The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-37

👤 Personal

#cablecutter #weather
1️⃣ After being a cable TV subscriber for many decades, I decided to ditch cable and switch to an Apple TV-only setup. Although my experience with Apple TV isn't ideal for consuming TV content (as I explained in this article), it's still the best option. It'll save me over $1,000 a year, more than enough to pay for an updated Apple TV when it comes out later this fall. 2️⃣ September is my favourite month of the year because of its cooler temperatures during the day and night. 3️⃣ I had a tough time selecting this edition's header image. I finally found one on Unsplash from Taiki Ishikawa. I chose that one because it's a good illustration of what is going on in our schools these days with smartphone usage: isolation. It's a good thing that more and more schools are starting to ban smartphones. The experience from this is that people likes it more than expected.

🗺️ Discoveries

#mymind #apps #macos
1️⃣ MyMind isn’t exactly unknown to me, but I recently started testing the water with it. I like what I'm seeing, but I'm not sure if I need for this. I have never been a long-time user of Bookmaring apps. 2️⃣ While BasicAppleGuy is building a macOS icon history collection, 512 Pixels had a macOS Screenshot library that I wasn’t aware. It's about as extensive as you can expect. 3️⃣ Thanks to Cloudflare, we can see how much internet traffic AI bots are generating while scraping websites. It's fascinating. 4️⃣ Here's one of the coolest websites that I’ve seen in a long time! It's for geeks, but it's worth a visit: PostHog.com.

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

#generativeai
1️⃣ Tiago Forte seems to be all in with generative AI in his latest video. At first, I thought his use of Claude for writing essays was clever. Then, I started to ask myself: Is he promoting modern writing, or is this entirely different, a new kind of writing that should use a different word? I don't know, but I'm not able to call that writing. 2️⃣ Don't miss the Numeric Citizen Blog Posts digest for August. 3️⃣ I find myself more and more starting new blog posts in French, then asking Grammarly to translate them into English. My mother language is French, and for me, this is helpful to break language barriers more easily. It's easier to get my ideas and thoughts out there. I'm fine with this workflow which involves generative AI. 4️⃣ Is AI changing our language? Yes.

🌄 Photography

pixelfed #iphone17 #unsplash
1️⃣ By rolling out ‘Stories’, Pixelfed is diluting my interest in the platform. 2️⃣ Tyler Stalman offers his views about the new iPhone 17 and iPhone Air. From a photography standpoint, the iPhone continues to advance and, maybe, lead the market. Time will tell, reviews will confirm or not. In any case, Stalman always offers great insights. 3️⃣ I've submitted a new photo to my Unsplash account. It's been a long time. For some reason, I've been an upstick in downloads of my most popular photos. I'm curious in what context these downloads are being used.

🍎 Apple & Tech

#tablet #tech
1️⃣ I like what Remarkable is doing with their tablets. Here is the new Paper Pro Move. In a whole dominated by a few companies, it's reassuring to see others trying to move the needle, even in niche markets. 2️⃣ While waiting for the next Apple keynote, I shared my perspective on these media events. 3️⃣ BasicAppleGuy wrote a good take on the upcoming Apple keynote, centered around the usual bingo card. His perspective is overwhelmingly positive compared to mine, but both are valid. 4️⃣ Apple's Awe Dropping event revealed many nice new devices. Jarrod Blundy gathered his reactions during the presentation. BasicAppleGuy posted an Awe Dropping Recep. Jason Snell wrote a great piece, too. All in all, this event marks a shift: Apple is levelling up the “regular” iPhone and Watch experience, increasingly differentiating on design and ecosystem integration rather than purely hardware exclusivity. Oh, Parker Ortolani wasn't convinced by the recorded event quality and the less-than-stellar Watch upgrades, yet he will get an iPhone 17 Pro. Orange. Greg Morris thinks the whole thing was a little bit weird. I wouldn't call it weird, but tired. 5️⃣ In the article "Apple is finally a carmaker" by Joe Rosensteel, the author draws an intriguing parallel between Apple's iPhones and automobiles, suggesting that the evolution of smartphones mirrors the automotive industry in terms of product updates, consumer behavior, and market saturation. 6️⃣ Want stickers for your new iPhone? Have a look at Basic Apple Guy’s A19 Inside stickers! They are cheap and beautiful.

🚧 Special projects

#newsletter
1️⃣ My subscription trial to Inoreader's Email digest concluded and I can say that it's not a replacement for Mailbrew.

📱 Apps & Services

#inoreader #ai #instagram #metaacquisition
1️⃣ Inoreader just introduced a game-changer for YouTube and Podcast consumption. For each video or podcast episode, you can request a written transcript, a topic list, or a full article. The topic list allows users to skip to a specific point in the content just by typing on a specific segment, while the article is a summary generated from the content. After testing it for a few videos, I must admit that these additions could radically change how I consume video and podcasts. I wrote a recap of my experience. 2️⃣ Instagram, after 15 years of existence, finally recognizes the iPad as a viable platform, so they released an iPad app. Just passing the information here. I'm not on Instagram. However, you know, Instagram is no longer Instagram. 3️⃣ Atlassian, the maker of Confluence and Jira, among other things, will acquire the Browser Company. It's probably more positive than negative. 4️⃣ Notion now offers offline mode. This is a game-changer for Notion users and has been a request for years. Happy for this to be a reality now. All the details here. By the way, Thomas Frank, a YouTuber dedicated to Notion, is a model for me to follow when it comes to explaining and giving constructive feedback about a product. 5️⃣ You can now save posts on Bluesky with the new bookmarking feature. Welcome to 2025, Bluesky. 6️⃣ Kagi Summarize for iPad and iPhone is out. Summarize any articles right from your browser. Handy.

“If the macOS 26 betas are any indication, Apple still has a lot of work left to make Tahoe amazing. I'm hoping they take their time and wait until later in the fall to ship the next great version of macOS. Acorn is going to take this approach at any rate. My goal is to make Acorn feel at home in macOS Tahoe, but still retain its own personality as well.” — The Shape of Everything blog

📺 YouTube

apple #iphone17 #applerumor
1️⃣ Funny guy. He's really strecthing his luck with this fake iPhone video. 2️⃣ If you are an Apple Safari user, you must watch this video showing all the power user features that you must know about to take advantage of better. 3️⃣ Notion supports offline mode. This has been requested for many years, and people rejoice. This video explains the new features and the many fine prints and limitations.

🌟 Miscellaneous

productivity
1️⃣ I love those articles where the author talks about the tools he or she is using, dropping or evaluating and how they fit in their workflows. This one is from The Platformer, a well-known author. He talks about Capacities, Recall, AI, among other things. 2️⃣ I recently used ChatGPT to help me edit a redirect instructions file for one of my websites. I needed to add an instruction for redirecting a specific URL that was pointing to a nonexistent page. I know a bit about YAML files but not about redirections, so ChatGPT helped me in this. It worked like a breeze. There are many areas of maintaining a website that require such a tool to help me fix issues, and I find this super helpful. I feel empowered.

🔮 Looking forward

climatechange #weather #liquidglass #applerumor
1️⃣ Speaking of the weather app icon (see previous section), as reported by CNN, it appears that North America will see a warmer-than-normal fall season. After the summer, fall is my favourite season. 2️⃣ Now that all Apple operating systems are release candidates, Apple has opened the gate for developers to submit their app updates to take advantage of them. Here's a prediction: the adoption of Liquid Glass will vary a lot from one developer to another based on UI challenges to fit the new mould, or disdain to adopt a new but controversial visual language. This could translate into a lack of consistency, more than ever before, on your beloved devices. We'll see how it plays out. 3️⃣ Now that the iPhone 17 is out, it's time to look at the iPhone 18 rumors. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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