The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2024-42

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! ✌️👋🏻