Published stuff

My Stuff column this week is: Not everything needs AI – least of all your Instagram and Facebook feeds. This looks at Meta AI clogging your feed with AI slop and killing any notion Meta social networks are about authenticity. But it also talks about a good AI use case – from HP, of all companies. 

Over at TapSmart, I write about 18 great apps for customising Lock Screen controls, mastering Control Centre, and which Apple Watch to buy. 

Other stuff

In the Verge, Mark Zuckerberg argues “individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content”. Then dismisses them pulling content from AIs by saying “it’s not like that’s going to change the outcome of this stuff that much”. And also infers if you put something into the wild, it’s fair use.

It’s all bullshit. Creators are merely suggesting their work is worth more than nothing. Zuckerberg disagrees – unless an org his tech is ripping off has enough legal clout to cause Meta a problem in the courts.

More broadly on AI, I worry people are being trained to expect the output is always good. Often, it isn’t. LLMs can save time by providing ideas, iterating copy, or doing basic research. But you need people at either end who know their stuff. Instead, AI companies hype that you no longer need expertise. Anyone can now be a writer, an artist or a musician! Just use GenAI! But don’t look closely at the written facts, the broken anatomy in figures, the rampant plagiarism, or the cost and resource issues. 

Over at Bluesky, ChinnyVision half joked about how his newish MacBook has worn keys but his 38-year-old Amstrad CPC doesn’t. Modern Apple keycaps are dreadful. As I noted, their lack of durability never ceases to amaze me. And if you’ve an iMac that isn’t silver, you can’t even buy a matching replacement on the Apple Store. Some of the keys on my iMac’s keyboard look like they’ve been gouged. Many remain pristine. I’ve no idea why. Maybe I have latent superpowers that could with some work have me fire acid from my fingertips.

Finally, Mark Gurman said on Threads the current version of Apple will never move away from pre-recorded events. Federico Viticci responded by saying live events are more fun. For me, it’s more than that. They are more human. Apple has lost much of that. 

Its events are slick, but beyond the odd fun moment (most of which come from Craig Federighi), they feel robotic. It’s like everyone studied hard in ‘Present Like Jobs 101’ but didn’t go beyond the surface. So we get Jobs cosplay squeezed to within a whisker of its life by the video edit. And it’s not like this is just Apple – every company now follows the same playbook, even when there’s a live component.