Apple Watch is 10. I write for Stuff about 10 ways in which Apple’s wearable surprised me over the years, from having me chat to a stranded astronaut to declaring me deceased.

Apple Notes is underrated. I increasingly rely on it for thought dumps, lists and tracking, mostly using a simplified version of the Forever Notes system to keep things organised. That and other tips form part of my new Notes deep dive for TapSmart/Swipe.

I like daylight savings time. As someone with SAD, gloomy winters negatively impact my mood in a big way. I feel like a new person come the end of March. But in those months before, when the days very gradually lengthen, iPhone app Solstice helps me cope.

Online age verification for kids? Rachel Coldicutt suggests that’s now on the UK political agenda. I’m not in favour. For every perceived benefit, there will be several downsides, not least in terms of personal privacy, data breaches, and general tech company shittery. 

The Lib Dems back a ban on playing media out loud on public transport. This kicked off a debate on Bluesky about whether or not this was illiberal. (Ian Dunt says no. My take is… it depends.) Depressing, mind, that this party (with over 70 of the UK’s 650 MPs) barely gets any news presence, and when it does it’s for a policy like this.

App Store curation remains dreadful. So says Jeff Johnson, who discovered a ‘virus protection’ app lurking on Apple’s Store, charging people an insane amount of money to ‘protect’ their devices in a manner that’s impossible. As Nate Vack noted on Mastodon: “I kind of feel like ‘once a week, go through the top 100 grossing apps and investigate the obvious scams’ is maybe a reasonable expectation for a company Apple’s size. Especially if ‘our store is closed because it is safe’ is their entire brand and legal argument.”

Ian Dunt writes a love song to the filth we left behind. It’s about addiction and the holes left when you are able to free yourself from a drug. Some great insight, but it also, curiously, overlapped with how I feel as someone with OCD. Those elements of craving, relief and then self-hate are all too evident during a ‘bad’ period or moment. Although there’s no real high with OCD – just the briefest spike before you fall into a pit on recognising you’ve ‘given in’ again.

Can AI creations be art? An interesting thread on Bluesky explores this subject. And, ironically, it was kicked off by Ian Betteridge, whose law I broke at the start of this paragraph (given that, yes, AI creations can be art). Sorry, Ian.