My town’s schools just banned smartphones. I think that’s a bad idea. Which, as I’ve discovered this week, isn’t a popular take. But there’s too much blaming of tech itself rather than how it’s supplied, managed and used, and less attention paid to the benefits it can bring. The column looks at the practical ramifications of a ban, from personal security to e-waste. (Katie Spalding a while back expertly called parent pledges to ban phones themselves “abstinence only phone education”. Brilliant.)

The next ZX Spectrum will also be a Commodore 64. Seriously. Well, sort of. The third and final run of the ZX Spectrum Next, a super-Speccy that uses FPGA to ‘be’ any Sinclair machine, will now be able to become Commodore’s finest too. Which is deeply funny, because that’s basically a 1980s British playground argument in a box.

Another Sinclair wants to spark a gaming revolution. Sir Clive’s nephew launched featherweight handheld GamerCard. It’s a bizarre thing – ultra-skinny with weird controls. It’s hard to imagine how it’ll be when actually playing games – even Pico-8, for which its display is ideal. Still, it’s tempting, despite being painfully spendy.

Sony’s first portable console turned 25. No, not that one. I’m talking about the PS One, which I wrote about along with a handful of other interesting Sony console side-quest updates.

UK websites want to verify your age. The Verge reported Bluesky and Reddit are early out of the blocks. Brits on Bluesky lost their minds, apparently unaware that this isn’t about one or two sites – it’s all of them. And the system doesn’t scale, demanding account creation and age verification with each individual site, entrusting numerous third parties with your personal data. At some point, this will end in a massive data breach. I also imagine we’ll see many sites simply block UK traffic rather than deal with the hassle. And, no, “just use a VPN” is not the answer to tech overreach.

Today’s consoles are cheap. Seriously. Over at Stuff, I remark how the Neo Geo Super Pocket finally gives me the console I could never afford as a kid. The starting point for this column was remembering that my first true gaming love, the C64, cost 400 quid back in the early 1980s. That’s the equivalent of £1400 today. Blimey. Anyway, the new Super Pocket is fab – and at pocket-money prices. Grab one.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood is 40. Not the band, which formed in 1980, but the game. Rocking up just after the band’s peak, Ocean’s title – which gaming legend Julian Rignall reminisced about on Bluesky – could so easily have been a half-arsed piece of junk to satisfy a license. But creator Denton Designs went above and beyond, crafting a unique mix of adventuring, mini-games and strategy that was years ahead of its time, and still in many ways stands up today.

The basic premise finds you exploring nondescript terrace houses, looking for clues to solve puzzles. In an era of text adventures, this foreshadowed Lucasfilm point-and-click games. If you found a tape, you could insert it into a VHS deck and start a mini-game. There were ten in all. Some were topical, such as Reagan and Gorbachev spitting at each other in a surreal take on those old Wild West shooter games. Some were surreal. One was disarmingly beautiful. 

There was so much more too, from a murder mystery to solve to a cat to feed. The extreme to the mundane. All to create a game about a pop band. If nothing else, Frankie Goes To Hollywood – on the 8-bit platforms that had 64k or under to play with – serves as a fantastic reminder of the magic that can happen when dev teams go above and beyond. Watch a video of the C64 version.

Accessibility and Apple: dizziness edition. I’m still concerned about the dev betas and how they’ll be this September. So I wrote about it, outlining Apple’s approach to vestibular accessibility (better than most, but still falling short), and responded to the three types of feedback I usually receive for these posts.

Also, I still hate Liquid Glass. We’re weeks into beta season now, and to me it still looks like a knock-off Android skin. It’s the first Apple OS I vehemently dislike to the degree I don’t want to use it. But on the Android thing, a thought struck me. I have the Android 16 beta on my Pixel, and this is the first time I’ve found I like Android’s visual design a whole lot more than the iPhone’s, but also where I’ve been frustrated about shortcomings in the flexibility and customization of Android compared to iPhone. Notably (and I know Android folks may disagree), I much prefer iOS widgets. And Control Centre is still far ahead of Quick Settings. I’m not saying the two operating systems have ‘switched places’; but it is interesting that Apple is no longer the obvious leader in terms of design, and Android isn’t always out front regarding flexibility.

Want to write on an iPhone? Probably not. But it’s a device millions of people always have on them. So when inspiration does strike, use the tips in my updated writing toolkit.

Social media is a mess. So here are some of my favourite iPhone apps to help you consolidate social media and your wider reading.

Why is Mail still in the Dark Ages? This column looks at the current Apple operating system betas, does a happy dance in the direction of Phone and Messages triaging spam, and then asks why Mail is so pitiful at doing the same.

Dark Nebula joins my iPhone classics series. I always loved this game, which is like if Bounder and Marble Madness had a baby. I’d love to see an updated version of it and the sequel on Apple Arcade. HINT HINT ETC.

One device to rule them all‽ That’s the subject of my Stuff column this week: I’ve used Android 16’s desktop mode – and now I’m frustrated with my iPhone. I’ve written about ‘phones as desktops’ before, and it’s a subject that somehow manages to annoy just about everyone. But I really like the idea of a phone that can become your primary device, plugging into accessories as and when it’s necessary. But even if that doesn’t work for you, Google’s efforts with Samsung are important for at least two reasons. First, in baking a desktop mode directly into vanilla Android, devs will be encouraged to make apps that are more flexible, and they will thereby better support more varied devices, such as foldables. Secondly, maybe – just maybe – it might prompt Apple to bring its really rather good iPad windowing model to iPhone. Although I’ll be bloody amazed if that happens any time soon. Apple doesn’t want you buying fewer Apple devices, after all. The notion people could just buy one would give Apple’s entire finance team heart palpitations.

Need a widget wizard? Probably not, but if you use an iPhone or an iPad, app Widget Wizard might be worth a look. In my deep dive for TapSmart, I outline how I use the app myself. The agenda widget is especially handy.

Google search AI results continue to suck. I’d naively thought people would push back against this feature, after all the terrible press. But Google just manually weeds out the worst cases, which means millions and millions of slop answers are copied and pasted daily. I recently watched online as people started arguing about the specs of a device that had ostensibly received an update. In reality, it was a new model but had the same guts. Google AI didn’t know this, because it doesn’t ‘know’ anything and duly served up some hallucinations a fan of the brand pasted into a forum thread – and then doubled down on. Absurdly, this convinced a couple of people to spend actual money. I suspect they’re not going to be so thrilled when they find they own two devices with identical specs but slightly different shells. Sigh.

Em dashes aren’t evil. Over on Bluesky, Leena said she won’t change how she writes in case someone might doubt she’s human. Her thread adds that some GenAI tropes exist because the tech mimics good human writing. The thing is, editors are already getting twitchy. I’ve had two more or less ask me to omit em dashes from my own work, because they’re concerned about people claiming copy their orgs run may in any way be AI-generated. Thing is, at some point the tech bros will tweak the algorithm (“Use fewer em dashes!”) and then what? So to fight this stuff, we just have to be better. Which in the case of most GenAI writing means not sounding like mediocre marketing copy (or, for socials, not overusing bullet points and spraying emoji about like confetti).

I met a cow. It was a nice cow, in a place cows are not supposed to be. Top tip: if you meet a cow, be kind to the cow. Avoid the cow. Give the cow space. Don’t, say, like people I saw that day, almost sneak up on the cow from behind because you “like cows”. Doubly so when said cow has massive horns that might puncture human flesh. (That didn’t happen in this case. And the cow was shortly ‘rescued’ by local rangers and returned to her field. But good grief at some people.)

Microsoft is killing the Blue Screen of Death. In my piece for Wired, I take a trip down memory lane to wave goodbye to the iconic screen we all love to hate. (Spoiler: there will still be a BSOD, but the B will stand for something new.)

Even Hades couldn’t save Netflix Games. Is mobile gaming doomed? Betteridge-baiting headline aside, this column for Stuff dives into my thoughts on mobile gaming, from its earliest days to the huge problems this side of gaming now faces. In my view, it’s – as ever – all about money.

The HDMI spec now includes 16K. Which is clearly bonkers. At least, I argue that point in my head-to-head opinion over on Stuff. Fighting on behalf of screens with more pixels than atoms in the universe (or something): Tom Morgan-Freelander.

The Trump Phone keeps changing. Wired notes it’s already a lot different from one week ago. Absurd, given that people are preordering something that still lacks defined specs. A week and change ago, I suggested the following over at Stuff: “It’s also unclear whether the phone will ever exist in reality. But if it does, millions of idiots will buy one. Are you one of them?” I wasn’t expecting to be proved right so quickly.

Apple design now baffles me. The company sometimes claimed it had more taste than it actually had. Brushed Metal won’t go down in history as gorgeous design. But something feels very wrong over Cupertino way. Sure, the macOS Finder icon is now 73% less hideous. But Liquid Glass has so many problems, the new alarm design on iOS is abysmal, and then there are the menu bars. Yikes.

From WFH to WTF. Anuj Ahooja over on Mastodon said: “In the last five years, we’ve gone from ‘employees will never have to go into an office’ to ‘employees need to be in the office because creative and innovative work can only be done face-to-face between humans‘ to ‘lol we don’t need humans’.” It’s an astute observation and the path we’ve travelled is like double whiplash. It’s quite something that while people were fighting managers to retain rights from covid that were one of its few benefits, many managers reasoned they could do away with people entirely.

Blinding lights are bad. It’s been hot in the UK, and so we have fans in almost every room now. And they all appear to have been equipped with an LED that could be redeployed as a floodlight. So it’s a good time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of a Stuff column: Dear all tech companies: stop adding obnoxious eye-searing lights to gadgets. (Reader: they did not stop. They will never stop.)

Sega killed loads of mobile games. You can save them. But, as I write for Stuff, you shouldn’t have to. This piece looks at how Sega Forever became ‘Sega For About Eight Years’, the ephemeral nature of digital games, and how (and why) the industry should embrace emulation. 

5 reasons to buy the Trump Mobile T1 Phone 8002 (gold version) was my second column for Stuff this week. Long-time readers might imagine it’s not entirely serious. Indeed, it suggests “[…] millions of idiots will buy one. Are you one of them?” Natch, I got angry ‘fan mail’ from someone who I imagine owns a red cap with MAGA written on it.

The new Spotlight for Mac is amazing – and I want it on my iPad. I’ve long been a fan of ‘pro’ launchers like the original Quicksilver. I write that I’m glad Apple’s getting in on the act – but would love the new Spotlight on iPad too.

Apple Intelligence live translation in iOS 26 is AI done right. Lest anyone think I only moan about Apple, here’s a second positive Apple article in one week. The heat must be getting to me. There are caveats with translation, but for personal use I’m excited about more people being able to communicate. This strikes me as a good use of AI.

But AI is mostly still terrible. This past week, WhatsApp gave someone another user’s number, AI-gen music on Deezer is being consumed by AI bots to make people money, and ChatGPT is offering to tailor translated articles for submission to specific magazines. That last one’s like Inception-level rights infringement – and equally terrible for editors and newcomers looking to break into journalism. 

Password advice remains terrible. You may have read Cybernews and others reporting on a massive hack. The snag: few concrete details are in the wild and yet publications reported this with clickbait headings and terrible advice. A commonality on the latter was ‘experts’ telling people to regularly update passwords. Genuine expert Kate Bevan said on Bluesky, “Actual experts say you shouldn’t change passwords unless you think they’ve been compromised. Also, SMS is better than no 2FA, but it’s the weakest method of 2FA: use an app to generate codes.” She uses Authy. Other options include Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and Apple Passwords. Additionally, she points to the NCSC’s guidance from 2018 on why you shouldn’t regularly change passwords. Publications need to do better when giving advice on this subject.

I wrote about why it feels hotter in a UK summer than you might think. Unsurprisingly, quite a few people countered that by saying that, actually, where they live, 31°C is like being in a fridge, having not read the piece. Sigh. (I also just checked local humidity readings. For the past week, they bottomed out in the mid-50s and mostly lurked in the mid-80s or higher. Bleh.)

Bluesky is still dying. According to a Spectator columnist, who then adds: “Which is a shame, because I don’t want these people back on Twitter”. Reader, these people do want us all back. To save you a click, this is another piece by someone who doesn’t like Bluesky and didn’t bother to integrate. Increasingly, I hear people countering this narrative, saying that Bluesky is great for engagement and traffic. (Wired said much the same in its most recent print issue.) The Spectator piece does have one important point, though: if the decline in users becomes an ongoing trend, Bluesky might be in trouble. Mastodon might be fine as a quieter, niche online space, but it strikes me that for Bluesky to succeed long-term, it needs scale.

The English language is changing. Watching a Girl Gone London video about ‘zed vs zee’, she noted globalisation is causing Brits to use more Americanisms. I see this myself and suspect the dominance of US English will eventually win out. Most publishers and companies I work for prefer US-English (Stuff being a rare exception). British children’s books use as much US-English and terminology as they can get away with, to push sales. And Brits taking in so much US media is echoed in vocabulary changes that, honestly, I sometimes find grating. Yes, old man shakes fist at cloud. But when ‘pants’ is being used for outerwear rather than underwear, I grumble a bit. And I’m absolutely going to draw the line at ‘faucet’, because come on.

The new tvOS is a bit rubbish. I was going to write about this, but I’m not sure I need to now. Joe Rosensteel says everything in tvOS brings minor additions and weird priorities, covering Apple’s slew of terrible UI decisions (including glass effects and profile frictions) and the only major new feature being faux-karaoke.

Duolingo is probably dead to me. In three days, my plan renews. But I’m over it. Extended time with it has made me more aware that the system is more about gamification and engagement than learning. Most changes Duolingo has made have been for the worse. And the CEO is an AI bro with no understanding of why people don’t want that infecting their already compromised experience. Babbel is the most recommended alternative, according to people giving me advice. My one concern: mini-G (10) has racked up a streak now well north of 1000. I hope she continues – in Duolingo or elsewhere.

Make your iPhone more minimal! If you want to. This is my selection of cracking apps that get out of your way and four beautifully minimalist, simple games.

Retrospecs is on sale for $0.99/99p. The app lets you load a photo or video and makes it look as if it had been generated on anything from an ancient Commodore PET through to a SNES or a Mega Drive. It’s a wonderful app – easy for newcomers, yet with loads of things to fiddle with for retro geeks. Buy it!