Squally April showers here today. Which is mildly annoying, given that it’s July. Oh well.

Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week is: VanMoof’s demise shows how reliant we are on here-today, gone-tomorrow apps. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot of late, given how many devices and toys can now only be used with an app. And as I wrote last week, it’s not like most apps stick around.

Having recently updated my Mastodon guide and listed 8 alternatives when you want to give Twitter the bird, I turned my hands to Zuckerberg’s latest baby with Get started with Instagram Threads. All you need to know to switch from Twitter.

I’m still finding Threads a bit weird. But I think when it gets a reverse chronological feed, I’ll spend more time there and even less on Twitter. Mastodon remains my social network of choice, however.

I also updated my best upcoming Lego sets feature for Stuff, while making pining noises at all the great stuff coming out.

That’s it for new writing from me this week, but if you’re in the mood for supporting indie journalism, the latest issue of Swipe is out, featuring my overviews of chatbot apps for iPhone, a piece on Procreate, a look at how Apple tackles mental health, and a quick dip into why I want Apple mobile devices to support multiple users.

Upcoming stuff/other stuff

I’m writing a monster of a feature for Stuff, digging into dozens of pieces of tech kit released during the lifespan of the magazine – which goes all the way back to 1996.

The main thing this confirmed to me, having done a lot of research: every single timespan you care to explore over the past 30 or so years has amazing things that happened in tech. For those people heavily immersed in the industry, it might seem like we’re seeing nothing more than endless iteration. That’s not the case.

Stunning shifts happen on a very regular basis. If you don’t feel that yourself, take a step back, get off the treadmill for a while, and see what happens when you return with fresh eyes.