The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-28

👤 Personal

1️⃣ I’m still getting used to my new job and my new Windows laptop. It’s not that bad, when you have low expectations. But honestly, with everything happening now with Apple Liquid Glass UI redesign faux-pas, I find Windows 11 to be comforting. Things are a bit dull, not too much, but most of the things are readable which is a plus for work 😜.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Nice MacPaint art pieces can be found here, from Decryption. Are you old enough to remember MacPaint? 2️⃣ Commodore 64 is back. Mostly. Wow. 👀 Would I buy this? Nope. 3️⃣ Things are moving fast at Digg, after the mobile apps in beta, Digg now officially has a closed beta for the web experience! It's clean, fast and entertaining. Will it replace Reddit for me? Time will tell. 4️⃣ I didn't know that Longplay was now available for the Mac. I have it on my iPhone and iPad because it offers great widgets with album art. Will I buy it on the Mac? Nope. 5️⃣ The history of Mac Settings since 1984! For computer enthusiasts, don't miss this site 👀!

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ My June blog post summary is now available right here. I have a few dozen subscribers to this newsletter, and I wonder how many of them are reading this from their email client. Are you? Drop me a line here: hello@numericcitizen.me. 2️⃣ I decided to cancel my #Grammarly subscription after five years of using the service. I think the service is pricey, and I may consider #LanguageTool as an alternative in the future. Meanwhile, I might rely on a combination of ChatGPT, Raycast AI and Apple Intelligence writing tools, depending on the writing context. I'm not convinced that this will prove to be a good decision because Grammarly is hard to beat and much more convenient to use within apps.

“Even email is vulnerable. They noticed a reduction in click-through rates, but not reductions in open rates; this, they believe, is because Google is summarizing emails and the summaries are being recorded as opens, even though people aren’t actually reading them.” — NY Magazine Intelligencer

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ You can make great photos in Valencia, Italy, from AOWS. 2️⃣ Adobe launched a new camera app called “Indigo”. The Verge has a short article about it, and they seem to like it; however, it is intended for photography enthusiasts who are willing to venture off the beaten path. I installed the app on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and started to play with it. This app falls into the same category as Halide, another camera app designed for photography enthusiasts. I'll probably report back in a future edition to share my thoughts on it. 3️⃣ A lot of great images right here, on Glass.

🍎 Apple & Tech

1️⃣ When considering #AI, Apple is clearly the underdog. In this article, Parker Ortolani notes that Meta is aggressively hiring top AI talent and considering acquisitions to stay competitive. In contrast, Apple's strategy appears more cautious, potentially focusing on a significant acquisition rather than a hiring spree, which raises questions about its confidence in current offerings and future AI developments. 2️⃣ In Louie Mantia's article, "I’ve Got Better Things To Do Than This, and Yet," he expresses his frustration with Apple's design choices, particularly regarding the Liquid Glass interface, while acknowledging he has other priorities he should be working on instead. 3️⃣ Great collection of reactions to Bill Atkinson's death. I'm late, but I only found out about this. 4️⃣ Apple toned down Liquid Glass in beta3. I prefer the new tone, but I ultimately wonder if Apple could provide a slider with three levels of Liquid Glass effect: Low, Medium, and High. 5️⃣ Jeff Williams, 62 is retiring from Apple. Apple pundits were expecting him to replace Tim Cook. The Human Interface and Design team will now report directly to Tim Cook. Tim is not a product guy and never will be. Apple needs to find a real product leader with a clear track record as a designer. More than six years after Johnny Ive departed, Apple still can’t find a replacement or doesn’t see the need for one, which would be a serious mistake. 6️⃣ We're getting a relatively clear picture of the upcoming iPhone 17 Air. 7️⃣ With iPadOS 26’s new windowing system, a more powerful iPad Pro with M5 processor makes sense. 8️⃣ Matt Bircher nails down all the missing parts of iPadOS 26 when used with an external display. All the issues mentioned hit me when I did my experiment a few days ago with my iPad Pro. 9️⃣ iPhone heart transplate.

“For Apple to be good, they need everyone in the community to point out when they’re bad? No thanks.” — Louie Mantia

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ I decided to start an ephemeral project about Apple’s UI refresh based on Liquid Glass visual language. The goal is to document the numerous cases where the user experience is blatantly broken with Apple’s desire to play the flashy game. You can visit the project with the following link. This document is another example of Craft being a great app to build such website in a wimp. 2️⃣ A future version of Realmac Software #Elements will introduce a #CMS. This feature will enable all sorts of use cases like having a blog. After watching their latest video demonstrating the capabilities of their CMS, I discovered that I won’t be able to use it with my current hosting solution which is Cloudflare. I would need to go elsewhere. That is something that I’ll need to take care of when the feature finally goes live. People highly recommended Chillingdog hosting company which happens to know quite a lot about Realmac software. As soon as the CMS is out, I'll try to make the switch.

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ #Craft 3.1.6 is finally out and brings a redesigned settings page, send-email-to-craft, simplified navigation, custom icons for folders, and search improvements. The Craft Bible subscribers get all the details in the Craft Release Highlights report. 2️⃣ Great summary of recent updates to Inoreader. I love those recaps. 3️⃣ From Craig Hockenberry: The introduction of windows in iPadOS has complicated app activity management, requiring users to perform an unintuitive action to trigger necessary background tasks, highlighting a need for Apple to adopt a more apparent distinction between app and window activity similar to macOS (link). 4️⃣ A new release of Craft recently dropped, and I made a video review of it. This release, which was in beta for over two months, brings some much-needed improvements. Yet, my Craft wish list is still full of unfulfilled desires. 5️⃣ Realmac Software Elements finally reached a significant milestone: version 1.0 is now officially out, as posted on their forums. 6️⃣ It appears that tags are finally coming to Craft because a new closed beta is about to start. I hope they won't deceive me on that one. I'm currently testing it and... oh my god!

“In software, 1.0 doesn’t mean ‘finished’, it simply marks the point where the product is stable, useful, and ready for a wider audience. It’s a milestone, not a finish line. The truth is, great software is never really done. It evolves through constant feedback, iteration, and improvement. With Elements, reaching 1.0 means we’re confident in the foundation!” — Dan C from Realmac Software

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ AI is consuming a lot of energy, but how much? This video tries to give some cues. 2️⃣ Rene Ritchie is back, well, sort of. He shared his frustrations about Apple's latest move, which involves ads being pushed on us through the Apple Wallet. 3️⃣ Realmac Software created a fake promotional video and shared it on their YouTube channel using AI. The people portrayed in the video are not real; nothing is real. Beyond the initial amusement while watching it, I quickly felt uneasy. I find it disturbing that a company focused on building creative tools for humans would produce a video like this using AI. There is nothing really creative in this. I don't want a future where AI-based tools create everything. I know they can do better. That said, judging by comments on the video, I'm in the minority of people who don't like it much. 4️⃣ Should Tim Cook leave Apple to make room for a more product-oriented guy? Well, it's complicated. After watching that video, I changed my mind.

🌟 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ If you want to get a glimpse of Apple Intelligence, Private Cloud Compute and the next version of Apple Shortcuts, don’t miss this video about SiriBOT. It’s a great tech demo for sure, but I fail to see the value compared to using ChatGPT. 2️⃣ The team at Craft decided to roll out Craft 101, a short training course about Craft. They showed a sneak peak on Reddit and all the pilot courses here. I had the same idea to create a paid course, but now I’m not so sure that I’m going to invest my time in this. My style would be much more casual and the approach would have been totally different. I’ll wait and see where their offerings go.

“At the point when you have to blur the content area to make the UI stand out from it, how can you possibly argue that it gets out of the way? It makes no sense.” — Louie Mantia

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ You must remember the past to appreciate the future. This video brought back great memories of my time as a student at university with a Mac. 2️⃣ Will Apple go cheap with the A18Pro-based Mac? Rene Ritchie’s second video in less than a week tries to find a reasonable answer. 3️⃣ #OpenAI is working on a web browser, according to a report from Reuters. I'm hoping for something better than Dia, from the Browser Company, which would mean a traditional browser with an integrated chat. I don't like the idea of chatting with my open tabs. I want to bring up the chat feature when I need it and dismiss it when I'm done. Nothing too fancy.

“For the first time ever, multitasking in iPadOS 26 feels like something Apple can iterate on for decades, the same way they’ve done with macOS since System 1 and the same way Microsoft’s done since Windows 95. Just as nerds like me today look back at early versions of Windows as a weird era before Microsoft finally figured out desktop computing, future nerds will one day look back at early versions of Split-Screen, Slide Over, and Stage Manager as part of that weird era before Apple finally figured out iPad multitasking.” — Jack Wellborn in Worms & Virus

“AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.” – Ginni Rometty

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