The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.10.11

👤 Personal {#newsletter}

1️⃣ First things first, the hero image of this edition is the default wallpaper of the upcoming iPhone Duo. It's one of the best iPhone wallpapers ever selected by Apple. 2️⃣ It's still hard to keep up with this newsletter, but I still like to put them together. I think I finally found the right structure and visual style.

🗺️ Discoveries {#discoverability, #digitalcreation}

1️⃣ This is my little dot. Pixel Area is a novel discoverability tool. You can filter by topics. → Pixel Area – a map of the independent web 2️⃣ One of the nicest places in the digital world: Utropiia. I'm blown away by the creative process and the end results. Yes, AI is involved (Midjourney), but it's far from AI slop. The mood and atmosphere in these images are something else. Must see. → The City of Utropiia

👨🏻‍💻 Writing {#blogging}

1️⃣ Veteran blogger Simon Willison argues that blogging builds careers, sharpens thinking, and creates luck, but only if you actually publish. His core advice: lower your standards, publish while you're still dissatisfied, and start an email list far sooner than feels necessary. → Simon Willison on Technical Blogging. 2️⃣ I wrote and shared a few things in August and September.

"Good writing is a tool to clearly communicate ideas from your brain into someone else’s." — Sophie Alpert in There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text

🌄 Photography {#iphone18, #review, #traveling}

1️⃣ I always loved clouds. Glass created a monthly category about them. Sadly, I didn't post any cloud images. → Monthly Category Favorites — Cloud — Glass 2️⃣ Tyler Stalman's review of the iPhone 18 Pro was the first video review I watched. In summary, this year's Pro iPhone is about photography-conscious users. I'm one of those. I upgraded to the 18 Pro Max (coming from the 15 Pro Max), and I’ve been experiencing this year's Pro line's value proposition. I'll have a definitive appreciation to share later this fall. 3️⃣ My next trip is coming soon: the first two weeks of November, I'll be in Thailand. This will be my first trip to Asia. Expect photos of a different vibe than the usual themes.

🍎 Apple & Tech {#ai, #ios27, #review, #timcook, #johnternus, #techhistory, #ads}

1️⃣ Apple is reportedly developing an AI server built on future "M8" chips for external customers, potentially re-entering the server market it abandoned in 2011. A 2029 release is possible but unconfirmed, with Nvidia networking tech under consideration to link chips efficiently. I've been wondering why Apple wasn't selling their Apple Silicon chips to third parties before the advent of LLMs. → Apple May Return to Server Market With Nvidia Technology 2️⃣ A yearly classic. → iOS 27 Released - What's New? (300+ Features) 3️⃣ Super cool if that's really something Apple has the intention to offer. → Siri AI is built to be replaceable by Claude or ChatGPT 4️⃣ The Apple Music Hall in London simply looks fantastic. → Apple opens Apple Music Hall, a state-of-the-art live music venue in London 5️⃣ New Apple CEO John Ternus is restructuring the company to move faster with fewer people, cutting middle management layers and pushing engineers to ship more products more frequently. It's a significant cultural shift for a company known for its methodical, twice-yearly release cadence. → John Ternus wants to reshape Apple, here's how 6️⃣ Apple's Genius Bar repair emails are carefully crafted to preempt common customer frustrations — lost passwords, missing backups, forgotten IDs — through repeated, plain-language nudges. Years of dealing with difficult customers shaped communications that are brief but strategically redundant. Now, imagine if your car dealer had this level of care! → Apple’s Intentional Service Language 7️⃣ Apple's new Live Rewind and Siri Recap features let Apple Watch passively record and summarize nearby conversations, raising serious privacy concerns. While Apple defends the features, they normalize surveillance and risk alienating users and damaging the brand Apple spent years building. It will be interesting to see whether Apple retracts them or releases the feature as shown. → The new Apple Watch recap features could be Apple’s biggest mis-step in years 8️⃣ End of an era, for real. → Read Tim Cook's full memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO - 9to5Mac 9️⃣ According to this article's author, Tim Cook grew Apple into a $4.6 trillion giant by offshoring labor and appeasing authoritarian governments, while producing increasingly derivative products. His legacy is one of ethical cowardice dressed up as pragmatism — profitable, but a betrayal of everything that made Apple worth caring about. → Apple CEO Tim Cook's Legacy Is Dull Products And Spineless Capitulation ️⃣ A rare, working Apple–1 computer with signatures from both Jobs and Wozniak goes to auction in October, expected to fetch up to $800,000. Originally sold for $666.66, it last auctioned for $671,400 in 2013 — a remarkable appreciation for computing history. → Rare Working Apple-1 Could Fetch $800,000 at Auction ️⃣ Funny story by The Verge aout a fictional first day in charge, John Ternus as a CEO. → A day-one briefing for Apple’s new CEO *️⃣ This isn't the Apple I'm rooting for. After adding ads to the App Store, now this? → Apple Plans to Squeeze More Revenue From the App Store, Report Says

"If you haven’t noticed, one important current trend in tech is to nudge people away from owning products while normalising subscriptions (paying for access) and product licensing." — Riccardo Mori in The ‘trap’ in the Apple Upgrade plan isn’t about money

📱 Apps & Services {#siriai, #rss, #app/cleanshot, #app/screenstudio, #openclaw}

1️⃣ I'm no longer using the Things to-do manager, but this recent update seems well integrated with new Siri AI capabilities, something my web app for managing to-dos will never have. → Things for OS 27 and Siri AI - Things Blog - Cultured Code 2️⃣ I decided to add Brrr to some of my workflows in n8n so that I could make a distinction between long text messages with short status messages which is perfect for Brrr. → brrr 3️⃣ Birchfeed is a new RSS sync service compatible with existing apps like NetNewsWire and Unread, but differentiated by a keyboard-driven web reader, live news stream, automation rules, and AI-generated daily briefings. It's $29/year through September. → Introducing Birchfeed, the best RSS app that works in your favorite RSS app already 4️⃣ I'm already a fan of Birchfeed. I have until next June to decide whether I keep it and replace Inoreader. Until then, I'll support this developer. → I made the RSS service of my dreams (Birchfeed) 5️⃣ With version 5.0, I'll drop Screen Studio, which I was using for a few videos because of the zooming effect that now comes with CleanShot 5. → Everything New in CleanShot 5.0 6️⃣ OpenClaw 2.0 is a massive open-source AI assistant update two months in the making, representing 50% of all pull requests ever merged into the project. It simplifies setup, rebuilds the browser app, and adds multiplayer collaboration — letting your AI agent grow from simple automations to team-wide shared workflows. Are people still interested in OpenClaw? → OpenClaw 2.0, Accidentally - OpenClaw Blog

"The reason why I had 689 apps was because I had that many services or games that I did, at least at some point, want or need to interact with; all of them required learning how they worked to get done what I wanted to get done. That, after all, was the point: I’m not a professional app user, I’m just someone who wants to get things done. And AI gets it done." in Apps, Agents, and Aggregation

🚧 Special projects {#vibecoding, #scribbles}

1️⃣ I replaced the default visual theme of my blog hosted on Scribbles. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I wasn't sure how much effort it would take or whether Scribbles could support it. It turns out it does, because after less than an hour of Claude AI dissecting Scribbles’ documentation, I had a new visual theme in place! I'm still blown away by how vibe coding possibilities brings down barriers. I know nothing about CSS or JavaScript, yet I can reach for AI to help me achieve this goal. 2️⃣ Since getting my brand-new iPhone 18 Pro Max, I've started collecting thoughts and observations for my next review.

📺 YouTube {#politics, #iphoneduo, #design, #youtuber}

1️⃣ Trump: Stop bashing Canadians. 2️⃣ The iPhone Duo is making a splash. 3️⃣ I like John Turnus in interviews. 4️⃣ An honest YouTuber tries to change course.

🔮 Looking forward {#ai, #aiagents, #cyberattacks}

1️⃣ Amodei's claim that AI agent swarms could "take over the internet" within six months is vague, technically implausible, and likely overhyped. However, AI-driven cyberattacks on poorly secured individual sites are a real and growing concern worth monitoring. → Could rogue agent swarms take over the entire internet in the next six months?

"Some people fear what AI will obsolete. I welcome it. If an AI can do something better than I can, then maybe that wasn’t the part of the work I was supposed to be holding on to." — Manton Reece - Reaching AGI

🌟 Miscellaneous {#applewatch, #design, #ukrainewar}

1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 12 bezels are larger and seem to be a return to the Series 6 design. Why is that? This Reddit guy seems to have found the reasons. → https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/s/2xFlVUju0v 2️⃣ Putin doesn't wage war for strategic gain; war sustains his regime's legitimacy and his own psychological grip on power. Peace would shatter the "existential threat" narrative propping up his rule. Western diplomacy must stop treating Kremlin demands as rational security claims. → Putin has become a prisoner of his own war

"War is, traditionally, a rational instrument of statecraft. States have used military force to conquer territory, secure borders, or protect strategic interests. War has also served to stabilise regimes internally by redirecting discontent to an external enemy." — John Christer Tønnessen Putin has become a prisoner of his own war

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