You don’t need a dumb phone. My column for Stuff this week explores simplifying your smartphone setup, but not binning it in favour of a device that will just lead to regret. And I get to gripe about Photoshop sending me a notification for no good reason. Companies, please stop doing that!

Think different about Home Screens is a kind of companion piece, over at TapSmart. It looks at the specifics of how I changed my iPhone setup, and also how I’ve largely ditched the icon grid across all my Apple devices.

Netflix will start showing GenAI ads in 2026. That’ll teach me a lesson for saying nice things about the company’s AI plans (vs Meta’s slop) in last week’s Stuff column. I won’t make that mistake again, Netflix.

Speaking of AI, tech bro entitlement is infecting everything through their GenAI inventions. At least, that’s my current frame of mind in a blog post based on a thread I posted on social media this past week.

The best Photoshop alternatives for iPhone (and iPad)is my other TapSmart piece this week. I wrote last month about how oddly redundant Photoshop for iPhone feels. This round-up looks at what it does well, where it falls short, and other apps you might try instead.

My upcoming Lego round-up received updates, with spots for new Pixar Luxo Jr., Sherlock Holmes and Batman Forever sets, and more.

Rich white men feel they should have everything instantly. That now increasingly extends to skills. But also, they don’t know what good looks like. Hence the current mess we are seeing with GenAI. Worse, everyone – from managers to consumers – is now being taught the same thing.

I see an increasing number of people saying that they want to paint/write/make songs and that it’s unfair that they can’t, and GenAI is the solution. Or hear about organisations claiming they can automate such tasks to the level they no longer need creative people at all. But GenAI tools are rarely sufficient. At least, if you want good. Which requires you to be able to recognise good.

For people who want to be creative, GenAI generates a finished article for them, based on a vague idea. There’s none of ‘you’ in there. In corporate scenarios, the lack of precision, specificity and accuracy from GenAI ultimately leads to some level of slop. In either case, the result is further erosion of the creative industries to make a handful of rich white guys richer through enabling people to think they can be Picasso or Shakespeare from merely typing in a line of text. What you’re really getting is another anodyne ‘median’ remix of what’s already out there.

Just like any other type of skill, creativity is not innate. I’ve lost count of how many people in the past have inferred that people are just born artists or musicians or writers. You don’t get people saying someone was born an electrician or a scientist or a footballer. In my case, I certainly wasn’t born a writer or a musician. I got to the point I’m now at because I’ve been writing professionally for 25 years – and writing songs for even longer.

Whatever skills I do have in these fields are also the result of thousands of hours of experiments and failures and building on successes. There was no shortcut. Notably, I also, as a kid, was good at art. Today? I’m OK. I can draw quite well. Am I ‘entitled’ to more? No. I never kept at it. Increasingly, though, tech bros would argue there’s no need to keep at it because you don’t even need to start. You just need a GenAI service and a prompt and you’re good to go, ready to turn even the vaguest creative impulse into the finished article in an instant.

I’m not sure where this is leading us, but I’m certain it’s not anywhere good.

This post is based on a post originally published on Bluesky and Mastodon.

Netflix’s smart AI plans expose Meta AI as an ugly dumpster fire from hell. That’s my new column for Stuff, and it probably means I’m off of Meta’s Christmas card list. The main thrust of the column is that there’s nuance in the AI space – it can be used for good. (Anyone working with tools to quickly remove blemishes from photos is making use of AI, for example.) But content created from scratch by GenAI is mediocre at best – and Meta AI is an endless feed of AI slop.

Wahhhhhhh is Marie Le Conte’s response to “I think generative AI has the power to change the world for the better” in her piece 11 things I hate about AI. It makes many great points – not least how GenAI tends to blunder into human aspects of creativity and make things worse. A lot of the things she argues align with my own thinking. Creative journeys are important. Blank canvases aren’t bad. Confidence without accuracy is bad. And her point about blogs and forums also made me a bit sad.

Apple is obsessed with thin again. Over at TapSmart, I explore why I’m not taken by the rumours about the iPhone Air, although I do outline two reasons that might explain why Apple is set to make the phone. I also very much hope at least some of the rumours are wrong, but I guess we’ll see soon enough. A single-speaker high-end phone in 2025 would be… quite something.

Zookeeper DX is dangerous. It’s the latest entry in my classic app series. And good grief at the degree to which it hooked me back in again as I tried to justify the time I was spending playing as ‘research’.

Please support our indie mag! We’re now up to issue 326 of Swipe – TapSmart’s iPhone/iPad incarnation. It’s just $2/£2 per month for two new issues and access to loads of back issues. All subs gratefully appreciated, because we’d love to keep the lights on for as long as possible!

In-flight entertainment on long-haul flights used to consist of a movie they’d project to the front of each section of the plane. On the few flights I had as a kid, I got to watch the top third of a movie, while surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke. Yay. How things have changed – most notably by everyone having their own devices. So for British Airways I wrote about some apps you’d want to download for offline fun before you fly. (And, natch, they’re also fab for long train journeys, camping, and just because.)

Operating systems don’t stand still. Neither do articles about them in the age of digital. By which I mean I refreshed my iOS tips and Apple Intelligence tips pieces for Stuff. Enjoy.

Lego. There’s a lot of it about. Which suits me, because I think it’s great. This past week, I refreshed my best Star Wars Lego sets for May the 4th, wrote about the new Shuttle Carrier Aircraft set, and started longingly at the pre-order button for Lego Ideas Pixar Luxo Jr.

Google killed some Nest devices. Along with, as I say in my Stuff column, any lingering doubt smart home kit is any different from other consumer tech. Sure, the Nest devices lasted longer than a phone – but not as long as an appliance should. Consumers need to decide whether they want to continue the rush to smart tech if it’ll just become dumb tech when companies get bored or decide older kit is no longer profitable enough to support.

What is Apple in 2025? Michael Tsai rounds up thoughts from Dan Moren (who says the hardware is still good but Apple itself less so), Jeff Johnson (“the company itself is no longer special”), and Dimitri Bouniol, whose post has the most damning quote: “Once they were successful, they acted like no one else took part in helping them reach that success.”

Culturally, the shift at Apple has been gradual, but it’s now a different company from in the early 2000s. My take is it moved in key areas from wanting to “be the best” to settling for “be least worst”. And even then, I’m not sure it’s always successful. 

I’ve seen quite a few push back on the notion current CEO Tim Cook only cares about money and that Steve Jobs didn’t. That’s wrong. Cook clearly cares about more than the bottom line alone, but it feels like that’s now Apple’s priority over everything else. Jobs? Of course he cared about cash. But he also appeared to fully believe all that “bicycle for the mind” stuff and care about creativity. Compare that with the recent raft of Apple Intelligence ads, celebrating lazy assholes by empowering them with faux creativity, productivity and thoughtfulness. That those didn’t set alarms blazing and went out at all says a lot.

It’s May the 4th. Which means an excuse to do Star Wars things. Which for me means an excuse to write about Lego Star Wars for Stuff. Your wallet right now: “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Apps for the car? Not while you’re driving, obvs. But otherwise, here are the apps, tips and gear I reckon are worth considering while going vroom. Car optional. Maybe you just like running around and making car noises, in which case, good for you.

Can you get something for nothing for iPhone and iPad? Of course. But anything good? Absolutely, if these 15 apps are anything to go by.

Retro racing games? Yes, please. Mr Qwak’s Retro Racing 2 Pro is now out for Android, and Shane McCafferty has released Hero GP for Game Boy Color. He’s also teased OutRun for Game Boy Color and so is clearly some kind of wizard.

Apple Watch is 10. I write for Stuff about 10 ways in which Apple’s wearable surprised me over the years, from having me chat to a stranded astronaut to declaring me deceased.

Apple Notes is underrated. I increasingly rely on it for thought dumps, lists and tracking, mostly using a simplified version of the Forever Notes system to keep things organised. That and other tips form part of my new Notes deep dive for TapSmart/Swipe.

I like daylight savings time. As someone with SAD, gloomy winters negatively impact my mood in a big way. I feel like a new person come the end of March. But in those months before, when the days very gradually lengthen, iPhone app Solstice helps me cope.

Online age verification for kids? Rachel Coldicutt suggests that’s now on the UK political agenda. I’m not in favour. For every perceived benefit, there will be several downsides, not least in terms of personal privacy, data breaches, and general tech company shittery. 

The Lib Dems back a ban on playing media out loud on public transport. This kicked off a debate on Bluesky about whether or not this was illiberal. (Ian Dunt says no. My take is… it depends.) Depressing, mind, that this party (with over 70 of the UK’s 650 MPs) barely gets any news presence, and when it does it’s for a policy like this.

App Store curation remains dreadful. So says Jeff Johnson, who discovered a ‘virus protection’ app lurking on Apple’s Store, charging people an insane amount of money to ‘protect’ their devices in a manner that’s impossible. As Nate Vack noted on Mastodon: “I kind of feel like ‘once a week, go through the top 100 grossing apps and investigate the obvious scams’ is maybe a reasonable expectation for a company Apple’s size. Especially if ‘our store is closed because it is safe’ is their entire brand and legal argument.”

Ian Dunt writes a love song to the filth we left behind. It’s about addiction and the holes left when you are able to free yourself from a drug. Some great insight, but it also, curiously, overlapped with how I feel as someone with OCD. Those elements of craving, relief and then self-hate are all too evident during a ‘bad’ period or moment. Although there’s no real high with OCD – just the briefest spike before you fall into a pit on recognising you’ve ‘given in’ again.

Can AI creations be art? An interesting thread on Bluesky explores this subject. And, ironically, it was kicked off by Ian Betteridge, whose law I broke at the start of this paragraph (given that, yes, AI creations can be art). Sorry, Ian.