Published stuff

‘Based on a true story’, as they say in the movies, my Stuff column this week is I swapped an Amazon Echo for an Apple HomePod and found Siri is dumb as a rock. It’s sobering to see how far behind Apple is in basic conversational interactions with smart assistants. For Stuff, I also updated my best browser games piece, and have since hit the dizzy highs of 7954 on Paku Paku.

Over at TapSmart, the excellent Just Press Record was added to my classics series. More of those coming up over the next couple of months.

And for this blog, I wrote Pen computing didn’t fail – it just evolved into something else.

Upcoming stuff

More retro pieces on the way, because a certain mag has asked me to delve into the best bits from a trio of once-popular gadget makers. That should be fun.

Other stuff

CES came and went, and I for a second year in a row largely ignored it, bar reading coverage over on Stuff. But if you fancy reading a couple of previous pieces that have held up rather well: How smart-home technology at CES 2014 ushered in the end of the world (“You might have thought the Terminator looked tough on your TV screen, but you’ve not seen anything until you’ve experienced the sheer horror of Android-powered smart tweezers leaping at your face, screaming DEATH TO ALL HUMANS”) and The CES 2024 I want to see – and the one I’ll probably get (“This new curved display is so wide it’s actually a loop!”)

Natch, I probably should have foreseen ‘AI in everything’ for the second of those articles…