The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-24

👤 Personal

1️⃣ Here's some important personal news: I'm getting a new job! Starting June 23th, I'll be taking a new position at one of Canada's largest banks. My previous job change was in 2018. This pivot means adopting a new set of digital tools and processes, something I always pay attention too. Not everything is for the best (I'm losing my Mac and I'm getting a Windows PC 😭), but overall, this is a new chapter for my IT career. It might be my last, too. I’m very excited for this.

🗺️ Discoveries1

1️⃣ I recently discovered the Dezeen web magazine, but I don't recall exactly how I came across this website. Dezeen is a leading online magazine about architecture, interiors, and design. You can find articles about architecture, interior design and much more. One thing that I observed: some design mockups of future architectural projects are so realistic, it’s mind-blowing. 2️⃣ Is Kagi simply a front-end to traditional search engines like Google? 👀 According to their documentation, it certainly appears to be the case, which is perplexing. I'm paying for Kagi because I think it offers great value and doesn't built their business of users tracking to serves ads. Why is Google allowing their service to be consumed with API calls from services like Kagi, bypassing their ads serving business?

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ I knew Bill Atkinson was a photographer, but I had never quite seen his work. Now we can. He was a multi-talented guy. 2️⃣ Glass introduced a pretty handy feature to help other Glass members discover who is new on the platform. An email is sent with a handful of new members so that other photographers can discover them. Speaking of Glass, if you plan to join Glass, you’ll get a 10$ rebate on your first year by using this link. You are welcome.

🍎 Apple & Tech

1️⃣ Who's going to WWDC25? Super cool visuals and stats from the makers of Flighty showing attendees’ origins. People must be using Flighty to register and track their flights. 2️⃣ Apple is a large corporation with the goal of making money. They make a lot. Beyond buying their products, they don't need us, Apple fans. That's what Dan Moren from MacWorld's column Stay Foolish is arguing in his last article. 3️⃣ Is Apple's software that bad? I fail to back the idea that Apple's OSes are bad or worse than they used to be. I rarely experience the type of things reported in that article. Last year's Apple record cards from SixColors seems to disagree and find improvements across the board. Yet, I do see many inconsistencies across the board, though. I believe that Apple software is often developed in silos, and designers may not communicate effectively with each other, or perhaps they don't use their software sufficiently to identify glaring problems. Apple is working to redo their UI across the board. Will that be enough to polish the many rough edges? I'm not convinced at this time. 4️⃣ Matt Gemmell switched to the Mac after being iPad-only for more than eight years. Why the switch? He found many limitations with the iPad that were hindering his productivity. Multitasking is one of them. Again, Apple is about to unveil a completely revamped multitasking feature; will that be enough? Is the Mac perfect? Matt mentions how needy the Mac can be with all those security-related notifications and prompts, as well as Safari needing too much management. Is iPadOS 26 changing his mind? Time will tell. 6️⃣ The vibe before WWDC is not very positive. 7️⃣ Basic Apple Guy created a bingo card to measure his predictions for the keynote.

John Siracusa, writing at Hypercritical:

As far as I’m concerned, the only truly mortal sin for Apple’s leadership is losing sight of the proper relationship between product virtue and financial success—and not just momentarily, but constitutionally, intransigently, for years. Sadly, I believe this has happened.

The preponderance of the evidence is undeniable. Too many times, in too many ways, over too many years, Apple has made decisions that do not make its products better, all in service of control, leverage, protection, profits—all in service of money.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I expect a lot of my apps to adopt Apple's Liquid Glass interface metaphor. Why? Because they are constantly updated to add new features, fix bugs and adopt new Apple software technologies. In other words, I don't use or depend on abandonware. 2️⃣ Kagi search now has 50K subscribers, a significant milestone. I'm one of them. 3️⃣ I'm still unsure how to save must-read articles. Suppose I see something interesting while scrolling my Micro.blog timeline, then I'll use the bookmarking features. If I'm browsing the web with the ARC browser, I might save in Inoreader or use a web clipper to save into a Craft document. I don't think I'll ever find a solution to this.

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I'm not a computer games player, but No Man's Sky on the Nintendo Switch 2 looks stunning. I wish I had the time and curiosity to try these games. 2️⃣ Forest fires are still raging in central Canada, as you can see in this video. 3️⃣ Marques Brownlee offers his thoughts on WWDC25 and Liquid Glass, as well as Snazzy Labs, in his always funny videos. 4️⃣ Don't miss this remastered video of Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford. 5️⃣ Video of Craig Federighi on iPadOS 26 and why there is no macOS for iPad.

🌟 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ Bill Atkinson passed away. RIP. Seems like he died from a similar sickness to Steve Jobs’: pancreatic cancer. 😢 he was a great programmer who worked on the Mac’s internal drawing routines called QuickDraw. He was the creator of HyperCard. And a great photographer, too. See him posing with Steve Jobs. 2️⃣ The Apple & Tech section is full of tidbits, and I have no more room for WWDC comments and notes, so here they are. 3️⃣ Liquid Glass, the fundamental visual attributes and behaviours at the center of Apple's OSes redesign, is officially out, and comments about it are also available. As expected, people are divided (did I say 'divided’?), but the general sentiment seems to be that it's not as bad as iOS 7 was in 2013, and Apple still has some time ahead to tweak things a bit here and there. I do like most of it, as experienced on my M4 iPad Pro, but the biggest problem is readability. In many situations, readability is much worse. While waiting for Apple to fix things, you can tone down a few attributes. In any case, this critique is certainly worth a look. 4️⃣ Apple was relatively silent about Siri, but talked about Apple Intelligence more than expected, but in a clever way. AI-based features are prevalent throughout Apple's operating systems. Taken as a whole, they form a sizeable chunk of Apple's new improvements. The one thing missing is generative AI content, which I expect Apple doesn't want to replicate as-is, just like they don’t develop a web search engine. 5️⃣ Stay foolish, stay hungry speech by Steve Jobs, 20th anniversary.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ Before WWDC25 Keynote: Can Apple turn the vibes around this year at WWDC? Things look bad right now, and something big has to happen, and it's not on the AI front. After the WWDC25 keynote: Apple made strides with all its OSes, while explaining that Apple Intelligence is still a work in progress. Not everyone is happy, but Apple still comes out in a slightly better shape this year, thanks to things like opening up on-device models to third-party developers.

“The last thing MacOS needs is more transparency/translucency than it already has." — Sebastiaan De With in “Physicality: the new age of UI”

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇪🇺 💪🏻