The central heating in our house was terrible. The wired thermostat was in the warmest room. Whatever we tried, we’d end up with an oven-like space there and freezing rooms elsewhere. We got a Tado smart thermostat and that immediately helped. Then we started adding Tado thermostats to the radiators. Which was great until this morning when one of them failed to turn on. Could be iffy Wi-Fi connectivity, a defective unit, or a message from the universe that I shouldn’t stay in bed on a Saturday. No idea which one yet. Technology!
Monument Valley 3 came out this week. It’s good, if very familiar, and I imagine many millions of people will want to play it. They can – if they pay for Netflix. And also keep their subscription active, because the current version ends with a frustrating ‘more to come at some point’ message. I’m starting to tire of game rentals and siloing, which increasingly resembles the fragmented TV landscape. It won’t be long before Disney gets in on this act – YouTube already has. That said, with the onset of free-to-play and all-you-can-eat, I’m apparently in a minority of folks who’d prefer to own rather than ‘rent’ games.
The Pi 500 has arrived. I really liked its predecessor, which for a long time piped lovely retro games to my TV. I liked how it was an all-in-one with a keyboard, marrying flexibility and compactness. It was subsequently replaced by an old Mac mini, which was more powerful. But I now wonder if it’s time for a Pi to make a living room comeback.
A quick note this time, because I’m buried in end-of-year deadline hell.
My column for Stuff this week is I want more Nintendo mobile games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll get them. My guess is that this pay-once take on a previously IAP-infested mobile title is Nintendo simultaneously making fans happy while extracting one final payment from them. But this version of Pocket Camp does also feel like the game it should have been from the start.
Also for Stuff, I wrote about the Sony PlayStation at 30 – and six of the best PS1 games to try. And instantly got a kicking for my games selection. But, hey, it’s my games selection. My aim with these round-ups is to give people a flavour of each system and ideally promote titles still worth playing today. Related: Vib-Ribbon remains underrated and excellent. And, no, I don’t regret including it over Tomb Raider, Wipeout and Resident Evil. Don’t @ me.
Finally, over at TapSmart, I wrote a deep dive for Carrot Weather. Carrot remains a unique app: feature-rich and hugely customisable weather, but also just great fun to mess around with. Hopefully, whether you’re new to the app or a veteran, you’ll discover handy tips within the article.
I was immersed in ancient games this week for Stuff, reviewing the Evercade Alpha and The Spectrum. The common theme? I liked both of these gadgets a lot more than I expected to. Both delivered a neat blast of nostalgia and immediacy, while recognising that people like to load additional games on to gaming devices.
The end of the year is blazing towards us all. Which means… retrospectives. Lots and lots of retrospectives. 2024 was a weird year in lots of ways. It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out when I review it in terms of Apple and tech.
Apple never wanted emulators on the App Store. I imagine it felt strong-armed into allowing them, due to EU regulators getting antsy, or as a means to attempt to derail third-party app AltStore, which an awful lot of people primarily cared about due to Nintendo emulator Delta. Even with that, Apple first authorised a terrible rip-off over Delta, and everything since has been at best a crapshoot.
PPSSPP Gold is currently in kafkaesque hell, with absurdist responses from app review. Mini vMac was blocked from the App Store, because Apple took umbrage at the idea of an emulator that used its IP. But then Apple went a step further and wouldn’t notarise it for third-party stores, which is outrageous.
These aren’t the only issues emulator authors have faced. Last I checked, MAME4iOS was in limbo. Several other emulator authors have given up. Meanwhile, Apple merrily approves emulators that barely work and are exploitative crap. A cynic might wonder whether this is intent, to showcase the worst of emulation and put people off. Although given app review’s history, it’s perhaps more realistic to instead go for the old saying that you should never put down to malice what could be explained by incompetence.
Thinking about it, I probably should have written those in the opposite order above, since one headline answers the other. Anyway, there is some good stuff in Apple Intelligence, and I’m glad Apple is being deliberate and cautious rather than stamping on creators’ faces. But I can’t help but feel all this effort could be put to better use – and that what this entire industry is delivering isn’t coming close to matching user expectations.
On her Young Vulgarian blog, Marie Le Conte wrote an excellent piece on (some) people’s need to post on social media. For me, it’s always been about human connection. As someone who’s worked from home for well over 20 years, social networking has – at its best – been a great way to feel less isolated.
Where I diverge a little from Le Conte’s take is in her thinking on Meta. She argues that Threads is struggling because Meta didn’t take into account the “posting middle classes” and their needs. I just think Meta can’t help but be anything other than itself. So Threads wants to be different, but Meta’s culture forces it to be little more than another Facebook.
It was notable to see Meta’s Adam Mosseri reveal that the algorithm is being shaken up, presumably because people are getting tired of For You being full of engagement bait. But the ‘rebalancing’ he spoke of only served to annoy people who like For You as it is – and those who hate it. The solution is to give people the option in Threads to default to a chronological feed – or an algorithmic feed of their choosing. But Meta has never been about letting you see what you want to see. Meta wants you to see what it wants you to see.
