Over at Stuff, my traditional Apple end-of-year review has been published: Apple’s 2023 in review: the good, the bad and the bubbly. From the highs of the iPhone Pro’s greatness… to the lows of the same iPhone Pro overheating!
See you on the other side.
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For Stuff, I wrote On the tech days of Christmas, my gadgets gave to me… – an ode to navigating the inevitable holiday storm of festive chaos, packed full of tinsel, misbehaving technology and tears. This took far too long and I was stupidly happy when I got all the tech headlines to line up with the carol. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
I also feature in a piece on the Stuff team’s favourite gadgets from 2023.
Over at TapSmart, I wrote about what RCS means for you and compiled my favourite Apple moments from 2023 as relating to mobile.
As 2023 lurks by the emergency exit, I thought it’d be fun to dig into my favourite articles that I wrote over the past 12 months. Hopefully you’ll find something interesting to read while stuffed full of turkey and wrapped in tinsel!
My number-one article from 2023 was for Wired: The Space Invaders Creator Reveals the Game’s Origin Story. I’ve written dozens of pieces for Retro Gamer and others about classic games. But I’d never had the opportunity to quiz the creator of the first game I remember playing about how the game came to be. So this was a special privilege and a real treat. Thanks to Chris Hill for helping make the relevant connections, to Jeremy White for commissioning the piece, and Naoya Raita for her translation work and endless patience.
Also check out two related pieces for Stuff on the Space Invaders Quarter Arcade: a making-of and Why I think Numskull’s Space Invaders Quarter Arcade is the best retro gaming gadget ever.
A close runner-up and my most-shared piece of the year was for Stuff: I lost my Apple Watch streak – here’s why it should have more humanity. I stand by every word of this, and believe Apple and others should think more carefully about how gamifying activities can knock people’s wellbeing rather than lift them up.
Also check out my friendlier streaks apps for iPhone piece for TapSmart.
Being an old git, I spend a lot of time donning rose-tinted specs and exploring the past. Here are my favourites from 2023:
I write less about games than I used to, but here’s what happens when an editor lobs me a ‘continue’:
Since the iPhone’s inception, I’ve spent more time than is reasonable buried in apps. These pieces include best-ofs, a deep-dive into Yousician, and explorations of the app ecosystems we really need.
Much of my tech commentary is about the big A. Here are my favourites from 2023:
And occasionally, I even write about non-Apple companies and tech events too. These two stood out from my 2023 columns:
Only a few weeks to go now before we find whether that last one comes to pass. In the meantime, I hope everyone reading this has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Things started to get festive over at TapSmart, with my feature on Christmas Day apps. I also added the superb White Noise+ to my classic apps series.
For Stuff, I wrote about another Quarter Arcades unit – the superb Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I managed to hold myself from yelling COWABUNGA! Just. But I did have enough shoutiness left for ‘Dumb things my iPhone does (and that I do) that could be fixed by AI’. Which attentive readers might spot is a cunning way to air a few choice iPhone gripes. Ho ho ho.
On the home straight now, with just a couple of articles left to file before I collapse in a heap for a week and change. So upcoming stuff for me will mostly be not writing anything much, building lots of Lego with my kid, playing with a diminutive TMNT cabinet, and sorting a new vault for my old digital files.
Which to me sounds like bliss after the insanely busy December I’ve had.
Some weird tech things walloped me in the face this week. The first was Pocket. I’ve used this read-later system since it was called Read It Later. I’ve hundreds of articles stashed in it. And now I’m locked out. Not sure why.
Two lessons from this so far. The first is that this is a rare case where I had no backup/data recovery system in place. Clearly, I needed one. The second is Mozilla’s support system is comically awful. The first response I got misunderstood the problem. And then when I tried to reply, anything I sent was bounced as spam. Since then, Mozilla has hassled me with a follow-up request. I’m hoping this resolves well, but won’t hold my breath.
The silver lining: Alfread. If you’ve not heard of that app, it gamifies read-later. The interface is like a dating app, where you swipe left/right. And in only ever showing a single article, it forces focus on your to-read pile. But also, I discovered it has a cache. Which means every article I added until I last opened Alfread (on 4 December) might still be accessible. Although there’s no way to export them somewhere else, they at least are not lost.
Still: fume. Mozilla is not in my good books. Also not in my good books: everyone on social media banging on that X is evil and that anyone still posting there is a nazi.
Look, I get it: Musk is awful. Many of the people on X are awful. I myself last posted there on 26 August, after having quit semi-regularly posting during July. But I would have thought one of the lessons the X fiasco would have taught us is to have more empathy and kindness.
There are all kinds of reasons why people continue to post on X, related to friendship circles, keeping alive independent businesses, and so on. But many people elsewhere – and especially on Threads – appear to now be on a moral crusade to damn anyone still on X.
Frankly, given that most people’s reasons for still posting on X are convenience and larger audiences, it’s a bit bloody rich of folk on Threads in particular to scream morals when posting on a Zuckerberg platform rather than Mastodon, not least given that their reasons for not using Mastodon are typically, yep, lack of convenience and lack of larger audiences. (Naturally, I got called a nazi by more than one person for this viewpoint.)
Perhaps everyone just needs a bit of end-of-year downtime. I know I do.
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It’s been chilly out. This inspired my latest toolkit for TapSmart, which is all about using your phone to keep safe in winter. I also added the masterful Galcon to my classic apps series. This run is planned to continue into 2024, and I’ve already got a few cracking interviews lined up for the apps side of things.
Incidentally, if you’d like to support our writing, please download the Swipe app for iPhone/iPad. Free trial. Cheap as chips subscription.
Over at Stuff, I wrote an Apple Arcade explainer and with Matt Tate expanded our list of best Apple Arcade games. The best upcoming Lego sets piece got its final update of the year too.
My column this week: I’m thinking of buying Blu-rays again, and it’s all Sony’s fault. If you’ve not heard the news, Sony’s deleting from user libraries a bunch of TV shows people paid for. It’s yet another reminder of the transient nature of digital-only content.
I’m now buried neck deep in end-of-year round-ups. And I’ll get it in the neck if those deadlines whoosh past my ears.
Happier news: I received the new Quarter Arcade today: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m planning to shoot another lightning fast YouTube Short tomorrow, since the previous two retro ones did pretty well for the time they took.
If this third one lands similarly, I’m going to explore more regular shorts next year – perhaps a scrappy one-minute review series. YouTube isn’t something I’m ever going to make a living out of, but I originally trained in video at uni and so have an itch to scratch. But I also lack time. However, if I can write, plan, shoot and upload something in maybe half an hour that people will find useful, I figure that’s a workable format.
Mostly, I’m knackered. Too many deadlines. Not enough hours. Such is the way when you hit Christmas crunch, with deadlines being compressed. I’m hoping for a break over the holidays.
Despite working all hours, I have kept up with the tech news. And the big thing that caught my eye this week was Beeper Mini. This app/service claimed it had figured out how to circumvent Apple and get iMessage working on Android. Tech YouTuber Quinn Nelson released a video that said it would be really hard for Apple to respond. Cue: endless breathless articles regurgetating that ‘fact’.
I online urged more caution and caught flak for it. Because, apparently, I didn’t know what I was talking about. Yet just days later, Apple killed Beeper Mini. Even if it figures out a workaround, the result will be a cat-and-mouse game at best, which isn’t any way to run a paid subscription service.
Honestly, this isn’t a case where I’m happy to be proved right. But it is another excellent example of how tech journalists need to be more guarded in what they write – and to not criticise those who are.
Finally, a cheerier piece of news: World of Goo 2 is coming out next year. I adored the original on iPad, and sincerely hope the sequel comes to Apple’s tablet. Regardless, it looks as joyous and imaginative as its predecessor.
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Over at Stuff, I fret I’m turning into my dad in Spotify Wrapped and Apple Replay were my wake-up call to listen to more new music. I also wrote about the Moto G turning 10, remembering the smartphone that brought quality specs to the masses, and the Sega Dreamcast turning 25 – along with six of the best Dreamcast games.
For TapSmart this week, I grumbled that although Apple Music Classical for iPad is great, it shouldn’t have taken eight months to arrive. If Apple can’t get its bum in gear regarding cross-device apps, why should developers?
So. Many. End. Of. Year. Wrap-ups.
I was concerned when our local McColl’s newsagent recently closed. It housed our town’s main post office and had a great selection of magazines. It’s now reopened… as a Morrisons Daily.
The print section is approximately one eighth of its old size and the magazine selection has been stomped into near nothingness. Depressing.
That leaves WHSmith as the last holdout for magazines where I live. At least that store, while slowly reducing the space given to magazines, continues to maintain and sometimes even expand its range. But I fear how this ongoing erosion of print outlets will affect what’s left of the industry – especially if WHSmith closures spread.
Over in digital, things were also not ideal this week, when I received a surprise £134.99 invoice from Yousician. Now, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise – I did subscribe to the service a year ago. But I received no communication whatsoever from the company about the renewal. Bad form.
I rattled off a support request, citing the 14-day cooling off period (which applies to the original contract and any subsequent renewal). Expecting to hear nothing back for a while, I instead got two emails almost instantly.
The first was a ‘higher volume of traffic’ BS email. The second was a clearly automated 50% discount offer, which made a mockery of the email that had arrived seconds beforehand.
I’m still mulling over what to do. Yousician is a good service, but I’m properly annoyed about how this was initially handled. Companies should do better. For example, Rebellion Publishing sends subscribers an email three months before their 2000 AD subscriptions are due for renewal, and then one more email every month until the payment is made. It wants you to be aware of the upcoming payment, rather than sneaking it through and hoping you won’t notice.
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