I always get a little giddy at this time of year, and that’s because of the prospect of longer evenings. I’m one of those people who doesn’t get on with winter gloom. Whether I actually have seasonal affective disorder or not, I don’t know for sure. But I do know that as the evenings draw in, I feel a sense of foreboding, like a cloak of oppression lurking just out of reach. When the clocks change in October, instantly plunging evenings into early darkness, it’s like a cloak that surrounds me until the longer days return, and that I constantly have to fight.

Fortunately, at the advice of a Twitter chum, I stumbled across a SAD lamp that helps me through the worst of times. It sits on my desk, searing my retinas during the bleakest days of winter, somehow tricking my brain into thinking sunshine is blazing outside when in fact everything is shrouded in inky blackness peppered with the occasional half-hearted glow of a street lamp. But on Friday, I put my SAD lamp away, and it gave my heart a little leap of joy.

It’s for this reason that I remain militant in my support for daylight saving time. Yet every year I see an increasing number of people grumbling about it. Mostly, it seems, people hate the clocks changing by an hour twice a year; and many people complaining (lots and lots of people in the USA) live much nearer the equator than I do, and so aren’t affected nearly as much.

Here in the UK, we’d have 3am sunrises at the height of summer if daylight savings went away, yet would lose ‘lighter later’ evenings. There have been attempts in the past to address this, with campaigns suggesting the UK moves to the same time zone as France. I suspect nothing will change in the foreseeable future, not least because the Daily Mail would explode in a froth of fury if THEY over in THE EVIL EU would ever TAKE OUR TIME ZONE (or something), regardless of the various studies that suggest the UK on CET would reduce depression, energy use and road deaths.

Still, I’m happier again for seven months now we’re on summertime; but I certainly wouldn’t complain if everyone in the UK somehow forgot to put the clocks back come October.

I have a Smart TV. It’s not overly smart. It’s a Samsung, and looks quite nice, but the interface was seemingly designed by a sadist. The TV runs on-demand ‘apps’, which take ages to load; Freeview audio is always out of sync, despite Samsung going ARGLE WARGLE WILL FIX SOON HONEST BARGLE at regular intervals; the panes within the interface lurch and spin as you switch between them; and the menus seem to have mistaken accessing options for an exciting game of hide the settings.

But what’s most struck me of late is how temporary the ‘smart’ bit seems to be. This telly is about a year old, but now barely a week goes by without a little message appearing at the top of the screen about a service ending. Mostly, these are for apps I don’t really care about, but Samsung itself pulled off a doozy last summer, removing 40 per cent of the front end, so it, apparently, could make improvements and add new features in the future. Naturally, there have been no improvements and no new features since.

What gets me is that tellies are all-in-one units, which are designed to last many years, but it’s clear the software on them isn’t. And this has made me reconsider what I’d go for in future — a much dumber TV to which you can attach an Apple TV or equivalent box. At least those appear to have a bit more of a future, cost little to replace if you want to upgrade or switch units, and tend to add more capabilities over time rather than take them away.

For all its bluster about making perfect and ‘magical’ products, Apple has a streak of realism about it. Company execs often talk about compromise. The point is that you have to compromise on components, in order to meet certain specifications and criteria, be they to do with pricing or usability. The question is whether the right compromises are being made.

Generally, Apple seems to get things right, but there are two areas where I find Apple’s decisions regarding compromise troubling.

The first is storage. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which shoot high-res photos and 4K video, and that are powerful enough to run high-end multi-GB games, start out at 16 GB. For ‘only’ an extra 80 quid or $100, you can get four times as much storage, in what seems like a blatant upsell. The iPad Air 2 also starts at 16 GB, and Apple has removed the 128 GB option, presumably to push people towards the new 128 GB 9.7-inch iPad Pro (which mercifully doesn’t have a 16 GB option, but omits a 64 GB one, leaving a void between 32 and 128).

The second area I have an issue with is the camera on the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. In terms of specifications, it seems to match the camera in the iPhone 6s, but that also means — just like on the iPhone — it is not flush with the case. When used flat on a table, this means the new iPad will wobble — not great if you’re drawing with Apple Pencil or even playing games. And how strong is that lip around the camera? What potential is there for damage? Will users essentially be forced into buying a case, thereby adding heft to the iPad and making its ‘thinness’ largely irrelevant?

However, as a writer interested in investigation and thought rather than screaming linkbait into the void, I have to concede that I simply don’t know what the right compromises are, except for me. Personally, I’d sooner see more storage at the low-end of every Apple line, and I’d prefer the new iPad to have a worse camera that’s flush with the unit. On Twitter, some people have told me they’re flabbergasted by Apple’s decision regarding the new iPad Pro’s camera, but then Perch lead developer Drew McLellan said “When I’ve personally seen an iPad used for work, it’s mainly been for that camera. And always with a case.”

Without the numbers, it’s impossible to know why Apple’s making the decisions that it is; and even with the numbers, you still wouldn’t be sure. Sometimes, these decisions are made on instinct or on the basis of trying to push devices into new areas of use. Even so, the notion of a wobbly iPad is enough for me to stop short of an immediate purchase, instead waiting until I can check one out in an Apple Store. Presumably, Apple thinks or knows my reluctance will be balanced by one or more people deciding Apple has made the right compromise — or them not caring about such compromises at all.

Apple just revealed a new iPad Pro. It looks fantastic. The device has all of the smarts of its bigger brother, but in the more svelte form factor of the iPad Air 2. You get Pencil support, the Smart Connector, built-in stereo speakers, the powerful A9X chip, and a 12-megapixel iSight camera that’s capable of shooting 4K video. In fact, that’s better than the one inside the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Or is it? Technically, the smaller iPad Pro’s camera blows the one in the 12.9-inch device away, but then you finally catch a glimpse of the new iPad from the back (which requires you to scroll a long way down the page linked to above) and notice that the camera protrudes from the rear of the device, just like on the iPhone 6s.

I really don’t like the protruding camera from an aesthetic standpoint, but it really hasn’t made that much difference when I use my iPhone. My iPad Air 2, on the other hand, is often used flat on a desk, most often when playing games, but sometimes also when using apps. I have an Apple keyboard for a Mac that has a slight wobble and it drives me nuts. I can’t really imagine splashing out over £600 on a new iPad with what for me will be such a fundamental usability flaw. And yet everything else about this device screams that it is perfect for what I want.

In short: ARGH.

I recently wrote that Game Center is still broken after six months. For many people, the system fails entirely, launching to a white screen, and freezing Settings when you try to access the Game Center section. This results in many games not running at all, impacting users who play games, and developers who make them (suddenly finding their games are effectively inaccessible unless they build in a ridiculous ‘is Game Center broken on this device?’ workaround); it’s also a pain in the backside for people like me, who write about iOS gaming.

I’ve filed bug reports about the Game Center issue in the past, but when Apple’s new Twitter support team sprang to life, I figured I’d give it a shot. It became clear that (entirely reasonably), I’d be asked to try a bunch of generic fixes, and so on about the third communication I fired over a lengthy message outlining all the things I’d tried already. (There are various ‘tech voodoo’ solutions rattling around the web, none of which appear permanent. The latest, which bizarrely shows some promise, is to restore your device and avoid any game released before November 2013.) In the end, I was bumped to phone support.

I had a very nice conversation with someone at Apple, who said he’d prioritise the case and get insight from engineers regarding what could be done to fix things. I wasn’t optimistic, and it turns out with good reason, because I now have a response:

the issue is being investigated and should hopefully be resolved soon

So there we go. The Game Center bug, which Apple has known about since the iOS 9 betas, is being investigated and should “hopefully” be resolved “soon”. I realise that’s all anyone can really say, but I think anyone reliant on Game Center would be justified in wearing their cynical hat while reading that statement. We can only hope ‘soon’ in this case means ‘by the time of the next minor update’ and not ‘possibly at some point in the iOS 10 cycle’ or ‘before the heat death of the universe’.