Now back in the land of the living. Mostly.

Published stuff

It was bizarre-o-week in games land. I wrote about the Atari 2600+, which mimics the ancient console and lets you plug in original carts and controllers. And then I wrote for Stuff: What unites the PlayStation Portal and Atari 2600+? They’re confusing, weird and very niche.

Both of these products baffle me, for different reasons, as you’ll find out in the column. I know some folks are enamoured by them, mind. There’s a big nostalgia factor to the Atari, and a convenience one to the PSP, as noted by Matt Tate for Stuff, who is eager to throw 200 quid Sony’s way. Even so, both of these for me have ended up filed under ‘no need to exist’.

Over at TapSmart, I look into better and friendlier streaks apps (Apple, take note!), Home Screens eroding app usage, and Monument Valley, which is the latest entry in my classic apps series.

A new issue of sister mag Swipe went out recently too, if you fancy supporting our work for the tiny sum of two bucks per month.

And finally: for this blog, I smashed out some cathartic words: iCloud sucks and it really shouldn’t.

Other stuff.

I was very ill recently and could barely move, let alone exercise. My streaks all went away. It’s almost a relief, and yet I noticed yesterday that when I got to the end of the day, having forgotten to do my 30 minutes on the elliptical, I just thought: sod it.

I’m going to try and rewire my brain using the Streaks app, with settings more generous than Apple’s YOU MUST BE A ROBOT line of thinking. Perhaps that will give me a sweet spot closer to motivation than drudgery. (Also good: Gentler Streak, which when I first tried it basically told me to chill for a bit, on the basis of my stats nose-diving. Nice.)

Elsewhere, I’ve started digging into the guilt piles, which in this house mostly comprise Lego and comics. Two recommendations. Tales of the Space Age is a gorgeous display set for fans of, well, space. And Saga is wonderful comics. I’m about to delve into the third deluxe hardcover. Here’s hoping the fourth will rock up before the heat death of the universe. (The creative team’s hiatus last time was impressive in terms of duration, but a touch frustrating for fans – if understandable, given the creators’ workloads!)

Summer holidays! Sun! So naturally the entire house comes down with THE PLAGUE. Sigh. Fortunately, at least, not that plague. Anyway…

Published stuff

My Stuff column this week is The Apple Watch X I want is one that’ll stop me doing stupid things, partly written in a haze. In what’s undoubtedly a journalist prize-winning first, the opening line is “CRANK CRANK KA-CHUNKK FRRRRRRRRPPP!” That’s a good thing, right?

Over at TapSmart, I explored study aids for iPhone and inducted 1Blocker into my classic apps series.

And for this very blog, I… posted something that wasn’t a weeknote. I know. I’m as surprised as you are. Threads and Mastodon are not doomed. What is: an expectation they can replace Twitter is quite self-explanatory, I think.

I get the feeling lots of people are looking for that single social network solution where they chat with friends, laugh at jokes, follow breaking news, get customer support from brands, have exchanges with celebs, and so on. Those days are gone, atomised in a whiff of Musk.

Upcoming stuff

For once, I don’t have an office full of hardware that’s not mine (hurrah!), but I do have a new Apple TV I’ll be putting through its paces for a proper explainer. I’m sure there are many others in the wild, but I’m writing one, so there.

It would be hilarious to suggest I’ll release a new album soon, but I did at least make some progress this week on a few tracks. I now try to avoid looking at the ‘date created’ stamp on all of them, mind. I suspect by the time I’m done, streaming will be too, and we’ll be having music injected directly into our brains. On the plus side, music is my happy place. So I should do more of it, regardless of whether it goes anywhere .

Other stuff

Last Sunday, on the way home from having sat in a field for four hours with some friends, I started to feel… not good. I then spent roughly the next ten hours making sure I was within running (and, later, desperate zombie-like staggering) distance from the bathroom. The dreaded noro had got me.

Still, it made me appreciate anew is the basics in life. That first moment of not being in crushing discomfort. Being able to tolerate the slightest sip of cold water. (The best thing I’d ever tasted, I thought, at that moment.) The flat lemonade I found I could carefully drink the following day. Half a banana: the meal of kings.

I’m still recovering now, and slowly returning to normal. But I am looking around and wondering a little more what normal should be. Not that I’d wish noro on anyone to end up in a similar space.

Summer happened. It was on Thursday. Spring before. Autumn now.

Published stuff

Over at Stuff, I wrote What is X, why does Elon Musk want an everything app, and why did Twitter have to die? Technically, it’s an X explainer. (An X-plainer?) But, erm, I may have added snark.

This week’s column is: Packing tech for your summer holiday? Hell-o-day, more like. Which has me reminisce about watching the top third of an in-flight movie while surrounded by smoke, and then moving to modern-day trips, where there’s less smoke, more screens, and – surprisingly – just as much ‘Tetris’ packing.

For TapSmart, I wrote about why Apple should take OS parity seriously and macOS Sonoma features I want on iPhone and iPad.

Other stuff

Despite having had two days off this week, I’m knackered. Primarily because the days off involved packing in summer holiday things for the youngling, in the final days before our Merlin pass runs out. On Thursday, we were at a weirdly empty Chessington. Today: London. All good. But I’m now apparently Gets Tired Too Easily years old, and also Knee Randomly Goes Sproing On London Bridges years old. Tsk.

One major plus this week was that our Chessington trip aligned precisely with the south of England’s ‘summer’. It lasted one day and was glorious. Given that we’d planned the trip weeks in advance, I felt grateful. But I do imagine I’m going to head into autumn feeling robbed about this year’s non-summer. I’ll take it over the horrors of fires and such in the south of Europe, but as someone who has trouble with lack of light, I’m already feeling the evenings drawing in. And there have been so few bright ones this year.

Not-summer in the UK continues. Hoping at some point the rain and cold might stop. In the meantime, send canoes. And fleeces.

Published stuff

Given that it’s the summer holidays and I have a nine-year-old, I’ve been battling Screen Time. So I wrote about it for Stuff: Screen Time = scream time. Parents need more human device tracking.

The latest issue of the print magazine is out, which features my round-up of last-minute holiday apps, a primer on animation with a phone, features on creative kit for illustrators and musicians (which includes my review of the oddball CMPSR joystick thing for making noise), and a fond/snarky look back at the very first Chromecast.

Over at TapSmart, I – with some irony – dig into barbecue apps, and I pit Apple Maps against Google Maps. Issue 281 of our sister mag, Swipe for iPhone, is also out, if you’d like to support our little indie venture.

Upcoming stuff

Next week, I’ll be fully immersed in the murky waters of beta operating systems, as I start work on my annual overviews for what’s coming to iPhone, iPad and Mac. Expect grumbles as I discover Stage Manager still doesn’t do quite what I’d like it to.

Other stuff

A stark reminder, today, about the nature of social media. I read through my Mastodon feed, which was pleasant, chatted to friends on Messenger, and caught up with Threads. Then I opened X/Twitter, and the first DM was from someone who told me to “get f——ed” for some article I’d written. I’ve no idea which one. I suspect it was probably this one.

I do miss what Twitter was, but I don’t care for what it’s become. Musk is making it easier and easier to cut ties with the service, even though many friends still post, and quite a lot of work came my way through it. I don’t have anywhere near the same level of outreach elsewhere (my Threads follower count is tiny). But X feels so angry all the time, and I don’t want to have to deal with that anymore.

Ack. Nearly forgot this week. Anyway: onwards!

Published stuff

Over at Stuff, I wrote X marks the rot. Don’t buy into Elon Musk’s lifelong crusade. My point: an everything app is the last thing we need from a company that can’t be trusted. My implementation: initially dipping into a terrifying future where your life depends on giving Elon Musk a daily X. Yikes.

For TapSmart, I added Device 6 to my classic apps list. Nothing else has for me ever matched this app’s combination of writing, design, style, smarts and full-on touchscreen integration (including some very meta elements). I also wrote about some of the new meaningful sharing features coming to iOS 17.

Upcoming stuff

I spent much of last week buried in a big feature for Stuff that digs into top hardware and services from the magazine’s lifetime. It’s always interesting to revisit tech from a decade or two ago that was revolutionary at the time, but that would be meaningless today.

I particularly fondly remember our Toppy (Topfield PVR). This let us pause TV (handy, since our then puppy always wanted to go for a wee when a show started) and record two channels while watching a third. But even better: it was customisable. You could replace the entire UI and do pretty much whatever you wanted with the device. I miss that kind of flexibility; but I don’t miss TV that requires any kind of planning. On-demand suits me. It is the way.

Other stuff

July in the UK is taking it out of me. I’ve elsewhere described our weather this year as follows:

• January: January
• February: February
• March: March
• April: March
• May: March
• June: July, but imported from Spain
• July: April

It looks like August is going to be just as grim as July. Cool. Grey. Dull. Obviously, that’s better than the nightmare happening in Southern Europe, but combined with all the horrifying graphs about climate change I’ve seen online, it’s getting me down. I don’t feel like myself right now, and I’m struggling to figure out how to right that.

I did at least get to the second day of Digitiser’s 30th anniversary, in an attempt to cheer myself up a bit. Digitiser was a daily games magazine on Teletext in the UK. To say it had irreverent humour is putting it mildly. The games industry hated it. The traditional publishing industry hated it even more. Readers loved it. The mag was relentlessly fun and creative.

The 30th was a live event, drawing more from what Digitiser has morphed into as a YouTube channel than its games history, although a follow-up to the original Digitiser The Show is now in the works.

Anyway, it was all very silly, with everyone having an awful lot of fun on stage. A little ray of sunshine in a country that has too little of that right now.