Apple is 50. Almost. I asked everyone on the Stuff team about their favourite Apple products and wrote about the top 50, which the editor scythed into five parts, which start today. Some of the choices (and omissions) may well surprise you.

Mac OS X isn’t 50. It hit its quarter-century, though, and I wrote a quick piece about this most lickable of operating systems. 

BlackBerry is back. Ish. The new Titan 2 Elite is aiming at the thumbs of the nostalgic. So I wrote the tongue-in-cheek ‘Over 6,000 people backed this new BlackBerry wannabe and I think they’re all mad’, which apparently pissed off QWERTY fans. Perhaps they can use those tiny keys to search the web for a sense of humour.

Before BlackBerry phones was the BlackBerry 850. Effectively a souped-up pager, it made business types very happy. I wrote about that too.

I recorded a podcast! I’ll be on The Bunker next week, talking about Apple, who’ll duly remove me from the company’s Christmas card list. Again.

Apple loves ads. Apple is going to infest Apple Maps with them. Apple appears to have lost sight of doing everything for the benefit of the user and not treating people who buy its gear as the product.

UK age verification continues to be a shitshow. Apple is now challenging user ages, to which you must respond with a credit card, driver’s licence or passport, unless the account itself is over 18 years old. Bit of an edge case and not got one of those proof methods? Tough.

It’s Clockschangemas Eve here in the UK. Overnight, the clocks will shift to British Summer Time, and I’ll be able to breathe again. I adore this time of year, with mornings where the sun doesn’t rock up at stupid o’ clock and where there’s more light in the evening to play football with my kid while she’s still keen. Honestly, I wish we’d ‘forget’ to change them back in the autumn one year…

The Last Ninja was a game for the C64 that got a lot of praise at the time, even though it was a bit fiddly and shit. It looked good, though, and it sounded great. Now, its music sounds even better, due to Matt Gray’s new recordings.

How about an Apple TV Neo? Over at Stuff, I write about the MacBook Neo, Apple’s previous forays into more affordable hardware, and the possibility of a new telly box. I’m also really chuffed with the image I made for this one.

MacBook Neo runs an iPhone chip. Or, at least, a chip initially designed for an iPhone. But what might that mean for actual iPhones? For TapSmart, I consider several potential advantages – although I suspect Apple won’t implement most of them.

Want a new iPhone or iPad? I updated my iPhone buyer’s guide and iPad buyer’s guide with Apple’s latest models.

Android isn’t killing sideloading. A new Google blog post outlines a new one-time process for power users. This comes in response to fears Google would remove sideloading entirely. Instead, it’s going to be locked behind several layers of warnings, which may or may not be the thin end of a shitty wedge. We’ll see.

Google is serving fake news. Well, AI-rewritten headlines. According to The Verge, this is currently a “small” and “narrow” experiment. Given the slap Apple (rightly) got when its AI mangled headlines in your notifications, I’m hoping Google slams on the brakes. I doubt it will. In fact, I’m convinced its AI Mode tab will soon become the default for any search results and non-AI options will be hidden behind a single white pixel with an alt tag that reads ‘beware of the leopard’.

Meta kills its metaverse darlings. The company that renamed itself after the metaverse is now setting fire to its own metaverses – well, bits of them. For now, chunks of its vision will live on via mobile. TL;DR: not many people care about the metaverse, but they sure do still love Roblox and Minecraft.

Apple is being Apple. Leaks regarding its iPhone Fold multitasking plans suggest it’ll hold back that device much like it long held back the iPad. I grumble about this over at Stuff.

iPhone cameras are great. But they’re even better when you use an excellent third-party camera app and do everything you can to keep your photos safe. 

(Both for TapSmart – please consider downloading our sister app, Swipe, and trying a trial.)

Banning everything is bad. I wrote a while back about local smartphone bans at schools. The UK looked set to ban social media for teens. But the government surprisingly pushed back last week. The opposition fumed. I was glad of the government’s decision. Here’s why.

Want to stop buying things? Not Yet is an app that helps you to consider purchases and see if you still want to go through with them a few days later. Check it out in my free apps roundup.

Lego Luigi! He now joins Lego Mario, who finally has someone to race against. This set also made it to my upcoming Lego roundup. Although I imagine most Mario fans are more excited about Mario minifigs launching in 2027.

Remember OutRun? Sega’s 1980s racer remains a much-loved highlight of the era. Most of the home conversions, alas, were dreadful. Which makes it all the more impressive Shane McCafferty got the game running on the Game Boy Color. I thought that would be the most bonkers OutRun version ever. Wrong. Because someone got it running on Apple Watch. ZX81 port next, please!

This week, the BBC reported that MPs had rejected calls for a blanket ban on social media for under-16s in the UK. Immediately, opposition parties slammed the government, including the Liberal Democrats, seemingly forgetting what the first word in their party’s name actually means.

I’m aware I’m in the minority when it comes to opinions about kids using tech. But, in part, that comes from being immersed in the industry and knowing what tools are available, along with a stark awareness of the slippery slope that we appear to be heading towards with age gating. Also, many people outside of the industry can spot the inconsistencies and issues with legislation too, even if, apparently, many politicians and perennially online adults cannot.

It’s why I recently wrote about why school smartphone bans are a bad idea, ended up on BBC News saying much the same (with my interview being cut to approx. 27 nanoseconds as a counterpoint to a much longer comment by a headteacher, natch) and then grumbled at length about the social media element on Bluesky.

Too many people are again ignoring the evidence around them. Australia has already shown that blanket bans don’t work. In fact, they don’t even exist. The country had a nightmare defining what is and isn’t social media. And for those things that fell into the prior camp, legislation cut off homebound children from their entire social circles.

But still people argue that something must be done. And… on that, at least, I do agree. Platform owners need to do more to surface controls adults can use to help best guide their kids. Social media companies and video platforms need to recognise the harms they can cause. But framing all this through “think of the children” does not help. We need to explore wider harms social media can bring and deal with them, not create a cliff edge at 16 or 18 (the latter being when people can vote), or mark one service as bad and ignore loads of others.

On the latest row, the Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, ”accused the government of failing to grasp the issue”. But I’d say that, for once, the government did grasp the issue, in understanding that more thought needs to go into the legislation before it becomes law. Even so, Labour MPs lined up to criticise their own party’s stance. For example, Sadik Al-Hassan said: “Parents like me are locked in a daily battle that they simply cannot win alone, fighting platforms that have been specifically designed to keep children hooked.”

I’m so, so tired of this. When did a generation that grew up with technology all around them decide to abdicate parenting responsibilities to the state? It boggles the mind. But for those of us asking for more nuance, it feels like trying to hold back the tide. To say things are against us is putting it mildly.

It’s easy to see why. Teachers, media and perennially online adults constantly flood the internet and TV with SKY IS FALLING commentary and contrary viewpoints barely get a mention. My own MP (Lib Dem) has taken to posting on Facebook about how awful the Labour Party is for pausing a ban that is deeply flawed.

So, yes, something needs to be done. Social media is causing problems. Kids should be protected. But what we need is more education (for children and adults), a better understanding of available tools, along with extra – and better – regulation. What we don’t need is to start stomping around and banning semi-random chunks of the internet, only to cause more problems than end up getting solved.

AI is killing my favourite gadgets. And possibly yours. Over at Stuff, I look into how AI’s insatiable appetite for components is squeezing out the rest of the industry, and how that might impact the wider world of tech – especially the fun bits.

The Retroid Pocket 6 is fab. I reviewed this for Stuff, and it’s my favourite retro handheld to date. Although, as per the above story, Retroid got hit by RAM and storage costs and nuked the configuration I was sent – something that’s never happened to me before in more than 25 years of writing about tech. On the plus side, the remaining config is still great.

GamerCard is delayed. And still weird. Retro Dodo reported that Grant Sinclair’s handheld has also been hit by these issues and won’t ship for a while. However, while Retroid was solid with its comms, GamerCard was announced last summer with a shipping time of six weeks. The website since then has barely changed, and there’s been little attempt to make realistic timings widely available. I imagine those who bought one must feel… frustrated.

It’s a shame in some ways. Sinclair was clearly trying to do something unique, in the spirit of the family name. But when I reported on the device last summer, I questioned the controls and value. Now the latter looks even worse, due to a price rise making it more expensive than a Retroid Pocket Classic, or 3x the price of an RG Cube XX, both of which are significantly more powerful and have proper physical controls.

(The RG Cube XX features in my updated guide to the best budget retro gaming handhelds in 2026 to emulate classic consoles and video games.)

MacBook Neo has one big problem. Quite a few small ones too. But, as per my MacBook Neo column for Stuff, one in particular means this device is the budget Apple laptop we all wanted, with a major flaw we really didn’t.

Apple has new Studio Displays. Finally. And they’re… fine? Good, even? But while Apple fixed their biggest flaws, these displays cost a small fortune. Here’s a column.

The BBC is under review. Or, rather, the Charter is. But that kind of amounts to the same thing. If you want the Beeb to survive long-term, take part in the public consultation by Tuesday. If you’d like hints regarding what to say, British Broadcasting Challenge has published a PDF with thoughtful suggestions.

Exercise apps mostly suck. Or I suck at exercise. Definitely one of those. But one exercise app that doesn’t suck is WalkStar, which I wrote about for TapSmart/Swipe. In short, the music stops when you do. It’s a really clever motivational aid.

Prune is a classic iPhone game. Or at least it’s been added to my iPhone app and game classics series.

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Eins, Zwei, Drei! I can take or leave Eurovision at the best of times, and 2026 is… not the best of times. So I won’t be watching this year. Still, I can’t help smiling at the UK entry by Look Mum No Computer, which feels like a bonkers mix of Kraftwerk and Vitalic, with a singer who’s about 90% shouty Damon Albarn. I never thought I’d see the day when I really liked a UK Eurovision entry, but here we are. There’s a video here.

The ZX81 turned 45. Which makes me feel very old. Here is a piece about it, along with a lightning-fast round-up that covers six of the best ZX81 games.