The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.05.24

👤 Personal {#life}

1️⃣ Here’s another late edition of the newsletter. Again, sorry for the delay, but life sometimes takes over. My personal hobby time is spread across many little things and is sometimes fighting against unexpected events like my wife's recent injury. She's slowly recovering. 🙏🏻

🗺️ Discoveries {#youtuber, #hobby}

1️⃣ Journalist Joanna Stern launches New Things, an independent tech newsletter and YouTube channel focused on asking "who is this technology for?" rather than just reviewing products, prioritizing human-centered coverage of how technology shapes our lives. → It’s Time. Meet My New Thing. 2️⃣ Another example of a guy having too much free time and using it to build incredible stuff like a personal knowledge management app, entirely built using Claude Code. → Building My Personal Assistant App. 🤔

👨🏻‍💻 Writing {#linkpost}

1️⃣ I was quite active in recent weeks on my blog with many linkposts shared using my custom-built RSS Flow web app which covers this capability of quickly putting together a linkpost.

🌄 Photography {#space, #glass}

1️⃣ Don’t miss the Artemis II Photo Timeline website where you'll find, as you might expect, a timeline of the best images of this moon mission. 2️⃣ How often do you see a photo-sharing service allowing users to swap images in existing posts without losing engagement? Glass just introduced it in version 5.3.1. Nice. → Replace Your Photo! — Glass.

🍎 Apple & Tech {#timcook, #appleceo}

1️⃣ Tim Cook grew Apple's value from $350B to $4T over 15 years without destroying it—a major achievement. John Ternus takes over as CEO, inheriting stronger hardware capabilities but facing harder challenges: AI integration, Services growth, and defining Apple's role beyond devices. → John Appleseed 2️⃣ Apple's new CEO John Ternus, a 25-year company veteran, brings deep hardware engineering expertise and a reputation for meticulous craftsmanship. His appointment signals Apple's preference for long-term leadership continuity and internal promotion over external hires. → Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch 3️⃣ Tim Cook steps down as Apple CEO after 15 years, transitioning to executive chairman while praising successor John Ternus as the ideal leader to guide the company forward with the same user-centric vision. → Community Letter from Tim 4️⃣ Tim Cook's Apple prioritized profit extraction, self-image, and services revenue over product quality, user experience, and developer relationships—undermining the very standards Apple claims distinguish it from competitors. The list of missteps is long enough to question whether Cook's leadership matched the company's stated values. → Cooked 5️⃣ Apple spent years meticulously engineering Tim Cook's CEO handover to John Ternus — using podcast appearances, managed media leaks, and strategic timing — to prevent stock market panic. The transition offers a masterclass in corporate PR choreography. → Apple’s CEO transition is one of the most carefully choreographed in corporate history. Here's what comes next 6️⃣ The Vision Pro may be Apple's Newton: an expensive, ahead-of-its-time prototype waiting for technology (lightweight AR glasses) that doesn't exist yet. Unlike the Newton's missing killer feature, though, the Vision Pro's limitations are already obvious to everyone. → Apple Lisa Vision Pro MessagePad 2000 7️⃣ Apple's success is rooted in engineering culture and collective identity — understanding it requires looking beyond the data and into how the organization thinks and operates as a whole. → Succession, study of the firm vs. study of the person 8️⃣ Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO to become executive chairman, passing leadership to John Ternus in a planned succession that Cook himself never received from Steve Jobs. This transition offers Apple an opportunity for meaningful change under a product-focused leader while Cook mentors from above and retains government relations duties. → That was Tim, this is Ternus: Some first thoughts on Apple's CEO transition.

"Tim totally cooked as the seventh CEO of Apple. But effective September 1, the hot seat belongs to John Ternus, the company’s eighth chief executive. Also, a great day for being a John at Apple. Johny Srouji moves up to chief hardware officer at the same time. Two solid moves for a company that still makes great hardware." — Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. John Appleseed

📱 Apps & Services {#agentic-ai, #wordpress, #reading}

1️⃣ MCP is a modern version of USB. It is at the center of a mini revolution in which AI Agents can work with MCP to interact with various services and build powerful workflows. The dark side of this is that the security surrounding this is not mature. → MCP Is Making API Sprawl Worse. 2️⃣ WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg went on a multi-hour rant blaming the project's stagnation on process creep and self-imposed bureaucracy — not competition. He argues WordPress has become too slow and consensus-driven to ship meaningful work, and wants to reclaim direct leadership to fix it. → Matt Mullenweg Says “The Wheels Have Fallen Off” in Wide-Ranging WordPress Critique. Anyone still using WordPress here? 3️⃣ Matt Birchler put together a read later web service with a native iPhone app called Quick Reads using AI and vibe coding. It seems really good, but it's not for me, I prefer to use my custom-built bookmarking web app. Cue the video for more details about Quick Reads.

🚧 Special projects {#youtuberecording}

1️⃣ I don't have many pending projects left, except maybe trying to record a new YouTube video using my recently acquired RODECaster Video S. I spent quite some time figuring out the final connectivity setup. You can see a napkin diagram of my setup below. I also started taking notes on how recording YouTube videos with this device compares to using a software-only setup. I realize that I'll be missing a few rather important things, like dynamic zooming based on the mouse movement, something that I started to enjoy using with Screen Studio.

📺 YouTube {#timcook, #techhistory, #macbook}

1️⃣ A lojng review of Apple under Tim Cook as a CEO. 2️⃣ The 8GB memory size of the MacBook Neo might be ok after all. 3️⃣ This video traces the 25-year survival story of macOS's traffic light buttons, arguing that their endurance isn't a design accident — it's the result of Apple treating its design character as untouchable and holding firm through criticism, while Microsoft (with equally bold bets like Luna and Metro) retreated every time the crowd pushed back.

🔮 Looking forward {#ai, #socialmedia, #appleintelligence}

1️⃣ Perplexity launches Health, an AI tool that aggregates health data from wearables and medical records to answer personalized health questions and create fitness/nutrition plans, with physician oversight and strict privacy protections. Should we trust them? No. → Perplexity Can Now Access Your Apple Health Data to Answer Medical Questions 2️⃣ Social media's toxic dynamics aren't caused by algorithms or human psychology—they're structurally baked into the architecture itself. Counterintuitively, filter bubbles may actually stabilize communities rather than destroy them, and legacy platforms are increasingly populated by bots rather than humans. → RIP social media. What comes next is messy. 😔 3️⃣ Parker Ortolani is imagining Apple Agents, part of the upcoming Siri rebuild. → Taking the Apple Agents Concept Even Further with Shortcuts, a Store, and Access Anywhere. Some interesting concepts there, but will Apple go that far with Agentic AI? I highly doubt it. 4️⃣ Really cool web page but also frightening statistics. Are we in an AI bubble? → Is AI Profitable Yet?

"It’s hard to imagine a more orderly, confidence-inspiring, exciting-but-not-at-all-surprising, this-feels-right way to do this. All of that, I am sure, is just the way Cook wants it. And, if you agree that Apple itself was Jobs’s greatest product, Cook really is a product person after all." — Monday, 20 April 2026, Another Day Has Come

🌟 Miscellaneous {#bloggerlife, #developer-experience, #privacyprotection, #appstore}

1️⃣ Basic Apple Guy reflects on a year of creating Apple-focused content—from wallpapers to deep dives on Apple's design history and iconography—while modernizing their site with dark mode and custom CSS improvements. → VI-Basic Apple Guy 2️⃣ A long-time Apple developer abandons the ecosystem after 25 years, citing software gatekeeping, poor macOS design, and a broken age-verification system that locked him out despite being 45 years old. He's migrating to Linux and Android to reclaim control over his computing. → Apple Just Lost Me • AndreGarzia.com 3️⃣ AI's unpopularity isn't a marketing problem — it's a worldview problem. Tech's "software brain" treats human life as data to be automated, but most people don't want to flatten themselves into databases. That fundamental mismatch explains the growing backlash. → BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN 4️⃣ Privacy isn't about hiding wrongdoing — it's a fundamental right. Tech giants collect staggering amounts of personal data, often without meaningful consent, creating real risks from security breaches, manipulation, and permanent reputational damage. Seeking privacy alternatives is worth the effort. → Privacy vs “I have nothing to hide” 5️⃣ Apple is blocking AI coding apps because its entire review model assumes software holds still — but AI-generated apps dissolve that assumption entirely. The real conflict isn't regulatory; it's ontological. The infrastructure built around static software artifacts — version numbers, review queues, bug reports — wasn't designed for code that generates itself at runtime. → The Wrapper and the Code

"Individual employees become more productive with the use of AI agents, but the organization captures none of that value." — Elvis Saravia AI Maturity - Where Enterprises Stand Today

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