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iPhone 13 Pro Max or iPhone 13 Pro — That is the question
I’m planning to go big screen this fall with the iPhone 13 Pro (12s?) Max (I currently own an iPhone 11 Pro). I never owned the biggest iPhone (Plus or Max). There is one thing that makes me pause: information density of the Max seems about the same if not a bit higher compared to the non-Max model. There are six row of icons on the home screen on both models (Max and non-Max), which is kind of lame. Am I getting this wrong?
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When a 2013 MacBook Air is > than a two-years old Chromebook
I’ll be getting a old 2013 MacBook Air for one of my son to replace an aging Chromebook that I bought about two years ago. Think about it. This eight years old MacBook Air is faster, much better design, much better screen quality, more memory and will be able to run macOS Big Sur and all other apps like iWorks et al. I find this incredible that we can read and hear people saying Apple gear is expansive and that is under Apple’s obsolescence progamming. I call this bullshit.
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Moving from Castro to Pocket Cast: 100% completed. 👨🏻💻⌛️👍🏻😁
I waited for close to a year for Castro to bring its podcasts app to the iPad. Today, with the announcement of Automattic buying Pocket Cast, it came back on my radar. It didn’t take too long to make the switch. Pocket Cast is a real multi-platform player, feature rich and has an as good design as the other players. After Tumblr, DayOne, now Pocket Cast, I want to give it a try and see how Automattic will build on it. Meanwhile, I’m really enjoying it.
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On PC in the cloud
Microsoft announced their PC in the cloud offerings this week. While it is probably based on their previous offering, Windows Virtual Desktop service, it does look like a milestone to me. I’ve been in IT for more than 25 years. I saw the migration from the mainframe to the client-server applications architecture. After that, it was about virtualization taking over with the popular VMware hypervisor. In the last five years, I saw the cloud taking over the IT world. The latter has a much more profound impact than any trend I witnessed or was part of in my career.
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User Interface design dark age era
We are in the dark age (not dark mode!) of user interface design for sure. We get excited for new animated UI elements (example here), but overall, delight has been lost in translation a long time ago. As Mike Rockwell is a link post say:
“I can’t really identify anything that I’ll be nostalgic for in ten or twenty years.”
I wouldn’t go back to pre-iOS 7 days but there has to be some delightful in-between degree of crafted user interface that had some real joyful elements in them. Apple is not the only one at fault here. It looks like it is a design trend spanning many mediums (print, TV, web, etc.).
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Google’s openness isn’t enough apparently (#antitrust #security #cybersecurity)
Wow, that one is close to being hilarious. Big tech companies are the target of hate these days. Google was hit by another antitrust lawsuit by no less than 36 states about their handling of applications side loading on Android. In summary, it is so cumbersome to side load an app on Android, thanks to security measures, that it makes it hard for competing App Store to compete.
Google makes the sideloading process unnecessarily cumbersome and impractical by adding superfluous, misleading, and discouraging security warnings and by deterring users by requiring them to grant permission multiple times for a single app installation (discussed in more detail in Sections I.C. and I.D. below). The effect of Google’s conduct is to practically eliminate competition in Android app distribution.
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Bye Bye Skylum - I barely knew you
In preparing to move off my 2017 Intel iMac (and put if for sale), I must make sure to re-install remaining applications on my M1 Mac mini. Photography-related apps were the last to be updated for the M1 chip. Lightroom CC is now fully optimized, but none of the Skylum apps I was (rarely) using: Luminar 4 and Aurora 2019 HDR. After spending some time on their support forums, I found out that none of their apps are optimized for the M1 chip. I had to make the call: bye bye Skylum. I barely knew you.
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What comes before the right to repair? (#apple #righttorepair)
The next step for Apple is to design for repairability which goes beyond recycling. AirPods are the worst example of this. When the battery life on these is reached, there is no practical way to replace them without throwing it to the trash and buying a new one. So for me, the right to repair goes way beyond having a choice of where I’m going to take a device for repair. It is about buying a device that was designed for and built to use recycled materials, but also it is about buying a device that can be repaired for basic things like battery replacement.
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Going to space… to watch a burning planet.
So Richard Branson went to space. Next, Jeff Bezos. And then, what? Is there any scientific purposes in these flights to space? Nope, not directly at least. Is this a publicity stunt? Yes and no. I’m not at ease seeing billionnaires spending their pretty money on something that don’t bring value to a community except for themselve. Oh, they want to start a new commercial flight in space business apparently, for billionaires:
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A few thoughts on cleaning up my Twitter accounts following list
Since last year, I’ve been making a major cleanup of my Twitter account. I came from following more than 2000 people down to less than 300… and my goal is to drop below 100. I’m slowly getting there. Here are a few take outs from this major cleanup of my accounts following list.
First, there are a lot of stale accounts on Twitter, which tends to artificially increase “followship”. It looks like people stopped tweeting a while ago — they left the building. Second, a bunch of accounts were iPhone developers that I started following during my indie developer era, back in 2009-2013. My interests have since then shifted to writing and blogging. I no longer need to get in touch with the developers community. Third, and this coud be the most troubling take out: Twitter has become less and less useful in my numeric life. Articles readings happens more and more though RSS feeds and Mailbrew. So, what’s left for me from Twitter? Getting reactions from people during specials events, related to Apple’s announcements. That’s pretty much it.
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The Touch Bar is a great example of a divisive feature. I love the Touch Bar. Poll: Do you think Apple should kill the MacBook’s Touch Bar? - 9to5Mac
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I’ve been experimenting with time tracking. I’ve been doing it as an experiment at first, but now it’s part of my workflow. I’m using Toggl and Timery. Ask me anything.
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The more we wait for beta 4, the more chance we will get a step back for Safari redesign. That’s my guess.
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If you depend on automation shortcuts and use shortcuts in general on iOS 15 & iPadOS 15, you’ll quickly realize that any advance Apple made in Notifications are ruined by Shortcuts generated notifications. Those notifications should be treated separately.
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Maybe Apple should sell iPhone without any operating system, that way, everyone is equal. I’d love to build my own kernel because I think it would be the best but since Apple is bundling one, I’m seriously disadvantaged. How is this even allowed?
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The power of iPadOS 15: setting up a workspace made of four apps with a simple shortcut from the home screen. So cool. 👨🏻💻🤓
