Published stuff

For TapSmart this week, I outlined why it doesn’t matter there are no folding iPhones and iPads yet. Naturally, lots of folks think Apple is behind the curve, but I’m not sure it is. These devices are fragile and insanely expensive. They might be the future – or at least a future – but right now I don’t think Apple desperately needs to enter the folding device market. Also for TapSmart this week, my lightning fast Mac buyer’s guide 2024.

Over at Stuff, I ask: Would a Gemini AI iPhone 16 be Awfully Impressive or Annoyingly Insidious? As ever, this is a meticulously researched, very grounded, and entirely sensible take on the subject. Cough.

Also for Stuff, I explore a Dungeons & Dragons Lego set you need a dragon’s hoard to afford, along with remembering the excellent Nokia 3210 at 25.

Finally, something a bit more serious for this blog: some brief personal thoughts on Apple and regulatory fights.

Upcoming stuff

A couple of goodies arrived this week for articles I’m working on. One was a GameSir G8, which is reportedly the best stretchy controller for mobile. I’ll be digging into that for a piece on AAA mobile gaming. 

I also received an Atari 400 Mini, in a rather lovely box. It recalled 1970s wallpaper, but unfortunately had the weakest magnetic catch ever. So the first thing my review unit did was tumble out of said box, skid across the floor and end up under some shelves. Fortunately, these mini consoles are bulletproof, and so I’ll be exploring this one for my Stuff column next weekend. 

Other stuff

My social feeds have been full of people grumbling about daylight savings, and that’s set to kick off again next week when UK clocks change. But I love it. (The clocks changing – not the grumbling.) In an instant, we’ll go from sunset around 18:30 to 19:30, meaning I’ll be able to start playing football in the street with my daughter after dinner again. I’m half surprised the Brexit mob didn’t force us on to GMT all year, but that possible future still nags at me, not least because DST is being attacked everywhere. Hopefully it will never happen.

Political commentator Ian Dunt recently wrote about writing. It’s an interesting piece, which itself remarks that everything is interesting. And also that writing is weird. Good points.

I’ve been writing professionally for almost 25 years. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, corporates and book publishers. And while it’s something that can come naturally, the act of writing ranges from effortless to the typing equivalent of pulling teeth. And you never quite know what you’re going to face.

Ian offers interesting tips, not least the importance of curiosity and boredom. If you’re bored writing, your audience will feel that. So find what’s in your subject that sparks curiosity. I also commented on the piece to add a few things I’ve found useful in my own writing, which I’ll share here. (Hopefully you’re at this point still curious rather than bored to the point of slapping yourself repeatedly, to stay awake.)

First, making no assumptions can be beneficial. It doesn’t hurt to add brief notes or outward links to get a reader up to speed on a subject. But omit those vital sentences and your work might be impenetrable – or at least harder to read than it should have been.

Next, find what you love and do as much of that as you can, because your passion will shine through. For me, that’s storytelling. If I could, I’d spend my work life interviewing people, especially in the world of apps and video games, to make sure creators’ stories aren’t lost. Alas, few pay for that. But when they do, I’m very happy.

Finally, don’t allow anyone to tell you how you should write. Advice and ideas are fine, but being prescriptive is not. I once had someone sternly argue that you should always write an entire piece from start to finish, and only then go back and edit, as if writing tools have never moved beyond the typewriter. They believed this helped avoid distraction. That’s great if it works for you. My writing style is more like sculpture – I often start with a big mess of words, ideas and research I smash into shape in Scrivener or iA Writer, shifting things around, hacking off chunks that don’t work, and hopefully ending up with something suitable for the words equivalent of an art gallery. Or at least not a skip.

Sometimes, people even read my stuff too. If you’re one of them, thanks for stopping by. This blog’s never exactly been high traffic, but I do appreciate each and every person spending some of their time here.

Published stuff

This week’s Stuff column is This is the Apple Car keynote that we’ll never get to see, which is perhaps not the most serious take on Project Titan being cancelled, but hopefully one of the most fun to read. The year’s best Lego also got an update.

And for this blog, I wrote up a quick piece in response to reports about Apple Arcade’s future: Game over for Apple Arcade?

Upcoming stuff

I’m still working on a piece on Sinclair, delving into the depths of the company’s output. That should be in Stuff before the summer. Meanwhile, my earlier piece on Atari is slated for the issue out in a few weeks.

Elsewhere, I’m digging into music discovery on mobile, and excited about writing up a piece on a very different type of mobile games controller. Or at least a very different use for one.

Other stuff

It’s quite a time for tech companies that should know better doing bad things. HP’s going all-in on the subscription printer game, which charges $7 per month for 20 printed pages. Don’t worry, because you can top that up! And you ‘only’ have to ensure the printer is always online. And sign up for two years. Although you can cancel – by paying HP more than the cost of a new printer. Bargain.

Automattic, which was supposed to be one of the good companies, has decided to sell Tumblr and WordPress (not, note, self-installed) content to AI companies to help them train their models. But don’t worry, because you can opt out and hope those companies actually care about your request, even though there’s no evidence I can see that they’re legally obliged to. Way to detonate years of goodwill, Automattic! (Docusign of all companies is also doing this. Which is quite something, given that the content you feed into it often comprises contracts and NDAs.)

Apple has performed a screeching U-turn on killing web apps, perhaps because the European Commission publicly stated there was no need for Apple to scrap them in the first place. Oh dear. I look forward to certain (mostly US) commentators retracting their “the bad and evil EU is forcing our beloved Apple to do a bad thing” stance and replacing it with a “the bad and evil EU is making it impossible for Apple to know what it should do and that is a bad thing” stance. Fun!

Right, that’s enough negative stuff. How about some positives? Three things, in fact, all about games. First, Kimmo Lahtinen has celebrated a decade of making games. The story is bittersweet regarding sales (as in, several of his games didn’t sell well), but he still seems happy with his lot. Also, if you’ve an iPhone or iPad, I would strongly recommend you buy some of his games. Drift’n’Drive is an absurdly fun racer for a buck, and I adored Day Repeat Day’s clever mix of match-three and social commentary. Get them all.

Elsewhere, having documented and even bug-fixed the original Elite, Mark Moxon has now reconstructed Lander– or, for people of a certain age in the UK, that insanely difficult 3D game on the school’s expensive Acorn Archimedes computers where you attempted to control a spaceship with a mouse and inevitably crashed after approx 0.3 seconds.

Finally, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is out in a couple of weeks. Alas, not for Mac, because reasons. But almost every other platform will get a combination of games and stories revolving around one of the most standout game makers from the UK. 

I wrote about Space Invaders for Stuff, and how that’s lodged in my mind as a very early gaming memory. Minter’s work is there too. The two very old home computing games I remember from my early childhood are Bowling and Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time. Needless to say, they were two very different games. And I only feel compelled to revisit one of them today.

Published stuff

For Stuff, I say old games consoles aren’t redundant – I think they’re a must-buy. This in response to commentators griping about the Switch 2’s delay, and one of my Stuff colleagues buying a PS5 recently and fretting he made an error. 

Hey, I bought a Dreamcast in 2002 and had a C64 until the mid-1990s, and I had loads of fun with them. You don’t always need the shiny new thing – consoles and games systems that have proven themselves can often be a better buy.

I also updated my best iPhone/iPad apps list with an interesting app called Presets that lets you stash and reuse edit stacks in Apple Photos.

Over at TapSmart, I throw in my 2p on Apple’s headset with Apple Vision Pro’s limitations may define it – or kill it. I also ask if you can be tempted back to the ‘grid of apps’ on Apple’s little black box in a new piece on the best Apple TV apps. Finally, leapy endless runner Canabalt has been added to my classics series. If you’d like more insight into that game, I wrote a long-read for Stuff about it some time ago that digs into the game’s origins and eventually its induction into the MOMA permanent videogame collection.

Upcoming stuff

I recently filed a piece for Stuff on Atari’s best hardware – at least as I see it. Next up, I’m tackling Sinclair and Commodore. Please do comment if there’s something you feel I should absolutely not omit.

Other stuff

Medium and Substack spam is becoming a big problem. I’m not sure quite what’s going on, but I’m now very regularly getting confirmations of subscriptions to writers I’ve never heard of. 

In better news, we took the 9yo to her first proper gig last weekend – and our first in several years: Slowdive at the Apollo. (Not my video.) Slowdive is one of my absolute favourite bands. Star Roving has for years been my favourite song, and there’s something about Slowdive live that eclipses even the studio versions.

Anyway, I’ve been having a pretty rough year mentally. I’m not sure why. But for a short while at that gig – and especially during that song – everything bad faded away and I felt ridiculously happy. So, thank you, Slowdive. And, I think, more of this kind of thing throughout the year.

Published stuff

A slightly tongue-in-cheek column for Stuff this week: My phone does everything, which is why I want to resurrect my iPod. And I really wish I could find the comic strip I refer to in the intro. It’s been bugging me for years.

I also gave my best free iPhone apps list a bump by adding Arc Browser, which has a really interesting way of presenting search results.

Over at TapSmart, it was all about kit this week, with new iPad and Apple Watch buyer’s guides.

Other stuff

Some random thoughts rattling around my head this week, mostly about Apple.

First, HomeKit is dreadful. I didn’t realise quite how bad it would be and regret dumping our Alexa kit and moving over, despite this household mostly being based around Apple products.

Yet again, an iOS update nuked my set-up. I recovered it, although our Eve plugs decided to not come along for the ride and once again needed resetting. It took a couple of days to figure out how to get my wife (listed as an admin on the system) back into the shared home too. Apple prides itself on “it just works”. But HomeKit just doesn’t. Looking online, I found I’m far from alone in this.

The same goes for macOS sidebar peeking, which has suddenly gained traction online, primarily because people hate it. If you’ve not noticed this in Sonoma, hover the cursor over a closed sidebar (left window edge) and it opens very slightly to remind you of its existence. This in many cases shifts all of the content within the window, which makes it a quite dangerous vestibular trigger. 

I’ve written to Apple’s accessibility team to suggest the behaviour is disabled when Reduce Motion is on. But mostly it’s yet another example of how hidden UI elements are a bad thing. (Weirdly, most macOS apps I use that have sidebars include a sidebar button in the toolbar though. So I’m not sure what Apple’s playing at here.)

Also, while I’m on a GRRR @ APPLE roll, nuking PWAs in the EU is now official, as reported by The Register. So the original ‘sweet solution’ for third party iPhone apps is hobbled. Apple, natch, blames the EU. Developers blame Apple for not getting its shit together. And honestly, I’ve little sympathy for Apple, given that it yet again looks like a company eradicating solutions for anything that might (but often don’t) threaten the money it makes from the App Store.

Finally, I was chatting with folks online this week about imposter syndrome. It’s a curious thing, in that I’ve been a professional writer in some capacity for well over 20 years, and it’s been my primary source of income for well over 15. I’ve written for a wide range of publications, including The Guardian and Wired. My rational brain (and, frequently, my wife) notes that I must be doing somethingright to have done pretty well in this industry for so long. And yet I can never quite shake that feeling: what if I get found out?

In some ways, it’s good to have a regular internal check against complacency. I never feel entitled to do what I do, and strive to always give my best, whoever I’m writing for. By the same token, I wish my internal needler would give over sometimes. Two decades in should be enough proof in any profession that you’re qualified to be there.

Published stuff

Living a fair way north, I experience great variance in daylight across the year. And that’s not ideal in winter, when the nights draw in and it’s also dark when I get up. Daylight trackers can help combat SAD symptoms during the early months of the year, by providing a reminder of how daylight is increasing. Solstice by Dan Eden is my favourite, in part because it can automatically turn offnotifications when the days start getting shorter again.

Solstice and several other daylight trackers – including ones that aid photographers and surveyors – are explored in my daylight trackers round-up for TapSmart. I also wrote an explainer on game streaming for iPhone.

Over at Stuff this week, my column is Nintendo Switch digital game prices are bananas – but beat Ubisoft’s dream future for console gaming. Even my nine-year-old has pointed out how ridiculous the pricing situation is, hence why we’re very much a household centred on physical carts – albeit one that’s aware this option might not be around for much longer.

Other stuff

I’m not sure what’s going on with Apple of late. I get that it’s historically acted with ferocity towards what it perceives as injustice towards the company. But its scrap with the EU is set to cause collateral damage, perhaps so the company can point to problems and say to other jurisdictions: “See‽ This is what happens when you force us to do things we said were bad!”

The latest ‘headdesk’ moment: Apple has reportedly killed PWAs in iOS 17.4 – if you’re in the EU. Users are now asked if the app should open a PWA in Safari or cancel. 

Web apps were Apple’s original ‘sweet solution’ for expanding on base iPhone installs before the arrival of the App Store. And although good examples are rare, there have been cases where PWAs have provided functionality effectively banned by Apple from the App Store, such as retro game emulation and cloud gaming. Now, these experiences will be made worse, by virtue of loading within the browser rather than a more app-like full-screen view.

Defenders of Apple (who too often align with being anti-EU and rabidly pro-anything-American) argue this is a case of ‘careful what you wish for’. Apple, they say, has no choice but to nerf PWA functionality, because a PWA is technically a browser and doesn’t let people switch browser engines – or that only Safari having this functionality would be unacceptable regarding level playing field rules. Naturally, there are counterpoint arguments, claiming PWA functionality doesn’t clash with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. (Also, if you take ‘level playing field’ to its extreme, you may as well argue Safari cannot implement any features at all that a competitor doesn’t have.) If you fancy balance, web expert Bruce Lawson offers a reasoned, thoughtful take.

With Apple remaining tight-lipped, it’s impossible to know whether this change was inevitable or temporary while the company explores how to enable all browsers to create PWAs. The problem is that it’s just not a good look. Even if this isn’t malicious compliance, it sure feels like it. It feels petty. And that doesn’t come so much from the EU’s demands as Apple’s responses to them.