So. Very. Tired.

Published stuff

Presumably reasoning that I’m getting on a bit, an editor at TechRadar asked me to dig into Life before Google: 7 retro services that helped us survive, from Altavista to Hotmail. This went down very well on Mastodon and Facebook, probably saying more about the audiences/my followings there than anything. Nostalgia, eh? That said, I still do have and use some of those ‘retro’ services, and am attempting to wean myself off of Google, because, well, Google.

For Stuff, I wrote about the Raspberry Pi 5, massive Lego kits to make your bank account scream, and playing the phone upgrade lottery, where your new phone resembles the old one, but has things that are temporarily or permanently missing. Tsk.

The latest issue of the print mag is out too. Within, you’ll find words from me on the Atari 2600+, weather alert apps, Android 14, and the very first version of Microsoft Word.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote about essential apps for a new iPhone and a new Apple Watch, along with asking whether the death of the iPhone mini signals the end of small iOS devices.

Finally, for this blog, I wrote Apple, Reduce Motion and the battle for vestibular accessibility. This celebrates ten years since I wrote a piece for The Guardian that spread far and wide and helped more people (and Apple) better understand issues relating to vestibular disorders. Honestly, it’s not often in tech journalism that I feel I’ve written something truly meaningful. This was an exception. That piece mattered. I know it made a difference, potentially to an awful lot of people. That felt really good.

Upcoming stuff

I’m mostly immersed in hardware right now, putting the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Apple Watch Series 9 through their paces. I’ll admit that while I was sceptical about the new zoom on the Pro Max, a trip to our local pond yesterday left me converted, with me capturing some shots I’d otherwise have missed when using Apple hardware.

Other stuff

I’ve mostly been knackered this past week, as some kind of bug swept through our household. As our kid’s class WhatsApp exploded with notifications about covid, we hoped it wasn’t that. Fortunately, it wasn’t, but we’ve still had a rough few days.

Covid itself is back on my mind as well. Last winter was miserable as we mostly avoided going out, not least given that almost everyone in the UK has ditched masks and decided covid no longer exists. I feel quite envious of friends overseas who are getting boosters, since the UK government has decided only folks over 65 can have one this year, unless you’ve an immune disorder or another condition on a very short list. And school policy remains ludicrous, forcing children back after three days, even when still testing positive, unless they have a high fever. It’s all deeply weird.

On a more positive note, we’ve been digging into Welcome to Wrexham, which is back on Disney+. I can take or leave football, but thought this show might be mildly amusing. I wasn’t prepared for a show that would have so many powerful stories and so much humanity at its core. The second series continues in this light, getting you right in the feels in the many moments between the manager swearing at his team and goals hitting the back of the net. Top of the table stuff.

How many digits do you have to have turn to icicles before it’s acceptable to turn the heating back on? Asking for a friend.

Published stuff

For Stuff, I ask: How will Apple respond to Google’s ten-year Chromebook update pledge? Apple is better than most in mobile, but now lags Google on desktop. And both companies are struggling with a desire to be (or at least appear to be) green while immersed in a marketplace that demands infinite growth. Top tip, everyone: we don’t have infinite resources. My take: devices have to last longer. And I mean that in a meaningful manner.

Over at iMore, I ask: Apple pitched the iPhone 15 Pro as the ultimate gaming handheld – but can Apple really take it to the next level? This is kind of a spiritual successor to my Wired piece last year about whether the M2 MacBook Air is any good for games. TL;DR for both: it’s not about the tech so much as the culture.

Over at TapSmart, Streaks Workout is added to my classic apps hall of fame, and I look at Apple’s balancing act – how a desire for profits impacts features and prices.

And in this here blog, I write about using Spoken Content to have your Mac or iPad read words back to you. I use this feature daily for proofing text. In fact, I’ll shortly use it to proof this text.

Upcoming stuff

I’ve got a shiny new iPhone here for review and so will be putting that through its paces soon. And given that I wrote about every other new Apple operating system, a tips feature will shortly rock up about watchOS 10.

I’m also mulling over how to pitch and write a new piece on accessibility. Speaking of, this coming week it’ll be ten years since I broke Why iOS 7 is making some users sick for The Guardian. So I’ll be writing up something about that too.

Other stuff

Updates to recent Apple kit have resulted in tech writers doing some entertainingly bonkers things. You might have seen that Federico Viticci over at MacStories used a Game Boy camera for FaceTime. And now Dan Seifert at The Verge put Samsung Dev on an iPad screen.

Apple’s probably removing Seifert from all Christmas card lists as I write. Mind you, his terrifying concoction did again make me think that my ideal iPhone would be the one device to rule them all. Now we’ve a USB-C capable phone that can play AAA games and run high-end apps, why not have it optimally output to any display? Apple’s answer: because money. My retort: but what of resources and sustainability?

New iPhone week is over! *collapses in a heap*

Published stuff

A busy week for me at Stuff. I had guides published for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma and Apple TV/tvOS 17.

Two columns: USB-C for iPhone was nerfed by Apple – but does that matter? (Spoiler: this aligns with Betteridge’s law of headlines.) And Ultra Wideband chips in iPhone 15 and Apple Watch sound great – I want one in everything, where I reason I want Ultra Wideband chips in all tech because I once hid some SSDs in a hat beneath a pile of shoes.

Oh, and I celebrated the return to iPhone of the excellent Coolson’s Pocket Pack by adding it to Stuff’s best free iOS games list.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote an explainer about USB-C for iPhone, looked at replacements for Apple’s pre-loaded stock apps, and added a third tier to my classic apps series with ‘bring back’. This looks at a long-gone favourite and how to approximate it on your iPhone and iPad today. First up: the much-missed Status Board by Panic.

Upcoming stuff

Hopefully I’ll be transitioning soon from hands-on with Apple’s new software to hands-on with its new hardware. In the meantime, I just filed a piece for iMore that should be up soon, and am from a personal perspective getting slightly more serious about finally releasing some new music and figuring out what to do with over 250,000 words of retrogaming interviews.

What I discovered, to my surprise, was my monstrous Scrivener document is actually full of holes. So I’m going back through my email and document archives to find the original interviews I did with a whole bunch of people. I have considered various outlets for this stuff. But I’m still not sure what to do with it.

My thinking is the interviews should be available in as lightly edited form as possible. But even that will require many hours of work. The notion of Kickstarting a book fills me with dread. A Substack is a possibility, but I’ve no idea if enough people would be interested. So this and the music thing are both moving forward at a snail’s pace for now. Still, that’s better than not moving at all.

Other stuff

So, that Apple event. Judging by my Mastodon and NetNewsWire feeds, it was divisive. Personally, I thought it was a rare Apple event (of late) that lagged. The most recent ones have felt so crammed full of information that it was like being sandblasted with data. This one was more like a movie where you get to the end and feel like they could have cut a third of the runtime and lost nothing.

I’ve written more about the event here.

Summer! In autumn! Because UK. This country is weird. Anyway…

Published stuff

Shortly after I wrote my weeknote last week, I headed to a real-world shop and bought some pieces of paper with words on. I know. Weird, right?

One of them was issue 300 of Stuff. Any magazine reaching that milestone is a big deal, but it feels like more of an achievement in the current climate, where magazines are under fire and so many people want articles to be free.

Issue 300 was special for me in another way, because an editor asked me to write a big feature celebrating all of the best gadgets that had appeared since the mag’s debut. This was split into time periods, giving people a real sense of how technology has evolved since the late 1990s.

The piece was a pleasure to write, and I do hope you enjoy reading it if you buy a copy of the magazine.

Also for Stuff – this time online – I wrote Apple to zap Lightning: why a USB-C iPhone 15 is good – and why it’s also bad. This is my take on Apple’s switch to USB-C, and noting that regardless of the good/bad details, most folks are just going to be angry. I also had fun making an image for the piece, inspired by Susan Kare’s wonderful Mac artwork. (Far better than stock art! Although I’m very aware I’m not Susan Kare. Still, I gave it my best shot.)

Elsewhere, TapSmart published my feature on creating a toolkit to make memories. This one’s all about techniques and apps to help you capture, save and share precious memories.

Upcoming stuff

Much of my brain and output over the coming week will be responding to what Apple does on Tuesday. But away from the new iPhones and such, I spent quality time properly digging into Apple TV recently (rather than, you know, just watching shows). A tips feature will therefore be winging its way to the Stuff website shortly.

Other stuff

Stuff wasn’t the only magazine hitting a milestone with its current issue – Retro Gamer hit 250. It says everything about the state of games magazines in the UK that I had to look for the section in my local WHSmith. And it turned out there no longer was one. Instead, just four games mags were lurking above the comics.

But Retro Gamer survives – thrives – after 18 years of stewardship under editor Darran Jones, who took over (if my memory’s not playing tricks) for issue 19. 250 issues. 18 years. Both major achievements. And it’s a great mag, which across those many issues told the stories of hundreds of amazing games – stories that in many cases otherwise would never have been told.

It’s been a long time since I wrote for the mag myself. From the mid-20s to the mid-70s, I was a very regular contributor, and fortune enough to write about many of my absolute favourite classic games. I remember a comical ‘interview’ with Alexey Pajitnov, where I asked about the genesis of Tetris and he spoke for half an hour about making the game as I quietly ticked questions off my list that I no longer needed to ask. Easiest interview ever. (And such a privilege to have what amounted to a one-on-one lecture of sorts about the creation of such a seminal title.) There was Mark Cerny’s sheer surprise that anyone would be interested in Marble Madness. The infectious enthusiasm of Eugene Jarvis. The generous input and unseen background work from Steve Golson. And so many more.

I have a retro itch again. I need to find a way to again contribute to the mag occasionally. Regardless, I hope it continues for many years to come.

Finally, a different flavour of retro, in Jamie Montgomerie bringing back two wonderful mobile games – meaning I can remove them from my 32-bit folders of sadness. Over on his blog, he writes about Coolson’s 10th Anniversary and resurrecting Coolson’s Artisanal Chocolate Alphabet and Coolson’s Pocket Pack. Generously, both are free. If you’ve the relevant kit and you enjoy word games, download them right away. Well, after reading his blog post, obviously.

Meteorological autumn is here. Bah. Shouldn’t be allowed. *waves fist at sky*

Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week is: Apple endorses right to repair – here’s why it’s not the big win you might think. It is a win of sorts, but from some coverage, you’d think tinkerers had won the lottery. In reality, we’re seeing demands for making the system more equal, not making the system better. And, of course, the proposed legislation does nothing for those who want to truly make devices their own.

Over at TapSmart, I dig into Apple reinventing answering machines. Warning: may contain snark.

Issue 283 of TapSmart’s sister mag, Swipe, is now available too. We offer a free trial and then it costs $2/£2 per month, for which you get two issues. If you can support our indie journalism, please do.

Upcoming stuff

As Retro Gamer gears up for issue 250, I recently realised how much I miss talking to people who created ancient games. Over at Mastodon, I scratch my retro itch with #DailyRetroGame, but… it’s not quite enough. And so I’ve been noting down gaps in Retro Gamer’s making-ofs and looking at what I might be able to do with games I’m keen to explore.

No guarantees. In my experience, it’s quite random whether people who put together amazing games back in the day will talk about them decades later. But I’m hopeful to at least get one or two new articles in this space out sometime over the coming months.

Other stuff

Quite a few apps I’ve written about in the past have abruptly moved to subscriptions. What’s interesting is how they’ve done this and what they’ve decided to charge.

One, notably, appears to be charging an annual fee equivalent to the original one-off price. That seems reasonable for something you use often. But others have decided on annual figures that are many multiples of the original one-off price. In one case, the annual cost rivals six months of a streaming TV service, for an app that’s good but not anywhere near a daily driver.

I do struggle with this. I get that devs need to make a living. But I’m also one of many people with subscription fatigue. I’m not sure what the solution is. Really, Apple should long ago have allowed devs to offer upgrade pricing, but it obviously prefers subscriptions, because that means ongoing revenue. The question is how many subscriptions an individual can tolerate, and what levels of pricing can be sustained for anything beyond apps and services people consider vital. Alas, I’m not sure I have any answers.