One device to rule them all‽ That’s the subject of my Stuff column this week: I’ve used Android 16’s desktop mode – and now I’m frustrated with my iPhone. I’ve written about ‘phones as desktops’ before, and it’s a subject that somehow manages to annoy just about everyone. But I really like the idea of a phone that can become your primary device, plugging into accessories as and when it’s necessary. But even if that doesn’t work for you, Google’s efforts with Samsung are important for at least two reasons. First, in baking a desktop mode directly into vanilla Android, devs will be encouraged to make apps that are more flexible, and they will thereby better support more varied devices, such as foldables. Secondly, maybe – just maybe – it might prompt Apple to bring its really rather good iPad windowing model to iPhone. Although I’ll be bloody amazed if that happens any time soon. Apple doesn’t want you buying fewer Apple devices, after all. The notion people could just buy one would give Apple’s entire finance team heart palpitations.

Need a widget wizard? Probably not, but if you use an iPhone or an iPad, app Widget Wizard might be worth a look. In my deep dive for TapSmart, I outline how I use the app myself. The agenda widget is especially handy.

Google search AI results continue to suck. I’d naively thought people would push back against this feature, after all the terrible press. But Google just manually weeds out the worst cases, which means millions and millions of slop answers are copied and pasted daily. I recently watched online as people started arguing about the specs of a device that had ostensibly received an update. In reality, it was a new model but had the same guts. Google AI didn’t know this, because it doesn’t ‘know’ anything and duly served up some hallucinations a fan of the brand pasted into a forum thread – and then doubled down on. Absurdly, this convinced a couple of people to spend actual money. I suspect they’re not going to be so thrilled when they find they own two devices with identical specs but slightly different shells. Sigh.

Em dashes aren’t evil. Over on Bluesky, Leena said she won’t change how she writes in case someone might doubt she’s human. Her thread adds that some GenAI tropes exist because the tech mimics good human writing. The thing is, editors are already getting twitchy. I’ve had two more or less ask me to omit em dashes from my own work, because they’re concerned about people claiming copy their orgs run may in any way be AI-generated. Thing is, at some point the tech bros will tweak the algorithm (“Use fewer em dashes!”) and then what? So to fight this stuff, we just have to be better. Which in the case of most GenAI writing means not sounding like mediocre marketing copy (or, for socials, not overusing bullet points and spraying emoji about like confetti).

I met a cow. It was a nice cow, in a place cows are not supposed to be. Top tip: if you meet a cow, be kind to the cow. Avoid the cow. Give the cow space. Don’t, say, like people I saw that day, almost sneak up on the cow from behind because you “like cows”. Doubly so when said cow has massive horns that might puncture human flesh. (That didn’t happen in this case. And the cow was shortly ‘rescued’ by local rangers and returned to her field. But good grief at some people.)