All Publications by Numeric Citizen

I wish there was a quick way to delete all the posts from the test blog on Micro.blog. @manton

The metallic monster.

I’ve been playing with iA Presenter 1.4 again this morning. I like what I’m seeing with the share presentation online feature (example here). Now, I have to wonder: what is my use case for this? I always come down to this question when trying new features, new apps or new services.

Why doesn’t the Arc Browser provide Kagi search as a default search engine option? 🤔

• We're close to the end of 2024. Most of my creative projects that I had in mind to complete are... complete. I still have a video to produce (tomorrow), my personal year in review to share and the last edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter, after these, that's it, it is a wrap for 2024.
• My wife just ordered an iPhone 16 Pro, upgrading from the iPhone 14 Pro. I'm a bit jealous. She will get it tomorrow. What she doesn't know is that she will get an Apple Watch Series 10 for Christmas, upgrading from an old Series 6.
• I started to look at mechanical keyboards. What a complicated world! I cannot figure out how to start researching for the best ones. I should probably go to a Best Buy or something like that to test some of the brands. I miss the old IBM "clicky" (& noisy!) keyboards hooked to green TS3270 terminals when I started in computer science at the university.
• I experimented with iA Presenter 1.4 which brings shareable presentations for the web. It's pretty slick. Have a look here.
• I have a few days of vacations in the next two weeks. I'll be busy moving out of the house which will leave me little time for other things. Let's call this a break. 

I'm so not in the Christmas mood... I wonder if I'll ever be before Dec 25th. 

I think there is something really nice here that Micro.blog should copy to improve its blog post editor. cc @manton

This weekend, I’m going to record and publish the next edition of the “What’s Up with Micro.blog” series. The last edition was shared last August. Don’t miss it!

Microsoft Teams for iPad is probably the buggiest app of all when used with an external display. So many weird UI behaviors. It might Apple’s fault, too.

Just bought Soulver 3 for iPad as a big fan of this app for the Mac. I cannot live without it on my iPad today while at work. Not cheap but so well done. I wish I couldd export a sheet into Excel with all the values and formulas transposed for me.

At the office today, the last time for 2024. It’s an iPad Pro-type-of-day. Currently using an external display with Stage Manager on and Apple Magic Keyboard. It feels a little bit cramped but it’s ok. After two minutes, I can already see display bugs when using an app on the external display. I’m looking at you, Micro.blog.

At one point, for Apple, it might become more economical and less damaging to leave the EU market behind. Is it indeed getting personal?

This post is for testing purposes only. Please ignore as I’m testing Ghost ActivityPub feature. If everything goes as advertised, I should see this post from the Ghost Admin page, under the ActivityPub section.

Look what we’ve got here. Can you tell what is happening here? 👀

I’m getting tired of hearing people invoke their ADHD syndrome for everything… I mean, come on… either it’s diagnosed and you take the pills or it’s an excuse…

Update #1: Sorry to look offensive to some of my readers. I should have been more precautious when sharing such a thought. I was referring to some people, a minority, who invoke symptoms of ADHD without the condition so they can be more easily excused of certain things. Those people exist and their attitude is causing prejudice to people who actually have some degree of ADHD.

As 2024 comes to a close, Apple’s year can best be described as one of significant strides in hardware but uneven performance in other areas. For me, this was a year of notable upgrades: my Apple Watch, Mac mini, and iPad Pro all received meaningful updates. Among them, the M4 Mac mini stood out as the star upgrade, followed closely by the M4 iPad Pro and the Apple Watch Series 10. These personal milestones mirror the broader narrative of Apple’s hardware achievements in 2024.

The Mac Shines with M4 Processors

Apple’s Mac lineup had a stellar year, driven by the introduction of the M4 processor series. This leap in processing power enabled the release of more capable and efficient Macs, with the redesigned Mac mini taking center stage. The M4’s performance improvements and energy efficiency in both desktop and laptop devices solidify Apple’s dominance in this space. For Mac enthusiasts, especially Mac mini fans, 2024 will likely be remembered as a landmark year that redefined expectations for computing performance in a small package.

iPhone 16 Camera Control: A Missed Opportunity

The iPhone 16 launched with significant buzz around its new camera control features, positioned as a game changer for photography enthusiasts. However, the reality didn’t meet the hype. The controls were criticized for being finicky and unreliable, leading many users to abandon them altogether. This illustrates the challenge Apple faces in balancing cutting-edge innovation with practical usability—an area where even the most seasoned companies can stumble.

iPad Pro and iPadOS 18: A Mixed Bag

The iPad narrative in 2024 was a story of contrasts. On the hardware side, the M4-equipped iPad Pro received praise for its upgraded display and powerful processor, making it a strong choice for professionals and creatives. On the software side, however, iPadOS 18 offered little in the way of innovation, marking it as a "tock" year. The lack of impactful software updates left some iPad fans feeling underwhelmed, emphasizing the need for a more synchronized hardware-software evolution.

The Series 10

The Apple Watch is now ten years old. Many tech pundits expected a complete redesign, but it didn’t come. The Series Ultra has a new colour: black. On a personal level, my Series 8 had a battery life problem, which rendered my watch useless near the end of the afternoon. I had to do something about it. Beyond a fresh new battery, the Apple Watch Series 10 offers meaningful upgrades, particularly for older models like the Series 6 or 8. It introduces a larger display, smoother design refinements, improved responsiveness, and valuable features like the double-tap gesture and on-device translation. While the backup & restore process is still a hit or miss, I’m happy with the Series 10. Yet, this upgrade might be the least meaningful of all.

Apple Intelligence: A Lukewarm Start

The Apple Silicon story continues to evolve impressively, but 2024 began a new chapter: integrating on-device Apple Intelligence with generative AI services in the cloud. Unfortunately, Apple Intelligence’s debut was underwhelming. While the potential is immense, many users compared it unfavourably to established services like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Apple’s efforts in AI remain in their infancy, and the lukewarm reception highlights the need for further refinement and competitive features to win over users.

The App Store Monopoly?

Apple is slowly moving forward with opening the iPhone, under the constant pressure of the EU. The App Store is at the center of this and Apple is still reluctant to budge. While the EU won't see Apple Intelligence anytime soon, they do get a peak at a more open iPhone with third-party App Stores. Maybe those changes will come to other parts of the world later. Who knows.

Apple Vision Pro: Fading Interest and Untapped Potential

The Apple Vision Pro, initially hailed as a groundbreaking entry into the mixed reality space, faced a significant drop in interest as the year progressed. While its announcement generated excitement, the high price point and limited practical applications dampened enthusiasm. Early adopters praised its technical capabilities, but the platform’s untapped potential was further hindered by a lack of developer interest. Without compelling applications, the Vision Pro felt like a solution in search of a problem. This dual challenge of engaging both consumers and developers highlights the hurdles Apple must overcome to make augmented reality a mainstream success.

Closing Thoughts

On a personal level, 2024 stands out as a remarkable (and expansive) year of Apple upgrades. The upgraded devices in my ecosystem reflect the significance of Apple’s advancements in hardware. At the same time, I’m ready to take a break from upgrades for now, as these investments have revitalized my setup and satisfied my tech needs for the foreseeable future. That said, 2025 might be the year when I consider upgrading my iPhone 15 Pro Max to the iPhone 17 Pro, or whatever name Apple decides to give it. Perhaps by then, Apple will have tweaked the camera control to make it more usable.

For sure, 2024 was an exceptional year for Apple in many ways, particularly in hardware. The M4 processor series and new Macs were high points, while areas like AI and certain iPhone features fell short of expectations. The Vision Pro also highlighted both the company’s ambition and the challenges of pushing into new markets. Looking ahead, Apple’s challenge will be to build on these successes and address the areas where they faltered. Some have also started to question whether a leadership change might be beneficial for Apple’s future. Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, longtime leaders at the helm, have faced increasing scrutiny. A fresh perspective at the top could potentially reinvigorate Apple’s approach and help tackle its current challenges.

One more thing, Basic Apple Guy’s year in review is really worth a read. Header image generated with Apple Image Playground.

My scores for Apple in 2024

HW reliability: Apple hardware is first class. I never had a problem with Apple devices in a long time. 5/5

SW Quality: I think this year's releases are doing just fine with a few cool things. I don't see any horror story to talk about. I’m not referring to Apple Intelligence of course. 4/5

iPhone: The iPhone 16 is an iterative version of last year's iPhone; camera control is a flop. 4.5/5

Mac: It’s the best time to be a Mac user, thanks to Apple Silicon. 5/5

iPad: Hardware is always way ahead of software. Again. 4/5

Wearables: AirPods continue to impress with software updates. 4.5/5

Watch: No new sensor, but a refined design. I’m ok with it. 4/5

Environment/Social: Apple's entry into generative AI might put the carbon-neutral target in 2030 goals at risk. 4/5

Services: Still no Apple Pay Cash in Canada. Still 5GB entry level of storage. Price increased in 2024. There are too many ads for a premium brand. 2/5

Developers relations: Beyond the official discourse, actions speak louder. Not a good year for Apple, but a good one for their lawyers. (2/5)

Apple TV: No new hardware. Boring. Software seems at a standstill. 3.5/5

HomeKit: Matter support doesn't make a difference for me. 3.5/5

I’be been trying to build a small business around Craft using Gumroad in the last 18 months. So far, it’s a hit or miss. I’m currently having paying 20 subscribers for The Craft Bible¹. I sold quite a few Craft templates, too. I have many more ideas for 2025 to continue to grow this offering. Yet, it won’t replace my day job.

I like Gumroad as a selling platform but also for writing articles and sharing them with my customers. This is not something that I planned on doing when I started, but I must admit that it’s fun to build a small community around an app like Craft, away from the public scrutiny of Reddit and Slack. Today, I shared a long op-ed article on my feelings about Craft. It’s a long piece that I took quite some time to write. I’m quite happy with the results. I can’t wait for user reactions and feedback.

Tonight, I watched the iPhone 4 leak documentary. I don’t want to spoil anything but there was an unexpected and unknown twist to this story. It’s a great documentary. It made me think twice about this era which I kind of miss, actually.

I don’t know why I’m paying for Ivory, I’m not often on Mastodon, much more often here and on Bluesky.

I’m still exploring ways to monetize my experience with Craft. After creating The Craft Bible, now it’s Craft Support Call. I don’t expect much from this, but I’m curious to see how it goes if I ever get one request.

So I finally got the iPad Magic Keyboard for my M4 iPad Pro. At first, I didn’t want to spend that amount of money on a freakin keyboard… but I’m a weak man and I did. While I love the added function keys row, the overall improvement, I’m not sure this keyboard is that magical.

When writing, I start in Craft and then export to Ulysses for final review and online posting. It works great, but I’m not always satisfied with Ulysses, which sometimes feels overwhelming. Enter iA Writer, an app that I remember using in its early days and that I liked for its simplicity. This blog post from Greg Morris reminds me of the perpetual questioning of my decision to settle on Ulysses.

This morning, I decided to download a trial of iA Writer. The first thing I checked was which publishing platforms it supports. To my surprise, it supports all the ones I depend on: Ghost, Micro.blog, and, to a lesser extent, Medium.

This blog post was written on my 15-inch M2 MacBook Air using iA Writer trial edition. Sadly, iA Writer couldn’t post as draft, so I had to manually copy and paste the content into a blank post on Micro.blog.

My Ulysses subscription ends on March 25th, 2025, but this publishing bug is a deal-breaker for now. Back to Ulysses.

A quick behind-the-scenes post: the same overall content, with two different apps. This is the “script” for this video. On the left, Mindnote Next, on the right, Zavala. This is sort of a cue card for use during video recording, the Mindnote version was much easier to read. Zavala’s version is more for documenting purposes. Even the outline view in Mindnote feels better.

Random thoughts of the moment. 💭

• I cannot decide if I'm going to subscribe to Screen Studio, a competitor to Screenflow and CleanShot. There is something to Screen Studio that I like but is not available on the other two: automatic zooming.
• As much as I like Micro.blog in general, for photo-sharing purposes, it is lacking. Even with the just-released photo collections, there is no way it can challenge services like Glass or even Pixelfed. I created two collections to see how it works. It seems that I can't share a link to them from here. If I find a way, I'll update this post.
• As much as I like Scribbles, the same goes for sharing photos here. No go.
• I released a video yesterday about Craft and at the very end I mention that now any subscription to the Craft Bible includes a one-week trial for free. I have yet to see a single subscription since yesterday. I'm highly perplexed (and a tad sad). I was expecting too much from this promotion I guess. 
• I wish I could see how much energy my online presence was consuming over the course of a year. I mean, I'm using many services, and they all consume energy because of me. How much?

No more thoughts of the moment. 🚶🏻

My brother-in-law got a M4 Mac mini recently. The last time he used a Mac was with the Macintosh LC III, more than thirty years ago. One thing he still struggles with, then and now: the menu bar that changes when switching apps. The other thing: he doesn’t get the Stage Manager. He turned that off.

I often share photos about Apple, apparently¹.

Riccardo Mori @morrick@appdot.net

Apple Intelligence died on October 5, 2011. https://mastodon.online/@9to5Mac/113647127504397409

7:51 PM • December 13, 2024 (UTC)

🤦🏻‍♂️

My experience with Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools is mixed. One significant issue is the absence of a feature to compare the original text with the revised version. In contrast, Grammarly excels in this regard, as its suggestions are contextual. Additionally, the constant need to select text to “feed” the Writing Tools becomes tedious. Another challenge arises when using Writing Tools with markdown content or links. These get mangled in the revised version. Finally, speed is also an issue. Even for simple text to process, it can take quite some time to get a response.

For now, Grammarly remains my preferred writing assistant, and I have no intention of switching to Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools anytime soon.

Will we ever see some generative AI or AI-based features added to HEY Mail? 🧐

Adobe Lightroom for Mac is the best Mac app of the year? In light of Apple buying Pixelmator, I find this a bit surprising.

If generative AI evolution is slowing down, it means Apple will have more time to catch up. 😂

The M1 Mac mini holds a special place in my heart, not just as a piece of technology but as a transformative device in my journey with Apple Silicon Macs. It was the first Mac mini I ever owned and served as a reliable workhorse for four memorable years, spanning both my professional endeavours and creative hobbies.

The Start of a New Era

When the M1 Mac mini launched in late 2020, it marked the dawn of Apple’s bold transition from Intel to its own Silicon. Intrigued by its promise of groundbreaking performance and efficiency, I made it my primary computer. Equipped with 16 GB of RAM and a spacious 1 TB SSD, it was a configuration that ensured longevity and flexibility. This machine wasn’t just an upgrade—it was a revelation.

The M1 Mac mini became the heart of my home office. Professionally, it handled everything from complex spreadsheets and virtualization tasks to video conferencing without breaking a sweat. It also supported my creative passions, including photo editing, blogging, and video production.

The Display Experience

For the first two years, I paired the Mac mini with an LG UltraFine 4K display. Its vibrant and crisp image quality beautifully complemented the M1’s capabilities, making it ideal for editing photos and videos. The combination of the M1 chip and a 4K display delivered a stellar visual experience that elevated my creative projects. Two years later, I replaced the display with a gorgeous Apple Studio monitor. It’s still the one I used on my M4 Mac mini, which replaced my aging M1 Mac mini.

The Bluetooth Blues

While the M1 Mac mini delivered on performance and efficiency, its first year was marred by a frustrating issue: persistent Bluetooth disconnections. This wasn’t just an isolated annoyance; it was a widespread problem reported by many early adopters, as documented in articles like Mark Ellis Reviews. From dropped connections with my Magic Keyboard to unreliable pairing with Bluetooth speakers, these hiccups disrupted an otherwise smooth experience.

Thankfully, Apple addressed this issue with the release of macOS Big Sur 11.2. From that point onward, the Mac mini’s connectivity issues became a distant memory.

Four Years of Dependability

Over its four-year tenure, the M1 Mac mini proved its worth. It stood as a testament to the durability and future-proofing of Apple’s first-generation Silicon. Even as newer models with more advanced chips emerged, the M1 performed admirably, handling every task I threw at it.

The M1 Mac mini wasn’t just a computer; it was a companion that adapted to my evolving needs. It kick-started my journey into the world of Apple Silicon, laying the groundwork for the Mac devices I’d use in the years to come. Whether for work or play, it consistently delivered the performance and reliability I needed.

A Fond Farewell

As I move on to newer technology, the M4 Mac mini, I look back on my time with the M1 Mac mini with gratitude. It was more than just a machine; it was a milestone in my computing life, bridging the gap between the Intel era and Apple’s Silicon revolution. For anyone who’s ever wondered whether a compact desktop computer could punch above its weight, the M1 Mac mini proved that the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

Missed this series introduction?

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 9 posts 😃
🏞️ 7 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 Two YouTube videos published 😃
Did you know that I made a 2025 calendar using a Craft template? It’s available here on Gumroad.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ As 2024 is coming to an end, I decided to spend some time updating my About Page to mark some of my goals as completed. It was a great year overall. Now is the right to think about my goals for next year (already). 🤔 2️⃣ In entirely unrelated news, the regime in Syria has fallen. To my knowledge, this regime was heavily supported by the Russian government. With the war in Ukraine, Putin's regime apparently couldn't keep up with Syria’s internal affairs and demands. This is a positive development: Russians can (and should) be kicked out. We shouldn't fear them and seize this opportunity to increase our military support for Kyiv. The sooner, the better. Now, I am returning to regular programming.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ This week, I discovered this guy on YouTube who built a method called “Forever Notes” for organizing notes based on Apple Notes. It is the best use case for Apple Notes so far, and I'm really impressed. First, I'm impressed by the quality of the content this guy put together. Second, it shows how powerful and flexible Apple Notes is. It looks so well done that I wonder if I should move my notes out of Bear and migrate to Apple Notes. Both apps are comparable, but I would save some money by doing so. This is something to consider, and it could become a project for 2025. I encourage you to watch this video if you are a note-taker looking to organize your content better. Don't miss his website, too. 2️⃣ I want the Flexbar! I’m still using a 2017 MacBook Pro with a TouchBar at work, and I like it. This little external USB-C TouchBar is clever and could challenge the well-known Stream Deck in some use cases. The plugin SDK will play a significant role in making this a reality.

Forever ✱ Notes - A free framework for Apple Notes

Discover Forever ✱ Notes, a unique digital note-taking framework designed for Apple Notes users. Organize your thoughts, streamline your workflow, and enhance your productivity with our simple, intuitive system. Explore Hubs, Collections, and Tags today!

Beta

“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” Andry Grove, ex-CEO of Intel.

“Once a tool is a part of my workflow, any change to that tool generates friction” — Matt Birchler

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Since 2023, I have published three write-ups: one about my personal life, one about Craft, and one about Apple. For 2024, the former two are doing great, but not with the third. I'll try to write something about Apple because I think 2024 was an important year for both Apple and me regarding adopting and using Apple technologies in my personal and professional life. I invested a lot of my money in Apple products this year, which is something to write about.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ One of my photos has been selected in this month’s highlights on Glass. This is the second or third time one of my photos has received this treatment. That photo was shared under my Decay series, which seems to be highly appreciated within the Glass community more than anything I've experienced back when I was on Flickr, 500px and Smugmug. I'll keep sharing my best urban exploration shots in the coming weeks. 2️⃣ Another great Glass discovery: Linda Alida, a young female photographer who seems to be blogging through her photos (great example here and here). I love this.

Linda Alida on Glass Photography Community

Linda Alida. Processing Through Art

Monthly Category Favorites — Decay — Glass

Eventually everything falls apart.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Apple is having challenges in making Apple Intelligence available in China. Baidu wants it all, while Apple says, no, you can't have it. Training LLM models is central to the problem: which data do you train on? I would say this: why bother with China, just leave it behind, just like EU. 2️⃣ Microsoft discontinues the Surface Studio Windows PC. I like Microsoft “courage” to try different takes on modern PC. It was an intriguing product. We can read different things with this discontinuation. One way is that Microsoft doesn’t sell enough of these to warrant keeping the product. But how much is “not enough”: a few hundreds units per month or a few thousands? Maybe Microsoft couldn’t bring enough ISV support for this device to keep it around. Apple tolerance to support a low-volume product like the Apple Vision Pro might be higher than Microsoft’s. It will be interesting if Apple keeps it around for a long time.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I'm still considering developing an online course on Craft. I asked the community about their thoughts on paying for such content this week. The initial feedback is not very encouraging. People either lack interest in it or are hesitant to spend much on it. How can I trust this type of poll? Of course, people won't say they want to pay the highest price possible. Nonetheless, this causes me to hesitate. 2️⃣ I finally completed my migration off GoDaddy for my domain names this week. I have a few domains, and I wanted them all on CloudFlare. Now, it's done.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Tapestry seems to be close to a release. I'm still undecided about this app. I want to like it, but I am not fazed by its visual design. 2️⃣ The second phase of Apple Intelligence is here with the release of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, etc. It's a packed release that is not only about Apple Intelligence; the Photos app received some improvements, too: Improvements to Collections views, including swiping right to go back. Recently Viewed and Shared album history can be cleared, among other things.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I created the second video of a three-part series about Craft 3.0. I’m not very satisfied with it. I was tired when I recorded. I wanted to get it out the door to keep my publishing momentum regarding this significant Craft release. Judging by user reactions, I did a good job. 👀😳☺️ Nonetheless, it’s not a good idea to rush things out to meet an artificial deadline. I should know better. The third one was release on Sunday, right before this newsletter and I must say that I'm rather proud of that one. 2️⃣ What will Apple do with the just acquired Pixelmator and Photomator? The question has no official answers, but Joseph Slinker has a compelling discussion about this subject, on YouTube. 3️⃣ The Browser Company is working on something new, something different. It's not another browser... oh wait, yes, it is: The Dia Browser. They are hiring people to finish the job. I'm curious, but at the same time, I don't want them to drop the Arc Browser because I really like it. The signs are pointing to an abandoned project: the Arc Browser updates are becoming less and less frequent and significant. 4️⃣ As I'm writing this newsletter edition, I produced and published 20 videos this year. I'll push another one before the end of the year, reaching 21 videos, which is much less than last year. It's hard to find a clear explanation for this. I hope to fare better in 2025, but it will be challenging because of many-months home improvement project about to start right at the beginning of January. In any case, I'll see where it goes. Life of a hobbyist creator is full of challenges.

Apple’s planned acquisition of Pixelmator for over $119 million has raised questions about its strategy and impact on users. The move is seen as a potential effort to attract creatives frustrated with Adobe, leveraging Pixelmator and Photomator to boost Mac sales or services revenue. Drawing comparisons to Apple’s acquisition of Dark Sky, concerns arise about integration into Apple’s Photos app, though the video suggests a more likely scenario where these apps remain standalone premium tools, akin to iMovie-to-Final Cut or GarageBand-to-Logic. With Apple’s renewed focus on the creative market, the creator anticipates continued development and relevance for Pixelmator and Photomator, bolstering optimism among users.

Creating a compelling recruiting video is challenging because it requires inspiring people to trust your company with their careers. To achieve this, it’s crucial to articulate a clear and visionary purpose rather than focusing on perks. The browser company is tackling this by introducing Dia, a new AI-driven web browser designed to transform the computing environment. Unlike traditional AI integrations, Dia leverages personalized intelligence to enhance workflows and automate tasks through its innovative architecture, built on a unique foundation called ADK. By reimagining the browser as an integrated, proactive assistant, Dia aims to make computing deeply personal and context-aware, embodying the potential of AI in a way that transcends isolated features. Drawing parallels to transformative historical innovations, the company highlights its commitment to building a future-ready platform and invites passionate individuals to help bring this vision to life.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Anything that helps reduce the search engine monopoly of Google is good news to me. This link post by Gruber gives a hint (I’m not referring to The New York Times article because of their paywall). With the emergence of the fediverse (Mastodon, Bluesky), maybe we can start hoping for a more distributed power on the Internet. 2️⃣ It seems that encryption is the new friend of American authorities (FBI) against potential China intrusions. It's the same FBI that was asking for backdoors in operating systems. What a bunch of clowns. Personnally, I'm using iMessage with other Apple user peers (fully encrypted) and WhatsApp (also fully encrypted).

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ iOS 18.2 is just around the corner, so I'm looking forward to the next iteration, iOS 18.3, which should bring the most interesting and promising part of Apple Intelligence. Siri is about to get a considerable boost if Apple's claims are believed. I can't wait to try it out.

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦

What is that? 👀

The monster.

Once upon a time... before computers...

JF Martin on Glass

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 5 posts 😔
🏞️ 7 photos shared 🙂
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 One YouTube video published 🙂
Did you know that I once created a public daily journal during my trip to Italy in 2022? You can still have a look at it right here.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ This was the thanksgiving week; I find the marketing around thanksgiving a bit tiring. Even as a consumer, I'm not ok with this systematic consumerism promotion. That being said, I'm always trying to be thankful for my life, my friends, my wife, my sons, all year long.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ What is happening these days with the company's logo design? See below. Computer and smartphone screens resolutions have never been so high, printing quality has never been so good, electronic billboards have never been so popular and big, and TVs have never been so good. Yet, companies turn their logo into unappealing designs without personality. Why? 2️⃣ I discovered the Minutes to Midnight blog. The design is super clean. It’s a fascinating personal website. He wrote a personal manifesto, which I find inspiring. Maybe I should write one myself.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I'm slowly getting used to focusing on Inoreader for all my reading needs. A recent blog article on the Inoreader website gives valuable details about the reading capabilities of Inoreader RSS readers.

Read-later services or applications result from facing or having too much content availability and a lack of time to consume that content promptly.

“…so many people use Chrome that many developers don’t always test if their websites work correctly in Safari. That’s absolutely a problem and it’s a frustration for Safari users.” — Matt Birchler

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ This week's writing projects were focused on writing the release highlight to go with the recent release of Craft 3.0. It's a significant milestone in the history of Craft that requires more attention than usual. This article is for The Craft Bible 2.0 subscribers. 2️⃣ The second writing project was an update for Medium members about my freelancing aspirations that were suddenly paused. I explained why on my Medium page. 3️⃣ As we enter the last month of the year, I'm facing the daunting task of finishing three feature articles: a personal year in review, a Craft year in review and finally, an Apple year in review. The latter has not even started, so the former two are in good shape. Yet, I'm unsure if I’ll have enough free time to finish and publish those pieces. I'm willing to drop the Apple year in review to focus on the other two that are more unique and might gain more traction. 4️⃣ Don't miss the monthly digest of my posts on Micro.blog for the month of November.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Unsplash Awards, 2024 edition is out! Oh boy there are so many stunning photos! If you must watch sometime this week, it’s that photos showcase. I always been a big fan of Unsplash but I must say that I don’t contribute as much as I would like. Not everything is Unsplash-worthy, though. 2️⃣ Sandra Roberts on Glass shares many great pictures. I discovered her because she saw some of my photos and liked them and gave me some feedback. I was curious and went to visit her website build on Adobe Portfolio. She's is really good photographer. We seems to share a passion for uban photography. 3️⃣ If something bad happens to Photomator since the Apple acquisition, maybe I should consider using Darkroom instead? I saw a thanksgiving promotion on Glass and thought that Darkroom could share directly processed images to the service, but it's not the case. This reminds me of something that I'd like to see in Glass: support for third-party photo-editing apps for easy sharing. 4️⃣ Another photographer discovered on Glass, Wayne MacPhail. I found this image especially telling.

https://sandraroberts.myportfolio.com/projects

Wayne MacPhail on Glass Photography Community

Wayne MacPhail. Enthusiast who shoots with iPhone 16 Pro, Ricoh GRiii X, Sony A6600 in the Hamilton, Ontario.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ John Gruber has an interesting blog post about Apple's acquisition of Pixelmator. He's a bit late, but his perspective required more research and deeper thinking than mine. He suggests that Apple might be more interested in Pixelmator Pro than Photomator. This would be my worst-case scenario, as I depend on Photomator for most of my photo-editing needs. Or maybe it is about competing against Creative Cloud. 2️⃣ Matt Birchler wishes he could find a reason to get the new M4 Mac mini. I did. And I'm glad. It's the best desktop Mac ever owned, if not the best. 3️⃣ According to Apple, Shazam crossed the 100 billion song recognitions. Shazam has a great story with Apple, and it clearly demonstrates that an app acquired by Apple can strive. I hope the same will happen with Pixelmator. 4️⃣ Yes, the Apple TV hardware is just fine. Don't believe people who think that Apple should make a TV set. It's a distraction. 5️⃣ Windows Recall entered in beta (again). Would you like something like this on macOS, made by Apple? As someone who tested Rewind, I would love to see that on the Mac. 6️⃣ It's time to talk about the iPhone 17 rumours, already. Oops.

“They could sell a bundle for, just spitballing here, $20/month or $200/year that would include the Mac and iPad versions of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator, and possibly Photomator. Maybe throw in some extra iCloud storage.” — John Gruber on the possible future of Pixelmator apps under Apple’s umbrella.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I'm well positioned with my efforts to update content in Craft to support Craft Tasks better to be introduced in the upcoming version 3. It's rather tedious, and I'm unsure how to recoup this time investment and how I will use task management in Craft if I ever will. 2️⃣ I'm thinking of doing my first YouTube live stream session. I could set up this session for the Craft users community where I could explore Craft live and answer questions. I need two essential pieces of equipment for this to happen: a pricey Rodecaster Video and a compatible webcam. I created a poll on YouTube for the community, asking if there is an appetite for this. If not, I could do the same, but only for The Craft Bible subscribers. 3️⃣ I want to mention the first anniversary of The Craft Bible 2.0. It's been a long ride. There are many paying subscribers, and I have been able to update the content regularly since the beginning. I wish I could do more, but the lack of time holds it. In a perfect world, it could become a collaborative project, but sadly, not many people are willing to invest the time required to maintain a project like this one. 4️⃣ I'm looking at opportunities to design websites with RealMac Software Elements. So far, I have three candidates. I would do this to build websites with great software, just for fun. It's easier to start from an existing website than starting from scratch. I could redo the website for the company I'm currently working for. I could also redo the one for Micro.blog and do the one for my freelancing company.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ MindNote is now MindNode Classic, but MindNote Next is out with another more expensive subscription. I’ll finish my current subscription with the classic version before switching to the newest edition. I like MindNote but don’t use it often. 2️⃣ Apple names the 2024 Apps of the Year finalists. None of the finalists are part of my apps. 3️⃣ Apple Frames 3.3. is out, but I prefer Shareshot, which is native and runs great. 4️⃣ I bought an app for my iPad called Orion from the makers of Halides that transforms my iPad into a video monitor using a USB-C cable. I tested it connected to my Nikon Zf camera to display the viewfinder content on my iPad. It works great. It also requires the Elgato CamLink 4K HDMI converter. It's cool. That converter also allows me to plug my Nikon into my Mac and use it as a webcam. It works great. The ultimate goal is to have a webcam compatible with the RODECaster Video switcher, which I plan to buy soon. But before that, I'll test my setup with my next video recording session. My initial tests are promising.

1️⃣ I made a video explaining the upcoming styles features in Craft 3.0, which should be out by the time you read this. It's the first video I produced on the new M4 Mac mini. It's a fast machine for sure, but using a two-screen setup for video production is really nice. You can get a summary of my creative toolset right here on my metablog. I was able to beat the Craft team for the Craft Style feature, but they will beat me for the Collections feature. Anyway! I will go deeper and be more critical of their newest release than anyone could or is willing to. Stay tuned. 2️⃣ Would you use the iPad for 200 days as your main computer? Someone did. Occasionally, I go to the downtown office with my iPad only, which I connect to an external display and bring my wireless keyboard and mouse. I use Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Word and PowerPoint. Straightforward stuff. It works ok. I want to love it, but there are so many rough edges. 3️⃣ Recently, I started listening to ambiance music like this. It gives a feeling of being in a science fiction movie like Dune. Instead of listening to white noises, I prefer a richer acoustic experience. Try it for yourself.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Manton Reece writes: “This week Mark Zuckerberg met at Mar-a-Lago with a convicted criminal who is out on bail. I stopped posting to Instagram in 2017, but I keep giving Meta second chances. No more. It’s time to burn this shit to the ground and move forward with the open web. Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.”. Does that means he is going to remove cross-posting to Thread from Micro.blog.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ We're entering December, already. The year 2024 went so fast. I'm looking forward to conclude this year by meeting my objective: focusing on the things I like to do most. 2️⃣ I'm looking forward to see the next iteration of Apple Intelligence with the first beta of iOS 17.3. This is where we should see if Apple will deliver on its promises of a better Siri.

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦

Once upon a time, computers...

This whole marketing and consumption thing is stupid. Sorry.

1. I came to realize that many of my link posts are finding their way into my Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter instead of being published here or on Micro.blog. I'm fine with that, I'm only thinking out loud. 
2. I finally created a short welcome video for my Ko-fi page visitors and subscribers. The video is hosted on YouTube but is not publicly listed.
3. I bought a few things on Amazon that brings me closer to the day when I'll use a RodeCaster Video to record YouTube live streams and produce more videos, instead of using Screenflow. These things will help me connect my Nikon Z f to the RodeCaster to act as a compatible webcam, supporting UVC mode. I'll probably use it too for other needs when I need a webcam.
4. I sold my M1 Mac mini to a really weird guy. It took less time than I thought it would. Great, but that guy, oh my...
5. I'm happy to see Plausible being supported on Scribbles.page. I'll keep Tinylytics anyway, just to support Vincent, the developer behind this service. He just bought an M4 Mac mini, so he needs some money! 🤭

Decay, a Series by JF Martin — Glass

A selection of the best decay scenes as seen through my camera lenses. Many of those images were shot when I was an active urban explorer circa 2018-2020.

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 26 posts 🙂
🏞️ 11 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔
This edition covers week 44, 45 and 46.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ Coming back from a one-week vacation, working on the plane with my iPad Pro. I'm loving it each time. This was a small vacation before starting a long stretch of no-time-for-vacation. Nothing until next spring, until then: work, work, home improvement project, writing, sharing, contributing.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I’m continuing my gradual discovery of Bluesky. My usage follows an up-and-down curve, but I’m learning to like Bluesky. I started this journey in mid-2023. Since then, Bluesky has grown in features, maturity and popularity. The platform is now reaching more than 20 million users. I'm hearing that Bluesky usage has been surging recently, especially since the US election. I’m not sure why. I’m happy to see Micro.blog support for Bluesky continues to grow, too. Micro.blog is still my go-to solution on the web, but I’m adding Bluesky to my daily routine, mainly for reading the news. The only thing to remember: social networks can be toxic and time suckers.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ In the “Small scale is the best scale,” blog post, I was reminded of a thought a friend of mine shared with me recently: the world as we know it now makes everything seemingly close. At any second, we can see and hear what is happening everywhere. It can be a good thing, but some people think it could be harmful to some degree. Are we really made to absorb this always-on proximity with the rest of the world? My friend thinks no. And I'm starting to agree with her. As I get older, I should focus on locality instead of globality—food for thought. 2️⃣ I discovered Read Max, a site on Substack. I read a few things here and there, but this one about people preferring AI-generated art over human-created art caught my attention. Let me say this: we tend to overestimate people's ability to decipher what is great art like what is a great photography. I would argue that it's a minority of people who can recognize what makes a great photo. We also tend to overestimate our value in our creations, be with images or words. That one is not really related to the Read Max website.

Read Max | Max Read | Substack

Explaining the weird new future, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe for a twice weekly delivery of internet culture, mega-platform grotesquerie, crypto conspiracies, deep forum lore, fringe politics, and other artifacts of what’s to come. Click to read Read Max, by Max Read, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

SubstackMax Read

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ The recent news of Apple's acquisition of Pixelmator prompted me to write about this. Since then, nothing new has been announced either by Pixelmator or by Apple. It's too early, I guess. I'm sure future events around Pixelmator apps will trigger more writings. Meanwhile, application updates and videos like this one are still being pushed out! 2️⃣ About once a week or more, I get requests for guest posts on my blog on numericcitizen.me. As shown below, the inquirer doesn't specify why my website seems interesting to him and doesn't specify which subject he would write about. How am I supposed to pull the trigger and ask for more information? 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I finally had a chance to experience the Glass Series feature, officially available since November 12th. Since then, I managed to create a few photo series (see Darkness, Minimalism, Shadows). Creating a new series is simple and can be done in two ways: uploading many new images or selecting already published ones. The first method will flood the followers’ timeline. I wish photos would be published with some delays until all images in the series are made public. The second method is straightforward; it is not shared with followers once the series is published. As shown below, social network previews are well-designed (a link leading to a specific series posted on Bluesky). With Glass Series, Glass gave a new name to Flickr or another similar service, an album. When browsing the photo timeline, pictures that are part of a series are identified with photo thumbnails overlaid on the photo. Hovering the mouse over produces a nice animation, expanding the thumbnail to show the number of images in the series. The side effect of this design decision is to improve the discoverability of past published images. The Series adds value to Glass and proves that Glass is maturing. I'll use them to organize my photos better. 2️⃣ Thanks to the new Series feature, I discovered this photographer on Glass; Here is the Impressionism series from Nico Photo. 3️⃣ Finally, I shared many of my best urban exploration photos on Glass to go with the new category of the month: decay.

Darkness, a Series by JF Martin — Glass

In this series, I want to show different degrees of darkness expressions.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Apple continues to release the next iteration of its operating systems with more Apple Intelligence features. 2️⃣ iCloud Backups for devices running iOS 8 no longer work, and Apple asks users to upgrade. 3️⃣ Lightning to Headphone Jack adaptors are no longer available from Apple; they were introduced with the iPhone 7. 4️⃣ I switched to the M4 Mac mini, and it went well. I shared a few details here. 5️⃣ Apple makes it even harder for thieves or the police to get access to a stolen iPhone with this little trick. Thanks, Apple. 6️⃣ AppleInsider reports that Apple no longer offers free repair of the infamous butterfly keyboard on MacBook Pro. What a bad streak for Apple.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I always have one project or two in my mind. For a few weeks, I've been following the development of RealMac Software Elements, a static website editor for the Mac. It's in beta, and the program is expanding its beta tester base. I have received an invite to look at myself. The only issue is a subscription to enter the beta program is mandatory. That's a first for me, and I wondered if this is a frequent practice. Nonetheless, I'm really tempted to give it a try. My first project would be to build a prototype website for a hypothetical freelancing job in IT services. The second project would be to rebuild my current company's website, which needs a complete redesign. Ultimately, I would love to use Elements to replace some of my publishing needs currently addressed by Craft's shared documents, like my About page. I'll give myself more time to think about this as I have a few other things on my plate for the rest of the year.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ News Explorer, a lesser-known RSS reader, entered beta for version 2.0. A few years ago, I happily used News Explorer for a few years as my primary RSS reading solution after spending quite some time with Reeder. The upcoming version 2.0 brings a few notable additions, such as feed filtering with keywords, which I appreciate in Inoreader, the RSS reading solution I'm using now. Am I going to switch back from Inoreader? Nope. Yet, I like to keep track of apps that I used to like. You never know when I might return. 2️⃣ You can use Apple Intelligence to ask ChatGPT to create images, but they come out in a square format. You cannot use a directive like “using a 16:9 aspect ratio”, which is possible in the ChatGPT client. Also, requests aren't saved in ChatGPT conversation history, even with a paid account, which is too bad. 3️⃣ I like using small Mac utilities, and up until now, I was happy using Tot, a small menubar text editor. A recent update to Raycast introduced Raycast Notes, and I'm in love with it. I moved all my notes to Raycast Notes and dropped Tot.

RSS Readers War: From Reeder to News Explorer

I’m a long time user of Reeder, a well known and well designed RSS reader for the Apple ecosystem (see my review of Reeder 4 here). But, recently during a discussion on Telegram (which by the way y…

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

Tripsy – Trip Planner for iPhone (iOS), iPad & Mac

The Ultimate Travel Companion – Tripsy is a travel planner that helps you plan your entire trip in one place. You can share your itinerary with family and friends, get flight alerts, store documents, and make wish lists of places to visit.

In theory, Tripsy is a great app idea that appears well designed and executed. The problem is that I don’t plan my trips in enough details to warrant buying or subscribing to an app like this. I’m sharing this here just in case you might find this useful.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Realmac Software continues publishing new videos about their upcoming static website editor Elements. 2️⃣ Pixelmator also continues publishing videos about recent updates, too. I like that. 3️⃣ If you want to see Apple Intelligence in action, this time, image playground and genmojis creation are showcased in that video. 4️⃣ Marques Brownlee talks about Apple Intelligence, too. 5️⃣ In Shot with iPhone, Tyler Stalman exposes the current state of iPhone photography and videography with many intricate details. There is a lot to unpack in the video here. Many valuable insights about iPhone photo formats, image processing, and more exist. After watching this, I realized that iPhone photography is becoming quite complicated. 6️⃣ An interesting one from the Notion team. Being 20 years younger, I would probably seek to work for them. 7️⃣ Montreal, the city where I've been living since 2006. At 32:09 in this video, we can see the building close to my downtown office, on the right. Montreal is such a diverse environment with so many great places as well as more troubling or ugly ones, like any big cities in North America. I often compare Montreal to New York.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I’ve been experimenting with Apple Intelligence Image Playground in recent weeks, and I must say that I'm not very impressed. No matter which photo I select, the results are awful. 2️⃣ I tried something with ChatGPT: “Based on what you know about me, draw a picture of what you think my current life looks like.” The results aren't compelling, as seen below. 3️⃣ I put my M1 Mac mini for sale. Many of these are currently being sold, following the redesigned M4 Mac mini. It won't be an easy sale.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ I'd like to put some time aside to create a series of YouTube videos dedicated at Craft 3.0 that is coming very soon. I'm not sure if I'll be able to achieve my objectives here because my next few weekends are rather busy.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

1. My morning routine now includes spending some time on Bluesky to get some news and to keep experiencing with this platform. 
2. At one point I was very effective on Twitter to filter out the content by different channels using Twitter lists. I'd like to do the same eventually on Bluesky.
3. For now, my Bluesky usage is heavily skewed toward following news about the war in Ukraine and somewhat engaging with the community around that subject. I expect this will evolve over time.
4. I feel that Bluesky is what Twitter should have become. 
5. I don't see bots, spammers, and the like on Bluesky and I wonder how long it will stay that way. 
6. Have a great day my friends. If you are on Bluesky, just say hi to me on Bluesky, search for "numericcitizen.me"!

I recently flew to and from Florida, which reminded me of my love for using an iPad on a plane. Here is a list of reasons, in no particular order, why it’s such a great experience.

• The 11-inch iPad Pro is perfect for today’s cramped planes. I always prefer using the iPad over the airplane’s infotainment system.
• It’s the only time I use Stage Manager to multitask across many different apps (task management, writing, music listening, etc.).
• Listening to music with noise cancellation is the best way to isolate myself from my neighbours and reduce ambient plane noise. The typical ambient noise level on a plane can reach 75 dB. Even if I don’t play music, I keep my AirPods Max on my head to lower the noise level.
• Watching downloaded YouTube videos is a great way to spend flight time. I often download short videos to learn new things instead of sleeping. Apple TV+ is also a great content provider for longer flights.
• It’s the best time to review my iCloud Photos Library and triage and cleanup. Using Photomator to edit RAW images is such an enjoyable experience, too. It’s a reminder of the Pixelmator apps acquired by Apple, which prompts thoughts of an uncertain future.
• It’s the only time when I play games. My current favourite games are Townscaper, Missiles Command: Recharged and Discbricks.
• On my way home, I use the iPad to organize my return to work or everyday life. I usually do this by simply using a list of tasks in Apple Notes.

Of course, this wouldn’t be as seamless without the iPad’s impressive battery life. Despite multitasking with multiple apps, playing games, and watching videos, I’m always impressed by how long the battery lasts. I usually only need a quick top-up once I reach my destination.

In conclusion, the iPad has become an indispensable travel companion. It transforms my flying experience from mundane to enjoyable and productive. Whether I use it for work, entertainment, or simply to organize my thoughts, it enhances every aspect of my journey in a way that no other device can.

1. I'm slowly getting over the Trump election. It's utterly sad because it means that you can say anything you want, do anything you want and still aspire to become the President of the United States of America. Is this what is called "the American Dream"?
2. I spent some time this morning to do some cleanup of articles that I started writing at some point in the past. My gosh, I have so many unfinished article projects: moving out of Toggl, find a better reading workflow, documenting my Bluesky experiment, and on, and on, and on.
3. I'm also slowly getting over the loss of Omnivore, the best read later service available until now. While updating a comparison table of similar services, I added Inoreader to the mix and I must say that it's probably one of the best alternative to Omnivore in my opinion.
4. I'm finally getting read for some bad news about Pixelmator apps. I prefer to set my expectations very low so that I could be pleasantly be surprise. 
5. Have a great week-end! 👋🏻

Apple bought Pixelmator, which sent a shockwave across the creative world. I’m in shock myself. As the dust settles a bit, it’s time to think about the possible implications of this.

As a reminder for what follows later in this article, Pixelmator has been around as a company since 2007 and makes two apps: a Photoshop competitor called Pixelmator Pro and a Lightroom competitor called Photomator. The former is available only on the Mac, while the latter is available for all Apple platforms (except the Apple Vision Pro). Look for this BasicAppleGuy article for a more detailed description of Pixelmator's history.

As explained in this article, I migrated to Pixelmator apps this year, leaving Adobe behind (I was a subscriber between 2016 and 2024). It took me some effort to achieve it, but it was mandatory because I couldn’t justify the subscription price asked by the Adobe Photography plan. I bought Pixelmator Pro and Photomator, which are probably among the best native Mac apps out there. I mainly use Photomator, but I use Pixelmator occasionally to create simple things like the following artwork for my podcast. It's elementary design, and Pixelmator can create more complex content, as you might already guess. Photomator offers a unique take on photo editing. One could argue that Photomator shares familiarity with Adobe Lightroom. Having used both, I would agree this is why I felt at home when I switched from Lightroom to Photomator. I’m pretty happy with my decision because the alternatives are viable for my photography workflow and needs.

Over the years, especially since switching to Pixelmator apps, I often wondered why Apple wasn’t buying the company. When you look at Pixelmator apps, you think: These apps could have been made by Apple. Some would say that Apple should have made those apps! Just look at the Pixelmator website; it looks like Apple designers are behind it.

Until recently, Apple lagged behind Photomator in photo editing features, but not anymore. Without a thorough comparison, let me say that both photo-editing apps are similar in the primary photo-editing area. I prefer Photomator over Apple’s Photos for basic image editing. Apple Photos’ design uses a more complex user interface to edit a photo but also lacks some flexibility. I like many of Photomator’s tools, while Apple’s Photos offers many tools that I don’t need or find a use case for. The capabilities of Photomator layers are approachable because I can understand how to work with them. It’s a well-thought-out app.

For some reason, I believe that Photomator and Pixelmator maximize Apple’s frameworks and APIs for image processing while presenting a different take from the user experience side. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they reuse many Apple graphic technologies and APIs, such as the iCloud Photos Library. Still, they also offer unique features, too, like Super Resolution, Denoise and Workflows.

I’m not very knowledgeable in Pixelmator Pro, but judging from my limited experience, I know that Apple doesn’t have such an app in their current offerings. I think Pixelmator Pro is much more approachable than Adobe Photoshop, and I think it’s a great addition to Apple’s offerings.

Market consolidation to compete against Adobe?

Someone could ask: Is Apple interested in Pixelmator Pro to compete against Adobe Photoshop with a more approachable take on image editing? Maybe, maybe not. It’s tough to tell from my point of view. Others have written that Apple is looking for new talents. This often happens in technology, but I doubt it is only about talent. It doesn’t serve Apple well to kill such a high-quality Mac app also available on the iPad and the iPhone. These apps are so rare these days.

Canva bought Affinity earlier this year. Words on the internet point to Canva's desire to better compete against Adobe. That sounds about right. By buying Pixelmator, is Apple trying to do the same? Probably. The case is compelling. As I said, Pixelmator Pro competes against Adobe Photoshop. Apple doesn’t have an offering in image-editing space and has never entered that space, while Photomator is a bit like Aperture, competing against Lightroom Classic.

From the official announcement on Pixelmator press release, we can read (emphasis is mine):

Pixelmator has signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.

What’s next for Pixelmator’s app? What was the motivating factor for this acquisition? Let’s look at each of them.

What could come next for Pixelmator apps?

Pixelmator Pro is an image editor that competes with applications like Adobe Photoshop. Looking carefully at this web page on Apple’s website, we can see that Apple has nothing like that while offering many other pro-level apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, MainStage, etc. Some are available on the Mac and the iPad, like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. I can see Apple adding Pixelmator Pro to the mix. It's probably the easiest guess to take. As noted by 9to5Mac, Pixelmator Pro isn’t currently available on the iPad. Apple could make it happen and ask for a small subscription fee, like for FinalCut Pro. I guess the focus of the Pixelmator team would be to work on this in the short term. It might not have been economically possible for the team to do it alone, but with Apple backing, it's an entirely different matter. I’m sure Apple is looking to expand their subscription offerings. Like FinalCut Pro for iPad, I can see Apple adding Pixelmator Pro.

Photomator is a photo editor that competes against Lightroom and… to some degree, Apple Photos. That is the crux of the problem. As I said earlier, there are some feature overlaps between the two. It is not obvious what Apple will do with Photomator. One thing that is unique to Photomator is its support for file-based editing. Photomator can work directly with files, which wasn’t possible until this summer. Of course, Apple wants users with bloated iCloud Photo libraries, potentially translating into more iCloud space subscriptions. But it makes more sense to use a file-based workflow for more serious photo editing of RAW images coming off a digital camera. Speaking of RAW images, RAW support is more comprehensive in Photomator. More advanced features like layers are available in Photomator, making it much more versatile for complex photo editing tasks. Workflows that enable the ability to do many different tasks in a single action are also something power users like me appreciate. Super Resolution is another example of something unique to Photomator. Could these more advanced features be folded into Apple Photos? Some people think it might. Other guys, like the developer behind Acorn, another image-editing app for the Mac, in a blog post, are asking similar questions to mine. He doesn't have a clue. Me neither. The overlapping of many features makes me less comfortable to bet on this. Keeping Photomator around would send a confusing message. The jury is still out on this one.

Looking ahead

Is Apple getting their hands on Pixelmator Pro while dropping Photomator the only possible story here? I hope not, but time will tell. For now, I’ll continue to use Photomator for the more demanding photo-processing needs while keeping an eye on what’s happening next. Let’s just say that I’m cautiously optimistic.

1. Fuck. 
2. Another four more years of trash politics. 
3. Fuck again. 
4. Apparently, the Americans thoughts the economy was better when Trump is in power. Under Biden everything is more expensive. The same is happening in Canada; everything is more expansive from groceries to housing. Is it because of the current Prime Minister? It's the same thing in Europe by the way. Does this mean every government is bad over there too? I mean, come on! Fuck it!
5. If people thought it was bad under Biden, wait for it, we ain't seen nothin yet.
6. Fuck da fuck.

1. I want to believe that the American people will make the right choice today. They have to.
2. If I'm being honest with myself, I could probably get rid of Craft and focus on Ulysses for my writing needs.
3. Weather outside is so "Novemberish". Gray. Cold. Windy.
4. Apple Intelligence Writing Tools aren't working well with markdown content.
5. I'm having lunch with one of my colleagues today, going outside the house from time to time is a good thing. 
6. Have a great day. 👋🏻

I spent some time this morning to visit my documented tool set on my metablog to make some updates.

1. It's election week in the US. My fingers are crossed, and I hope for the best: Harris. I'm not voting, since I'm Canadian, yet, I'm going to Florida next Saturday to catch my cruise ship for a one-week vacation, and I'd like the place to be quiet. Not only the US but the world doesn't need someone like Trump. 
2. On a totally different subject, I'm waiting for reviews of the new M4 Mac mini. Then I'll make a decision. Shipping dates are between November 15th-19th for the configuration I'm looking for, right when I return from vacation. 
3. My wife is having a job interview tomorrow. She's about to make a 180-degree turn with her career and I hope she will get it. But if it doesn't go well, then she will have difficult decisions to make and probably go as a freelancer, just like what I'm considering for myself. 
4. In other news, in case you didn't know or noticed: I don't write a lot about politics and wars, but I recently decided to vent a little bit for about it. I chose to do it on my Bluesky account, not on my blog.
5. I just discovered Openvibe which looks like a mix of Croissant, Tapestry. Bluesky and Mastodon are supported, and RSS feed support will be added soon. I much prefer Openvibe design to Tapretry's. I'm not impressed so far by the latter. I don't think it will ever reach the level of Ivory for Mastodon or Openvibe. 
6. Each time I post something here on Scribbles, I'm reminded how could the post editor is. Happiness is made of small things, I guess.
7. Have a great day. 👋🏻

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 18 posts 😃
🏞️ 10 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 One YouTube video published 😃

Did you know The Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest came out on November 1st? Check it out!

👤 Personal

1️⃣ I got a new supporter on my Ko-fi page this week, and I'm happy about it. It's not only about the money but the feeling that I'm not writing in a void. Some people are not only reading my stories but want to show their support. I'm grateful for that. But money is often not far behind, too. As a creator, I depend on many services and tools that cost money. I never wanted to make money by writing, but I had this wish this week: having enough supporters to cover all my subscription costs. That would be cool. I have a long way to go before reaching this goal.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ This week, I (re)discovered the fragility of software. I left behind 1Password because Apple Passwords offers simplicity without being simplistic. Pixelfed is another example of its development tied to a few developers, with one guy being much more active than others. Pixelfed suffers from its leading developer lacking focus and being spread across many open-source projects. There are things I want to see on Pixelfed but aren't coming, like an iPhone app that has been in beta for maybe a year! I'm considering reducing my activity level on Pixelfed to focus on Glass instead. The third example is Omnivore, which will close because its developers are working on something else. So, I'm focusing on Inoreader instead to support my reading needs. Do you know what is common between Glass and Inoreade? Both are paid services. Next up on the list of fragile software? Continue reading below, and you'll find out.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ I should revisit my reading workflow because of the demise of Omnivore. For the time being, I'll be focusing my usage on Inoreader and letting the dust settle before making a decision. The closure of Omnivore is sad because I lost my reading highlights library. There is no easy way to reconstruct this. I did export my data, but it is sitting in many files on my computer. I do have those in Bear, though, as shown below.

“I hate that today if you want a great browsing experience, you need to install all kinds of ad-blockers.” — Riccardo Mori

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I’ve been writing an article this week for the office using an unusual workflow. I wrote down fifteen phrases representing individual thoughts around the automation of IT operations. Then, I went to ChatGPT and asked GPT 4o Canvas to use these fifteen thoughts to write an article. Upon my first read, I asked ChatGPT for many changes and added my personal touch. The result is somewhat positive, considering the time I took to write this. I then imported the article into NotebookLM to create a podcast episode, and the results blew me away. I sent the results to some of my colleagues, who were impressed too. 2️⃣ Apple Intelligence Writing Tools are out for those with capable devices. Information Architect recently published an article about how Apple Intelligence’s approach to text editing might be wrong. This article is echoed by Kirk McElhearn, who thinks the writing tools are not good. I must say that I tend to agree to some degree. When I ask to proofread my text, I need to take the time to compare both to see if my writing was contaminated or not. It takes time, and the user experience might not be optimal. On the other hand, this solution might be good enough for most people. Time will tell, I guess.

Why the M4 Mac mini Will Be My Best Mac Ever!

A plethora of Mac announcements this week pushes the Mac to new performance levels.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ One of the best creators recently discovered via Glass, Mad Heiress, offers a rich set of images, poems, stories, etc. Some photos are mildly NSFW but very tasteful and respectful. I wish I had a fraction of his talent. Simply put, wow. Another newly discovered photographer on Glass is Yano Kova. She does stunning black-and-white street photography. There are so many great photos like this one. 2️⃣ I’ve been sharing many discoveries recently in photography, most of them made through Glass. I wonder why? I fail to see comparable quality photos on Pixelfed. The latter is more general public, while Glass, a paid service, attracts more accomplished photographers. That's simply a guess, an observation. I don't want to offend anyone who shares photos on Pixelfed. I'm on both platforms. 3️⃣ Speaking of Glass, the photo-sharing service, officially set a date for launching the Series on November 12th. I can't wait to try it out! The Series feature will allow photographers to publish related photos as bundles if you didn't know.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ The rumoured home device that Apple might be working on resembles the iconic iMac G4 but with a more squarish and smaller display. I have always liked this Mac because it wasn't only a utility device but an object of art. I'm not looking to buy this type of device, and I don't see the roles it would play in my household. 2️⃣ This was Mac Week, and it had many meaningful announcements. The iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro received a tech refresh, with the Mac mini having the only notable external redesign. I have a lot more to say in a separate article. 3️⃣ Apple is buying Pixelmator! I repeat: Apple is buying Pixelmator, the maker of Pixelmator Pro, and Photomator, my beloved photo-editing apps that took over Adobe’s! I don’t know if I should be happy or worried about this sudden turn of events! You can read the official announcement right here on Pixelmator Blog.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ After weeks of hard and tedious work inspired by this documented process, I finally completed my migration off 1Password. Not only will I save some money, but my security posture will also improve because of this migration to Apple Passwords. I have been a 1Password user since at least 2014, but with Apple's introduction of a solid password management app, I prefer to use first-party and integrated solutions. The next thing to do is migrate off Authy, the 2-factor authenticator app. That part is not fun because I need to turn off the 2-factor configuration for each service and reconfigure it using Passwords. 2️⃣ Following the news about Omnivore’s slow demise, I'm going to work on using Inoreader as a replacement for reading later articles, exporting my data and building something different for my reading workflow needs. IFTTT, Notion, and Readwise might be involved to some degree.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ The big news of the week on the applications side is undoubtedly this announcement by one of the main contributors of Omnivore, an open-source read-later service. According to the news, the developer accepted a job to work on ElevenLabs’ audio reader instead. I understand the decision; everyone needs to put bread on the table. But I'm not switching to ElevenLabs’ app anytime soon; I don't need an audio reader to read my content out loud. So, what am I going to do from now? I won’t wait for someone else to take over the development of Omnivore. The first option is to maximize what I already have: Inoreader. It's a paid subscription, their business model is clear, and they have been around for quite a while. In the coming days, I will explore Inoreader to store articles for reading later and text highlighting. I already know that Inoreader doesn't work with Readwise. So, I'm done with one-man-shop open-source projects. I decided to export all my Omnivore data and move on with it. 2️⃣ I'm also now questioning my usage of Readwise. I’ve been using Readwise since 2021. I don't use Readwise to browse my past highlights, but I use it for archival purposes. Even for that, I don't refer to my past readings often. Omnivore was configured to save my text highlights into Readwise. From time to time, I export the highlights to Bear. Without Omnivore, Readwise makes no sense; I don't use other means to store data in Readwise. Readwise offers a lower subscription tier for that purpose, and I could consider downgrading to it. I don't use the Readwise Reader because it felt too overwhelming the last time I tried it. 3️⃣ Scribbles.page is out with a few updates like adding a website menu, something that I was hoping to come.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ This week YouTube content is heavily flooded with Apple news and commentary about about Mac-related news. But, to start, I chose a short clip showing Steve Jobs explaining what Apple is going to do for the computer world. I felt it was to the point and relevant to this week's announcements.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I’m going on a one-week vacation, so the next edition will be published around November 23rd. I'll be mostly offline during that week because I have no internet. It’s a good thing to disconnect, right? 😱

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ Of course, I'm looking forward to two things: reviews of the new M4 Mac mini and, for the long term, how Apple is going to deal with their recently acquired Pixelmator company. I'm holding my breath, and my fingers are crossed.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

A building in my neighborhood. Not the best architectural style if you ask me, but someone had an interesting idea to embellish it.

In this article, I want to do things differently. I will write about why the new M4 Mac mini is the most fantastic Mac ever and share my thoughts gathered during a week of Mac announcements. Let’s get down to it.

First thing first: I’m a Mac fan. I’ve been such a fan for quite some time and wrote about it extensively. I tried to use recent Macs in recent years because I spend so much time working with them that I want the best. I’ve been a longtime desktop fan with many iMac models (2005, 2007, 2010, 2017), but in recent years, thanks to the Apple Silicon chip, I made a turn and started adding Mac portables to my digital life. This article was written mainly using an M2 15-inch MacBook Air.

Sunday night, October 27th, 2024.

I’m rather excited for the upcoming week. Is it because I'm in for an updated Mac mini? Coming from a M1 Mac mini, Probably. Following this tease from Greg Joswiak last week, it's official: the week ahead is all about the Mac. The first announcement should arrive on Monday, probably around 9 AM EST. I'm wondering what is going to be announced first. Is Apple going to play the crescendo game with the Mac mini announced last? If so, the iMac could be the first to come out with updated accessories using a USB-C connection. Will Apple show off redesigned accessories, or will they play it safe and leave it as it is now? The maligned Magic Mouse should be tweaked with a more intelligent way of recharging it. I’ve been using the Magic Mouse for many years, and I think it is due for an ergonomic revisit. Anyhow, tomorrow can't come soon enough.

Monday, early morning, October 28th, 2024.

I’m just having my coffee, going through my RSS feeds, and looking for any last-minute news or rumours, but nothing is worth mentioning except this bingo card by the Basic Apple Guy. It's an entertaining read. He thinks Apple will start with the Mac mini announcement, but I disagree with this prediction. He seems to imply that there will be some videos, but I don't think so. I hope we will get more than a press release in the Newsroom. Will we get a $499 Mac mini configuration? Maybe, but I'm not holding my breath. Will we get a space black Mac mini? I doubt it. Apple is so predictable these days. A dedicated Apple Intelligence button on the new Magic Keyboard? We didn't have a Siri button. I don't think we will get a dedicated button for Apple Intelligence. The day is still young, but I’ll learn more very soon.

Monday, 9:10 AM, October 28th, 2024

Refresh the Apple Newsroom webpage in my browser. Refresh the Apple Newsroom webpage in my browser. Refresh the Apple Newsroom webpage in my browser. Nothing shows up yet. Maybe at 10 AM EST?

Monday, 11:30 AM, October 28th, 2024

I was busy at work and missed the announcement timing, which was at 11 AM EST.

The first press releases (with a video announcement, a stripped-down version of a keynote, or a glorified press release?) came out thirty minutes ago, and as expected, the iMac was the first to receive the M4 treatment. Comparisons are made against the M1 iMac, which I find questionable, but they yield great numbers. Compared to the Intel-based iMac, this is even more questionable, but I guess Apple sees that many iMac owners are still using such old iMacs and wish for them to upgrade. This iMac is the best all-in-one design, but it's not for me anymore. I prefer having a separate screen, a bigger one for that matter. I'm using an Apple Studio display, which I really like.

The keyboard and mouse now have USB-C ports, too, but there is no word on where the USB-C port is located on the Magic Mouse. A nano texture option comes to the iMac, a first and pricey option. There is no significant change of colours. Meh.

Yet, for people like me who use an M1 Mac, the M4 represents a giant leap forward.

Of course, Apple touts Apple Intelligence as the most beneficial workflow for getting M4 processing power. That’s not surprising. They have a dedicated press release for iOS 18.1 et al. that sports the first Apple Intelligence features.

Monday, 5:30 PM, October 28th, 2024

Reactions are favourable for the beefed-up iMac, which includes new capabilities like better support for a two-display setup. Pricing for the now USB-C-only peripheral also increased slightly, at least in Canada, reaching new heights and near-obscene levels.

Still, the iMac is a super-looking computer.

I am turning my attention to tomorrow morning, 11 AM EST.

Monday, 8:04 PM, October 28th, 2024

I’m still digging into today’s news. I found this information tidbits about the low-end iMac configuration encouraging: the 10-code M4 CPU configuration will support two external displays, which could have been possible only for higher-end configurations. This bodes well for the M4 Mac mini.

Tuesday, early morning, October 29th, 2024

What a spoiler this morning when Amazon leaked the next Mac mini on their website! Apparently, the leak occurred yesterday night after I went to bed, but it has been fixed this morning. MacRumors still has the information. A comparison of different Mac models was briefly available, showing the new Mac mini design, which I include here. Oops.

Visually, if images are at scale, the Mac mini is much similar to the Mac Studio and comes with two USB-C ports in the front on the left and something else on the right, but it’s hard to see. It might be a headphone jack because it is a black circle. The only finish available is silver, which is disappointing; a space black version would have been fantastic.

The Mac mini’s spec sheet suggests it is much more powerful than its predecessor. It shows a maximum of 64 GB of RAM, 20 GPU cores, and 8TB of storage. However, we don’t know about the entry-level configuration yet, which is much closer to what I’ll get.

Even with this last-minute leak, I’m more excited about the new Mac mini. I can infer some pricing guesses and see the price going upward in the $2K CAN range for a configuration I will buy. Ouch.

Tuesday, 11 AM, October 29th, 2024

The mighty M4 Mac mini is now officially announced! From what I’m reading, what a machine this is: compact, beautiful, but powerful, with all the right ports at the right place. I’ll be ordering one in mid-November. Reactions are overwhelmingly positive, if not enthusiastic. It's probably the best Mac mini ever to ship.

The video segment for this announcement is slightly more than 12 minutes long. I particularly like the use of the tilt-shift effect during the introduction. The Apple headquarters building seems like a miniature replica. The following shots illustrate the video’s particular visual vibe.

In the following image, we expect the reveal of the new Mac mini, but instead, we are presented with the current one quickly followed by the new Mac mini, which is much smaller. I like this sense of humour. I also think it references the old-style reveal on stage by Steve Jobs back in the day.

This is my desktop Mac for the next five years: M4 Pro Mac mini with 12 CPU cores, 16 GPU cores, 16 Neural Engine cores, 24 GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Compared to the M1 chip, the M4 is a significant leap forward. According to the Geekbench website, the M1 is rated at 8661, while the M2 Pro is rated at 12726 and the M3 Pro at 14042 in the multicore benchmark. We are close to a 2x increase here. I can’t wait to experience the difference.

Since I’m using a RODE wireless microphone for video and podcast recording, the receiver plugs into a headphone jack on the back of my current Mac mini. It’s not very convenient. Now, being on the front, it is. There is a little controversy about the power button placement. It can’t be worse than the current design, and I would argue it is better. Looking at the videos, I think the power button is not entirely flush with the button case, which will help locate it with the touch of a finger.

Now, the only question is: when should I place my order? I’ll probably wait until mid-November, when I return from my one-week vacation.

Tomorrow, it’s Wednesday, the third and last Mac-related announcement. MacBook Pro is next, but I’m surprised the Mac mini announcement came before. I would have thought that Apple would keep the newly redesigned Mac for last. The sequence seems tied to the Apple Silicon chips, not the Mac model itself. Anyway, there might be an even more significant announcement tomorrow. Who knows?

Wednesday, 7:10 AM, October 30th, 2024

This morning, I tried configuring the M4 Mac mini on the Apple Store app that I will order to see if shipping dates have started to slip. It’s not the case. Apple probably has good inventories. I’ll keep an eye on this over the next few weeks. Also, I’ve been testing buying through the university store for better pricing, and I could save $200 CAN. If I apply a trade-in value for my M1 Mac mini (a $225 CAN value), the final price would be $2,219 CAN. That’s a lot of money.

Wednesday, 11:05 AM, October 30th, 2024

As expected, the MacBook Pro with the M4 chip was announced. The video segment is the longest of the three, at 16m33s. For the first time, the nano-texture display option is available on the MacBook Pro, adding another set of price points.

All Macs now come with 16 GB of base memory, including the MacBook Air, a surprise move. This could also mean an M4-based MacBook Air might come later, like next Spring.

My wife is looking to get a Mac for the first time. She’s looking at the MacBook Pro and will probably settle for the 14-inch, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD version. She plans to use two external displays. She’s a Windows laptop user, and she is in for a shock.

It was an excellent week for the Mac in general. I feel that Apple is excelling on all counts. The Mac lineup is straightforward, with the Air and Pro for laptops and the iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro lines for desktops. A plethora of configurations are available for each line at various price points. The message around Apple Intelligence is loud and clear. I counted 14 references to Apple Intelligence on the MacBook Pro mini website alone, 16 on the iMac mini website, and 16 on the Mac mini website. That’s a lot.

#Montreal #montrealphoto #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography

The small house. Trick or treat? 🎃 #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #spookyvibes #spooky

• Gone is 1Password.
• Gone is Omnivore.
• Gone might be Readwise. 

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 9 posts 🙂
🏞️ 13 photos shared 😃
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔
This newsletter edition covers weeks #41 & #42.

Did you know you can catch a few highlighted stories and photos of mine by visiting this website?

👤 Personal

1️⃣ I’ve been in a writing lull recently, preferring to focus on photography more. I often go from writing to photography and vice versa. My attention span seems shorter than usual, which doesn’t help my writing in general. That’s not entirely true; I’ve been writing, but I’ve been on LinkedIn and Medium in my professional life. I’m trying to be more active on LinkedIn for a few reasons that I won’t share here, but you can read about it on my Ko-fi page. If you want to know what it is all about, subscribe to my Ko-fi page.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I've looked at Canva, a PowerPoint replacement that runs as a SaaS but is also available on devices like the iPad and the Mac. However, Canva is much more than a PowerPoint replacement. I see Canva as a competitor to Adobe Express, which I enjoyed long ago. I cannot share why I'm looking at this right now, but I must say that it feels like a great alternative and a valuable tool for creative people like me. The question is: what does this service bring to the table that I cannot already do using Keynote, Freeform or Mindnote, etc.? I could use it to design a website prototype, that's for sure. One use case could be for website prototyping while I wait for the beta release of Realmac Software Elements. I will make more comments about Canva soon.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ Every once in a while, I stumble on a blog post from other bloggers that shows their appreciation for what I'm doing, like this one. People can show their appreciation in many ways, like supporting me on my Ko-fi page and writing blog posts like that one. 2️⃣ More than ever, I believe in the web curation movement as we enter AI-generated content at a massive scale. That's why this blog post from Manuel Moreale resonated with me. I want to quote a few things from this blog post. 3️⃣ A newly discovered author, Maggie Appleton, touches on fascinating subjects like programming, design and anthropology. Besides touching on exciting subjects, her website is gorgeous by its simplicity and organizational structure. Too bad the site didn’t receive recent updates. Still, it's now part of my RSS feed subscriptions.

“With a web flooded with AI-generated slop and the platforms themselves encouraging it, the role of curators is gonna become more and more important.”

“Anyway, now more than ever, if you find value in curated blogs, newsletters, zines, or any other type of curated material, consider supporting the people who create and maintain them, because the vast majority of the time, they don’t do it for the money, they do it because they think it’s important.” – Manuel Moreale

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I started testing Ulysses, the writing app for the Mac. Version 32 will support Apple Intelligence, particularly for the Writing Tools. If all goes well, it could replace Grammarly when support for Apple Intelligence is added to more apps. My initial testing offers mixed feelings. To invoke Apple Intelligence features, you must select the text, which is not required with Grammarly. Apple Intelligence refuses to work on a paragraph containing a hyperlink. It could be a bug in Ulysses beta, but it could be a limitation, too. Grammarly works better in that respect, but sometimes, the link will be mangled when corrections are made. Nothing is perfect. Stay tuned for more comments on that one.

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.” — Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ A good post from Matt Birchler: resolution is not everything in digital photography. I agree. 2️⃣ A newly discovered photographer: Anna Shtraus, thanks to Glass Highlights. She takes many photos in places like the Middle East. She calls herself a visual poet, and I like this. Instant subscribe! 3️⃣ Did you know you can watch my latest images from Pixelfed in slideshow mode? Try this link! 4️⃣ Found a great wallpaper collection inspired by Edward Hopper, for your iPhone, available on Gumroad.

Anna Shtraus on Glass Photography Community

Anna Shtraus. Visual poet living in the Middle East. I used to live and breathe landscapes, but recently really enjoying shooting streets. If the light is good, the…

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Rumors about the iPhone 18 😳 are already surfacing, stating advanced densification of the A20 chip with 12 GB of RAM using a 2 nm process. It's too early for me to influence my decision for next year's plan, though. I'm still planning to get the iPhone 17 as I often skip one generation of devices. 2️⃣ According to Mike Gurman, Apple is now turning its attention to home automation products and services. Now that Matter, the protocol that makes home devices talk and work together, is the standard, Apple is looking to build devices like home robots and communication-related gizmos🤦🏻‍♂️. I should wait before judging, but I don’t see that as an exciting journey. 3️⃣ For Apple fans, BasicAppleGuy shared some new wallpapers out of Apple Park photographs—many great ones. 4️⃣ Apple is considered two years behind in generative AI, according to a report by Gurman. Remember the MP3 players before the iPod came out? Apple was thought to be behind, too. Will this scenario repeat itself with generative AI? The leaders like OpenAI keeps getting better all the time. But, If you can't beat them, joining them might apply here. Om Malik is getting nervous about Apple Intelligence being late to the AI game. 5️⃣ ||The subsequent major releases of macOS, iPadOS, iOS, tvOS||, et al. are around the corner. Get ready for Apple Intelligence phase #1 of... many more phases! Phase #2 of Apple Intelligence is already out for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 users, as well as modern iPads and Macs with Apple Silicon Ship. I upgraded my iPad and iPhone to this second major release of iOS 18. I'm currently on the waiting list to test Image Playground, but according to this article, it might take a few weeks to play with this.

Apple Park Wallpapers — Basic Apple Guy

A collection of nine Mac & iPad backgrounds featuring beautiful locations around Apple Park.

Basic Apple GuyBasicAppleGuy

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Not exactly a special project, but I’ve been spending quite some time testing the next round of betas for Craft Docs. As shown on Craft Docs YouTube channel, three important things are coming to Craft: Collections, Styling and Task management. I have mixed feelings with the new directions for Craft. I don't see use cases for Collections. The new styling feature doesn't go far enough by lacking basic image processing. Task management is also something that I'm not really looking to do within Craft; I'm a happy Things 3 user. The next public release of Craft, probably version 3.0, is still many weeks away.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Photomator 3.4 came out this week, and surprise, you can now flag, reject and start (from 0 to 5 stars) each photo. As suggested by this guy on Micro.blog, when using the Apple Photos library, these actions are saved, and a new set of photo albums is created to easily find those photos, all placed within a folder named “Photomator.” For those like me who often use files outside of Photos, for each photo that gets flagged, rejected or starred, a new .xmp file is created, just like the sidecar file if the photo has been edited. This is an excellent addition for those like me who previously used Adobe Lightroom, where the catalogue is central to the photo-processing workflows. 2️⃣ It seems a new MindNode app is coming soon, called MindNode Next, a free upgrade for those on the MindNode Plus subscription (like me). Collaborative work seems to be the highlight of this new generation of MindNode. Strangely enough, MindNode Next is already available for the Apple Vision Pro, and other platforms are coming later this year. 3️⃣ Inoreader finally launched the redesigned reading experience, which I LOVE. 4️⃣ Notion launched several new features and products presented in this short clip. Notion Layout for building better-looking pages. Most of the new features are available now. I played with Notion Layout a bit, but I will spend more time exploring Notion Forms and the new Marketplace in the coming days. The latter is essentially modelled around an App Store.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Photomator 3.4 is out and comes with photo tagging and starring. See that in action in the following video. I'm already a fan. 2️⃣ The Starship flight and return to Earth, right on the launchpad, is mind-blowing. We came a long way from the first space shuttle flight in 1981. Very impressive.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ I'm still waiting for this M4 Mac mini announcement, but it is coming. It's widely expected to be in the last week of October. Even more with Apple's tease shared on X.com. 2️⃣ Here's an excellent summary of what's new in the upcoming iOS 18.1 release from MacRumors. Here's an excellent overview of iOS 18.2 from MacRumors, too. 3️⃣ Apple teases new Macs! The M4 Mac mini is really coming next week! Getting ready for hard decisions.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

Let's have a drink, shall we? #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography

On the road to New York City, in the car, using Spectre app.

At the show of Sting in New York City.

New York is full of colors. #newyorkcity #architecture #streetart

Oh boy that I find it hard to study and improve technical skills in today's world, full of interruptions and disruptions. 

1. I'm currently testing the updated Scribble's post editor. I like the tweaks. 
2. I'm testing Canva as a tool for website prototyping. It comes with a Mac app (not native, but hey... who builds native apps these days?) Great potential here. 
3. I'm about to test a new beta release of Craft where Objects are replaced with Collections. Similar concept but very differently implemented. The former was more useful to me. The latter is more like a Notion database.
4. Have a great day. 👋🏻

JF Martin (@numericcitizen@pixelfed.social)

Like a painting.

Pixelfed

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 10 posts 🙂
🏞️ 3 photos shared 😔
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔
This edition covers the week #39 and #40.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ I’ve been busy with personal matters recently, which prevented me from working on my usual creative hobby and releasing this newsletter more regularly. But over the years, I learned that sharing when it’s meaningful and ready is more important than sharing for the sake of sharing. If it means to release this newsletter on a more irregular basis, so be it. Hobbies must be fun, not a burden. 2️⃣ With this newsletter edition, I decided to tweak the content a bit: I'll no longer include the logbook excerpt from Things 3, my preferred tasks manager. This logbook was a list of completed tasks during the week. I don't see the real value of including this anymore as I wasn't always able to keep it up to date and reflect my actual accomplished work. At one point, I even included a list of all the articles that I was reading on Omnivore. Since there is no integration between Omnivore and Things, automation is not possible and trying to build one is not worth it.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ I made some tests with Google's NotebookLM using my main website as the source. It's fast, and after a few minutes, I was already impressed. There is a media buzz about this podcasting feature, which is technically impressive, but ethically, I find this dangerous. 2️⃣ I discovered www.flaticon.com while searching for icons for a Keynote presentation template. I think I knew about that icon collection but forgot about it. I might subscribe to it if I find enough interesting icon sets to build a coherent collection.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ The end of Tabletop newsletter by Michael Steeber. So sad. Michael didn't share much about what's next for him. I hope he is okay. Maybe he was hired by Apple? Maybe there is not much to say about Apple Stores nowadays. The rate of new stores opening is relatively low, and most news is about remodelling and relocation. 2️⃣ Lou Plummer launched a challenge for bloggers and writers: the appreciation challenge. I find the idea rather interesting, so I was probably the first to share my appreciation for his work publicly.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ ChatGPT canvas feature recently announced at their latest developers conference seems handy for writers like me. I tried it out to create an article and was blown away. Ultimately, the best of this will be experienced when embedded into apps like Craft or Ulysses. From the OpenAI website: “We trained GPT-4o to collaborate as a creative partner. The model knows when to open a canvas, make targeted edits, and fully rewrite. It also understands broader context to provide precise feedback and suggestions.” 2️⃣ It occurred to me this week that I often spend more time sharing photos when I'm writing less. I feel less inspired to write in the evening, and I'm also more tired; it takes less effort to share photos. That's the explanation that I came up with. 3️⃣ I finally wrote and shared my Apple Watch Series 10 review. I made a funny title: “A Significant Iterative Refinement.” I'm playing with words here and making fun of Apple’s iterative product releases.

Numeric Citizen Blog Posts Monthly Digest - Numeric Citizen Blog

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I've spent more time editing photos than usual in the last couple of days, and I'm enjoying it. Next week, I’m going on a short trip to New York to see a show of Sting, and I'll bring my camera with me for sure. 2️⃣ Great video about showing the iPhone 16 Pro video capabilities, entirely shot in Chicago, an excellent place for such video. It could have been an Apple ad. Was it? 3️⃣ A great review from Tyler Stalman of the iPhone 16 from a photographer's perspective. 4️⃣ Another iPhone 16-related review, this time about the controversial Camera Control by Sebastiaan De With.

Ben Lomon on Glass Photography Community

Ben Lomon. Montreal-based photography enthusiast.

A Montreal-based photographer I discovered this week. I like to see my city as seen through the eyes of another street photographer.

Monthly Category Favorites — Windows — Glass

How did you frame them?

Glass’s monthly category for September was “windows. “ In its category highlight, Glass offers a few great images shared by the community. I submitted two photos (image one and image two) in that category but wasn’t selected.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ The Pixel Fold Makes the iPhone look old. Really? This form factor does not convince me, and I’m not alone because I never see someone using a folding device. I prefer discreet devices like a phone and a tablet. And a Mac. I must be getting old. 2️⃣ The Macintosh IIci with an Apple Portrait Display as shown here was a very popular configuration for anyone doing serious desktop publishing in the early nineties. I always liked portrait display orientation and I wonder why we don’t see that more often these days.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ My 1Password to Apple Passwords migration is going well. The fun thing about this migration is that I relived old memories of many defunct web services I used in 2014 when I started using 1Password for storing my passwords. I disabled the 1Password browser extension on all my devices to force myself into migrating passwords. It works.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Ghost is still working on implementing Fediverse. It's still too early, but Ghost users like me could see their monthly bill increase as the number of fediverse followers increases. I submitted my request to be part of the upcoming beta. Tiny sites with small memberships are preferred; this is precisely what my Ghost site is: small. Ghost's subscription tiers are based on the number of subscribers. With Fediverse, the number of followers will add up to the subscriber count, which could translate into a price increase for me. Since my audience is relatively small, it's not an issue for me. 2️⃣ Inoreader is prepping a significant web application redesign. After switching to the beta version and testing it for a few hours, I must say that this is the most successful redesign of any web service that I have ever seen. The new look offers higher information density while being cleaner and more functional. A new sidebar provides a great way to switch between major Inoreader features like RSS feeds, audio, search, etc. I provided a screenshot of my home view so you can judge yourself. 3️⃣ I finally cancelled my Linktr.ee subscription after three years of use. It was a great ride, but I prefer to focus on fewer platforms now. 4️⃣ If you are a writer using one of the popular writing apps like Ulysses or iA Writer, consider reading this review of an alternative app called Paper (very detailed).

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ Again this week, I spent quite some time watching video reviews of the RODECaster Video device and again, more than ever, I think this is something I will get. The question now is when? It's a relatively expensive device, and I'm also waiting for the next Mac mini to be announced in the next few weeks, which will probably cost a lot, too.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Google announced two new Chromebooks and the integration of Gemini AI with a dedicated keyboard key. I would consider getting the Lenovo Chromebook Duet because of its relatively good design. But why am I considering getting this? I'm curious to test the water outside the Apple walled garden. I like vertically integrated solutions, and Google can compete with Apple.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ I'm still looking forward to the October announcements from Apple, which will focus on the M4 Macs, including the redesigned Mac mini. From there, I'll decide if I upgrade my M1 Mac mini or buy the RODECaster Video device or do both.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

Apple's September 2024 release of the Apple Watch Series 10 introduces a range of improvements that mark a substantial progression, particularly for users upgrading from earlier versions like the Series 6 or Series 8. Based on my experience with the new device, I want to highlight the key innovations and enhancements that set the Series 10 apart from its predecessors.

Performance and Design Enhancements

The Series 10 is still true to its origin; the new finish and larger display make it look rounder, but I'm not sure there is a significant difference. The larger screen is handy when interacting with apps or reading notifications, making the overall experience more user-friendly while allowing more information to be displayed seamlessly. The edges of the display curve more smoothly into the casing, giving it a refined aesthetic that enhances its appearance and usability. The thinner bezels make better use of the display area, allowing more information to be shown without feeling cluttered. This thoughtful design iteration makes it easier to read messages, type on the on-screen keyboard, navigate apps, and use widgets—all contributing to a superior user experience.

The Series 10 offers a significant boost in performance. Compared to my Series 8—a noticeable upgrade over the Series 6—the Series 10 is considerably more responsive. The user interface of watchOS is smoother, with apps launching faster than before. This speed improvement is especially evident for those upgrading from older models. Skipping a generation of devices is the best way to feel these differences when upgrading. Everything from switching watch faces to opening apps feels instantaneous, and this increase in responsiveness contributes to an enhanced overall user experience.

Notable New Features

The new double-tap (or double-pinch?) gesture has proven incredibly useful, adding a new level of convenience when navigating or interacting with the watch. This feature allows users to quickly control apps and interact with notifications without using the other hand, which is particularly helpful when on the move. The gesture feels intuitive and becomes second nature after just a short period of use, enhancing the overall hands-free experience. It is handy for answering calls, stopping timers, or controlling media playback, reducing the need to tap buttons or use the Digital Crown.

Another notable addition is the on-device translation feature, which has been very handy for quick translations. I downloaded the English and French language packs, and having translation capabilities directly on the watch has been helpful in day-to-day situations. This feature is perfect for travellers or those who frequently interact in different languages, as it provides instant translations without relying on an internet connection. The accuracy of the translations is also impressive, and the speed at which the watch processes these requests is a testament to the improved performance of the Series 10.

Another surprisingly enjoyable feature is listening to podcasts or music through the watch's speakers. While it might seem unconventional, it’s a convenient option for brief listening sessions when headphones aren’t available. Given the small form factor, the speakers are clear enough for spoken word content, and the sound quality is adequate.

Upgrade Process Challenges

Despite the many enhancements, the upgrade process remains an area needing refinement. Apple’s in-store purchasing experience is seamless, but migrating settings and watch faces from an older watch is still cumbersome. The Apple Watch backup and restore feature does not work reliably, which disrupts the upgrade process for many users. The ability to share watch faces via iMessage is clever and saves time, but it doesn’t provide a complete migration solution. A more streamlined approach that allows easy transfer of all settings would significantly improve the upgrade experience. The current process requires too much manual setup. There is also the risk of losing some configurations in the process, which makes upgrading feel less rewarding than it should be.

For those upgrading to the Series 10 while keeping an older watch, here’s a helpful tip: use iMessage to share watch faces from your old device to the new one. This lets you quickly set up your preferred watch faces without starting from scratch. Install your apps first, then send each watch face via iMessage to yourself, enabling easy installation on the new watch. This method saves time and helps ensure that your new watch feels familiar right from the start while still taking advantage of the improvements in performance and design.

For those who decide to set up their watch from scratch, it can be an opportunity to curate watch faces and settings intentionally. I found it refreshing to start anew, choosing only the watch faces I needed rather than transferring everything from my old device. This method allowed me to simplify my watch setup and only retain the features that I found most helpful. However, not every user will find this experience liberating—many would prefer a one-click solution that ensures all settings and configurations are automatically transferred without hassle.

Another area for improvement is the syncing process, particularly for music and photos. Allowing users more control over when and how content syncs would significantly improve user experience. Music and pictures only sync when the watch is charging, which is typically overnight while I wear my Series 8. Since I got my new watch, my favorite photo album still hasn’t synced, and there’s no option to force the sync. This limitation can be inconvenient, especially for users who want certain content readily available. Apple could improve this by allowing users to manually initiate syncing, ensuring that content is updated according to personal preferences rather than the device’s schedule. Simplifying the migration process when upgrading watches would enhance the overall experience, making it as seamless as the initial in-store purchase.

Health Monitoring and Battery Performance

The health-monitoring capabilities on the Series 10 have also seen notable improvements. For instance, The heart rate monitor is more accurate than my previous Series 6. During workouts, such as walking, the Series 10 consistently provided precise heart rate readings without blackout periods, addressing a critical problem of earlier models. This increase in accuracy is particularly beneficial for those who rely on the watch for fitness tracking, as it provides a more reliable assessment of their exercise metrics. Additionally, the Series 10 includes improvements to other health features like blood oxygen monitoring, which initially came with the Series 6, sleep apnea detection, and sleep tracking. Together, these features work more seamlessly, offering richer insights into overall health and well-being and encouraging healthier habits.

Battery performance has also improved, thanks, of course, to the new battery. My Series 8, with 84% battery health, and my Series 6, at 64%, clearly showed their age. The Series 10, with its new battery, delivers much longer usage time, especially when using more demanding features like long workouts or the remote camera app. With moderate use, the watch comfortably lasts more than a day, even with health tracking and other features enabled. Before going to bed, the battery level is now at more than 60%, allowing more than a day of usage on a single charge. The low-power mode also extends battery life, which is helpful during long outdoor activities or when charging is not immediately available. This extended battery performance makes it easier to rely on the watch throughout the day without worrying about finding time to charge it.

About The Second Hand Animation

One minor inconsistency I noticed was with the animation of the second hand across different watch faces. With a 1 Hertz refresh rate, the new Reflections watch face features continuous second-hand animation, while many others do not, without any apparent reason for the discrepancy. While this doesn’t affect functionality, a small detail detracts from an otherwise cohesive experience. Apple could address this inconsistency in future updates to ensure a uniform experience across all watch faces, mainly since attention to detail is one of the hallmarks of their products.

Conclusion

Overall, the Apple Watch Series 10 represents a significant upgrade for those coming from older devices, as well as for more recent ones like the Series 8. With improved performance, a larger and more ergonomic design, enhanced health features, and new interactions, such as the double-tap gesture, it’s a compelling choice for those using older models. While Apple’s attention to detail is evident in many areas, there remains room for improvement in the upgrade and syncing processes. Despite these minor drawbacks, the Series 10 watch pushes the boundaries of what a smartwatch can offer, making it an excellent choice for new users and seasoned Apple Watch owners.

The following is a summary of my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition
👨🏻‍💻 23 posts 😃
🏞️ 2 photos shared 😔
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 No YouTube video published 😔
This newsletter edition covers weeks 37 and 38.

👤 Personal

1️⃣ It’s been a busy two weeks. I just returned from a business trip to Las Vegas and spent quite some time working on our future home improvement project. Plus, this underground project of going freelance also took some of my spare time. This explains why I didn’t share much in the last two weeks.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ As Manuel Moreale said, discovering (non-dev) blogs is hard. 2️⃣ I found this blog, Things, by Guy Schmidt: minimalistic, but with most of the things I like. 3️⃣ I haven't thought about it, but depending on the wallpaper you use on your iPhone, you could save battery power during the day. These wallpapers, because of the clever use of the rule of thirds, are rather beautiful if you like astronomy. 4️⃣ I love visual notes (also called Sketch notes). I took notes during a recent brainstorming session at the office and was reminded about sketch notes' existence. I researched the web, found many great examples, and stumbled on “Ink Company Studio.” What they do is clever: during a corporate event, you subscribe to the company’s service to create sketch notes during meetings or presentations. It’s very cool. While skimming different sketch note styles, I realized I like it when there is a good balance between text, iconography and colours. 5️⃣ Another cool discovery is the official website of Alberto Ortega. His artwork is made of paintings of street scenes from the fifties based on handmade miniature models that he creates. It's really cool and unique.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ While browsing my Micro.blog timeline, I met Erlend from Norway. I came across his Micro.blog hosted website that I have found to be gorgeous and unique in its design and appearance. At first, I didn't believe this website was hosted on Micro.blog using one of the available visual themes, but yeah, it is. Browsing his website is a delight both visually and with the content. I decided to support him via his Ko-Fi page.

"So many ‘exciting’ camera upgrades, so much computational assistance, you’ll end up forgetting what it means to take a photo." — Riccardo Mori

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I'm enjoying writing for Medium. While doing so, I gathered a bunch of notes about my writing and reading experience on this platform. I plan to write an article about that soon. There are many things to like about Medium but a few irritating things to dislike too. It's a bit a love-and-hate relationship.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Another excellent photo series by JF Dupuis, this time about a dear subject of mine: clouds. Really big clouds. 2️⃣ For those with an old iPad, here’s a good suggestion: make it a photo frame with this app. I spent some time digitizing old family photos recently, and putting them on an old iPad is a good idea. 3️⃣ I decided to tweak some photo-related settings on my iPhone: Preview HDR content is now OFF and photographic styles is now set to rich contrast. My desire here is to remove some typical iPhone images flatness and this comes after watching this iPhone 16 Pro review from The Verge. 4️⃣ If you are contemplating buying the iPhone 16 Pro for its photo-related features, consider watching this video review from Peta Pixels. Well worth your time. One of my nephew bought the iPhone 16 Pro and found the Camera Control to be finicky to use requiring a long learning curve to master. I'm skipping this year's iPhone and hope that next year Apple will tweak that new button.

I’m wondering if the new iPhone 16 Camera Control is the new Touch Bar. – Numeric Citizen

Dewi Koomen on Glass Photography Community

Dewi Koomen. Love to see the extraordinary in the ordinary - proud mom 👧🏻 👦🏻 🇹🇼 - Click Pro - Dutch 🇳🇱

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Lack of excitement. Sameness. Boring. Ennui. These are general sentiments about the last Apple Keynote announcing the new iPhone. On top of that is the perception that Apple Intelligence won't do the trick of triggering a super-cycle. As the main backdrop, developers have been angry about Apple for quite a while now. Something wrong is happening, and I wonder if Apple is noticing. 2️⃣ Not everyone is impressed by Apple. In this blog post, Riccardo Mori offers a rather harsh take on Apple and their recent announcements. Ouch. He is a longtime Apple user, but when he started with Apple, it was quite a different world, and Apple was so different. Apple, the underdog, was more likeable. 3️⃣ Manuel Moreale hates the redesigned Control Center. It seems Apple is doing everything wrong. 4️⃣ Apple Intelligence rollout will take a long time. How could this be different? Generative AI wasn't a thing until late 2022, and Apple had about two years to figure out a whole new integration and backend infrastructure to support that in a meaningful and secure way for its users. 5️⃣ While waiting for Apple Intelligence, it might be a good idea to read MacStories iOS 18 review. I want to mention two things about this review. First, I like the artwork used across pages and review details. It is a direct jab at Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence image creation tool and AI-generated content. MacStories commissioned an iPad artist to create these artworks. Second, I like the author's take on Apple Intelligence, AI in general, and his desire to be a creative guy who dislikes AI-generated artifacts, which negates the unique value proposition of humans: creativity. 6️⃣ Meta Connect was fun, apparently.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ Since the official release of Apple's Passwords app, their official password management solution, I started migrating my passwords off 1Password. I came across this article from one of the developers behind Apple's Passwords, Ricky Mondello. He works for Apple. I'll use his "online method” to migrate and increase my online security posture. I’m trying to migrate a few passwords each day. Tedious.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ There are two places to look for information about iOS 18 and iPadOS 18: MacStories detailed review and this guide from MacRumors. 2️⃣ The new Reeder app continues to trigger reactions. Some people really like the latest iteration. 3️⃣ iA Writer for Android will retire, thanks to Google’s Play Store rules.

“Developing on Android is a daily worsening struggle with red tape, inconsistent device performance, App Store search performance gaming3, and rampant piracy.” — iA Writer developer.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ On the “How About Tomorrow?” podcast with Adam Elmore & Dax Raad, DHH joins in and discusses so many interesting and controversial things that I cannot decide where to start. From Apple’s current hegemony over developers and users, quitting the Microsoft world, then quitting the Apple world and joining the Linux bandwagon, quitting the cloud, and building its things, this discussion is highly entertaining. DHH is a controversial guy, and this discussion contains so many opinionated views that there is a lot to unpack. I must admit that many of the opinions expressed resonate with me. DHH is correct when talking about Apple and its power over developers. Quitting the Apple ecosystem is something that I read more and more. Many are talking about this, but very few make the jump. I don't see myself doing it soon; I'm probably too old for that, but I can see the point. Hyperconcentration of power is not a good thing for anyone. DHH’s bravery in calling out things is necessary. 2️⃣ I came across the new RodeCaster video reviews, and I must say that I’m impressed. So much that I’m considering getting one when it is finally available. For 1200 US$, it’s not exactly cheap, but it could solve many of the challenges I have while doing video recordings and for Teams meetings at work.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I’ve been on Bluesky since April 25th, 2023. My user number is 35,638. Not bad. See my badge below. It reminds me of my early days on Twitter back in 2007. I was an early adopter, too. 2️⃣ I made a video about Craft. I shared a summary of it on Reddit. Got called out for writing a bad summary using ChatGPT. I got some support in response. Not everyone is a jerk. Still, I hate Reddit.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ This video about Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses made me look at the Apple Vision Pro differently. Even if Apple Visio Pro is a technological marvel, Orion Glass shows the way in some areas, like device size and style. It's interesting. But I still don't like Meta and Zuckerberg.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

Newsletter Past Editions

📅 Meta

The latest edition of "The Ephemeral Scrapbook" details the author’s activities, which range from sharing various posts and photos to digitizing family memories with Photomyne. Notable discoveries include Jony Ive’s new button design and Jeremy Ultey's blog on generative AI. The author expresses mixed feelings about sorting old family photos and highlights the significance of curation in combatting disinformation. The newsletter also discusses Apple's recent Glowtime event, iOS updates, and impressions of the iPhone 16. The author contemplates the future of content creation as centered on human curation, and shares insights on writing, with a particular process involving ChatGPT for translations. Future plans include visiting an Apple Store to experience new products announced in the recent keynote.

The following summarizes my contribution activities since the previous newsletter edition. The next edition is scheduled for early October.
👨🏻‍💻 19 posts shared 😃
🏞️ 3 photos shared 😔
🎙️ No podcast episode published 😔
📺 One YouTube video published 🙂

👤 Personal

1️⃣ Last weekend, I spent quite some time sorting out boxes of old family photos. I came out of this exercise with mixed feelings. It is strange to see in a picture that 95% of the people pictured are dead. It's hard to realize that I missed a significant portion of my parent's life when they were retired. I was too busy with my own things. I'm the youngest child, and I had a big age gap with my parents I somehow always saw them as being rather old. Nonetheless, I miss them. 2️⃣ I resubscribed to Photomyne for a month to digitize some of my family photos before throwing them out. It works great. I'm using my iPhone 15 Pro Max for this. I wrote a review of Photomyne a while ago.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Jony Ive, now at “Love From” company, designed a... button. It looks cool, but I want to hear the satisfying click when both parts snap together. 2️⃣ I discovered this "blog" by Jeremy Ultey, a professor from Stanford University. He is currently invested in helping others take advantage of generative AI to help people and companies gain comfort and confidence. 3️⃣ Here is a good way to discover new blogs.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ In the article “Curate to Create,” I found the whole idea resonating. Based on the principle that nothing created is really new these days, what's left to be done is to curate and develop connections between bits of information. Also, I see that curation is one way to combat disinformation and add value to published content. In a way, it's the entire point of this newsletter. Am I good at it? No, but I'm working at it every single day.

“The reason why the current web sucks is because way too many people are expecting things to magically get better without doing their part. The web is a collaborative product and we all have to do our part to make it better.” — Manuel Moreale

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ Writing helps me think and sometimes leads to solving problems or challenges. For example, I’ve been writing a few stories about my thoughts on becoming a freelancer, and this helped me have a clearer view of what it really means. Writing, for me, is the best way to process thoughts and ideas. Without writing, I would be blind. 2️⃣ I wrote a new story on Medium this week about a personal experience at work. I followed this process: I wrote the initial story in French and then used ChatGPT to translate it into English. I read the results and felt it wasn't conveying the essence of the original text. I asked ChatGPT to improve the writing of the resulting first iteration. It came out pretty well. Then, I asked ChatGPT to elaborate on a specific story aspect I felt wasn't well explained. I was impressed with the results. What is this process telling me? It is sometimes more manageable to start writing my ideas in French. Asking ChatGPT to translate my text into English is transitory because the resulting translation often needs improvements.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I’m still eagerly waiting for the Glass Series to launch. No official dates have been set so far. It is exhausting to wait for that. 2️⃣ I discovered Micheal Beecham on Glass while browsing black and white photos. This guy is so good at capturing the mood, and doing it in black and white offers the best way to capture the subtleties of the scenes. 3️⃣ A series of great black & white portraits from JF Dupuis on Pixelfed.

Michael Beecham on Glass Photography Community

Michael Beecham. A Dorset-based black and white landscape photographer. Usually on a hillside, or in a woodland somewhere. Tall. Generally good-natured.

Jean-François Dupuis (@jfdupuis@pixelfed.social)

Portraits

Pixelfed

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ Like him, I rarely use the action button on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple is adding another button on the iPhone 16. Will people use it more? I guess so since it is dedicated à taking photos and videos. 2️⃣ Apple Glowtime event took place. In my opinion, we should call it an infomercial more than an event. I share most of my thoughts about it here. 3️⃣ Reactions are mixed, I would say. 4️⃣ Apple Observatory seems to be a new construction site at Apple Park in California. According to this article on Dezeen, it looks like a great place with a design that is similar to Apple's current architectural traits and elements. The place was first on the day of the Glowtime keynote, where the new iPhone 16 line was launched. It was used as a demonstration space, according to Gruber. 5️⃣ Speaking of Gruber, Manuel Moreale wrote a small post about the EU vs US iPhone debate, the iPhone divide, and the way Gruber keeps hammering the subject in the name of what, exactly? We don't know. This piece might come across as bold and confrontational. The tone challenges Gruber’s perspectives on Apple’s features and policies, especially around the EU vs. US debate over iPhone functionalities. It questions the value of Gruber’s critiques and urges him to adopt a more inclusive mindset, embracing user choice and differing opinions globally

Exclusive photos reveal Apple’s subterranean Apple Park Observatory

Dezeen can exclusively reveal photos of technology brand Apple’s new events venue, which is sunk into the hillside at the Apple Park campus in California.

DezeenTom Ravenscroft

"Apple’s brand, product ecosystem and marketing muscle are all so strong that even the bare minimum is usually enough." — Mark Gurman

“Sameness in design is not equivalent to a lack of creativity." — Om Malik

“It just occurred to me that Apple (and other “gatekeepers”) are getting a bit of their own medicine with the DMA. Developers in the App Store have always had to live with unclear and changing rules, as well as the risk that Apple will effectively shut down your business with an absolute rejection. Suddenly the bully is being bullied, with changing rules and unclear guidelines — and they don't like it.” — https://mastodon.cloud/@drewmccormack/113106933929326824

It’s Glowtime Apple Event Bingo — Basic Apple Guy

Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event is scheduled for 10:00am PST on Monday, September 09.

Basic Apple GuyBasicAppleGuy

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ This Medium Publication « Numeric Citizen Journeys » is in fact gradually becoming my newest project. Since I like documenting a lot of stuff in my life, I think this could be helpful for other people in the same situation. Consider giving it a look, I'm quite happy so far with the design.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ Apple's iOS 18 is finally in release candidate state while I'm using iOS 18.1 beta on my iPhone, iPadOS 18.1 beta on my iPad and macOS 15.1 beta on my MacBook Air. I'm waiting for the subsequent betas, which should be in the next few days. 2️⃣ I'm still using the new and controversial Reeder app, which is being updated to improve formatting and functionality. 3️⃣ Apple released three ads about Apple Intelligence. The main character in these ads is Isabella Ramsey, who was last seen in “The Last of Us” TV series (I can’t remember her name, sorry). I'm not sure that I like the messaging of these ads, especially where they make us look “fake” by making people think we remember things or that we read what we were expected to read, which we didn't. 4️⃣ I’ve been spending some time watching videos about Realmac Software's RapidWeaver Elements, a new static website building app, for the Mac. It is still being developed and is currently in private beta. I've been watching those videos for a secret project that might require me to build a website from scratch. Elements seems like a great Mac app. I'm afraid to learn CSS, but it should be minimal if videos are any indication. I'll report back in the future. 5️⃣ In my latest YouTube video, I discuss general concepts surrounding objects and Craft Objects. This upcoming feature in Craft is a game changer, and I felt the need to share some details before the official release later this fall. 6️⃣ Scribbles.page blogging service keeps improving quite a lot. Recent additions are live post previews which is handy when writing longer posts and private blogs for those who needs a closer exposure of their blog.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I recently discovered and watched the Fifth Element short film on YouTube only to find out later that this short film was entirely made by AI, from the visuals, the storyline, the music, everything! How much energy in how many datacenters does this short clip require to become reality? It's far from a perfect story, but it's a boring one. It's only the beginning.

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I would love to hear the click of Jony Ive's designed button. MG Siegler talks about it, too. 2️⃣ JPEG-XL image format is official, and the latest iPhone supports it. It seems too good to be true—faster, smaller, wider support. Something is scary, though: it's a complex file format requiring a lot of code to support, as reported on Threads. If it is true that Firefox needs 100K lines of code to support JPEG-XL, then it is safe to assume that this also becomes a great cybersecurity attack surface. Do you remember the Macromedia Player or the Adobe Flash Player? You can also find all the details about JPEG-XL on the official website. 3️⃣ This little Dji NEO drone is super cool, and while I don't need one, I wish I had one. See the following promotional video. 4️⃣ I realized that this newsletter is all about curation, human curation, to be specific. Is this the future of the web? Some people like Jeremy Utley think it is, as he shared in “Curate to Create.” The future of content creation lies in curation, as audiences face content fatigue and anxiety from endless choices.

A picture from the Severance series is available on Apple TV+. What a strange world this series portrays. I liked how they conveyed that people working with computers are doing things I don’t understand, and I’m in IT! What they do is unknown to me, at least. They move little numbers to meet a visual target using a trackball instead of a mouse. I like this retrocomputing style. It’s so weird and useless from our point of view. Maybe this is what other non-techy people think about those of us who work in IT, anyway?

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ I’m looking forward to visit the Apple Store next week and experience everything Apple announced during their Glowtime keynote. I’m really eyeing the Apple Watch Series 10, to replace my aging Series 8, bought in 2022. Battery life is miserable; I’m barely making it to the afternoon.

I wish you a great week! ✌️👋🏻

Newsletter Past Editions

📅 Meta

Generally speaking, the “Glowtime” event has too many tech sheet talks, lacks emotional conversation, and feels too long. When a device is mature, new iterations are so subtle that mentioning those subtleties is the only way to entice users to upgrade. Or is it? I’m getting tired of the Apple headquarters. I can’t believe Apple invites the press to watch a video on a big screen. What a waste of resources and money. Here are some things that I find worthwhile talking about, at least for me.

About the Apple Watch

First, I’m a bit surprised that Apple didn’t mention the tenth anniversary of the Apple Watch. I would have preferred an emotional retrospective segment over the specs-packed ones. And we didn’t get the redesign the iPhone underwent with the iPhone X in 2017. Speaking of design, the new watch is barely thinner by 1 mm. As per the Apple Watch mini website, the following visual comparison lets people get the gist of it. However, the jet-black finish accentuates the slimmer design over the one in black matte. I would have preferred that they used the silver finish on both sides to be a fair comparison.

Another strange thing is that the Apple Watch mini website offers another visual comparison, which is the screen size. Why is the Series 8 and 9 absent from the comparison? Maybe the difference would have been too incremental. Is Apple targeting mostly Series 6 and prior owners? Anyhow, I would have liked to see the Series 8 in this comparison.

More apparent is the Series 10 design change: the watch roundness, thanks to a more pronounced corner radius. I kind of like it. As always with Apple products, seeing it in person will help you make a final decision. Also, Series 10 sports double the storage of Series 8.

One more thing, absent from the keynote is Jony Ive showing a new Apple Watch band with the newly designed “button”. Is such a thing possible? I wish.

Other notes

AirPods Max was given a new charging port and colors. There are no audio improvements, no size reduction, and the same stupid carrying case. Jarrod Blundy for HeyDingus website sums it all up. The AirPods Max are now the new original HomePod, IMO. Getting new features with software upgrades is great, though. This is the case for the AirPods Pro 2. That's cool, and the messaging around it was to the point.

Oh, the iPhone 16. I find it less exciting, but I wonder if it is because the features gap is less pronounced this year. The Main camera got a new name: 48 MP Fusion camera. Confused. This new camera button and mini user interface look great.

Some of the photography-related changes are intriguing: the new photographic style in post-edit is really cool. The user interface for editing a photo with a specific style using a multicoloured pad is dope. I can’t wait to try it in the Apple Store on my next visit.

As expected, Apple mentioned Apple Intelligence a bunch of times. You can find the logo everywhere on the iPhone mini website. I can’t wait to see real-world Apple Intelligence benchmarks for the iPhone 16 Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro; how much difference does 8 GB of RAM and the A18 / A18 Pro CPU make? It would cost me over a thousand Canadian dollars to upgrade from my now-discontinued iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’ll pass and wait for the iPhone 17 next year.

This morning, I added a guestbook to my blog. Please, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while or if you just came by, take a moment to sign it! 🙏🏻

The updated navigation structure on numericcitizen.me. This blog is hosted on Ghost.org.

For those who didn’t know, I maintain a description of all the apps and services that I use on “My Complete Content Creator Toolset And Some More” page.

Bye bye Hookmark, apparently my current subscription ended. I cannot justify subscribing to this app just to be able to browse hookmark files created when my subscription was active. I’ll need to update some of my Craft templates to remove all my hookmark file references. Tedious.

I spent some time this morning to update my content creator toolset mini website. It was long overdue.

For long-time readers and followers, they know that I own a few websites or publishing places, but a reminder is always welcomed. With so many places to publish to, you might wonder why not use only one big website. Well, I’m glad you asked. You’ll find most of the answers in the following diagram.

As you can see, each place fills a different role. Think of them as publishing channels. I prefer to have many focused places with content directed to a specific crowd over having a single channel full of seemingly unrelated posts. But there is more to it: I love using different tools and services. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and a specific set of features. That’s what drives me the most to use different publishing platforms.

This article is about how I’m using Craft and Things 3, which is behind any short or long article I share online. Here is what happens when I get a new post idea.

1. In Things 3, Create an entry and set priority and desired or expected date of publication if known.
2. In Craft, I create a new document, set the title and then copy the document’s deeplink to the clipboard.
3. Still within Craft, I move the newly created document to the appropriate folder.
4. Still within Craft, I update my private creator dashboard document optionally.
5. Back to Things 3, and I paste the deeplink into the note field. It’s handy to jump from Things 3 to Craft with a single tap.

At this point, I can start my research, writing and editing of my article or blog post in Craft. Now, here is what happens after publishing my article:

1. Mark the to-do item as done in Things 3.
2. I update my private creator dashboard document by converting my deeplink to a new permalink that I put in the Recently Published section.
3. I monitor the appropriate RSS feed for quality control. See this article about subscribing to my own RSS feeds.

There you have it. Craft plays a central role in my blogger workflow¹. This blog post exposes what happens at the beginning and at the end of a new post idea. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something.

❗Short announcement: I made some changes to my megafeed hosted on FeedPress by adding Blips RSS feed and this metablog RSS feed. If you want to get everything I share via a single RSS feed, this is what you need to subscribe to in your favourite browser. All updates to my digital presence are posted on this changelog page. Now, returning to normal programming. 📺

I recently got a few comments and questions from some followers on Micro.blog about my use of Scribbles versus Micro.blog blog hosting services. One guy couldn’t figure out why I was using Scribbles to write very short posts using a one-word title while I was using Micro.blog for longer posts, most of them without a title. I replied with a short answer, but I think I should elaborate for those who have been following me for some time or for those who just got here.

I use three distinct sites for posting written content. My main website (https://numericcitizen.me ), which came first, is currently hosted on Ghost. Next is my Micro.blog site (https://blog.numericcitizen.me), and, more recently, I added another small website hosted on Scribbles https://blips.numericcitizen.me. Let me explain each site’s purposes.

My main website is for posting longer articles like tech reviews (like “Five tools for efficient bloggers”) or for sharing long takes on a specific subject (like: “Five Steps for leaving Twitter”). My publication velocity is about one article per week. This is where my weekly creative summary newsletter gets published, thanks to Ghost’s built-in newsletter capabilities.

My second website is my daily blog, called “my blog,” and is where I post comments and thoughts about Apple, tech, photography, apps and services, and many other things. My blogging site is part of Micro.blog, there is a small community around it, thanks to Micro.blog fediverse support. Somehow, Micro.blog replaced Twitter for me, more than my presence on Mastodon did. I usually post around 10-20 weekly posts on Micro.blog. I like this place a lot for so many reasons.

I recently started using Scribbles, a small blog hosting service I like and want to support. I’m using this service to post short thoughts using a single-word title. These posts are then cross-posted to my Micro.blog timeline with a link going back to my Scribbles site. You can see an example of such a post appearing on my Micro.blog timeline in the following screenshot. Each post sports two emojis to help me spot them in my timeline. One thing I try to do is not to be too clickbait with my single-word title. The chosen word must be evocative or related to the post content.

The post on Scribbles gets cross-posted on my Micro.blog timeline by using one of the coolest features of Micro.blog: cross-posting of content coming from RSS feeds. This is shown in the following screenshot.

Micro.blog picks up posts from the Scribbles website RSS feed and will post content on my timeline, as well as cross-post it to Mastodon and Bluesky. This is POSSE in action. I’m a believer.

When I first thought about writing this article, I wasn’t sure where it would end up being shared. However, as the article grew in length and covered my blogging habits, it became obvious that it would go on my meta website, which is another one of my websites. There you have it.

Have you ever searched the web for an article where you couldn’t see when it was published? It happens to me quite often. I don’t understand why such important information isn’t communicated to the readers.

In a fast-moving numeric world, the publishing date helps the reader gauge the content’s relevancy. I set the publication date on all my websites because it adds context to the content. When I created Numeric Citizen I/O, I used a post slug format that includes the publication date. The path to the webpage is shown in search results, which makes searching the web a more useful experience. Below are examples of URLs to my websites.

https://numericcitizen.micro.blog/2021/03/07/about-those-webp.html

https://numericcitizen.me/2021/02/27/porting-office-work-a-bad-idea/

Update 2022-11-15: Sadly, since moving to a Craft-based hosting solution, the URL can no longer include the publication date. If you are a business plan subscriber, the workaround is to set the document as a separate website individually.

Update 2024-03-15: I realized that when I moved from WordPress to Ghost, I lost this notion of date in the URL. All previous content is still accessible using the old URL format, but newly published content no longer contains the publication date in the article’s URL. We cannot have it all, I guess.

This article was first published on 2021-03-17.

I decided to disable cross-posting from my Glass feed to Bluesky and Pixelfed. This should fix the photo duplicates on your Micro.blog timeline each time I post a new image on Glass. Sorry for the inconvenience. The problem was simple: Let’s say I share an image on Glass, Micro.blog picks it up and cross post to Bluesky and Pixelfed. Micro.blog then detects a new photo from my Pixelfed feed and cross posts that to my Micro.blog timeline for the second time. Hence the duplicate.

If you want a peak at my current reading notes management workflow, you might find this video interesting (Craft, Bear 2, Omnivore, Readwise).

🔗 Mobivention announces its own iOS App Marketplace

As detailed by the company in a press release, mobivention’s App Marketplace will let developers distribute B2B and B2C apps to their customers outside the iOS App Store. “The mobivention App marketplace is primarily aimed at business customers who are looking for an alternative solution for distributing their apps,” mobivention explains.

Tired: there is an app for that. Wired: There is a marketplace for that. 🤓

Let’s say I stumble on an article I wish to read and process. I’ll follow the following steps, covering the collection and archival stages.

1. Save the article in Omnivore¹,².
2. Set tags in Omnivore.
3. Read the article, highlight text as needed and write comments if required.
4. Summarize the article using Raycast AI. I have a Keyboard Maestro macro for that.
5. Copy and paste the summary into the Omnivore notebook accompanying the article.
6. Archive the article in Omnivore.
7. Export the Readwise highlights (done automatically from Omnivore syncing).
8. Import the created markdown files into Bear.
9. Adjust tags if required.

I realize this workflow is essentially for the Mac. Nothing like this can be done on the iPad without a major tweak or two.

You can find this article on the “My Micro-Workflows Explained” website.

Each week, I use this template in Things 3 to help me out with my planning. Each Sunday, I duplicate the whole project and rename it accordingly. I love Things 3[^1]. [^1] I tried to do this in Apple Reminders but I prefer Things 3 experience.

Today I added a new global changelog¹ page to my metablog. The changelog will cover all the changes applied to my digital publishing space.

I encountered my first few hurdles in transposing my content from a Craft document to a Micro.blog. Craft enables rich document content and supports block types like JSON output or command line examples. Posts containing these need special Markdown attention. Thanks to some help¹, I figured that out, so the output looks ok. Next up are documents with images like screenshots. When exporting from Craft to Ulysses, images are inserted in Ulysses as references to Craft’s backend storage. When posting on Micro.blog, the images are not uploaded on Micro.blog’s backend. I need to manually download each image and insert them in Ulysses so they get uploaded to Micro.blog and be self-contained there. If I ever drop Craft, I want the images in my post to stay valid and display correctly.

Circumventing Ghost’s limited posts management capabilities.

I recently decided to spend some time editing past articles published on my Numeric Citizen Space website. I first thought that by going to my Ghost admin page, I could quickly browse past published articles by month. I couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, Ghost offers limited post management capabilities, thanks to its limited content browsing capabilities. I cannot go back, say, list articles published early in 2023. I can sort by ascending or descending order, but from there, I have to scroll through a long, dynamically created list of posts. It’s not very effective for a website with 600-plus posts. I had to find a different option to locate a post for an update. This is where Ghost’s content APIs come into play.

The following API request doesn’t do the job (API key voluntarily removed!):

curl -H "Accept-Version: v5.0" "https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/api/content/posts/?key={APIkeygoeshere}&fields=title,url,published_at,updated_at&filter=published_at:>2024-01-01%2Bpublished_at:<2024-02-01" | json_pp

Let me explain what is this API request.

First, I’m going to the request using the macOS command line, hence the curl command. Next, the whole query follows in quotes. I query the content/posts API endpoint. Next, I pass my API key, followed by a field selection (&fields), and next with the filter using the published date between two dates. Finally, I pipe the results in the pretty JSON print macro (is this a macro?) so the output looks like this:

jfm@CraftingMAChine ~ % curl -H "Accept-Version: v5.0" "https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/api/content/posts/?key={API-key-goes-here}&fields=title,id,url,published_at,updated_at&filter=published_at:>2024-01-01%2Bpublished_at:<2024-02-01" | json_pp
{
   "meta" : {
      "pagination" : {
         "limit" : 15,
         "next" : null,
         "page" : 1,
         "pages" : 1,
         "prev" : null,
         "total" : 9
      }
   },
   "posts" : [
      {
         "id" : "65b6a09840566000015b0d37",
         "published_at" : "2024-01-28T13:50:19.000-05:00",
         "title" : "My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week of 2024/03",
         "updated_at" : "2024-01-28T13:50:19.000-05:00",
         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/my-weekly-creative-summary-for-the-week-of-2024-03/"
      },
      {
         "id" : "65b6540640566000015b0cf7",
         "published_at" : "2024-01-28T08:23:26.000-05:00",
         "title" : "Special Message to Paying Subscribers",
         "updated_at" : "2024-01-28T08:23:26.000-05:00",
         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/special-message-to-paying-subscribers/"
      },
      {
         "id" : "65b16e25bc7fde0001314ccb",
         "published_at" : "2024-01-24T15:09:24.000-05:00",
         "title" : "The Mac Turns 40",
         "updated_at" : "2024-01-24T15:09:24.000-05:00",
         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/the-mac-turns-40/"
      },
      {
         "id" : "65ad35418532ae000169ddd2",
         "published_at" : "2024-01-21T10:22:33.000-05:00",
         "title" : "My Weekly Creative Summary for the Week 2024/02",
         "updated_at" : "2024-01-21T10:22:33.000-05:00",
         "url" : "https://numericcitizen.me/my-weekly-creative-summary-for-the-week-2024-02/"
      },
   ]
}

Next, I copy the post ID of one article and paste it my browser for edition using this special URL:

https://numeric-citizen-introspection.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/652e6eedb8a2650001ad9c5b

This URL brings me directly into the Ghost editor, provided that i was already authenticated with my account. That’s pretty much it. It could be much simpler. For this, I miss WordPress.

You can find the Ghost API document right here.

This blog is a Micro.blog hosted version of the Craft-hosted version. I’m currently in the slow process of copying my content over here.

As much as I love Craft, its current version is unsuitable as a read-later solution. I do keep a list of bookmarks within Craft, but the article’s content is not fetched and saved into Craft, something Notion is able to do. This list is kept for other purposes, like helping me build my newsletter and other long-form articles. I need a better reading solution.

Reading is something that requires the least distraction possible. Safari reader mode is great. I use it quite frequently to remove the noise from a webpage, but it lacks the highlighting feature of Instapaper or Pocket. Using a shortcut to save a text highlight is possible but distracting. This is where an app like Instapaper or Pocket comes into play. But which one is the best? For me, it is Pocket¹, here is a quick comparison of both solutions.

• Pocket design is richer, while Instapaper’s is minimalistic, which could be seen as an advantage. Yet, Pocket is still frictionless for reading.
• Pocket updates are more frequent.
• Pocket is more expansive than Instapaper.
• IFTTT support is more extensive with Instapaper than it is with Pocket.
• Instapaper allows quick notes to be created next to the highlighted text. This could prove useful. Think of it as meta-highlighting.
• Instapaper seems stuck in the past when it was created by Marco Arment.
• Instapaper allows you to organize bookmarks into folders, something I wish Pocket would support. I’m a bit compulsive about organizing my content.
• Pocket supports iOS widgets, not Instapaper.
• Share sheet allows tagging with Pocket, which makes me more efficient.
• Page rendering seems better in Pocket.
• On the Mac, Instapaper Safari extension doesn’t work. It keeps asking me to authenticate with the application, which I did. See next observation.
• Both Pocket and Instapaper don’t support Sign in with Apple within the macOS application; only on the website. Because of this, the Instapaper is useless on the Mac, while Pocket supports creating a password for the account, which fixes this issue.
• Pocket offers a public profile page where article recommendations can be shared.
• I have more confidence in Pocket’s future and sustainability than in Instapaper’s.

The following screenshots are page rendering examples of the same article from both services.

If Craft is ever updated to extract an article from a website, allows tagging and highlighting, I’ll probably reconsider my use of Pocket. For now, I’m a very happy user of Pocket, a service which helps me read more and better.

My Pocket profile. My Matter profile.

In recent days, I’ve been working on a proof-of-concept to replicate Numeric Citizen I/O website currently hosted on Blot.im into Craft. I’m happy to report that the main portion of my work is completed. You can have a look at the end results here (Craft link). Now, the only missing part is the support of custom domains and notifications. The former will help mask the Craft URL behind a more user-friendly URL. The latter will let me know when someone is dropping a comment on the website. For the time being, I’ll update both versions in parallel. Enjoy.

Moving content from one platform to another isn’t easy. And it shouldn’t be that way.

The problem: I want to migrate a few dozens of posts from my Numeric Citizen Blog to my other website, Numeric Citizen Introspection, hosted on Ghost. Easy, right? Think again. The Ghost migrator plugin doesn’t support posts selection; it’s an all or nothing tool. How can I migrate a subset of my posts in that context? By assigning a specific category to each post, I can use the WordPress export tool to export these posts. Next, those posts can then be imported into an empty WordPress instance. From there, I could use the Ghost Migrator plugin. The issue is that I don’t have an empty WordPress instance sitting idle. Using WordPress.com, I cannot install the plugin in a free instance (it’s part of a Business plan, which I subscribe to for my main blog). The solution, was to use my Synology NAS to install an empty WordPress instance locally and proceed from there. Let’s see what the workflow looks like.

1. Turn off post update in the WP to Buffer Pro plugin to prevent flooding your Buffer queue
2. On the source WordPress instance, update posts category that you want to export
3. Install the “Export media with selected content” plugin (which is needed to export images as well as text content)
4. Export content to an XML file with the plugin
5. Install WordPress on Synology NAS with all required dependancies
6. Configure a WordPress website that will be used to host exported content in transit to Ghost
7. Install “Export media with selected content” in Synology WordPress instance (not really required)
8. Install the Ghost Migrator plugin
9. Delete the default post and unneeded page from the WordPress instance, as well as any images from the media library.
10. For each post to export, add the export category of your choice (in my case it was “PhotoLegend”.)
11. Export posts using these options from the WordPress Tools menu

12. Switch to the WordPress instance running on the Synology NAS
13. Select Import from the Tools menu
14. Select the XML file created from the Export step earlier
15. Set the author for the imported posts

16. Set the Download and import file attachments to bring in images
17. Click Submit and wait for the process to complete (it takes some time, depending on the number of posts and images to import)
18. Verify if all posts are listed in the Posts section (check creation date, author, etc.)
19. Check for Media Library to verify if images are imported
20. Open a few posts to see if content is correctly formatted
21. Edit posts with back links or other elements that need to be updated before importing content into Ghost
22. Edit tags according to the destination website requirements
23. Edit post slug and post title according to destination website requirements
24. Export using Ghost Migrator plugin, select the JSON format since ZipArchive module isn’t installed with this version of WordPress and PHP

25. Import JSON file created in the previous step
26. Check for imported posts issues. This is where I hit the wall. Missing photos, content imported as HTML blocs, etc. Not great at all.

27. Turn back on the WP to Buffer Pro Post Update option

This workflow doesn’t meet the goal of migrating WordPress content to Ghost. I ended up deleting the posts on the source WordPress instance and kept a copy of them on my Synology instead. I don’t know what I’ll do eventually with these “archived” posts.

Observations

Some observations are in order. This whole story brought many observations that I think you should consider if you’re attempting something similar.

• The Ghost Migrator plugin is very limited, which make it hard to build an optimal migration workflow.
• Images migration is close to impossible or very unreliable, forcing to use a manual export and import process.
• Image optimization plugins on WordPress could make the migration harder than necessary.
• Website optimization plugins on WordPress could add tags that are probably hindering the migration process.
• Ghost import feature is still a work in progress can there is no way to select which post to import after reading the JSON file.
• Testing the migration with a single post would most likely help identify issues faster, instead of importing all the content on the first try.
• It doesn’t help to convert the WordPress post to use the block editor before exporting the content.
• Migration efforts are time-consuming, making sure the content still has value to your reader is a good idea. I ended up deleting my 23 posts after spending hours of migration efforts. The positive side of this story is that I learned quite a lot.
• Even if I couldn’t use the ZIP file for the Ghost Migrator plugin, I don’t think it would have made a difference in the migration quality. I tried to add ZIP Archive to the PHP installation, but the WordPress installation within my Synology NAS is hard to customize. After spending a few hours trying, I dropped the ball.
• Data portability is really an issue these days. Even with export or import plugins exist, there are other problems that are inherent to each platform or CMS.

One thing that I gained from this experience is that by using WordPress on my Synology NAS, I can export content from my online WordPress to my Synology NAS for archiving purposes. That’s cool. Other than that, the problem of data mobility across content platform is real.

My previous blogger workflow update was in March 2021. Quite many things have happened since then. It’s time for another update. Buckle up because this is a big one, and enjoy the ride!

What’s in

For 2021, I was expecting a year without many changes to my blogger workflow, and yet, I was in for quite a few surprises.

• Probably some of the most important additions this year are Toggl, Timery, and Focused Work to track my time while creating content (consider bookmarking and reading “Why and How I’m Tracking Time With Toggl” if you want to know all the details.) Tracking my time does take some time, but I like the results.
• Hello Ghost (again)! I started experimenting with Ghost during the 14-day trial period, during which all features were available for testing. I started building automation with the Zapier integration. After the trial period ended, the integration with Zapier stopped working for some reason. I quickly found out that many features like custom themes, custom integrations, and commenting support are only available with certain subscription tiers. Commenting on each blog post isn’t available by default unless I’m on the Creator tier and customize one of the provided themes. To use Commento, I needed an API key, as well as a custom theme and a custom integration. And moreover, a custom version of Casper with some script invocation was added to enable Commento integration. Forking such a built-in theme requires staying in sync with the official theme, as Ghost updates them from time to time to benefit from all Ghost’s additions. Finally, I visited Google Search Console to add my Ghost website for better SEO management and optimizations. I became a subscriber at the entry-level tier for $9 per month, but I quickly realized that the $25 was the one I needed (consider bookmarking and reading “Moving From Substack to Ghost–My Experience” for more details.)
• iPadOS 15 introduced support for Safari extensions. Working on the iPad now feels less and less a compromise, as Grammarly support and many other extensions are now available. For people depending on the iPad, it is a much-welcomed addition. Unexpectedly, in 2021, my workflow shifted towards the MacBook Air (read “Coming Out of a Rabbit Hole and Buying Two MacBook Air”).
• Pocket made a comeback in addition to Readwise (consider bookmarking and read “Instapaper vs Pocket — Which Read Later Service Is Better for Me”). Pocket is well-known and doesn’t need much introduction. According to Readwise website: “Readwise makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights.” Resurfacing previously highlighted text snippets is fun and helps build a lasting memory of past readings. I added Readwise as a source to my weekly newsletter built using Mailbrew.
• Using the Readwise sharing feature to repost quotes on Twitter is handy. I don’t use it too often, though.

• WordPress plugin: I’m using the paid version of “WB to Buffer” for reposting previously published posts to Buffer. With another WordPress plugin named “Feedzy” it imports RSS feeds from Substack and Microblog and creates “Also on my …” type of blog posts automatically. It didn’t generate much traction and added too much noise to my original content feed. This was disabled after a few months when I moved out of Substack.
• I unexpectedly started using Matter when Matter officially became public. Matter seems to have gained some traction over Pocket as the best read-later service. Compared to Pocket, it creates great link posts that can be saved or shared online, just like Readwise and Pocket.
• I became a subscriber of Typefully (typefully.com), a web application for writing threads on Twitter. Some features of Typefully are similar to Buffer’s, like being able to schedule tweets. I use it to write threads to complement some of my articles. The latest example of things to watch in 2022. Finally, Typefully brings great engagement analytics.

What’s out

• My experience with HEY World didn’t last long. I’ve been moving out of HEY World to go to Substack for my Friday Notes* and Photo Legend* Series (consider bookmarking and reading “Migrating My Content From Hey World to Substack”). I can say the same thing about my Substack experience. These services, while attractive, didn’t stick in my workflow.
• HEY is no longer on the workflow diagram. HEY doesn’t really contribute to my blogger workflow. Most of my readings don’t happen there anyway, even if HEY provides newsletters dedicated feed, one of the tent pole features of the mail client.
• As mentioned earlier, Substack is out. The popularity of a platform doesn’t guarantee the popularity of your content.
• I closed my Telegram account. Read more here to learn why. I’m contemplating Signals instead.
• WordPress Plugin: Coblock was disabled to remove overhead in webpage processing. It didn’t make a difference, though.

In progress

• I do spend more time maintaining my digital garden in Craft all year long. You can find a lot of stuff in there.
• I’m still trying to figure out how to use Apple’s Quick Notes feature in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. I may end up having no use for this after all, which is too bad because, on paper, the idea is cool.
• I’m always thinking about using Apple’s Reminders in my workflow. Reminders have improved quite a lot over the years, but occasionally, I think Craft could take over if table support was better (sorting, tagging, etc.). The more things I’ll do with Craft, the more synergy it creates. I’ll watch Craft’s evolution in 2022, and maybe make a move.

Things to improve

• Adding text clipping in Craft would be so helpful. There are shortcuts that work with Craft that do just that, but I don’t find the experience very satisfying.
• Speaking of Apple’s Shortcuts, I do find more use cases for them to speed up a few key tasks, like setting up my work session after logging into my account on macOS.
• Templates in Craft to kickstart the creation of a new article would be very handy. It is expected in 2022, in an upcoming update in 2022 or via an extension.
• As much as I would like to see the addition of tags in Craft, implementing this feature could be tricky. Where should we be able to tag things? In a page’s properties, inline in the page’s content?
• I have to work on my reading workflow and decide what I’m going to do with Pocket, Readwise and Matter. Pocket will probably go as it is entirely covered with Matter.

Miscellaneous

• My usage of ** Craft ** has significantly increased this year. It is becoming my second brain (Fun fact: find out the name of my MacBook Air). Lately, I decided to use the Craft calendaring feature to prepare a weekly plan containing my content creation objectives. As the week progresses, I keep it up-to-date and check items off the list. It’s a satisfying experience, trust me.
• I’m still using Notion to keep my old data and connect Matter to Notion to save my reading highlights automatically. As soon as a Craft extension allows me to pump my data out of Notion, I might be done with Notion once and for all. Notion is not shown on my workflow diagram but will be in an upcoming post covering my reading workflow.
• Twitter Revue: I had a Revue account before Twitter bought them. Now that it is integrated into their platform, I experimented with it (read a sample issue here). I love Twitter Revue, but I have yet to find a unique and useful use case for it. I currently have five subscribers.
• Furthermore, I should consider closing my Flipboard account. I never go there; it’s not what it used to be, and I don’t get any traffic from this platform.
• Google News, where I cross-post my main blog content, could also go down the drain. I don’t get any traction there.
• Finally, Tumblr is another place where I cross-post content. Tumblr has become a ghost town in recent years, and it doesn’t help at all. Even if cross-posting is done automatically using WordPress’ built-in feature, I should consider stopping using this platform.
• In my previous workflow update, I considered moving my Photo Legend Series to Hey, which I did for a short while. Now, it is hosted on Ghost, along with my Friday Notes Series and monthly newsletter. I like consolidating stuff sporadically.
• Since getting a MacBook Air, my iPad Pro usage significantly dropped. The Mac is the power user tool. I cannot be as productive on an iPad.
• I worked a lot on my WordPress blog to improve its score on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, as documented here. Did it make a difference? According to my blog visitor statistics, the answer is no. Here is a strange thing: if I run PageSpeed tests twice in a row, the final score is quite different. Usually, the second try gives much better results. How much trust should I put in these results? Another observation: my score for this blog, a static website, is the worst. Is Blot hosted on a low-end performance tier in the cloud?
• I’ve been using Commento with Blot to add comments support on this blog. I never got a single comment! It’s a high price to pay for a service that nobody takes advantage of. Maybe it will be a better fit with my newsletter website on Ghost? Time will tell.
• IFTTT still plays an important role in my publishing workflow as it works with Buffer to help me control the cross-posting flow. Each day, I spend some time managing the Buffer queue to spread out posts to be published. I also use IFTTT to cross-post anything I post on Reddit to my Twitter channel on Buffer. Buffer has a new calendar view that helps you see a timeline overview of all future publishing. Buffer isn’t cheap, but I like what it does for me. Cross-posting content does help create traffic and improves engagement.

Well, that was a long one. I want to walk you through my reading workflow for an upcoming article. I read a lot of stuff online, and many applications and services are involved here. Reading is the source of my inspiration for most of my work as a content creator. I think there are some interesting things to write about. Stay tuned, and see you in 2022.

Digital nomads. The flavour of the day. Looking for a better digital experience? Every reason is good to move from one place to another in the digital world. It’s about having some fun.

I recently came across this blog post from Greg Morris where he writes: “I look at blog designs like Birchtree.me* and think to myself “I want a blog like that” and then go out and try to build one.”*. I often tell myself the exact same thing. But then, not long after, I came across another blog post , but this time by Andy Nicolaides writing on his blog, The Dent:

“I’ve just gone through yet another blog migration, moving from Micro.Blog to Ghost (again). I was happily posting to Ghost a year or so ago, saw a nice looking blog on Micro.blog and jumped ship. I then sat there, not posting for half a year, before I saw Greg Morris’ updated site over on Ghost and my blog envy kicked off again. Let’s not even mention how incredible Matt Birchler’s Birchtree looks right now!”

Ghost has always been a source of curiosity for me, coming back to it from time to time to look and see how it is evolving. Following those two blog posts, I got back to one of my articles about a past experience with Ghost for photo sharing. At the time, it didn’t go well. Furthermore, I started using Substack to host my newsletter for unknown or clearly defined reasons. So, this time, I returned to Ghost to look at it as an alternative to Substack. Why? After all, I was quite happy with Substack. And yet… If I look at Substack and Ghost, there are many things that made me dubious of my choices.

• I don’t get any subscribers from Substack Discovery because Substack is very popular these days.
• I prefer the way Ghost handles the publishing process and the distinction between having a CMS and a newsletters publishing platform within the same platform.
• Ghost’s API supports text editors like Ulysses, which would help speed up the process of creating newsletter issues. By working directly with Ulysses, each new issue would be much easier to put together, as Ulysses supports templates, while Substack doesn’t. Since the basic structure of my newsletter stays the same each month, using a template makes perfect sense.
• Substack offers some visual customization options, but they are quite limited. On the other hand, Ghost offers themes that help make a more personal-looking website.
• Ghost supports Unsplash, which is a must for me.
• Ghost provides better support for photos than in Substack with photo galleries. This could prove to be useful for my photo legend series, among other use cases.
• Integration of plausible analytics is easy, but it is not possible with Substack. Another must-have for me.
• Stripe integration, which I already use for Medium payments, if I ever choose to add a paid tier to my newsletter.
• Commenting is possible by tweaking the theme and adding some integration code. Yet, I wish there was a better and easier way to add this to a website. In the future, I could try to set up Commento for comments using this procedure. Ghost theme customization is available only on mid-tier and up-paid plans. This feature could replace the thread feature available on Substack.
• Good integration with Buffer via Zapier. IFTTT integration is possible only via RSS feeds. As a paying member of IFTTT, I chose the latter.
• Better RSS feeds support posts, tags, and pages just by adding /RSS to any URL. On top of that, it is possible to customize the webpage referring to a tag by adding a header image and a description, just like here for the Photo Legend Series.
• Selecting a fully featured theme is challenging, as Ghost doesn’t provide an easy way to filter themes by supported features.
• I’ll leave my Substack account active for the Substack Reader feature.
• Easy migration path from Substack to Ghost using this procedure.
• Should I import my content? After a short test run using the 14-day evaluation period, it was clear that I had to.

How Ghost could be improved for me?

One of the Ghost editor’s most powerful and useful features is the ability to create and reuse content snippets. If you’ve ever used an email client with saved replies, this will be immediately intuitive.

• Integration features and custom themes for the entry-level paid plan (access to the API admin token).
• A customizable dashboard.
• A native client on Mac or iPad.

Steps to move from Substack to Ghost

1. I exported my data from Substack, which took less than 10 minutes to complete. Substack makes this super easy.

2. Import my subscribers list into Ghost’s members list.

3. Download Xcode from the Mac App Store and launch it for default configuration (required for the next step).

4. Install Homebrew to be able to install NPM modules later (importing content into Ghost requires Node.js and NPM modules): https://treehouse.github.io/installation-guides/mac/homebrew

5. Install Node.js and NPM: https://treehouse.github.io/installation-guides/mac/node-mac.html

6. Follow this procedure to import articles into Ghost CMS. This is done via the command line.

   `migrate substack numericcitizen-export-2021-11-14-m9k19kr99s/posts.csv –readPosts numericcitizen-export-2021-11-14-m9k19kr99s/posts –url https://numericcitizen.substack.com –useMetaImage –useMetaAuthor –drafts false

   `A lot of my decision to switch depended on the success of this step. If content was successfully imported without too much required tweaks, I would consider this a success and go with the next steps.

7. Import the created zip file (the migrate command generated a 230 MB zip file ready to import). This file was then imported using this procedure.

8. Configure site pages and tags Once the import is complete and without error.

9. Review imported content and set tags according to each post’s content. That step was tedious but was mandatory to recreate the same content structure currently on my Substack website.

10. Configure and write a contact page so that users can click from the bottom portion of my Ghost website to contact me.

11. Connect my Ghost account to my Stripe account just in case, even though my newsletter is free—you never know!

12. Configure Ulysses publishing options to publish content from within the application to Ghost. After all, this was one of the main reasons I switched from Substack to Ghost, right?

13. Do a test run with a fake article and check RSS feed content generation.

14. Configure the support and reply-to email addresses.

15. Set up Plausible analytics and add it to my Ghost website using the customization feature in the header section.

16. Update all my IFTTT automations for cross-posting to Twitter via Buffer when a newsletter issue comes out.

17. For mid-tier paid plans only: Add Twitter Revue new sign-up to Ghost via Zapier (this requires the Admin API token, which is not available in the entry-level paid tier).

18. For mid-tier paid plans only: Add Ghost cross-posting to Buffer via Zapier (this requires the Admin API token unavailable in the entry-level paid tier.)

It took me about a day of work to accomplish all this, from the trigger to the final announcement post on Substack. I’m super happy with the end results.