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.
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.
After a long break, I returned to Wired this week, with a deep dive to ask: Is Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro good for games? I’ve long been an advocate for iPhone gaming, but Apple in recent years has made bold claims about its devices being suitable for AAA. I spent many hours separating fact from fiction and even exploring whether you could ‘consolise’ an iPhone, making any nearby Switch look on, aghast.
Apple released a bunch of new Macs this week. Some of the best coverage is over on Six Colors. I was particularly happy to see Jason Snell mentioning sustainability in his iMac review. You used to be able to use old iMacs as a display for another Mac. That went away long ago. It’s a feature Apple should bring back if it gives a damn about being green.
This week has seen another exodus from X. But I still see people worried about moving on – and a lot of folks getting angry about those who are sticking it out. I can understand why people remain on the site, but suspect there’s no saving what it once was. When an owner is so directly influential in a site, it becomes a reflection of them. Still, when I removed my presence there last summer, it was nonetheless gut-wrenching. I had amassed a wonderful collection of follows and followers over the years. But many of them have long gone now or, at most, shifted to ‘broadcast’ mode. So there’s no going back.
My take these days is there’s nothing that replaces X, but there are plenty of options online for those who’d like to have something broadly similar. I recall David Allen Green referring to Bluesky as Twitter cosplay, and that’s fair enough. But it is marrying familiarity with robust tools that improve the user experience in meaningful ways. Beyond that, Mastodon is chugging along, and there’s Threads for people who want to chat with Pizza Hut.
Also, if you or someone you know is reluctant to leave X because it’s good for news, I’d caution against staying for that reason. The algorithm is too aggressive. Instead, look into RSS and create your own feed of sources you care about. This can include major news outlets, indie blogs and even accounts on the likes of Bluesky, Mastodon and YouTube. My favourite RSS reader is NetNewsWire, but there are many more. If you’d like to get started with NetNewsWire, my colleague Tom Rolfe wrote about that for TapSmart. And I wrote an iPhone toolkit for staying informed – without the need for X.
Incidentally, if you are looking for a new online home and head to one of those networks, do say hi. I’m active on Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon.
Also, last week’s piece, Why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years, went absolutely bonkers. I’ve had (positive) emails and messages all week about it, and it did silly numbers. Thanks to everyone who read it and those who got in touch with their tips about what CD player to buy.
Other stuff
An Apple event is looming, and so I imagine I’ll soon be further immersed in new kit. I’m interested to see how Apple moves its hardware on this year, with the iPhone rumoured to be a reasonably minor update but the Apple Watch getting more substantial changes. Personally, I’ll also be looking at software for Apple Watch – I’m still recovering from covid and so being able to pause my rings can’t come soon enough. (Although it won’t help this time. Still, at least I won’t have to complain about this basic missing feature again.)
Over on Threads, in a response to requests for writing tips, Scalzi suggested reading your work aloud to catch copy errors. This is an old trick, but one I always find many writers surprised by when you mention it. Similarly, relatively few realise you can get your Mac to read text back to you. I outline how on Threads.
Last week, I caught covid for the first time. I’m still isolating. Day nine now. I’ll take another test this afternoon, but still expect it to be positive. I’m… so over this. And it’s increasingly depressing to be away from my family and confined to a room. But it is what it is. At least neither my wife nor my daughter have caught covid from me. And isolation did spur me on to release a new piece of music for the first time in over a decade. You can listen to Where I Want To Be on YouTube. (I’m pretty happy with that bass line. A good reminder of why I need to write more music with actual instruments, rather than prodding at a screen. Anyway…)
If nothing else, catching covid has also been a reality check. My wife mentioned my covid to our elderly neighbour, who looked shocked and asked how I managed to catch it, as if I’d made a special effort to do so. Friends who’ve caught it recently say they’ve had similar responses from people. In the UK at least, it’s as if covid doesn’t exist, despite us just having had the biggest wave in a long time.
Worse, our medical service has no interest whatsoever in helping anyone who’s not ‘at risk’. So while I hear from people in the US and Switzerland who received medication and boosters in recent years, in the UK it’s a case of “take a couple of paracetamol and hope you can shake it off in a couple of weeks”. Oh, and no boosters again for the majority of the population this autumn either (unless you can find somewhere to buy one, for the first time), because the way to stop covid is still apparently to have people repeatedly catch covid. Bonkers.
Heaven help us if a more dangerous disease ever sweeps this country.
