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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Curious rumours this week about Apple TV+ being scaled back. Would that make it just Apple TV? Or Apple TV-? The argument is that Apple has chucked loads of cash at its streaming service, but the numbers no longer justify it.
Right now, this is the only streaming service our household has running. The movies seem very hit and miss, but there are a lot of great shows. Will that still be the case in two years?
Today, Apple TV+ has a solid reputation – almost the HBO of streaming. But Apple Arcade initially had a run of being a ‘premium’ take in its sector. Apple’s since dumbed that down, filling it full of me-too casual fare and giving dozens of old App Store favourites another airing.
Is Apple about to do an ‘Apple Arcade’ with TV+? If so, what would that look like, and how would Apple differentiate the service from its rivals if it’s increasingly packed full of lowest-common denominator telly and bought-in series from elsewhere?
