The Blark black and white camera app is a rather new addition to my most used camera apps on my iPhone these days. I want to mention it here quickly because even though it's not perfect, it's doing a lot of things right. The Blark app is a pretty new app, it was first released in 2025, so at the pint of this writing it's just a couple of months old. And therefore the app makes good use of many advantages of the modern OSs. read more…
blog: software
Consciousness is one of these terms that comes up again and again when talking about the newest iterations of current AI systems. But what is consciousness? Honestly, the term was already hard to define even before the advent of AI. I guess the most common explanation these days is still that consciousness starts building up the more a system, a biological system, becomes more complex. Most people would argue that under these circumstances, only we as humans are able to be aware of who we are and reflect on what we are doing. So humans are to be considered conscious. But what about animals? Or plants? Or any living cell? And finally, what about AI? read more…
It's been a couple of days now since the official launch of the new Reeder app for iOS and macOS. But actually my very first impressions were not at all different from the opinions I have about this app now. It's really hard for me to say when I loved a new app like that right from the beginning. The new Reeder app is exactly how I work and think in terms of news feeds of all sorts all across the internet. The app is glorious, capable, flawless and incredibly beautiful. It's been definitely the right move of the swiss developer Silvio Rizzi to go that route. read more…
Right in the middle of 2024 it seems AI is everywhere. Certainly every electronic device is now shipped with some form of AI, cars use AI, cameras use AI, even fridges and toasters use AI. AI has become the buzzword of 2024 and it seems to be hard to ship new products without having AI in mind. But does this all make sense? What's the purpose of AI, what are the disciplines where AI is really transformative and soon will be unthinkable without the use of AI? read more…
With curiosity and a lot of interest I recently watched Apple's keynote about the new Apple Vision Pro headset. It's not advertised so much as a virtual reality or augmented reality headset but instead it's referred to as a "spatial computing" device. The term needs a bit of further explanation though looking at what the device can do and given the fact that it's more or less a huge goggle hooked to a computer. As soon as it is released it will present all the information that so far only lives on your flat computer screen in a more or less animated, augmented, three-dimensional reality. Your living room becomes your new desktop. All the information stored on your computer becomes part of the spatiality of your home. read more…