Published stuff

I wrote two columns for Stuff on the recent Apple event. The first celebrates the Home button going away, and the second has my take on the iPad Pro running macOS – namely that it doesn’t need to. 

Over at TapSmart, I was also on the Let Loose beat, rapidly exploring 11 talking points from the event.

Other stuff

Apple apologised for an ad in which it crushed creative and cultural objects in a gigantic press, the output of which was an iPad Pro. I get what the company was going for – all these things can be squeezed into a super-thin tablet. But the execution was… bad.

The company in the past has been capable of whimsy and fun. Perhaps it could have leveraged animation, ‘sucking’ those objects into the iPad, like apps into the Mac Dock. Regardless, a clinical metal press crushing terrified toys and beautiful instruments wasn’t the best direction.

I’ve seen people excusing Apple on the basis culture has changed. Apple is bigger now. People are increasingly annoyed about digital tools due to AI. So years back, this ad would have been fine. I’m not convinced. I don’t think people would have cheered an advert where vinyl collections, record players, CDs and tapes were crushed, only to reveal an iPod.

There are also grumbles that the iPad Pro isn’t pro enough. I get it. Apple has long wrestled with how far to push the device, while balancing its need to not impact on the Mac. For years, external display support for iPad was laughable. And today, it’s a device that is fantastic for consumption, excellent for certain creative tasks, but sub-optimal for others.

I do wonder, though, how much of the frustration stems from YouTubers, programmers, or tech pundits griping that the iPad Pro isn’t perfect for them in quite specific ways, and ignoring the bigger picture, where lots of people happily use one every day, preferring it to a Mac. 

On Mastodon, mcc wrote about how map apps are incapable of routing when you’re on public transport. This is a frustration of mine. When I’m in a car or on foot, my map app will instantly outline how long it’ll be until I reach my destination. When I’m on a train, it has no idea what’s happening and attempts to route me as if I at that second just got catapulted out of the window.

Finally, over at The Guardian, Keith Stuart braved the deadly waters of retro gaming by outlining the best video game magazines ever. At least, if you’re British.

Unusually for a list like this, I was in broad agreement – although omitting Wireframe even from the honourable mentions was a pity. Also, I wouldn’t personally top the list with Edge, but I get why it was done here. And it was great to see Newsfield remembered so fondly.

I’m not sure what the boring Commodore User was doing twinned with the far superior Your Sinclair, though. And Retro Gamer got short-changed down at #14. At the very least, that mag – which is still going – deserved to be above Future’s weird ACE and Edge wannabe games™.

Still, a good feature from Keith, who I hope hasn’t met his untimely demise after being set upon by a horde of furious Amstrad fans armed with sharpened copies of Amstrad Action.