The Xperia Play has returned! Sort of. The Ayaneo Pocket Play is a modern take on a smartphone that has slide-out controls that turn it into a handheld console. Again, sort of. As someone who’s loved smartphone gaming since the iPhone 3G, I ask myself over at Stuff why the Ayaneo Pocket Play doesn’t make me more excited.

Premium apps for iPhone? There are plenty of good ones, and my selection of the best is here, now including Fastbackward.

Love Lego? My final Lego update of the year for Stuff explores the best sets of 2025 and what’s coming up in early 2026, including a minifig-scale DeLorean.

Phones away for Christmas Day? Mostly. But there are times when an iPhone comes in handy, as outlined in my apps for Christmas Day feature.

Apple has nuked an Apple Account. Again. And this time, it’s owned by someone who literally wrote the book on Apple development and who runs the longest-running Apple dev event not run by Apple. If the company can obliterate Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison’s account for no good reason, no one’s is safe. Again, make sure you have local backups of EVERYTHING.

Robin Ince has quit the Infinite Monkey Cage. He outlines why on Bluesky, and his final moments on the show were captured too. This makes me deeply sad for Robin, the audience and approachable science as a whole. Infinite Monkey Cage was my favourite show. And I quite deliberately say that in past tense, because I won’t be listening without Ince, whose input to the show was irreplaceable. The BBC desperately needs a rethink when it forces out people who have the audacity to be decent human beings, while allowing those spouting all kinds of nasty views to remain in post.

Today is Adam Banks Day. For those of us who were fortunate enough to be in his orbit, he was an inspiration. The man was a giant in publishing and a fantastic, kind human being. I miss him deeply and he was taken from us far too soon. Wherever you are, Adam, I’m sure you’re spotting typos that no mere mortal could possibly have seen. (See also: Christopher Phin’s wonderful and heartfelt tribute on YouTube.)

Your iPhone already has iPhone Fold Software, but Apple won’t let you use it. I’m not sure why I was surprised about this, but iOS and iPadOS aren’t really distinct, as recent hacks have shown by getting iPadOS running on an iPhone. My latest piece for WIRED explores the ramifications and what it might mean for the future of Apple hardware and software alike.

The iPhone Fold? Pfft! I want the iPhone TriFold. But only if it’s better (and cheaper) than the Galaxy Z TriFold. Which, as I write for Stuff, just isn’t going to happen.

I hate Liquid Glass. I wrote for WIRED about its divisive nature, griped over at Stuff regarding its shortcomings, and grumbled on this blog about its accessibility issues. Since then, improvements have been made, but Liquid Glass is still a mess, eroding clarity and usability across every Apple operating system. So I’m not shedding a tear that Apple’s head of user design, Alan Dye, has quit. I am, however, excited that his replacement is Steve Lemay, a well-regarded interaction designer. Not that this will lead to a handbrake turn, but it could result in iOS 27 and chums being at least a little less awful next autumn.

Want to fill your house with Lego? You’ll need fewer sets with these giants. Although your wallet won’t thank you if you buy all 52 of these massive sets.

Need a gift for an iPhone fan? (Or some thoughts for your own list?) Here’s my gift guide for TapSmart.

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Planning for the holidays? Let your iPhone take the strain.

The new Met Office app is due. Specifically, the company will ruin its app and website on 10 December.

Actually good apps? Here are some for Apple Watch and Mac.

My Spotify Unwrapped is learning how poorly the service pays bands compared to its major rivals and that its founder invested in AI military defence. Other streaming services exist. As does Bandcamp, for when you want to actually own music rather than merely rent it.

Simogo Legacy Collection is out. I wrote about it last week. If you’ve got a Switch, buy it unless you hate fantastic, innovative games.

Games should not be ephemeral. Yet they are. Notably on iPhone and iPad, where Apple cares more about revenue and pushing people to the next thing than preservation. It’s this that pushed Simogo to release its entire mobile collection for Nintendo Switch. Over at Stuff, I outline why I think this is a smart move – and that it doesn’t say great things about the future of iPad games.

Color Splash is an iPhone classic. It now joins my classics series over at TapSmart. My thanks to Hendrik Kueck for the in-depth interview about the origins of this famous (and still fab) app.

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The iPhone 17 is this year’s best buy. That’s my take after two months, and I’m sticking with it.

Apple’s Files app is lacking. Fortunately, there are other file managers for iPhone, which can make it easier to deal with network and cloud storage. My piece for TapSmartchecks out the best of them.

175 graphic novels for $18? That’s the latest – totally bonkers – Image Humble Bundle. If you’ve never tried digital comics before, now is the time to start.

Microsoft Windows hit 40. Over at Stuff, I wrote about its path from wonky beginnings to world-domination.

Bubble Bobble is excellent. Hammering the point home is the new Evercade Alpha Taito unit, which I wrote about for Stuff in my column called ‘I always wanted a full-size arcade machine, but this is even better’.

The new online App Store is great. And awful. For TapSmart, I outline why I think it represents the best and worst of Apple.

Editing photos on an iPhone? My latest for Amateur Photographer heads beyond Photos to explore the photo editors that have stuck around on my smartphone.

Speaking of iPhones… I overhauled Stuff’s ‘best iPhone in 2025 ranked from best to worst’ list.

And speaking of iPhone photos… I find the prospect of tidying a library of thousands of snaps overwhelming. But apps like Memories and Fastbackward make doing so manageable. Find out how in my column for TapSmart.

Buying a gift for a frequent flyer? My latest for British Airways High Life lists 11 they’d (probably) love.

Tired of feeling insane all the time? That’s the question Marie Le Conte asks in her recent column. And, yeah, I feel exactly the same when it comes to online discourse and the current path of British politics.

You are likely to be eaten by a grue. But, on the plus side, it’ll soon be an open source grue, according to Jack Yarwood over at Time Extension.

Type-in listings are back! If you’re a child of the 1980s, you might remember spending hours laboriously typing a listing into your 8-bit micro. And then said listing failing to work. Yet there was always something magical when one of the things did spark into life. Now you can relive the joy/horror with DOCTYPE, which is a properly old-school listings mag but for web apps. A genius and terrifying creation in roughly equal measure.

My iPhone 16 Pro battery isn’t great. And yet it’s also healthy, according to the Settings app. Still, it’s disappointing that I often head towards the end of the day with the phone gasping for a charge. Which is why, for once, a spec on an Android phone excited me, leading me to write I want Apple to squeeze a OnePlus 15 battery inside my next iPhone.

Mac icons are now dreadful. So says Paul Kafasis, who systematically dismantles Apple’s new design style, ably supported elsewhere by John Gruber. Honestly, I’m not sure what’s going on at Apple right now. The broader issues with Liquid Glass don’t say good things about taste, usability and basic objectivity. These icon changes starkly show all these problems in microcosm, with most of them being significantly worse from aesthetic and usability standpoints.

The customer experience is all-important. So says Ken Segall, who argues Tim Cook’s Apple increasingly crosses a Steve Jobs red line. The whole ‘What would Steve Jobs do?’ thing is dangerous territory. A company has to move on when a founder is no longer around. But I’ve long felt Apple too often shifts under Cook from ‘be the best’ to ‘be least worst’ regarding customer experience. Infesting Maps with ads, which Segall suggests is rumoured, would be another step into the bad space.

The App Store is now online. This one deserves a finally. When you look up an app in Safari on Mac, you no longer get a preview page that immediately attempts to load the Mac App Store – and, in my case, then causes a vestibular trigger that makes me dizzy. You can now search and browse categories. But can you buy anything online and, say, load an app on to your iPhone, ready for when you next use it? No. Incredible. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been able to do that on Google Play for years and years.

A Vectrex Mini is coming. I wrote about this for Stuff, and it’s a mini console I never imagined would happen. The Vectrex is also a console I always craved but never bought. These days, they are expensive units – and also fragile. Not an ideal combination. The Mini lacks a CRT, which has made some folks grumble. Although not to the degree it impacted the Kickstarter, which was fully funded in 15 minutes. And from an authenticity standpoint, the Mini will at least get physical overlays that ape the originals (with a digital fallback if you use a game where you don’t have an overlay). Even better, the unit turns into a gloriously geeky desk clock when idle. So, yes, I want one.

I updated some Apple articles: iOS 26 tips (Stuff) and my iPhone and iPad buyer’s guides (both TapSmart).

Star Trek Lego is boldly going, etc. I covered the new set for Stuff, cramming in as many puns as I could get away with. Engage! Etc.

A Roblox gardening game is getting a movie. Being old, I don’t care. And I figured this was a good excuse to point back to an old column about putting these retro games on the big screen instead.