I’m still running iOS 18. Would I recommend doing so? Probably not. But I still find iOS 26 borderline unusable. I write for Stuff about how I hope WWDC 2026 will bring better news in the shape of iOS 27.
The men’s football World Cup is almost here. Think you can do better than your team? Prove your skills with these iPhone football games.
Ruark gear is lovely. I have a bunch of it in my home. The British company has just released some new kit, which is spendy but gorgeous. My piece for Stuff has the lowdown.
Halide Mark III is here. This iPhone camera app is opinionated and beautiful – and one of several I keep on my iPhone. I’ve updated my best iOS apps roundup with info about the new release. You can also find out more about Halide Mark III here – and how to gain quick access to multiple iPhone camera apps and editors by reading my tutorial on the Action button for Amateur Photographer.
Marjane Satrapi has passed away. Tragically, she’s said to have died of a broken heart at just 56. The NYT piece is worth reading. As is Satrapi’s Persepolis, if you don’t own a copy.
Squid Bits! In happier news, Jess Bradley’s superb Squid Bitsfinally has a collected edition. Buy one for your kid(s) – and yourself. It’s really fun.
Inbox hero? Maybe you can get there with my Gmail tips. (And, you know, maybe I’ll actually do all of these things myself and get to inbox zero before the heat death of the universe…)
The iPhone Action button finally clicked for me. It’s all about creating menus. I dig into how to do so in my article for TapSmart.
June + Lego = argh. At least if you’re trying to save money. Anyway, sorry if you are 1) trying to save and 2) a big Lego fan, because I updated my upcoming Lego sets feature.
Jamie Smart is great. He won the inaugural graphic novel award at the British Book Awards. And his acceptance speech was a love letter to the entire British comics industry. His work appears every week in The Phoenix and there are loads of Bunny vs Monkey collections available, which are fantastic for kids and adults alike.
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.
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.
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.
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.
