Apple reinvented iPod Socks. But because this is 2025, they’re now ludicrously expensive fashion items. Read more in my column about iPhone Pocket for Stuff.

Apple will soon sell a Mac that uses an iPhone chip.Which makes it even more absurd that, unlike Android 16, you can’t use your iPhone like a laptop. I unravel all this over at Stuff.

I love taking photos on my iPhone. I’m very much an amateur, though, which probably makes me well suited to my new gig, writing for Amateur Photographer. My first two columns are on why the iPhone is a game changer for photography (and always has been) and how fab the Photos app is for editing.

Which is the best iPhone ever? You probably won’t agree with me, but it did take bloody ages to update this list for Stuff, so don’t yell at me too much about it.

Astronomy. Every time I think of the word, I get that Dara Ó Briain sketch in my head, where he explains how to forever remember which is the good one from astronomy and astrology. In short: Astronomy. Nommy. Yes, I know. But I’ll take that to the grave. Anyway, I wrote a feature about using Night Sky to explore the heavens.

We don’t live in a paperless world. Yet. Fortunately, then, iPhone document scanners exist. Here are my favourites, in a round-up for TapSmart. 

Want some iPadOS and macOS tips? Check out my updates for iPadOS 26.1 and macOS Tahoe 26.1 over at Stuff.

Want a new Apple Watch? Here’s my latest update to the TapSmart Apple Watch buyer’s guide.

Another visitor! Stay a while! Stay forever! If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember Elvin Atombender yelling this via your C64. What you might not know is folks are beavering away on the third entry on the series, and it’s looking great.

Xiaomi’s Game Boy-style retro case is bonkers. For Stuff, I suggested it was the maddest smartphone accessory I’ve ever seen. Because it is.

Want some premium Pi? The Raspberry Pi 500+ tries something new, bringing a properly clacky keyboard to its all-in-one. This and the internal SSD ramp up the price, but it’s nice to see the Pi lot exploring new markets.

UK ID cards are back! And just as divisive as ever. I have no issues with ID cards in the abstract, but the Labour Party’s reasoning for them is “because migrants”, which isn’t remotely OK. Also, the government’s obsession with digital-only doesn’t seem a great idea for a national ID card. Just ask people with settled status and that digital-only document…

The new Met Office app is terrible. I love the Met Office. Its forecasts are often excellent. The current app is workmanlike but really good for getting information across. To me, the new one is like a cheap take on Yahoo Weather, totally misunderstanding the benefits of reasonable information density. It just takes longer to do anything and the provided information has less clarity. You can get the betas here. Do provide feedback if you use it.

Immersion has a new album out. WTF?? is a hopeful soundtrack to the times we find ourselves in. Grab a copy.

The keynote for Apple’s developer conference was held yesterday. Much of it involved Apple executives hyping Apple’s “delightful and elegant new software design”. In short, it’s like Windows Vista, visionOS and the interfaces in Minority Report had a baby. As I explain in a column for Stuff, I’m not thrilled about this new direction.

Online, I’ve seen plenty of pushback against those complaining. A common thread appears to be that Apple is a leader in accessibility and there are options to turn some Liquid Glass elements off. But there are problems with that point of view.

While I’m more writer than designer these days, I was trained in the visual arts. I was always taught that clarity and legibility should be at the forefront of anyone’s mind when designing. Surely, that’s even more the case when creating an operating system for many millions of users. Yet even in Apple’s press release, linked earlier, there are multiple screenshots where key interface components are, at best, very difficult to read. That is the new foundational point for Apple design. And those screenshots will have been designed to show the best of things.

Furthermore, Apple may be a leader in accessibility, but it is far from perfect. I first wrote about vestibular issues on this blog, back in 2012. But it was the following year, with a piece for The Guardian (Why iOS 7 is making some users sick) that the word got out there regarding major accessibility issues with a new design language. To Apple’s credit, it did listen. Changes happened. The iOS team in particular has been very responsive to my recommendations – and I’m sure also to those from others.

But the key word is responsive. Apple is still very often reactive rather than proactive regarding vision accessibility. Even today, there are major problems with the previous versions of its operating systems (one example being the vestibular trigger if you tap-hold the Focus button in Control Centre). One year on, they aren’t fixed. And now we have an entirely new design language that will upend everything and that starts from a place where clarity has been eroded, animations are even more prevalent, and broad accessibility is seemingly an afterthought.

My hope is that there will be time in this beta run for enough fixes to be made. My fear is that many of us will be waiting months for a fully usable OS, if that ever occurs. So, sure, argue against what I and others are concerned about. State, correctly, that Apple is a leader in accessibility. But stop assuming that just because this new design might be OK for you and because Apple has controls in place that might help people avoid the worst effects of design changes, everything is just peachy. Because it isn’t. Millions of people are now a coin flip away from whether or not they’ll be able to comfortably use their devices in just a few short months from now.

Last year, I argued that Apple never wanted emulators on the App Store. I suspected it felt strong-armed by EU regulators into allowing them, or was using them as a tool to blunt AltStore, which looked set to specialise in the kind of apps Apple wouldn’t approve. I also noted that MAME4iOS was in limbo. But the situation is in fact worse.

The developer had already renamed MAME4iOS to ArcadeMania, due to Apple raising concerns about ownership of the MAME brand. OK. I get that. But a couple of months back, the creator revealed (and I noted on Mastodon) that Apple rejected the app anyway because “they said it can only run ROMs owned by the developer”.

Still, this is app review, right? Mistakes happen. So the app was resubmitted. And computer said no:

The App Review Board evaluated your app and determined that the original rejection feedback is valid.

To address the 5.2.2 issue, please revise your app to only run ROM files created by you or that you specifically own.

We encourage you to review the previous rejection correspondence for this app, make the necessary changes to bring it into compliance with the App Review Guidelines, and resubmit it for review.

ArcadeMania’s creator adds: “I’m kind of at a loss of what to do at this point”. And, yeah, it’s easy to see why. Emulators, by definition, tend to run ROMs their creators don’t own. Apple’s demand is like mandating music player developers own every song users might add. And it’s a doubly baffling decision, given the existence of other emulators, including arcade emulators, on the App Store.

Apple isn’t serious about emulation. It never was. Right now, creating an emulator for iPhone, iPad or Apple TV is a waste of time, given that approval is a lottery with opaque rules Apple changes on a whim and does not apply evenly. And all this further damages the company’s gaming credibility. People who like emulators tend to really like games and they’re vocal. Right now, they continue to shout about Android.

See also:

• Apple isn’t serious about retro game emulation on iPhone – nor level playing fields for developers
• Apple vs emulation – three months of incoherence and idiocy

Published stuff

I was immersed in ancient games this week for Stuff, reviewing the Evercade Alpha and The Spectrum. The common theme? I liked both of these gadgets a lot more than I expected to. Both delivered a neat blast of nostalgia and immediacy, while recognising that people like to load additional games on to gaming devices.

Elsewhere, RIP your wallet, due to my updating the best enormous Lego kits to buy. And Apple announced it will soon set fire to thousands of iCloud backups. So my column for Stuff warns: Don’t rely on cloud backups, because iCloud and Google won’t keep your stuff forever.

I also wrote a quick post about the dismal current state of app review on iOS when it comes to emulation. 

Upcoming stuff

The end of the year is blazing towards us all. Which means… retrospectives. Lots and lots of retrospectives. 2024 was a weird year in lots of ways. It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out when I review it in terms of Apple and tech.