Just as the US justice decides whether Google will have to divest its web browser, Chrome, a new generation of rivals emerges, bringing built-in artificial intelligence “assistants” as their differentiator.
It’s quite likely a coincidence, but it’s still curious. There are several asterisks to this story, starting with the fact that these new rivals are built on top of Chrome’s foundation, Chromium. I’ll set those asterisks aside, though, because the more important question is whether these assistants are here to stay.
It’s almost impossible to escape WhatsApp and very difficult to get rid of Instagram. For many, it’s also undesirable. Friends, relatives, loved ones, and the entire presence of many businesses are only available on one or the other (or both).
In 2022, when I wrote about a “more affectionate approach” to technology (pt_BR), I had recently returned to using these and other commercial platforms. I lowered my defenses in an attempt to be more present, to participate more.
The problem with companies like Meta is that every concession on our part is exploited to the fullest.
VSCO Capture. New camera app from the VSCO social network. iOS only.
Tender. Tinder for the committed: the app only shows photos of your loved one and the only option is to swipe right. For now, iOS only.
LookAway Mirror. LookAway, the nice macOS app that reminds you to take breaks during the day, got an iOS companion that blocks sites and apps when the computer is also locked.
Remember when WhatsApp was just a lightweight messaging app? I miss those days. Today there are so many features, so many announcements of new stuff that sometimes useful ones slip by unnoticed.
By chance, the other day I came across “Advanced chat privacy,” available in group and individual conversations. It was released in April.
When activated, three things happen:
It disables conversation export. This makes it harder to forward messages to third parties and process them with external AIs, like Google’s NotebookLM.
It disables automatic media downloads.
Finally, it disables access to Meta AI, Meta’s annoying AI that, by default, can be invoked by typing @meta in a conversation.
Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), there isn’t a global button to activate advanced privacy in all conversations; only within each conversation’s options.
Given the impossibility of using a better app, like Signal, it’s a good option to activate when sensitive topics are being discussed.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here every Thursday. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive.
What’s on my phone. I started a series on the Portuguese version of the blog where readers and friends show what they have on their phones. The first one is mine.
Don’t publish your podcast only on Spotify. I’ve been coming across small or personal podcasts that can only be listened to on Spotify. Intrigued by this trend, I created a new podcast on Spotify to find out what’s happening.
Macrowave. A service for listening to music together. The broadcaster needs an app (available for iOS and macOS). To listen, the website is enough. Developer’s report.
Scribe. An alternative, much lighter interface for Medium articles. Just replace medium.com with scribe.rip in the URL of the article you want to read. (Example.)
MeTube. Graphical interface for yt-dlp, a command-line application for downloading videos from YouTube and other platforms. Unfortunately, the installation is a bit annoying (a little less if you know Docker).
Folio. From ex-Mozilla employees involved in the late Pocket, this new app presents itself as “a new kind of read-it-later app.” It looks a lot like Pocket from the good old days.
DOGWALK. A free game made by the Blender folks to explore integration with the Godot language. For Linux, macOS and Windows.
No days off. This guy has been running every day for ten years. Ok, good for him. The cool thing is this website where he compiled the data from this decade of running into beautiful charts.
FFmpeg in plain english. An “AI” that converts natural language descriptions into an FFmpeg command.
Rodrigo Ghedin. I learned to make websites in the early 2000s, got into journalism a while later, and ended up here, at Manual do Usuário.
What phone and operating system do you use?
I use an iPhone SE (2022) running iOS 18.5.
Tell us about your wallpaper.
My wallpaper is the iOS 18 default. I always use the current OS version’s default. I like this one because it’s beautiful and changes colors throughout the day. (Though some patterns, like the morning one, make it hard to read the status bar at the top of the screen.)
Why is your home screen set up the way it is?
My home screen is a mix of practicality and good incentives. Practicality to keep apps I need at key moments always at hand, like transportation/mobility ones. The good incentives consist of removing from my view those I try to use less on my phone, like email and the web browser.
I arrange the icons in the bottom row to reach them with my thumb. My phone is one of the last that can be used with just one hand. (I also use that feature that brings the screen down by double-tapping the home button a lot.)
I keep some widgets on the screen to the left of the main one: monthly calendar, battery level (because of AirPods), and bad habits I’m trying to quit and migraine episodes, which I monitor with Days Since. One cool thing about this app is that it shows the average interval between events, which is useful for tracking progress.
What apps do you use most?
The apps I use most on my phone are messaging apps (Signal and WhatsApp). Others worth highlighting are task apps (Reminders) and calendar (Calendar), though my approach with them is more “reactive” (I deal with notifications/alerts).
What’s the most obscure/weird/surprising app you use that you wish more people knew about?
I don’t keep many apps installed on my phone and prioritize the default ones, which I think are good enough and usually have better integration with the (eco)system.
That said, my favorite is NetNewsWire, a feed aggregator (RSS, Atom, JSON). It’s very well made, lightweight, pleasant to use. If all the apps I use daily were as well made as NetNewsWire, I think I’d use my phone more. (Maybe that’s not a good idea!)
The Meu Condomínio app might catch your attention. It’s (by far) the worst app on my phone and a side effect of writing Manual: it’s the price I pay for refusing to give up my facial biometrics to enter and exit my condo building.
A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything
I’ve been coming across small or personal podcasts that can only be heard on Spotify. Intrigued by this phenomenon, I created a new podcast on Spotify Creator platform to find out what’s happening.
Spotify, among other services, offers podcast hosting. It’s a similar arrangement to what Substack has for newsletters: generous resources at no cost to create and maintain the newsletter (or, in Spotify’s case, the podcast).
There’s a fundamental difference, though. A newsletter created on Substack can be followed by any email client — Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, your own domain. Spotify podcasts, however, are limited to Spotify and, worse, have their RSS feed disabled by default.
A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004. Try accessing it on a computer to see (and interact with!) the preference screens from various system versions.
URL to Any. Various tools for manipulating web page content. Free.
Reachy Mini. Hugging Face, an LLM (AI) repository, has put this cute (and open source) robot on pre-order, designed for teaching robotics with artificial intelligence. For USD 449 (wireless) or USD 299 (“lite” version, works tethered to a computer).
CPU-X. Linux alternative to Windows’ CPU-Z, an app that displays information about your computer’s processor, motherboard, and graphics card.
Weather Watching. An “AI” camera analyzes clothing and the presence of umbrellas among pedestrians on a New York street to give a weather forecast. Perhaps the world’s most inefficient weather forecasting.
Packet. Linux app compatible with Android’s Quick Share protocol (the “Android AirDrop”).
FolderDrive. An external drive (128 GB) shaped like the macOS folder icon.
Hued. Try to guess the color of the day. You get three chances.
