Weeknote: 25 January 2025 – iPhone rumours, tech lord hell, and remembering Jonathan Nash

I’m finding iPhone SE4 rumours more exciting than iPhone Air gossip (Stuff) – and that’s just weird. Mostly, I’m baffled at the Air rumours, which currently point to a hugely expensive flagship phone with no stereo speakers and a so-so camera. Apple’s obsession with thin: resurrected? I hope not.
Photos for iOS 18 alienated the masses, but Apple’s opinionated redesign largely survived unscathed. I wrote about the uproar and what (little) Apple changed for TapSmart. Also for that site: my pick of the best iPhone Control Centre widgets.
Mastodon is transferring ownership of key ecosystem and platform components to a non-profit. Good. With US social networks kowtowing to the right wing, having one that remains outside the influence of certain presidents and oligarchs is a good thing. What would be even better: more European institutions actively supporting Mastodon.
Ian Dunt wrote about resisting tech overlords. This was a useful, approachable piece, and much of Ian’s thinking aligns with my own. Ultimately, a lot of what we do on devices is habit – and habits can be broken. If you want to ditch a social network, add friction. And more broadly, be more mindful and deliberate about decisions surrounding tech. That might mean as little as moving an app from your Home Screen or using site blockers with cooldowns to wean you off of specific websites. Which might sound infantilising, but it’s not really. It’s about using the technology to help you manage the technology.
Ian’s piece also talks of endings and the finite nature of traditional media. Increasingly, we are sucked into the infinite. An album ends and a streaming service starts playing other things it thinks you’ll like. You watch a video or TV show, and autoplay continues until you or your device conks out. Occasionally, this can be beneficial – I’ve discovered songs and artists through Apple Music continuing on after an album I love. But that’s not always the case if it’s not deliberate. Companies care about engagement, not about you. Hence why I still gravitate towards printed books, and why when I wrote about buying my first CD player in 20 years, the column went bonkers, leading to weeks and weeks of entirely supportive messages. And not one of them told me off for not also recommending ludicrously expensive cable risers.
Tony Yates asked whether people will push back against GenAI. His thinking: people don’t want it, and the market will express that. I’m not so sure. While I don’t think most people get a kick out of GenAI content, the questions for me are 1) will GenAI be ‘good enough’ and 2) will people be told when things are GenAI? With the current flood of GenAI on YouTube and cheap blogs, the answer to Q1 right now is mostly no, and to Q2 is mostly yes. But what if they flip?
Finally, some terribly sad news: Jonathan Nash recently died. He was a games journalist and comedy writer beyond compare, whose influence permeates through an entire generation of writers still smashing out words today. I was only in Nash’s orbit a few times, working on a handful of projects together. Even the man’s emails were works of art – bite-sized nuggets of comedy genius akin to his very best writing in the likes of Amiga Power.
I lost touch with Nash about ten years ago. As I understand from his close friends, it wasn’t unusual for him to vanish without warning and then suddenly show up, years later. I’m gutted the latter will now never happen. Saying someone was ‘one of a kind’ is an overused phrase, but it’s entirely appropriate here. For longer – better – tributes to the man from people who knew him far better than I did, read John Walker’s wonderful piece at Kotaku and Kieron Gillen’s memories in his recent newsletter.