Weeknote: 14 December 2024 – smaller iPhones, Apple moments, and game rentals

Published stuff
My column for Stuff this week talks about how dropping down an iPhone size made me ‘think different’ about giant phones. In short, I thought I’d miss the bigger screen – and I don’t. Also, my pinkie finger is much happier now.
For TapSmart, I wrote about my favourite Apple moments from 2024 and added MindNode to my classic apps series.
Other stuff
The central heating in our house was terrible. The wired thermostat was in the warmest room. Whatever we tried, we’d end up with an oven-like space there and freezing rooms elsewhere. We got a Tado smart thermostat and that immediately helped. Then we started adding Tado thermostats to the radiators. Which was great until this morning when one of them failed to turn on. Could be iffy Wi-Fi connectivity, a defective unit, or a message from the universe that I shouldn’t stay in bed on a Saturday. No idea which one yet. Technology!
Monument Valley 3 came out this week. It’s good, if very familiar, and I imagine many millions of people will want to play it. They can – if they pay for Netflix. And also keep their subscription active, because the current version ends with a frustrating ‘more to come at some point’ message. I’m starting to tire of game rentals and siloing, which increasingly resembles the fragmented TV landscape. It won’t be long before Disney gets in on this act – YouTube already has. That said, with the onset of free-to-play and all-you-can-eat, I’m apparently in a minority of folks who’d prefer to own rather than ‘rent’ games.
The Pi 500 has arrived. I really liked its predecessor, which for a long time piped lovely retro games to my TV. I liked how it was an all-in-one with a keyboard, marrying flexibility and compactness. It was subsequently replaced by an old Mac mini, which was more powerful. But I now wonder if it’s time for a Pi to make a living room comeback.