Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week: I love my Apple TV – so why doesn’t Apple? Apple used to call its little streaming box a ‘hobby’ and all evidence suggests it’s one that the company is losing interest in. I also wrote up some iOS 18 tips and tricks and updated the best upcoming Lego sets list.

Over at TapSmart, I explored 10 great apps for learning new things, updated the site’s iPhone buyer’s guide and added the much-missed Squareball to my classic apps series. That game was so good. It’s also one of the very few 32-bit games I’ve never been able to get running again on my iPad Air. 

Other stuff

Starved of Netflix, the ten-year-old is now mainlining Animal Park. This BBC show is a behind-the-scenes look at British safari park Longleat, and is objectively very good. But it’s driving me bonkers that the voiceover exclusively uses imperial measurements. While this is a family-friendly show (rather than broadcasting on a children’s channel), I think it’s wild in 2024 that this is still happening. At the very least, you’d think the show would use constructions like the giraffe is five metres – or about 16 and a half feet – tall, not least because British children haven’t been taught imperial in about 50 years. It’s not the 1970s, BBC!

As someone who’s been keen on iPhone gaming since the beginning, I always find it sad when sites go away. But TouchArcade shutting down is a really big one. The signs have been ominous for a while, but reading the linked post was nonetheless a gut-punch. Time to double down on supporting remaining iPhone gaming outlets, such as the excellent AppUnwrapper.

Finally, this was the week my follower count on Bluesky sailed past Threads. I’m not obsessive about such numbers – engagement and enjoyment are what really matter on social networks. But numbers are an indication of momentum. 

For me, Bluesky started out way behind every other network when it came to followers. I joined very early (user 40,269 – one of the first one per cent), and it was like typing into the void. Which was oddly freeing. But today it’s the only social network where it feels like a bunch of new and excited people are joining all the time. It’s also fun, with an energy that’s lacking elsewhere.

This shift also means a post-X social landscape has finally clicked into place for me. I ‘abandoned’ about 7,000 followers there. More importantly, I lost hundreds of great accounts that I followed. I miss what it was, but not what it became, and quit posting publicly in 2023. Other networks swirled around, and for a while Mastodon was the only one that mattered. But many people came and went, annoyed at not immediately getting the audience and engagement they’d enjoyed on Twitter but without working for it. Threads threatened to become good but now bibbles along; worse, Meta prioritises what it wants you to see rather than what you want to see.

Right now, I dip into Bluesky first (plenty of friends, writers and comics folks, retro gaming, politics and pundits), still spend a fair chunk of time on Mastodon (great conversation, tech geeks and devs, academics, wonderful photography accounts), and zoom through Threads in about five minutes daily, to catch up with the few friends who’ve landed there and decided to stay.

I still miss those people who have – for whatever reason – decided to stay on X. But I did twice check in and browse through 24 hours of my ‘filter’ feed – a ‘best of’ I put together during more optimistic times. It was mostly empty. I took that as a sign.

Published stuff

No weekend column this week for Stuff. Instead, my interview with Apple about gaming was published – Apple says the Mac has become a serious gaming platform: here’s why. This is, note, an interview with Apple, not analysis of Apple nor a wider discussion about what the games industry thinks of Apple. Nonetheless, there are interesting insights into how Apple perceives itself in this space, not least in how it differentiates its ecosystem from Windows.

Also at Stuff, I wrote about why Camera Control is the best new iPhone 16 feature and refreshed my best upcoming Lego sets list.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote a guide to using MindNode and jotted down my thoughts on Apple’s Glowtime event

Other stuff

My covid recovery continues but it’s clear everything didn’t snap back to normal, apart from my sense of taste/smell. A month after my first positive test, I’m still tired all the time. I hope that changes.

I mowed the front lawn. First time, bar a border, since April. I think that’s our future now. Pull out the long grasses but just let everything else grow. I like the crickets and the bugs. That’s way better than a boring space of 3cm high grass. That said, the anthills I found were terrifying.

Bluesky is increasingly fun. I’ve been trying to figure out a post-X social landscape for myself, and over a year after quitting that site things are starting to make sense. Mastodon is where most of my dev/tech friends live. Bluesky is comics, writers, and politics stuff. Threads is… for everyone who doesn’t want to be on Mastodon and Bluesky. And X is still dead to me. I just wish a few more people would make the leap to something other than the hellsite.

The CDs piece I wrote got another readership bump last week from somewhere, and I’m still receiving messages about it. Notably, they’re all friendly ones. That piece clicked with a whole bunch of people, which makes me happy. Sometimes when writing columns, it’s like shouting into the void. When a bunch of people make the effort to email a reply, that’s properly old-school and gratifying all at once.

Published stuff

For Stuff this weekend, I wrote about why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years. We have a thousand shiny discs and nothing to play them on, which seems daft, not least given how favourite songs and albums randomly vanish from streaming services all the time. This one also appeared to strike a chord – I’ve had a bunch of (very nice) DMs, social media posts and even emails (old-school!) about the column.

Elsewhere, I wrote about The Spectrum and added Phantolex to my free iOS games feature. And for TapSmart (which just released issue 309 of sister mag Swipe), I wrote Bring back: Weightbot.

Other stuff

Yes, this one’s late. I almost forgot. Still recovering from covid, which is taking time. A day out at London Aquarium wiped me out, although the family had a great time, and I was very happy to squeeze in the trip that should have happened two weeks ago, just before my daughter returns to school.

In tech, Capcom has now decided iPhone versions of its console-grade games like Resident Evil 4 and Village need an internet connection to run. Given that half the point of mobile is being able to play anywhere, I’m not sure ‘anywhere you happen to have a data connection’ is going to go down well. And by extension, this is another point against App Store gaming Apple really doesn’t need right now, not least given Monument Valley 3 is heading to Netflix. Developer ustwo said this is so it doesn’t have to “compromise in order for it to survive in the kind of App Store that exist in the modern day”. Ouch.

Published stuff

My stuff column this week is: The secret AI prompts at the heart of Apple Intelligence, in which I add to the Apple AI prompts someone revealed on Reddit. I also added Dumb Phone to my best iPhone apps round-up.

Meanwhile, over at TapSmart, I explored great multiplayer party games to play.

Other stuff

iDOS finally got approved, putting an end to this particular slice of App Store idiocy. Note that MAME4iOS remains in limbo, however, being repeatedly rejected for ‘spam’.

Disney’s legal team is using terms and conditions from Disney+ to stop a man suing over a wrongful death at one of its theme parks. Perhaps it’s jealous that Netflix owns Black Mirror.

Covid finally caught me, after four years. My throat felt weird, I did a test, and I got the evil line of doom. Anyone who says this is just like a cold needs their head examined. Only two days in, feeling sick and knackered all the time is getting old.

I’m also kicking myself. I’d long been the last mask standing, and still used it on public transport. But I’d not been using one all the time in stores, nor when we went to Legoland UK this week. Although I’ll never know precisely where I picked this up and if a mask would have helped. Silver lining: my wife and daughter appear to have escaped so far.

Published stuff

Over at TapSmart, I dig into the good, the bad and the ugly of Apple and AI, messaging apps for iPhone and the best Apple TV apps.

My column for Stuff this week: Dumb phones and smart rings won’t help when I need a tech detox. Aka I’m starting to bristle at the notion that to use tech less, we need more tech. No. We just need to know when to put something down.

Other stuff

I have two guilt piles. The first is my eBay pile, which now takes up the entire space under an office desk. And a huge box in a cupboard that we do not speak of. And half a dozen boxes of comics in the garage. This… is not great. And also an excellent example of what happens when I lose eBay momentum.

The bigger guilt pile is the ‘read pile’. Books. Comics. Magazines. I buy a lot of collectible graphic novels and interesting non-fiction titles in print (rather than digital). Beyond that, I buy print magazines, including Wired, Stuff, Retro Gamer and Blocks. And, it turns out, they increase in number when they’re not read. Who knew?

However, while reading through the latest Blocks, I realised I have ‘magazine completism’. I know I should zip over things that don’t interest me. But I feel duty bound to read the things from cover to cover. I suspect this is a manifestation of whatever flavour of OCD I have, which is mostly geared around “but what if I miss this important thing?” (So: I’ll check the front door more times than is strictly necessary, let’s say, in case I somehow missed that it wasn’t locked, thereby leading to nefarious types cleaning us out. Reader: that door has never not been locked on my returning to check it again. And again. Sigh.)

This isn’t ideal, because the pile grows faster than I can get through it. Just as well I don’t have the symmetry/orderliness aspect of OCD, or I’d be really done for. On the bright side, I’m squeezing every last drop of value out of these magazines, and so that’s something.