Alarmo from Nintendo

Published stuff

Nintendo has made an alarm clock. Which – if you’re old enough – shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, Game & Watch units were also clocks. But I figured this was a good excuse over at Stuff to say: Forget Alarmo and Super Mario Clock – here are the 5 video game clocks the world really needs. This… may not be my most sensible column of the year. Fun to write though!

Also for Stuff, I reviewed the new iPhone Pro Max. Unsurprisingly, it’s a very good phone. But in a quietly impressive way. I don’t think there are going to be people throwing parties in the street over the new features. Speaking of which, over at TapSmart I got down my thoughts regarding two weeks with Camera Control. I mostly like it, but I’m not convinced, of all things, that the button is in the right place. 

And finally, I wrote up a guide on how to get started with Things.

Upcoming stuff

I filed a piece on iPhone gaming. This was a properly deep dive, involving some frankly absurd attempts to turn an iPhone into a Switch. I’m not sure when it’ll be published, but I’m looking forward to seeing that in the wild.

Elsewhere, I’m working on another of my classic apps pieces, about a long-time favourite – and an app that’s relevant to the new iPhones, let’s say.

Other stuff

I’m dreadful at bouncing between systems for organising my day. And the way things are for me of late (lots to do; time poor), I need to be better organised.

I used to add meetings in Calendar for approximate times articles would take to write. But as I moved into more corporate work and my schedule became rigid, that no longer worked. So I took to adding all-day events in Calendar for tasks, and used Widget Wizard to put the agenda on my Home Screens. This was twinned with a table in Notes that gave me an at-a-glance view of upcoming projects.

None of this was particularly flexible, and although I have dabbled with a range of GTD apps, I never settled on one. But inspired by Joan Westenberg’s piece on Apple stock apps, I took another look at Reminders. With its column view, you get something that’s like a basic kanban setup. I’ve got one board for freelance and another for a corporate client. Tags and deadlines give me alternate views across publications and times. The Today view tells me what I need to sort urgently.

The Apple solution is imperfect. Most notably, I’d love to have a ‘this week’ view, telling me what I need to sort before the weekend. I’ve faked that to some degree with a ‘next four days’ view, which somewhat works with my schedule. Still, it’s been interesting to use Reminders in this manner – and it really is helping.

Next up: sorting out Notes with something based on Forever * Notes.