent switch to Plausible, over the last thirty days, the distribution of devices type used to visit my blog puts the tablet far behind the desktop, the laptop and the smartphone. One would think the tablet form factor to be much more popular. The iPad is massively popular. I’m still in love with this form factor after all these years. Continue reading →

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 →

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 →