VHS was always awful. Yet the rumblings of a revival are never far away. My take is over at Stuff: I love retro tech, but a VHS revival is the last thing we need. If you look very carefully at that title, you might just be able to figure out my opinion of this format.

Apple released new AirTags. They’re very much like the old ones, which is (mostly) a good thing. I wrote two columns about them: One thing Apple’s new AirTags won’t help you find is their actual range (Stuff) and I use this £29 iPhone accessory for peace of mind – and it just got even better (Amateur Photographer).

Fancy a new iPhone photo editor? I’m a fan of Obscura Studio, by the same creator as the excellent Obscura Camera. If you’re interested in trying it, check out my Obscura Studio deep dive, for TapSmart. 

‘Phones vs TV’ is increasingly a thing. Various TV show creators have noted that streaming services demand clunky exposition to be woven throughout episodes, because viewers are too often distracted by their phones. But phones can be a boon to TV and movie fans – if you have the right apps. Just, you know, stop looking at your phone when you should be looking at the TV, eh?

Is Apple the new Microsoft? This Betteridge-baiting headline sits atop an interesting piece by Shannon Carroll for Quartz. I don’t agree with everything in it, and I’m not convinced about the title. But this quote totally chimed with me: “Now, Apple doesn’t need every customer to feel delighted, it just needs them to feel locked in – and to keep paying.”

Apple made loads of money. Huge non-shock in Apple reporting it raked in yet more billions over the recent quarter. Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber neatly burst the party bubble: “It is difficult to get a company to see that certain of its core competencies are in severe decline when the company is making more money than ever.” Agreed. Modern Apple appears to equate success solely with profits. Which might account for why it’s making a horrible mess of software, developer relations, and more.

I’m tired of Apple and accessibility. Every year, I write to Apple multiple times about accessibility concerns, primarily in the field I know best: vestibular triggers. To be fair, Apple has taken on board some of what I’ve recommended. But over the past year, it feels like things have slipped. Triggers show up in an operating system and they’re never removed. And most of this stuff is extremely simple to test for: turn on Reduce Motion and check if there are any problematic animations. It appears no one did this for the new Pixelmator Pro for iPad, given that it’s chock full of triggers. Not good enough.

VPNs might be age-gated in the UK. Or they might not. The Lords (UK upper/revisioning chamber) has been debating the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which looks to be about as well conceived as the Online Safety Act. That is, not very. Amendment 92 seeks to age-gate VPNs, which would cause untold problems in industry and be extraordinarily difficult to enforce anyway. And, for good measure, Amendment 94a appears to further a move towards a ban on social media for the under-16s. I wrote about smartphone bans a while ago (Stuff bumped it back up the feed last week) and feel much the same about these new amendments: we need better education, more parental action, and fewer blunt weapons that are setting up cliff edges while simultaneously causing inconsistency. On the plus side, given that the amendments are from the opposition, there’s a reasonable chance the Labour government will ignore them. That said, they seem exactly like the sort of thing this Labour government will wish it had come up with itself.

FUN THINGS! If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Your reward is an update to my Stuff feature on best browser games, which now includes Hill Climb Racing Lite, and news that superb Bubble Bobble ROM hack Lost Caves has been converted to the C64. “Now, it is the beginning of a fantastic story!!”