Apple logos through time

Apple turned 50 last week. Which, unsurprisingly, accounted for a lot of my work, which reflected on five decades of the tech giant in various ways…

Apple’s 50 best products ever! Was not entirely what I wrote for Stuff. I reasoned that pitting an Apple II against an iPhone was ridiculous. So, instead, I totted up personal votes from the team, which made for some… interesting results. The countdown was published in five parts – 50–41, 40–31, 30–21, 20–11 and 10–1 – after which editor Dan Grabham complained about a few entries having not made the cut.

I appeared on The Bunker podcast. Which, as a long-time listener, was a lot of fun. I talked to historian Alex von Tunzelmann about how Apple came to be, its successes and blunders, and whether it can survive the age of AI. Listen to the episode here.

How Apple changed photography forever. I wrote this piece for Amateur Photographer as a potted history of sometimes non-obvious (or, at least, non-iPhone) ways in which the company upended the world of photography.

Some Apple gear never makes it into the wild. These products often take on mythical status, or at least have you question what might have been – for better or worse. I wrote about seven of them for TechRadar.

Apple revolutionised mobile. Obviously. But, given that I write for iPhone mag Swipe (republished online at TapSmart), we figured it’d be fun to do a super-speedy 50 ways Apple changed the world: iPhone, iPod, iOS and beyond.

I also wrote some stuff that wasn’t to do with Apple’s 50th…

Apple Watch sleep tracking is weird. For my Stuff column this week, I talk about how Apple’s sleep tracking seems too keen to please, and that – surprisingly – I want it to be meaner to me.

Turn your smartphone into a games console! Sort of. With these mobile controllers, you can have some surprisingly excellent gaming larks, whether you’re playing AAA titles or retro fare.

Or stick with an actual retro console. Evercade Nexus is the latest iteration of Blaze’s handheld that aims to bring back the experience of classic gaming, rather than just the games themselves. I wrote about it for Stuff, which outlines the hurrahs (wireless play) and hurroos (oddly low screen PPI). Also, if you want a retro gaming handheld before this lands in October, there’s my budget retro handhelds roundup, which is also in the current edition of the print mag.

Your phone can scan more than documents. For TapSmart, I wrote about specialist scanner apps for photos, food, Lego, and more.

The clocks have changed! Which, as regular readers will know, has made me almost absurdly chipper. I am, apparently, solar powered. If you’d like to keep tabs on daylight and have an iPhone, check out my roundup of the best apps for doing so.

Need a new Mac? I updated my Mac buyer’s guide over at TapSmart.

Waste your time! With the 57 best browser games you can play for free, including the infuriatingly addictive 100 Jumps and the ‘likely to be atomised by Nintendo lawyers quite soon’ Wind Waker.

Finally, a few not-me things: