I simplified my audio setup some years back. In my column for Stuff this week, I dig into the reasons why – and find validation in the excellent new Ruark MR1 Mk3 speakers – along with offering a dash of audiophile baiting for good measure.

Want to give your brain a workout? Here are 12 excellent puzzle games for iPhone, each offering bite-sized challenges.

Little Computer People is 40. I loved this game as a kid. Although ‘game’ is perhaps underselling it. LCP was more like a digital goldfish – a pet person that was proto-Sims mixed with a Tamagotchi. I remain amazed that no one has resurrected it for smartphones, because it would be a perfect pocket companion. Check out the piece I wrote for Stuff about this 8-bit classic.

Moodflow deleted a year of my records. I’m not thrilled about this. The Google Play store is now flooded with angry customers, and there’s almost certainly no way to get the data back. (The app in theory backed up to Google Drive, but another bug apparently signed users out before obliterating their records – including mine.) Safe to say I won’t be writing about this app ever again.

As a child of the ’80s, I grew up with the C64 and ZX Spectrum. I still love how ancient systems tackle imagery. Retrospecs is the best way to process pics as old-school art, from delicate Mac Plus emulation to custom animated ASCII weirdness. It’s now on sale for just two bucks. If you own an iPhone or iPad and have any interest whatsoever in classic computer graphics, it’s a must-buy.

Slide Over is back. Apple has resurrected its popular ‘stashable’ iPad window – ish. It now only holds one app (albeit one per display) but it can now be resized. I wrote about this for Stuff, noting how it gives me hope Apple will fix other aspects of its revised operating systems. *cough Liquid Glass cough*

Sleep Score worries me. Apple isn’t alone in ‘rating’ your sleep. And I know some people thrive on gamifying every aspect of their lives. But over at TapSmart, I explore the damage such systems can cause.

A new Twitter? Not quite. Rather than connecting with people, I spent some happy hours connecting with our feathered friends by way of BirdNET.

EastEnders vs fridge? In a now sadly deleted Reddit post, I learned the Internet of Shit is alive and well. The poster claimed their Samsung fridge was picking up and playing audio from their neighbours, including EastEnders. They couldn’t find a way to disable Bluetooth. Turning off the speaker effectively made many of the fridge’s smart features redundant. Although, frankly, a non-smart fridge that isn’t connected to the internet seems like a good idea to me, given what else Samsung is experimenting with.

Human-centric AI publishing! That’s apparently the latest wheeze, according to a press release I received earlier. This would combat the tide of AI slop by allowing people to create a non-fiction book. In an hour. Uh-huh.

I stole Fairphone’s Moments switch. I was at a tech event last week, where bemused journos are herded into an underground space to bounce around between PRs. Fairphone was the main brand that caught my eye, especially when the Moments switch was demonstrated to me. When I got home, I made something similar for my iPhone, as outlined in Why Apple should steal the Fairphone 6 Moments switch for the iPhone.

Razer is bonkers. I say this on the basis that last year I wrote about ‘hacking’ a GameSir X2s to create an iPad Pro ‘handheld’. But Razer’s Kishi V3 Pro XL now does this in an official capacity.

I love matrix synths. They make it easy for anyone to create music. TonePad was the best. I write about how to bring it back for iPhone.

Retro games on iPhone? Apple pushed back for so long against emulation, but the iPhone emulation scene is slowly improving. My classic games toolkit for TapSmart explores how to get started, apps to check out, and accessories to add.

Keen on the night sky? I added Star Walk to my iPhone classics series. The app first appeared waaaay back in 2008 and has since influenced a whole host of astronomy apps.

Please subscribe! Speaking of TapSmart, its iPhone/iPad incarnation Swipe is a twice-monthly indie publication. Issue 337 is our latest, packed with all sorts of goodies. If you’d like to support us, there’s a free trial, and then subscriptions are just $2/£2 per month, which also unlocks dozens of back issues.

“Your presentation is pedantic and boring.” Ken Segall recalls Steve Jobs using this line, eviscerating a former colleague’s pitch – and then applies the same argument to Apple’s current events, which he thinks are too “slick, repeatable… and safe”. I think they also lack humanity. Pre-covid stage-based stuff was always much warmer. Apple events today come across as a weird combination of polished, sterile and ‘Steve Jobs cosplay’ (in terms of everyone’s delivery).

Galaxy Ring crushes finger. Ouch. I wasn’t excited about the prospect of a smart ring anyway. Even less so now. My Apple Watch strap isn’t going to strangle my wrist.

A playable Lego Game Boy? Someone got it working. And not even with a Pi, which was my assumption of how someone might achieve such a feat. 

Dashy Crashy is back. The remastered version dials down the IAP to a single payment, drip-feeding missions and new cars over the weeks ahead. iOS-only for now, but lots of fun. I added it to my best free iPhone games feature. To grab it right away, head to the App Store.

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.