Wired headphones are making a comeback. Apparently. This isn’t a ‘year of the Linux desktop’ thing either, because an increasing number of people are embracing the cable once again. I’ve never stopped, and so I wrote about why for Stuff: I love my AirPods but I’m glad wired headphones are making a comeback – here’s why.

Apple and gaming, sitting in a tree. At least, that’s how the company would have it, having made yet another push for gaming last week. I thought this effort was more laudable than most, since it was Apple’s (first? only?) Indie Games Week, highlighting a bunch of new titles. I covered the event for Stuff, including an interview with Hello Games MD Sean Murray, in No Man’s Sky finally prepares to land on iPhone.

There are 299 reasons to not buy the new Apple TV 4K. That’s the main thrust of my column about Apple’s revamped black box. The price hike this device has seen over the past year has been eye-watering, and the updates aren’t nearly enough. Still, if you do grab one, here are the 25 best Apple TV apps you’ll actually use.

Apple HomeView left me baffled. I quite like the idea of it but have barely any meaningful use for one. So I mulled that Apple’s smart display looking like the lovechild of my favourite Mac and an Apple Watch isn’t nearly enough for me to buy one while also grumbling that Apple’s wall-mounted HomeView costs the same as the regular one, despite missing its bottom half.

There are now many, many iPhones. Because my editor made me, I updated my list of every iPhone ranked in order of greatness, which has never been controversial at all, along with my roundup of the current best iPhones.

Fed up with iPhone photos not syncing? Missed the chance to do a syncing feeling pun? No worries. Check out my latest for Amateur Photographer, which explores the annoying reason why your iPhone photos don’t always sync – and how to fix it (for a while, at least).

AI is making mush of people’s brains. At the very least, there’s a compelling argument that people are starting to lose their critical thinking capabilities. From The Guardian’s Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back by Taylor Telford:

At Microsoft, which rolled out AI widely internally, executive vice-president Ryan Roslansky recently publicly lamented the prevalence of AI slop in his day-to-day work. After receiving “what was clearly an AI-generated doc” from a co-worker, he used his AI to summarize it and came away with no new thinking about the idea, he said. He warned his followers against falling into this potential “doom loop”, where AI does the reading and writing and leaves behind an “ocean of sameness”.

I had to read that more than once, because it’s such an amazing and staggering paragraph. I love the bit where it says the Microsoft guy used AI to summarise AI slop (thereby creating, what, slopception?) and – shock! – got no new ideas (having not used his own brain) and was terribly angry about the whole thing. His conclusion is about right. His actions were the problem.