I’m currently immersed in all things iPhone 16, for a bunch of things related to hardware and gaming. More on those as they rock up.
I’m also hoping to dig into some new retro consoles later in the year. Because it turns out, you can never have enough retro consoles. (Note: you probably can, if my very full office is anything to go by.)
Other stuff
I live near a lake that also happens to be a SSSI. It’s good for waterfowl, and also bats. I’d not gone bat spotting in a while, and feared few would be around, given the collapse in UK insect life, which has been noticeable locally. But last night, the family went on a bat walk, and saw a bunch of them flitting around, occasionally divebombing the group of us that had gathered.
The evening also scratched a tech itch I never knew I had. Each family was given a bat detector. And it turns out, you can buy one online. So that might result in one more piece of tech entering the home.
My Stuff column this week is: Not everything needs AI – least of all your Instagram and Facebook feeds. This looks at Meta AI clogging your feed with AI slop and killing any notion Meta social networks are about authenticity. But it also talks about a good AI use case – from HP, of all companies.
In the Verge, Mark Zuckerberg argues “individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content”. Then dismisses them pulling content from AIs by saying “it’s not like that’s going to change the outcome of this stuff that much”. And also infers if you put something into the wild, it’s fair use.
It’s all bullshit. Creators are merely suggesting their work is worth more than nothing. Zuckerberg disagrees – unless an org his tech is ripping off has enough legal clout to cause Meta a problem in the courts.
More broadly on AI, I worry people are being trained to expect the output is always good. Often, it isn’t. LLMs can save time by providing ideas, iterating copy, or doing basic research. But you need people at either end who know their stuff. Instead, AI companies hype that you no longer need expertise. Anyone can now be a writer, an artist or a musician! Just use GenAI! But don’t look closely at the written facts, the broken anatomy in figures, the rampant plagiarism, or the cost and resource issues.
Finally, Mark Gurman said on Threads the current version of Apple will never move away from pre-recorded events. Federico Viticci responded by saying live events are more fun. For me, it’s more than that. They are more human. Apple has lost much of that.
Its events are slick, but beyond the odd fun moment (most of which come from Craig Federighi), they feel robotic. It’s like everyone studied hard in ‘Present Like Jobs 101’ but didn’t go beyond the surface. So we get Jobs cosplay squeezed to within a whisker of its life by the video edit. And it’s not like this is just Apple – every company now follows the same playbook, even when there’s a live component.
Starved of Netflix, the ten-year-old is now mainlining Animal Park. This BBC show is a behind-the-scenes look at British safari park Longleat, and is objectively very good. But it’s driving me bonkers that the voiceover exclusively uses imperial measurements. While this is a family-friendly show (rather than broadcasting on a children’s channel), I think it’s wild in 2024 that this is still happening. At the very least, you’d think the show would use constructions like the giraffe is five metres – or about 16 and a half feet – tall, not least because British children haven’t been taught imperial in about 50 years. It’s not the 1970s, BBC!
As someone who’s been keen on iPhone gaming since the beginning, I always find it sad when sites go away. But TouchArcade shutting down is a really big one. The signs have been ominous for a while, but reading the linked post was nonetheless a gut-punch. Time to double down on supporting remaining iPhone gaming outlets, such as the excellent AppUnwrapper.
Finally, this was the week my follower count on Bluesky sailed past Threads. I’m not obsessive about such numbers – engagement and enjoyment are what really matter on social networks. But numbers are an indication of momentum.
For me, Bluesky started out way behind every other network when it came to followers. I joined very early (user 40,269 – one of the first one per cent), and it was like typing into the void. Which was oddly freeing. But today it’s the only social network where it feels like a bunch of new and excited people are joining all the time. It’s also fun, with an energy that’s lacking elsewhere.
This shift also means a post-X social landscape has finally clicked into place for me. I ‘abandoned’ about 7,000 followers there. More importantly, I lost hundreds of great accounts that I followed. I miss what it was, but not what it became, and quit posting publicly in 2023. Other networks swirled around, and for a while Mastodon was the only one that mattered. But many people came and went, annoyed at not immediately getting the audience and engagement they’d enjoyed on Twitter but without working for it. Threads threatened to become good but now bibbles along; worse, Meta prioritises what it wants you to see rather than what you want to see.
Right now, I dip into Bluesky first (plenty of friends, writers and comics folks, retro gaming, politics and pundits), still spend a fair chunk of time on Mastodon (great conversation, tech geeks and devs, academics, wonderful photography accounts), and zoom through Threads in about five minutes daily, to catch up with the few friends who’ve landed there and decided to stay.
I still miss those people who have – for whatever reason – decided to stay on X. But I did twice check in and browse through 24 hours of my ‘filter’ feed – a ‘best of’ I put together during more optimistic times. It was mostly empty. I took that as a sign.
No weekend column this week for Stuff. Instead, my interview with Apple about gaming was published – Apple says the Mac has become a serious gaming platform: here’s why. This is, note, an interview with Apple, not analysis of Apple nor a wider discussion about what the games industry thinks of Apple. Nonetheless, there are interesting insights into how Apple perceives itself in this space, not least in how it differentiates its ecosystem from Windows.
My covid recovery continues but it’s clear everything didn’t snap back to normal, apart from my sense of taste/smell. A month after my first positive test, I’m still tired all the time. I hope that changes.
I mowed the front lawn. First time, bar a border, since April. I think that’s our future now. Pull out the long grasses but just let everything else grow. I like the crickets and the bugs. That’s way better than a boring space of 3cm high grass. That said, the anthills I found were terrifying.
Bluesky is increasingly fun. I’ve been trying to figure out a post-X social landscape for myself, and over a year after quitting that site things are starting to make sense. Mastodon is where most of my dev/tech friends live. Bluesky is comics, writers, and politics stuff. Threads is… for everyone who doesn’t want to be on Mastodon and Bluesky. And X is still dead to me. I just wish a few more people would make the leap to something other than the hellsite.
The CDs piece I wrote got another readership bump last week from somewhere, and I’m still receiving messages about it. Notably, they’re all friendly ones. That piece clicked with a whole bunch of people, which makes me happy. Sometimes when writing columns, it’s like shouting into the void. When a bunch of people make the effort to email a reply, that’s properly old-school and gratifying all at once.
Also, last week’s piece, Why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years, went absolutely bonkers. I’ve had (positive) emails and messages all week about it, and it did silly numbers. Thanks to everyone who read it and those who got in touch with their tips about what CD player to buy.
Other stuff
An Apple event is looming, and so I imagine I’ll soon be further immersed in new kit. I’m interested to see how Apple moves its hardware on this year, with the iPhone rumoured to be a reasonably minor update but the Apple Watch getting more substantial changes. Personally, I’ll also be looking at software for Apple Watch – I’m still recovering from covid and so being able to pause my rings can’t come soon enough. (Although it won’t help this time. Still, at least I won’t have to complain about this basic missing feature again.)
Over on Threads, in a response to requests for writing tips, Scalzi suggested reading your work aloud to catch copy errors. This is an old trick, but one I always find many writers surprised by when you mention it. Similarly, relatively few realise you can get your Mac to read text back to you. I outline how on Threads.
