I’m so sick of tech illiteracy and ignorance at the heart of government. It makes no odds who’s in charge. All politicians run around screaming “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” to, ironically, satisfy perennially online older people talking bollocks on Facebook and Mumsnet.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems when it comes to tech and children. The internet in particular presents major challenges. But shielding kids from so much and creating a cliff-edge at 18 won’t help. Nor will removing mobiles fix attention issues or deal with bullying.

As per the BBC, the latest wheeze in England is to ban kids at school in England from even having a phone in their possession. But so much of modern life requires a smartphone. What are children who use one for access to public transport supposed to do?

There are other practical reasons to have a device too. My youngling’s school had to evacuate after a major gas leak. Kids having phones helped coordinate with parents rather than the school being swamped with such efforts. The government would suggest you buy a brick phone, but that adds cost and assumes people have the means. It adds to e-waste. It’s another thing to take care of.

Access to phones “risks pulling children away from their learning and from each other”, the government said. How? If there’s an on-campus usage ban, which most schools already implement, how are children being pulled away from learning? One response was that kids are “still TikToking in the toilets”, to which I’d say citation required. And kids still need a device anyway, because homework and other communications now come via apps. Parents therefore often provide kids with one piece of tech that can do everything. Such efforts will now be undermined.

I fear a slippery slope. Sooner or later, the UK government will push for a full ban on smartphones for the under-18s. Then everyone will act all shocked when there are problems with buses and trains, a bunch of teachers start having issues with the physical searches that are being mooted, and kids end up in a worse spot than they were before.

If we really do want to think of the children, how about choosing education over eradication when it comes to technology?

Argh. Even later. Sorry (again). Anyway…

Another screen solved my screen problem. Said problem being faffing rather than reading more. (Specifically, my ever-growing read-later pile and more fiction.) I’d planned a piece about Naomi Alderman’s Couch to 5K for reading but, entertainingly, got distracted. But I resolved to do… something. In the end, I did some research about e-readers, quickly decided Jeff Bezos could go do one, got a Boox Go 6 (Gen II) in instead, and spent a couple of happy months with it before writing a piece for Stuff: I needed to fix my iPhone-addled brain and it turns out the answer was another screen.

I no longer hate Liquid Glass. In fact, I don’t hate Liquid Glass to the extent I’ve turned off legibility-oriented accessibility aids on Mac and iPad. (I still use them on iPhone on a per-app basis.) Much of this change aligns with a major overhaul to iOS for the iPhone Duo. Over at Wired, my take on this is that Liquid Glass Finally Makes Sense on the iPhone Duo – but it also makes more sense everywhere now. (Not that it doesn’t still need work, mind.)

I don’t think Apple’s touchscreen Mac goes far enough.I wrote about how Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro didn’t contradict previous arguments Apple had made about similar devices. (As in, interacting with vertical screens is bad because it kills your arm.) Hilariously, Apple then showed an animation of someone reaching over the new Mac’s keyboard to play a synth on the touchscreen. Er, no. So much no. However, it’s good that users of this device have more choice when it comes to interaction, even if I doubt they’ll use it much. Read all about that in my column: Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro is finally here, but I’d sooner have a MacBook that turns into an iPad. Also, MacBook Tappity Tap Pro was right there, Apple.

Faraway is no longer faraway. That’s because Eliss creator Steph Thirion’s long-awaited follow-up was released today. And I do mean long-awaited – he first announced it 16 years ago.

Qwak is reborn. The original Qwak is even older, starting out on the BBC Micro in 1989, before finding its way to a range of other systems. A new version has now arrived on Steam, and it’s very good. Buy it!

Argh! Very late! Sorry. Anyway…

Apple’s touchscreen MacBook is imminent. I wrote for Stuff about why the MacBook Tappity Tap Pro doesn’t necessarily contradict Steve Jobs once railing against the ergonomic issues of vertical touchscreens.

iPhone Duo badness: iFixit tore one apart and discovered some bad news, in that the screen issues may well be a design flaw. On the plus side, the Duo is apparently the most repairable foldable ever – although iFixit adds “that’s not saying much”. Ouch.

iPhone Duo goodness: apps. Specifically, 43 of them, which I compiled into a bonkers roundup of interesting and bonkers things to install on your new fold-o-phone.

The iPod turned 25. It strikes me Apple could still sell a bunch of these if it had a mind to. But I suppose that these days that the iPod wouldn’t be profitable enough.

The new iMac is the old iMac. Well, apart from the chip. That’s just about enough for me – but barely. That said, while a more radical iMac exists in my dreams, I was very aware of what we’d get in reality. Still, at least Apple didn’t ditch the purple option…

The Ghosts film is very good. If you’re a fan of the (UK) series, go and see it.

Wired headphones are making a comeback. Apparently. This isn’t a ‘year of the Linux desktop’ thing either, because an increasing number of people are embracing the cable once again. I’ve never stopped, and so I wrote about why for Stuff: I love my AirPods but I’m glad wired headphones are making a comeback – here’s why.

Apple and gaming, sitting in a tree. At least, that’s how the company would have it, having made yet another push for gaming last week. I thought this effort was more laudable than most, since it was Apple’s (first? only?) Indie Games Week, highlighting a bunch of new titles. I covered the event for Stuff, including an interview with Hello Games MD Sean Murray, in No Man’s Sky finally prepares to land on iPhone.

There are 299 reasons to not buy the new Apple TV 4K. That’s the main thrust of my column about Apple’s revamped black box. The price hike this device has seen over the past year has been eye-watering, and the updates aren’t nearly enough. Still, if you do grab one, here are the 25 best Apple TV apps you’ll actually use.

Apple HomeView left me baffled. I quite like the idea of it but have barely any meaningful use for one. So I mulled that Apple’s smart display looking like the lovechild of my favourite Mac and an Apple Watch isn’t nearly enough for me to buy one while also grumbling that Apple’s wall-mounted HomeView costs the same as the regular one, despite missing its bottom half.

There are now many, many iPhones. Because my editor made me, I updated my list of every iPhone ranked in order of greatness, which has never been controversial at all, along with my roundup of the current best iPhones.

Fed up with iPhone photos not syncing? Missed the chance to do a syncing feeling pun? No worries. Check out my latest for Amateur Photographer, which explores the annoying reason why your iPhone photos don’t always sync – and how to fix it (for a while, at least).

AI is making mush of people’s brains. At the very least, there’s a compelling argument that people are starting to lose their critical thinking capabilities. From The Guardian’s Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back by Taylor Telford:

At Microsoft, which rolled out AI widely internally, executive vice-president Ryan Roslansky recently publicly lamented the prevalence of AI slop in his day-to-day work. After receiving “what was clearly an AI-generated doc” from a co-worker, he used his AI to summarize it and came away with no new thinking about the idea, he said. He warned his followers against falling into this potential “doom loop”, where AI does the reading and writing and leaves behind an “ocean of sameness”.

I had to read that more than once, because it’s such an amazing and staggering paragraph. I love the bit where it says the Microsoft guy used AI to summarise AI slop (thereby creating, what, slopception?) and – shock! – got no new ideas (having not used his own brain) and was terribly angry about the whole thing. His conclusion is about right. His actions were the problem.

I am ‘the enemy’. At least according to King Trump of the USA. Why? Because I refuse to call Artificial Intelligence ‘Super Intelligence’ until it’s actually super. Read my column for Stuff on why.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is a really great phone. Shocker, eh? Still, it’s been a while since I’ve had Apple’s big-o-phone to review and so it was interesting comparing it to my iPhone 16 Pro.

The Evercade Nexus is imminent. I was sent a sample for review. My take: it’s pretty good, the screen is a lot better than I expected, the dual sticks work very nicely for some games, but the whole thing might be a big chunky if you’re not blessed with big mitts. Read my thoughts over on Stuff.

I interviewed Laura ‘Penfriend’ Kidd. It’s always a slight concern when chatting with people you admire, but I had a delightful time interviewing Laura, who was very open about everything from why she first got into music to thoughts on the music industry and AI. 

Another retro home micro is on the way. This time, it’s the Atari 800, being reborn as THE 800XL. Weird name aside, I wrote about why I was always jealous of this system as a kid. 

Blocknado gives us a new spin on Tetris. Rather literally. It’s now joined my best free Android games roundup.