The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.07.12

👤 Personal {#traveling, #life}

1️⃣ A lot happened since the previous edition of this newsletter. I’ve been on a two-week trip to France where I took the opportunity to finish my latest web application for sharing places that I visited. It's called Trails. It was fun to put together, much less complicated than I thought, and it was a joy to use while on vacation. Here's a screenshot of this web application. I plan to use Trails for my next trip, this fall, in Thailand. I can't wait! 2️⃣ While on vacation, I learned that the well-known blogger and photographer, Om Malik, passed away. Om Malik was 59; I'm 58. It's a reminder that anything can happen at any time. 😔 3️⃣ A blog post by Scott Knaster brought me emotions about my troubled relationship with my brother. Without going into too much detail, I certainly can relate.

🗺️ Discoveries {#traveling}

1️⃣ The most recent discoveries pertain to my recent trip to Paris, France and I shared many photos from this trip (Glass profile page), many are from visits to museums while outside temperatures were unbearable.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing {#techreview,#iphone18}

1️⃣ I started thinking (with the help of Claude AI) about my next big writing project: my review of the iPhone 18 Pro Max. For this edition, my previous one was when I upgraded from the iPhone 13 Pro to the iPhone 15 Pro Max; I want to take the angle of highlighting the meaningful improvements, both in software and hardware, that the iPhone 18 series offers. Users of older devices miss features like photographic styles on the software side and may have cooling issues, which newer devices address with the water vapour chamber introduced in the iPhone 17 Pro. 2️⃣ Meanwhile, you can have a peek at last month's blog posts digest, right here.

🌄 Photography {#darkitecture, #glass}

1️⃣ Twenty-five years after its launch, DPReview got a redesign, and it's rather a good one → DPReview redesign 2️⃣ So many great images from this recently discovered photograph → C A Soukup. 3️⃣ Fun roundup of the new Glass logo in the wild. I'm still not a fan of the new logo, though → The Results Are In — Glass. 4️⃣ Julian's manipulated architectural photography transforms real spaces into otherworldly landscapes through contrast, colour, and texture. His raw, honest process prioritizes gut feeling over intellectual concept, sometimes spanning years to complete a single image. One of my favourite photographic styles → Q&A with Julian — Glass. I started experimenting with the darkitecture style (see exhibit A and B). 5️⃣ Here's an overview of my preferred images from my trip to France. These are iPhone photos. More here.

🍎 Apple & Tech {#appletv, #techtrends}

1️⃣ Apple hardware is getting more expensive, reversing a many-decade trend of stable prices for an ever-increasing feature set. → basicappleguy.com/basicappleblog/rammaggedon. 2️⃣ Apple raised Apple TV 4K prices by up to 67% despite the hardware being four years old with five-year-old chips, likely positioning current models as placeholders before fall's anticipated new models with Apple Intelligence capabilities. This is ridiculous, and I find similarities in the ATV 4K and the now-defunct Trash Can Mac Pro: overpriced, undervalued. → The Price-Hiked Apple TV 4K Is 4 Years Old. See also Apple Just Increased Prices on MacBooks, iPads, and More. I find this scandalous and outrageous. 3️⃣ Apple is suing OpenAI, and I'm getting tired of this type of tech drama. I expect Apple to remove the ChatGPT integration before the official release of iOS 27. Personally, I never direct Siri requests to ChatGPT.

"Treating chatbots as sentient beings allows tech companies to take the attention economy to the next level — the “attachment economy” — making users emotionally attached to their products, despite the potential harms." — Mike Elgan in AI chatbots need ‘deception mode’

📱 Apps & Services {#hypertexting, #monocle, #wordpress, #rss}

1️⃣ HyperTexting is a privacy-first, reverse-chronological social news feed built on the open web that lets you follow any RSS-compatible site and post to your own website. It combines the best of old-school feed readers with modern social features—no account required. I put HyperTexting on my list of apps to test. i wonder how different it is from Tapestry. → HyperTexting (I discovered HyperTexting from this post by Manton Reece. → Great to see this write-up of HyperTexting on TechCrunch! I feel like I’m indirectly featured because I’m in one of the screenshots. 🙂) 2️⃣ Another application due for testing is Monocle. In principle, I like the idea, but on a MacBook, the app I'm currently in always covers most of my screen. → Monocle for macOS • Noise-cancelling for your screen 3️⃣ Building tools that no one else will make because they only matter to you is the essence of what’s exciting about agent-assisted coding. No matter what some tech pundits or AI detractors say, having these building capabilities at hand is a game-changer for many, like me. Think about wheelchairs: for many, they're transformative, helping them live better lives. 4️⃣ Anthropic's Claude Mac app is an Electron app because its desktop engineering lead, Felix Rieseberg, literally co-created and still governs Electron — and previously shipped Electron apps at Slack and Notion. It's a personnel decision masquerading as a technical one. → Claude’s Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

"WordPress still runs about 41. 5% of every website on the internet and 59% of all sites built on a known CMS, at least at the time of writing. The raw count of WordPress sites keeps climbing, and no other platform on the open web comes close. Anyone predicting its imminent collapse is selling something. What is changing is what WordPress is used for." — Jean Galea in Who's Left to Build WordPress?

"If Claude Code is so good I don’t get why they don’t prove it by using it to make an even halfway decent native Mac app." — John Gruber in Claude’s Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

"It was the open protocols, the RSS feeds and email, that alone offered a direct connection to your favorite writers and publications, unmediated by algorithms." — Matthew Guay in Google Reader was building the wrong future

🚧 Special projects {#vibecoding, #youtuberecording}

1️⃣ My vibe coding projects are entering maintenance mode as everything is working according to my needs. I'm still thinking about restarting my YouTube video production, this time using my recently acquired Rodecaster Video device. In fact, I'm looking for a video subject that wouldn't require a long video (more than 10 min in length). 2️⃣ The last little project, which, in the end, wasn't a real one, was to build a page containing all my YouTube channels’ recently published videos. I thought it would be challenging because YouTube APIs have severe limitations, but an RSS feed for each channel was the only requirement to make it possible. With Claude Code, it took half an hour of work to achieve. The page now lives in my personal dashboard, as seen in the following screenshot.

📺 YouTube {#timcook, #siri }

1️⃣ The new Apple prices are out, and it’s ugly. → Why Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Prices Will Have to Increase | WSJ News 2️⃣ A very inspiring speech. → 'Listen Like You Might Be Wrong': Harvard Student Goes Viral For Stunning Speech On Trump Amid Feud 3️⃣ Interesting interview about Siri AI with Craig and Joz → Apple’s AI Big Bet 4️⃣ 'We Are Powerful': Mark Carney Explosive Speech Stuns Washington Ahead Of G7 Meeting 5️⃣ Worth watching how Apple tweaked macOS Golden Gate icons compared to macOS 26 Tahoe → macOS Golden Gate 27 & macOS Tahoe 26: Icons Comparison 6️⃣ In the “Personal Context” video, Siri AI is put to the test and while it shows great improvements, it’s still need to learn some tricks. Apple is playing catch-up here, and it shows.

🔮 Looking forward {#liquidglass}

1️⃣ MacOS 27 improves upon the previous version's flawed "Liquid Glass" icons, but Apple should go further by restoring distinctive icon shapes instead of forcing all apps into uniform squircles, which harms usability and design creativity. I really think Apple should allow distinct design across platforms, each platform having a distinct and small design uniqueness. For example, on macOS, Apple could revert this icon design limitation. → Free The Icons 2️⃣ Leaker Warns iPhone 18 Pro New Colors May Face Same Durability Issues → I might go with the gray version this time, in order to prevent this.

🌟 Miscellaneous {#techinsights, #ai-coding }

1️⃣ JA Westenberg: "The smartphone is the enemy of deep thought. Deep thinking needs sustained attention, incubation, and boredom. Boredom is the soil where creativity grows." - I agree. → www.manton.org/2026/07/08/ja-westenberg-the-smartphone-is.html manton.org 2️⃣ Manuel Moreale periodically cycles between expanding and contracting his online presence; he is currently in a downsizing phase, merging newsletters, abandoning domains, and archiving projects. I wonder if this is something I'll do one day? I do some consolidation work from time to time, but nothing more beyond that. → Downsizing manuelmoreale.com 3️⃣ AI loops that autonomously generate and test code burn tokens inefficiently by skipping crucial thinking work—discovering flaws, clarifying vision, and making architectural decisions. Real software design happens in conversations that sharpen thinking, not in automated trial-and-error iterations. At first, I thought this article missed the point, but upon a complete read, I was entirely mistaken. This is a great piece, an honest one. → The Architect and the Builder: alexanderkucera.com 4️⃣ Om Malik, a legendary tech journalist who reinvented himself from hard-charging blogger to thoughtful essayist after a 2008 heart attack, recently died. The piece celebrates his integrity, generosity, and influence on independent media while revealing he produced some of his best work from an ICU bed. → Om. Om Malik, a renowned San Francisco writer, photographer, and tech investor, passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long battle with a heart condition. He was widely respected for his insightful commentary on technology and striking photography. → Om Malik, 1966-2026. Om Links.

"Give me all of the AI assistance in the world and the value I produce will still be reliant on how deeply I understand both the problems and the solutions that the agents are building for them." — Simon Willison in Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

"In almost every product category, faster usually means better. But for AI chatbots, it turns out, a delay makes people assume the results are better." — Mike Elgan in AI chatbots need ‘deception mode’

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