Microsoft is killing the Blue Screen of Death.In my piece for Wired, I take a trip down memory lane to wave goodbye to the iconic screen we all love to hate. (Spoiler: there will still be a BSOD, but the B will stand for something new.)
Even Hades couldn’t save Netflix Games. Is mobile gaming doomed? Betteridge-baiting headline aside, this column for Stuff dives into my thoughts on mobile gaming, from its earliest days to the huge problems this side of gaming now faces. In my view, it’s – as ever – all about money.
The HDMI spec now includes 16K. Which is clearly bonkers. At least, I argue that point in my head-to-head opinion over on Stuff. Fighting on behalf of screens with more pixels than atoms in the universe (or something): Tom Morgan-Freelander.
The Trump Phone keeps changing.Wired notes it’s already a lot different from one week ago. Absurd, given that people are preordering something that still lacks defined specs. A week and change ago, I suggested the following over at Stuff: “It’s also unclear whether the phone will ever exist in reality. But if it does, millions of idiots will buy one. Are you one of them?” I wasn’t expecting to be proved right so quickly.
Apple design now baffles me. The company sometimes claimed it had more taste than it actually had. Brushed Metal won’t go down in history as gorgeous design. But something feels very wrong over Cupertino way. Sure, the macOS Finder icon is now 73% less hideous. But Liquid Glass has so many problems, the new alarm design on iOS is abysmal, and then there are the menu bars. Yikes.
From WFH to WTF.Anuj Ahooja over on Mastodon said: “In the last five years, we’ve gone from ‘employees will never have to go into an office’ to ‘employees need to be in the office because creative and innovative work can only be done face-to-face between humans‘ to ‘lol we don’t need humans’.” It’s an astute observation and the path we’ve travelled is like double whiplash. It’s quite something that while people were fighting managers to retain rights from covid that were one of its few benefits, many managers reasoned they could do away with people entirely.
Blinding lights are bad. It’s been hot in the UK, and so we have fans in almost every room now. And they all appear to have been equipped with an LED that could be redeployed as a floodlight. So it’s a good time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of a Stuff column: Dear all tech companies: stop adding obnoxious eye-searing lights to gadgets. (Reader: they did not stop. They will never stop.)
I have issues with Apple’s current design trajectory. There’s a lot of gloss – style over substance – with Liquid Glass. While I appreciate some refinements, like the quiet exit of the Home indicator, the more I use macOS 26 and iPadOS 26, the more I question where Apple’s heading.
Historically, Apple has been opinionated and confident in its graphic design. More often than not, it’s also made good decisions. There are exceptions, but the Mac survived and later thrived by marrying beauty and usability. Similarly, the iPhone would never have become a giant in mobile computing if iOS hadn’t looked great and been easy to use. Today, though, Apple too often feels lost when it comes to design.
This sense of unease can be shown by focusing on one key component: the menu bar. This element has been a vital part of the Mac since the platform’s earliest days, helping users quickly and efficiently access commands and controls.
In the first macOS 26 dev beta, Apple removed the menu bar background entirely. Menu bar text and icons suddenly floated above whatever was behind them, dramatically reducing legibility – something that plagues Apple design right now, due to Apple’s obsession with Liquid Glass. Using Reduce Transparency brought the background back, but no one should be reliant on accessibility settings for basic legibility.
In beta 2, Apple added an option to restore the menu bar background. Which is good. Except it also makes me question Apple’s confidence in its design work. When Apple starts hedging its bets, it signals that it knows something is wrong, but lacks the conviction to course-correct. Or perhaps such settings are a means to temporarily shut people up, while default choices reveal the true intent and direction of travel.
On iPad, things are even worse. I’m a fan of the new windowing system, but the menu bar implementation is dreadful. The problem isn’t its auto-hide behaviour – the Mac has had something similar (although off by default) since 2015. Again, the issue is that Apple is so enamoured with transparency that it’s sacrificing visual clarity.
Unfortunately, the ‘fix’ on iPad isn’t yet anywhere near as full as the Mac one. In beta 1, a two-up window view could see menu bar text vanish entirely. In beta 2, Apple added a subtle gradient, which barely helps. Honestly, this is embarrassing – the sort of thing a design student wouldn’t hand in as part of a project. A menu bar coming to iPad is great, but not if you can’t read its text.
I spent five minutes mocking up alternatives, one with a frosted glass effect and the other with a solid background. I’m very aware that they are far from perfect, and one commenter rightly suggested iPadOS would prefer a rounded rectangle menu bar background, like the Dock. But they still offer more clarity than Apple’s proposal. And that’s a problem, because basic foundational graphic design should be the starting point for operating systems many millions of people use every day. Design that lacks legibility shouldn’t make it off of the drawing board, let alone into a beta.
Fortunately, it’s still June. These operating systems won’t ship until September. There’s still time to fix all this. But Apple’s timid iPad tweak doesn’t suggest an eagerness to improve. If anything, it suggests a design team wondering: what’s the bare minimum we can get away with to quiet the complaints?
A piece in the i Paper today – “Reddit is ugly and utilitarian – but it’s the best space left on the internet” – sings the praises of Reddit. It does so through the lens of writer Zing Tsjeng enjoying a site that doesn’t demand you “market yourself as popular, attractive or palatable”. But in later admitting the site “isn’t perfect, of course”, the piece misses the chance to dig deeper and therefore overlooks key issues with Reddit that aren’t immediately apparent.
I do agree with the i about certain benefits. Reddit being largely text-based is increasingly rare in an internet obsessed with video and brevity. It allows for – and often encourages – depth and discussion, due to being essentially a bunch of specialist forums glued together. Its algorithm isn’t great. But create an account and Reddit will mostly stick to things you actually want to see, rather than ‘doing a YouTube’ and rapidly steering you towards extremism. It stands in stark contrast to the instant gratification of TikTok or the endless void of AI-generated slop that is a modern Facebook feed.
But. The piece calls Reddit “one of the few remaining platforms safe from capitalism’s onerous demands”. It then, crucially, qualifies that statement with, “to market yourself as popular, attractive or palatable for the online gaze”. I say crucially, because that caveat is vital. It aligns with the piece’s objective: to position Reddit as a place where you can be yourself. But by narrowing the definition, that dodges some uncomfortable truths, which are some of the places where Reddit starts to go bad.
The piece claims that in being “[f]reed from the need to appeal to the algorithm or establish a personal brand, people can actually be themselves” and this “fuels the brutal honesty behind notorious confessional subreddits”. In some cases, this is true. But Reddit has a karma system, which is often ‘farmed’ (gamed), a process that has been accelerated by the onset of AI. Long-time users have watched, glumly, as many of their favourite subreddits (Reddit’s jargon for ‘dedicated forum’) slowly descended into a game of spot the AI post.
For the most part, automated posts (regularly recycled) are confined to those huge subreddits, because they are the best places to farm karma. But AI has impacted the site in other ways. Users increasingly copy-and-paste from ChatGPT, just as they do everywhere else online. But on Reddit, this erodes the platform’s reputation for expertise. I recently witnessed a surreal argument about handheld console specs, with someone doubling down on their inaccurate, clearly AI-generated information. The result? People bought into it and said they’d ‘upgrade’ to a device that in reality didn’t offer the claimed benefits. Quite why they didn’t research outside of Reddit is beyond me, but for some people Reddit is the internet, in the same way older folks barely leave Facebook. Regardless, it shows Reddit isn’t immune from AI.
In fact, Reddit the company is in very much in favour of AI, largely because it long ago realised it could sell Reddit content as training data. This is, remember, user-generated content. Without that, Reddit is nothing. But the users won’t see any of the spoils. And if this alone makes you question whether Reddit is one of the good guys, the platform’s attitude was laid bare during what Wikipedia calls the Reddit API controversy. In short, Reddit brutally went after third-party apps, such as the popular Apollo, made unfounded accusations against Apollo’s creator, and sparked a wave of subreddit blackouts. When the Reddit leadership’s patience wore thin, the company simply threatened to replace moderators if they didn’t reopen their subreddits – and then followed through. That ended any pretence the platform is meaningfully democratic or, for that matter, meaningfully different from its rivals.
None of this necessarily contradicts the i paper’s subjective claim that Reddit is the “best space left on the internet”. But even if you agree (and, for the record, I don’t), the conclusion must be that it’s merely the best of a very bad bunch.
Sega killed loads of mobile games. You can save them.But, as I write for Stuff, you shouldn’t have to. This piece looks at how Sega Forever became ‘Sega For About Eight Years’, the ephemeral nature of digital games, and how (and why) the industry should embrace emulation.
5 reasons to buy the Trump Mobile T1 Phone 8002 (gold version) was my second column for Stuff this week. Long-time readers might imagine it’s not entirely serious. Indeed, it suggests “[…] millions of idiots will buy one. Are you one of them?” Natch, I got angry ‘fan mail’ from someone who I imagine owns a red cap with MAGA written on it.
Apple Intelligence live translation in iOS 26 is AI done right. Lest anyone think I only moan about Apple, here’s a second positive Apple article in one week. The heat must be getting to me. There are caveats with translation, but for personal use I’m excited about more people being able to communicate. This strikes me as a good use of AI.
Password advice remains terrible. You may have read Cybernews and others reporting on a massive hack. The snag: few concrete details are in the wild and yet publications reported this with clickbait headings and terrible advice. A commonality on the latter was ‘experts’ telling people to regularly update passwords. Genuine expert Kate Bevan said on Bluesky, “Actual experts say you shouldn’t change passwords unless you think they’ve been compromised. Also, SMS is better than no 2FA, but it’s the weakest method of 2FA: use an app to generate codes.” She uses Authy. Other options include Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and Apple Passwords. Additionally, she points to the NCSC’s guidancefrom 2018 on why you shouldn’t regularly change passwords. Publications need to do better when giving advice on this subject.
I wrote about why it feels hotter in a UK summer than you might think. Unsurprisingly, quite a few people countered that by saying that, actually, where they live, 31°C is like being in a fridge, having not read the piece. Sigh. (I also just checked local humidity readings. For the past week, they bottomed out in the mid-50s and mostly lurked in the mid-80s or higher. Bleh.)
Bluesky is still dying. According to a Spectator columnist, who then adds: “Which is a shame, because I don’t want these people back on Twitter”. Reader, these people do want us all back. To save you a click, this is another piece by someone who doesn’t like Bluesky and didn’t bother to integrate. Increasingly, I hear people countering this narrative, saying that Bluesky is great for engagement and traffic. (Wired said much the same in its most recent print issue.) The Spectator piece does have one important point, though: if the decline in users becomes an ongoing trend, Bluesky might be in trouble. Mastodon might be fine as a quieter, niche online space, but it strikes me that for Bluesky to succeed long-term, it needs scale.
The English language is changing. Watching a Girl Gone London video about ‘zed vs zee’, she noted globalisation is causing Brits to use more Americanisms. I see this myself and suspect the dominance of US English will eventually win out. Most publishers and companies I work for prefer US-English (Stuff being a rare exception). British children’s books use as much US-English and terminology as they can get away with, to push sales. And Brits taking in so much US media is echoed in vocabulary changes that, honestly, I sometimes find grating. Yes, old man shakes fist at cloud. But when ‘pants’ is being used for outerwear rather than underwear, I grumble a bit. And I’m absolutely going to draw the line at ‘faucet’, because come on.
The new tvOS is a bit rubbish. I was going to write about this, but I’m not sure I need to now. Joe Rosensteel says everything in tvOS brings minor additions and weird priorities, covering Apple’s slew of terrible UI decisions (including glass effects and profile frictions) and the only major new feature being faux-karaoke.
Duolingo is probably dead to me. In three days, my plan renews. But I’m over it. Extended time with it has made me more aware that the system is more about gamification and engagement than learning. Most changes Duolingo has made have been for the worse. And the CEO is an AI bro with no understanding of why people don’t want that infecting their already compromised experience. Babbel is the most recommended alternative, according to people giving me advice. My one concern: mini-G (10) has racked up a streak now well north of 1000. I hope she continues – in Duolingo or elsewhere.
Make your iPhone more minimal! If you want to. This is my selection of cracking apps that get out of your way and four beautifully minimalist, simple games.
Retrospecs is on sale for $0.99/99p. The app lets you load a photo or video and makes it look as if it had been generated on anything from an ancient Commodore PET through to a SNES or a Mega Drive. It’s a wonderful app – easy for newcomers, yet with loads of things to fiddle with for retro geeks. Buy it!
You might have seen reports about a heatwave in the UK. Then you might have looked at the temperatures and thought: what? What? Readings this week have been in the high 20s, and where I live are predicted to top out at 31°C on Saturday. (That’s high 70s to high 80s in old money.) Surely that’s just… lovely? Bit of sun. Bit of warmth. Get over yourselves, wimpy British people!
But no. Because various factors add up to make things pretty uncomfortable here. We don’t, as a rule, have air conditioning. It’s increasingly common in cars. Some offices and shops (mostly supermarkets) will have some kind of cooling units. Often ineffective ones, mind. Homes? Vanishingly rare. And those homes? They’re designed to keep heat in. Mostly brick-built. Heavily insulated. Smallish windows. No air flow. And speaking of air flow, there’s not much of that either right now. No breeze at all. Plus, it’s humid, due to the UK being a weirdly shaped island surrounded by sea.
There’s no time to prepare and build resilience either. If you live in a place that’s very regularly hot, you become acclimatised. The UK, though, frequently flips seasons at almost any time of year. A week and change ago, we were tempted to put the heating back on in our house. With wind chill, the ‘feels like’ factor outside was in single figures (mid 40s, in ye olde degrees). During evenings, we were wearing fleeces and wrapping up in blankets. Now I’m sitting in my office, just after 9am, with a fan blasting into my face, watching the temperature readings on our smart radiator gadgets tick ever upwards. The windows are open and that’s doing nothing. Fans are on, which is basically blowing hot air around. Even nights aren’t helping, with their lack of breeze and temperatures stubbornly only briefly bottoming out in the high teens (mid 60s). And sunrises before 5am mean if you do leave the windows and curtains open, you’re going to wake up at stupid o’ clock.
Despite all this, I personally would take heat over murk. We often have ‘summers’ in the UK that amount to six weeks of cool grey. I am solar powered. I love the sun. But the heat can be tricky to deal with. And because of the various factors outlined above, not least the fact that for many people there’s just no ‘escape’, it can feel an awful lot more uncomfortable, stifling and intense than you’d otherwise realise from the temperature numbers alone. In short, it’s hotter than you might think. So maybe think a bit before rattling off yet another “pfft – the Brits are just wimps” post when, here in the UK, we all feel like we’re melting.
