Published stuff

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Apple Intelligence. For Stuff, I wrote that Apple Intelligence is very Apple but not very intelligent. And for TapSmart, I ask: Are Apple Intelligence writing, notification and photo tools all they’re cracked up to be?

Thinking about it, I probably should have written those in the opposite order above, since one headline answers the other. Anyway, there is some good stuff in Apple Intelligence, and I’m glad Apple is being deliberate and cautious rather than stamping on creators’ faces. But I can’t help but feel all this effort could be put to better use – and that what this entire industry is delivering isn’t coming close to matching user expectations.

Elsewhere on Stuff, I made everyone feel old by celebrating the Nintendo DS’s 20th. I also updated the best upcoming Lego sets piece.

For TapSmart, I wrote about 16 iPhone apps that are even better on iPad and detailed how I’m using Reminders as my go-to to-do app.

Other stuff

On her Young Vulgarian blog, Marie Le Conte wrote an excellent piece on (some) people’s need to post on social media. For me, it’s always been about human connection. As someone who’s worked from home for well over 20 years, social networking has – at its best – been a great way to feel less isolated.

Where I diverge a little from Le Conte’s take is in her thinking on Meta. She argues that Threads is struggling because Meta didn’t take into account the “posting middle classes” and their needs. I just think Meta can’t help but be anything other than itself. So Threads wants to be different, but Meta’s culture forces it to be little more than another Facebook.

It was notable to see Meta’s Adam Mosseri reveal that the algorithm is being shaken up, presumably because people are getting tired of For You being full of engagement bait. But the ‘rebalancing’ he spoke of only served to annoy people who like For You as it is – and those who hate it. The solution is to give people the option in Threads to default to a chronological feed – or an algorithmic feed of their choosing. But Meta has never been about letting you see what you want to see. Meta wants you to see what it wants you to see.

Published stuff

As a writer, it’s great when your instincts turn out to be sound. I’d written a Bluesky piece for the issue of Stuff currently going to print, but then saw the massive wave of new users and so got it online ASAP. And I’m thrilled to report that The best Bluesky tips 2024: replace Twitter and make social media fun again has done really well, because it’s good for the site but, more importantly, helps more people get started with Bluesky. Numbers-wise, it’s even creeping towards my surprise breakout column about why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years.

Speaking of columns, this week I wrote the following: This games store is saving 100 retro games from oblivion. The rest of the gaming world needs to step up too. Games preservation is close to my heart, and so it’s always good to see commercial entities tackle this problem, rather than leaving it to grey-area emulation. But there are so few of them. The games industry needs to do more and care about its own history.

Finally, over at TapSmart, I wrote about 12 great iPhone Lock Screen widgets and added Edge to my classics series.

Other stuff

The latest Bluesky wave has got people talking. Often in ways that to me make little sense. Over on Threads, people seem genuinely annoyed that Bluesky is the current social media darling. There’s lots of hand-wringing from the people in charge, who don’t seem to realise that Threads cloning the best Bluesky features won’t matter if Meta continues being Meta, making decisions that are user-hostile.

For me, the key thing about Bluesky (like Mastodon) is that it defaults to the content you want to see. Threads adding custom feeds is meaningless if it always shows you inane engagement bait in ‘For You’ every time you open the app. And the company continuing to conflate – or not – Threads and Instagram depending on whether – or not – it’s in Meta’s best interests is getting old. (‘Use a totally different social network for DMs’ is wild from a user-experience standpoint.)

But the big argument about Bluesky comes from people still posting on X. They claim we need to save the town square. We’re told Bluesky will become a left-wing bubble. Just no. X’s algorithm was aggressively pushing right-wing content into my feed when I quit the site in 2023, so I can only imagine how bad it is now. It is no longer a level playing field. And right-wing voices are not blocked from Bluesky – it’s just that people will block them if they start being dicks.

Moreover, X is not and was never a town square. It was more like a pub. And you don’t stay and fight for a pub you like if a new landlord scraps the barred list, starts yelling about how much he hates “the libs”, makes friends with a bunch of far-right nutters, and ensures your entire time there will be spent dealing with arseholes yelling shit your way. What you do is this: you find another pub. In all, I get the impression certain people are mostly fuming because we won’t play their game anymore. Tough.

Speaking of Bluesky (again – last time, I promise), I asked over there the following: Do writers have that thing when they read themselves from 10 or 20 years ago and it’s like reading someone else entirely? Some old columns on this blog and elsewhere still sound like me to some degree, but many feel weirdly alien. It’s odd. And this isn’t about quality. In fact, sometimes I read an old column and think it’s really clever, which helpfully sends me into a spiral of “oh my god, I’m shit” as my deadline roars towards me with all of the subtlety of a rhinoceros wearing a jetpack.

Still, I suppose this is a good thing. I’d rather evolve than always be the same. And I’m heading towards 25 years of being paid to smash out words for various folks, and so I must be doing something right.

Published stuff

This week’s column for Stuff: I don’t want more new tech gadgets where “there’s an app for that”. Enough with products solely reliant on an app to function.

For TapSmart, I wrote about accessories that transform your iPhone into a different gadget and an iPhone toolkit for better sleep.

Upcoming stuff

An article I’m very excited about is going live Monday afternoon UK time, apparently. I’ll be sharing on socials and also here in the next weeknote. (These days I’m mostly on Bluesky and Mastodon, with a smattering of Threads.)

Other stuff

Pixelmator got eaten by Apple. I’m thrilled for the team, but not so much for what this means for the company’s apps.

The Mac version of Pixelmator is an odd one. Although lauded by many on its debut, I gave it a hard time in the press, considering it to be clunky, resource-hungry and buggy. I suspect my initial reviews didn’t get me on the Christmas card list over at Pixelmator HQ. But over time, that Mac version improved and the mobile versions appeared. Today, Pixelmator for iPhone is a powerful mini-Photoshop of sorts, if one that’s barely ever updated. The company’s main app, Photomator, is a superb way to enhance your snaps, whatever your needs and skills.

It’s for the latter I suspect Apple bought the company. And time will tell whether this is a Dark Sky (buy; integrate some features; kill), Alchemy Synth (buy; add directly to another app) or a Logic Pro (buy; iterate; retain). If I had to guess, Pixelmator for iPhone is dead and Photomator features will be rolled into the edit interface of Apple’s Photos. But I’ll miss Pixelmator’s apps a lot. That’s something 2007 me would be very surprised to hear.

Published stuff

My column this week is: Now winter’s drawing in, the gadget I most care about is a sunrise alarm clock. I’ve known for years I have have a form of SAD, and that means mornings are tough when it’s dark when I get up. So this column is my love letter to niche tech that deserves no love. Because although it’s effective, it seems uniformly designed by people who don’t understand actual humans use technology. 

Other than that, it was a week of Apple. I reviewed the new iPad mini (“a mini update in almost every sense”) for Stuff, and over at TapSmart mulled that it went ‘Pro’ but not in the way I was hoping. (I also updated my iPad guide.)

For Stuff, I also checked out the iPhone 16 Plus (“The iPhone you’d pick last for your team”), while TapSmart got a round-up of 20 cracking single-purpose iPhone apps.

Other stuff

The clocks change this weekend. I hate it. Losing an hour of daylight makes me miserable. And while people will doubtless suggest I get an up hour earlier, then, the world doesn’t bend to my schedule. Lighter evenings are times for playing with my kid in the street, and enjoying the final warmth of the day. That’s all gone until April.

It’s always interesting around now to see how divisive changing the clocks is. In the US, I suspect many people forget how far south they are. By contrast, here in the north of Europe, not changing the clocks would either make for bizarre summers with sunrises at 3am, or very late sunrises in winter if we stuck with summer time all year. 

On the latter, that’s the main reason I’m unconvinced that the UK should change the clocks one spring and then never touch them again. It’d be rubbish for Scotland and that’s not fair. But that doesn’t mean I have to like the status quo either. Time to fire up the SAD lamp again…

Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week is I’m converted: cheap and cheerful plug-and-play is a great way to revisit classic retro games. While I understand the love for original hardware and flexibility, I’m getting to the point where I just want to pick up a controller and play. Plug-and-play TV units do the job, but I’m also really enjoying the new Hyper Mega Tech Super Pockets, which are just play, rather than plug. 

Each one feels like a greatest hits album from a classic publisher. If you want to see the latest two in action, check out my 24-second YouTube first look ‘epic’.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote about iPhone 16 vs iPhone 16 Pro and asked whether the Pro is still worth it. And camera app Halide became the latest entry in my classic apps series.

Other stuff

Joan Westenberg asked people about the struggle between “the seamless simplicity of an all-Apple ecosystem [and] the freedom and flexibility of cross-platform independence”. I struggle with this myself. iCloud is too flaky to be reliable. Notes is a risk, because I for years had a scratchpad that had loads of stuff in, and it one day vanished. (I managed to get a version back by powering on a laptop I’d not opened in a week and turning off Wi-Fi before it could sync. That still lost me a week of input though.) Apps can help, such as Exporter, but I really wish Apple’s first-party apps were better at export. And that’s because I do value the simplicity of the ecosystem, and am now fully on board with the Reminders set-up I wrote about last week.

Elsewhere, I found myself in a discussion that comics are doomed because today’s children only love screens. Which is rubbish. What matters are habits, and those are driven by parents and accessibility.

Regarding comics, there are three issues. The first is that, for years (although this is changing), educators dismissed them. Children were taught comics were ‘lesser’ and not proper reading. I was therefore delighted when my daughter’s school specifically listed comics in her reading recommendations, alongside prose fiction, non-fiction, magazines and poetry. 

The second – arguably bigger – concern is we have an entire generation of parents who themselves never got into the comics habit in the UK, because the market was largely destroyed during the 1990s. I’m an old fart compared to many parents in my kid’s year. I also love comics. So mini-G has subs to three of them. As far as I’m aware, no-one else in her class is subscribed to any comics at all. One boy had (but no longer has) a Beano subscription. These kids are only ten years old. At that age, I had loads of the things.

Finally, there is the issue of accessibility. Comics used to be a working class thing and priced accordingly, but the market shifted. Magazines and comics are no longer impulse purchases like they once were, but things you consider. That in itself adds a barrier. Doubly so when you look at the rapid reduction in outlets as supermarkets pare back magazine sales and branches of WHSmith decide they want to focus on stationery and cards.

Fortunately, the market has responded. Bookstores sell chunky paperback comics and manga. Jamie Smart has sold over a million copies of Bunny vs Monkey. As a fan of that strip, I’m thrilled for Jamie Smart. But I can’t help but feel wistful for a time that gave kids more choice with cheap weeklies, which because of their sheer number gave many more cartoonists opportunities than comparatively risky books ever will.

If you’re in the UK, have a youngling and like the idea of comics, I strongly recommend the six issues for £1 offer from The Phoenix. The Beano and Monster Fun also have great offers for new subscribers as well.