Design is how it works. Liquid Glass doesn’t. At least, that’s the broad consensus in my latest for Wired, Liquid Glass Could Be One of Apple’s Most Divisive System Designs Yet, which includes comments from several app creators and designers.

Elsewhere, I’m seeing plenty more confirming people aren’t impressed with Apple’s latest. Matt Hill’s comments in the first link of those three are especially illuminating, because he switched to Mac in part because of its consistent design language, which Apple is busy atomising. 

Ads are everywhere – and now coming to $2,000 fridges. Good job, Samsung! I’m sure everyone wanted their expensive cooling box to feel as premium as a Kindle With Ads. I bellyache about this trend for Stuff.

I did a podcast. Marketplace Tech asked me to chat about how the new iPadOS brings Apple’s tablet greater flexibility but also kills off Steve Jobs’s original vision for the device. Hopefully I don’t sound too bonkers. 

The camera plateau isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. My column for TapSmart looks into Apple’s ‘rebrand’ of an unfortunate hardware bump, digging into why the bump itself actually a good thing.

The iPhone Air is Apple’s future, hidden in plain sight. Another TapSmart column, this time looking at the ‘compromise iPhone’ and reasons why it might exist beyond being a new shiny shiny to distract people bored with more of the same.

Speaking of, I did a search of local Apple Stores yesterday. This was launch day. I could get an iPhone Air basically anywhere. Most iPhone Pro models too. The iPhone 17? Nope. Curious.

Need a good clock app? Here are some good clock apps for iPhone.

The NES did not save video games. I don’t recall what triggered my grumping online about the ‘video game crash’ and the NES sailing to the rescue. Probably yet another misinformed YouTuber stating this as a global fact. It’s bollocks. And it’s especially irksome when British YouTubers – or the BBC – parrot this line. Doubly so for the BBC, which had its own platform at the time.

I should probably write my own take on this topic at some point, but TL;DR is that even in the US things were more complicated than Atari ET game > things go splat > NES is here > hurrah! In the UK and elsewhere, it’s revisionist nonsense. European markets, for example, were in rude health during the entire 1980s – and the NES was barely a blip on the radar there until the very end of the decade.

Pac-Man is gone from the App Store. And Google Play. This isn’t breaking news – it happened a few months back. I find this wild. I can only assume it wasn’t pulling in enough money for Bandai Namco to bother continuing to support it. But this is also why I’m often all HARD STARE at corporations bellyaching about the evils of retro game emulation. 

I mean, I get it for Switch. When games are being sold right now in stores, it’s not a good thing when emulators are inviting folks to pirate everything. But for products that are decades old? And where companies very specifically have never provided a route to legal ownership in a manner that lets you play the games how you wish? Do better, games industry! (And, yes, I know this won’t happen. Digital music being ‘freed’ from any specific platform wasn’t a lesson learnt in favour of consumer freedom. Corporations decided: we will never let that happen again.)

Alex Andreou wrote about flags. Specifically how they are being weaponised in the UK right now and making immigrants feel unwelcome and unsafe. (My county council seems completely uninterested in taking down the ones across our local area. Some of them are massive too. I suspect when one of the bigger ones comes loose and causes a pile-up, said council might think again.)

Carrot Weather has added a musical. It’s about the Carrot AI’s attempts to overthrow her maker – and the world. Which is… quite something. (And also mildly terrifying, if catchy.)

Lego is releasing a gingerbread AT-AT. That’s it. That’s the piece.

The iPhone Air reveal was a load of hot air. That’s the central premise of my column for Stuff, which explores what Apple said and what it delivered. Now, it’s not like Apple isn’t prone to hyperbole. Yet for this phone, the gap between spin and reality was greater than we’ve seen in a long time. And of all the compromises Apple made that I mention in the piece (and there are many), I didn’t even mention that the Air has a single speaker, like a budget Android blower from five years ago. I regret the omission. (Apple probably doesn’t, given that it wasn’t even mentioned during the launch keynote.)

The iPhone 17, however, is boring. Yet in another column, I argue why I reckon it’s the best option for most people this year – and (surprisingly) even closer to the iPhone Pro than ever.

The iPhone 16 cannot be upgraded. Which is quite funny. Last year, Apple provided a couple of storage upgrades for the 15. But if it had done the same today, potential buyers would end up with the option of a 256GB iPhone 16 or a 256GB iPhone 17 for the same price. It’s strange. Last year, the 16 seemed like solid value. Now, 12 months later, it’s not worth considering.

Spotify Lossless hi-fi audio won’t cost extra. Good. That’s the only way I’d ever use it. I outline why over at Stuff, in a column guaranteed to eject me from Spotify’s Christmas card list – and that of those types of audiophiles.

Replacing your Mac with an iPad? I did that. And, last week, I chatted about it for Marketplace Tech.

iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 are out on Monday. My sympathies to anyone who has to use them. But if you do, here are some tips to make the best of them.

Love books? Can’t remember what you own or have read? Then you need Book Tracker, a top-notch app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. I dig into its excellent feature set for TapSmart.

The UK government is looking to expand the Online Safety Act. Because of course it is. Again, it’s hard to argue against the premise. Of course no one wants vulnerable people to be able to access content that encourages self-harm. But there is no magic wand that will make all this go away. Although Labour appears to think one exists, by saying it is “compelling platforms to use cutting-edge technology to actively seek out and eliminate this content before it can reach users and cause irreparable harm, rather than simply reacting after someone has already been exposed to it”. So it was never about porn. It was never about children. And I do wonder what will be next on the list.

Apple Music can’t get any worse, right? Wrong. [Edit: I’m told this isn’t new. I hadn’t noticed because I use Reduce Motion. But still… yikes.]

I never liked OutRun much. Sorry. I thought it was a quite clunky racing game, despite the lovely visuals and excellent music. The sequel, however, remains my favourite racing game ever. If anything might change my mind about the original, it’s people doing amazing things with the concept, squeezing it into places it shouldn’t go, such as a C64 PETSCII version and this amazing fan effort for the Game Boy Color. Do-do do-do-do-do do-do-dooooooo!

Subscribe to Design Thinking. It’s an ace comic strip about being in the world of design. But when the creator asked if maybe people might chuck him some cash over Ko-Fi, he lost subscribers. Too many people are entitled. If you’re not one of them, please show this cartoonist some love.

My camera is an iPhone. It has been for years. And so with new iPhones – with new camera systems – arriving early next week, I decided to explore what was coming next in my Stuff column, ‘Zoom and gloom: The iPhone 17 Pro camera rumours I love – and hate’.

Longplay is great. If you have an iPhone, iPad or Mac and a love of the album as a distinct musical unit (vs having Spotify or Apple Music turn your entire music collection into a massive jukebox), it’s a must. Over at TapSmart, I outline why I think Longplay is the best music app for iPhone.

Two-factor authentication is a must. Increasingly so. Which is why I dug into my favourite 2FA apps for iPhone.

Mac devs are revolting. In the sense that they’re pissed off at Apple. Marco Arment argues Apple’s attempts to harmonise its operating systems “solve a problem no Mac users had”. Craig Hockenberry fumes that one size does not fit all in a blog post that dismantles Apple’s current Mac approach. They’re not alone, and I wonder if the real fallout of the ‘26’ operating systems won’t be so much Liquid Glass, but Apple finally breaking long-term, vocal, important Mac advocates to the degree they just don’t care anymore.

Mac apps no longer feel native. That’s the startling conclusion from Steve Troughton-Smith. And it’s hard to disagree. Things were already quite bad. But macOS 26 makes everything significantly worse with interface design forced on it from mobile platforms. By contrast, although the UI design for iPadOS 26 is poor as well, the functionality improvements from the new windowing system – which I wrote about for WIRED – tip things to positive on Apple tablets.

macOS 26 creates a squircle jail. I remember when Android started experimenting with round icons and shoved existing ones inside of a circle. It looked crap. But, hey, Android! Today, though, Android looks (and often works) better than the upcoming iOS 26, and macOS is now busy forcing distinct icon shapes into identical squircles. The arrogance is breathtaking, as is the total lack of respect for app creators. Bizarrely, some of Apple’s own apps are caught in the mess, although I assume that will be fixed next week. Unlike, you know, the rest of the utter disaster that is Liquid Glass and Apple’s botched UI and UX ‘harmonisation’ of its operating systems.

The iPhone Air is imminent. If the rumours are right, the result is going to be an odd duck. I dig into that in my latest Stuff column, I want the iPhone 17 Air to slim down the iPhone – not dumb it down.

Secure your stuff! When it comes to iPhones and data, I outline how in the latest TapSmart toolkit. 

Wonderputt was great. And it’s now the latest entry in my long-running iPhone classics series. 

Liquid Glass is locked. We’re at dev beta 8 now with this year’s Apple operating systems, which means any changes from this point will be minimal. The visual design and UX still sucks, so much so that a print mag I occasionally write for has provided new guidelines for screenshots. Contributors must turn Reduce Transparency ON. Why? Because otherwise grabs wouldn’t be legible enough.

I’ve never seen this kind of direction before. Until now, every tech/Mac magazine I’ve written for demanded you shoot grabs with default settings. But we’re now at the point with Apple design where the default UI isn’t suitable for a long-running print publication unless a buried accessibility setting is activated. Good work, everyone! Everything is fine dot gif.

Google Pixel’s AI Zoom makes shit up. Shocker, eh? There’s a good piece about it from John Scalzi. All of which reminded me of a Stuff column I wrote in 2023: Samsung Space Zoom promised the moon but gave us an AI ‘fake’ – and I don’t care. The end bit seems rather chilling now:

In the future, everyone in a photo will smile, because that’s friendly, whether they were actually smiling or not. Litter will be eradicated and every street will be clean, unless you’re looking at the real street. You won’t be able to believe anything you see in any picture, but that’s OK, because by then the screens will be on your face. You’ll swim around in an unreality uncanny valley AR metaverse forever, while the real world is on fire. But at least the moon will look perfect.

Llamasoft is coming to Evercade. 27(!) games on a single cart. Really happy to see Jeff Minter getting some love, what with this and the Digital Eclipse effort. Great also that both of these products enable you to explore multiple versions of key Llamasoft games. What Jeff managed to get out of the humble VIC-20 is astonishing, and VIC Gridrunner is possibly still my favourite version (perhaps tied with the sadly long-gone iPad release).

Soundwave superior! For once, my Stuff column is a properly light-hearted one, rather than me griping about something. Well, apart from chastising teenage me for selling his toys, the massive idiot. Still, I get to revel in a chonky Transformers Soundwave that’s also a Lego set. YASSSSS.

Speaking of Lego, I updated Stuff’s guide to the best upcoming Lego sets and OH MY at that WALL-E and EVE kit.

The ZX Spectrum Next is a hit. There’s lots of bullshit rattling around in retro-gaming circles right now, with a certain ‘new’ company supposedly against toxic social media deciding to be toxic on social media about its rivals. Hmmm. By contrast, the ZX Spectrum Next mob all seem rather lovely about everything. And so it pleases me greatly that the third ‘issue’ of the new ZX Spectrum managed over 1,000% of its funding target, pulling in a whopping £2.6m. If this really is going to be the last ever official Next, that’s a pretty spectacular finale.

iOS 26. Bleh. I still can’t stand Liquid Glass (or, as of dev beta 6, Liquid Frosted Glass). I don’t understand what it’s for, in terms of user benefit. It just seems to be for Apple to say “hey, look at our flashy light refraction tech!” Fortunately, there are good bits in iOS 26, as outlined in my latest tips piece for Stuff.

Apps! I don’t write about apps as much as I used to (mostly because hardly any publications now want app coverage, alas), but the odd piece still rocks up. In fact, this past week, I wrote three. For Stuff, I added AudioKit Synth One J6 to the best free iPad/iPhone apps round-up, wrote a Photomator deep dive, and updated TapSmart’s best task manager apps for iPhone feature.

VPNs are bad! Apparently. In the non-shock of the week, the UK government is now mulling age-gating VPNs and arguing (wrongly) that individuals verifying keeps children safe and so people should stop using VPNs. 

Ultimately, Labour’s implementation of the Online Safety Act is starting the process of normalising mandated accounts tied to unthinking verification for any site that might have content that isn’t all suitable for children. Additionally, MPs are bigging up big UK drops in traffic to Pornhub as a victory, but with no context whatsoever. It may be people have moved to other sites, or users are now ‘invisible’. Vilifying a ‘good actor’ porn site also feels very right-wing USA…

Anyway, there’s a big Bluesky thread here that tries to unravel my response to various aspects of this. But first go and read Girl on the Net’s excellent Age verification: what’s the harm?

I hate school uniforms. Mini-G is heading to secondary in September and we’re now immersed in buying her extensive garb. It’s expensive. The number of mandated items is ludicrous. Most of them are single supplier, from a supplier that is woefully inconsistent in sizes – and that has stock issues with whatever mini-G needs. Helpfully, the school has noted it will be zero-tolerance on uniform infractions.

I’m so sick of this bullshit. There is no real evidence that uniforms are beneficial. Plenty of other European countries merely have school clobber guidance, and their kids do a lot better than Brits in school, in terms of academia and socialisation. Ultimately, our obsession with uniforms goes back to class and conformity, and it’s absurdly outdated. I’ve heard arguments it’s about ‘preparing’ children for work. But not that many companies mandate people wearing a suit these days. And I don’t see any benefit in an 11-year-old child wearing a fucking tie to school every day. Fume.