Published stuff

My Stuff column this week was ‘They don’t make Olympic video games like they used to – which might be for the best’ – exploring classics from my childhood and comparing them to the horror inflicted on the masses for Paris 2024. I also wrote about the new BurgerTime Quarter Arcade and refreshed the best upcoming Lego sets round-up.

For TapSmart, I explored one of my favourite apps, with a deep dive of Soulver. I also recommended 10 great creativity apps for iPhone and wrote a HomePod buyer’s guide.

And for this blog, I covered my ongoing frustration with Apple’s approach to emulators in ‘Apple isn’t serious about retro game emulation on iPhone – nor level playing fields for developers’.

Other stuff

Curious rumours this week about Apple TV+ being scaled back. Would that make it just Apple TV? Or Apple TV-? The argument is that Apple has chucked loads of cash at its streaming service, but the numbers no longer justify it.

Right now, this is the only streaming service our household has running. The movies seem very hit and miss, but there are a lot of great shows. Will that still be the case in two years?

Today, Apple TV+ has a solid reputation – almost the HBO of streaming. But Apple Arcade initially had a run of being a ‘premium’ take in its sector. Apple’s since dumbed that down, filling it full of me-too casual fare and giving dozens of old App Store favourites another airing.

Is Apple about to do an ‘Apple Arcade’ with TV+? If so, what would that look like, and how would Apple differentiate the service from its rivals if it’s increasingly packed full of lowest-common denominator telly and bought-in series from elsewhere?