Photoshop is now on iPhone. I’m not sure I want it after all. In my column for Stuff, I conclude that the dream was for apps like Photoshop to come to mobile years ago. They did. Adobe didn’t. Now I’m not sure Adobe being on iPhone is relevant for most people.

The iPhone SE was small and relatively cheap. The iPhone 16e is neither. I wrote about this for TapSmart. Honestly, I think the branding is just marketing spin from Apple. It’s absurd from a tech standpoint to talk about a phone being part of the iPhone 16 family when it doesn’t look like it nor have features to match. The lack of MagSafe is especially baffling.

Given current politics, people are looking for alternatives to US services. The linked site outlines European options for the likes of email, search engines, and so on. Also, while people on Bluesky won’t want to hear it, that’s a US organisation too. By contrast, Mastodon is decentralised and based in Germany. I’m not suggesting quitting Bluesky (I won’t be), but I am gently suggesting more people – and organisations – give Mastodon another shot and use both.

Speaking of the US, a story broke about a German tourist being held by the CBP. I’ve fortunately never had that happen to me, but it did remind me of a surreal encounter I had when travelling to WWDC. And bear in mind I play life with a cheat code when it comes to the US – white man with Home Counties (ish) English accent.

LOK Digital is a great puzzle game, like a crossword puzzle where the creator got drunk and mashed keys to fill the gaps. I added it to my best Android games list, but it’s also available for iPhone, iPad, Windows and Mac.

Speaking of games, I updated my best one-thumb games for iPhone feature for TapSmart. It’s always amazing to see what game creators can do with the most minimal of player interaction models.

It’s actually sunny in the UK. Time for a spring clean? I wrote about how you can use your iPhone to help.

Lego made a T. rex fossil set almost as big as an actual dinosaur. OK, slight exaggeration. But it’s a metre long. I love Lego, but where do people store this stuff?

Apple finally killed the Home button with the iPhone 16e. I won’t miss it. Much. But as I wrote for Stuff, there are still things it did better than anything else. And its replacement is dreadful.

Adobe Photoshop has turned 35. I remember first seeing a copy at school, in a new graphics building that had a handful of tiny Macs. And I’m sure I could have written something sensible about this landmark, but I instead wrote something far more fun for Stuff.

People are wearing their Apple Watches on their ankles. So I asked whether you should. And immediately recognised having set off the Betteridge’s Law of Headlines klaxon. Still, it was an interesting thought experiment. 

AI is blurring facts and fiction. For TapSmart, I explored ways to use an iPhone to unmask truth in an age of AI.

Speaking of AI, Ai Pin is dead. And the ‘important update’ for customers is a doozy. My favourite bit: “We understand this transition may be difficult.” Note that the actual ‘transition’ is from a working product (after a fashion – Ai Pin was shit) to a piece of e-waste that you’ll barely be able to do anything with beyond checking the battery level. Looks like I wasn’t far off back in 2023: “I worry AI Pin is a feature wrapped around an ideology, masquerading as a product.”

New Lego never stops coming. My best upcoming Lego sets feature for Stuff got some new entries recently, including a massive new Ninjago set and a brick-built take on van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Which, despite being Lego, is still marginally cheaper than it would be to buy the original.

Apple R&D made Luxo Jr. Ish. Over at Stuff, I write about how Apple robots need to be charming and useful, but can’t prize being adorable over utility.

In 2003, Ulysses reimagined writing apps. It’s now the latest entry in my iPhone classics series, which includes an interview with Ulysses co-founder Marcus Fehn. 

Want to sell your old tat? For TapSmart, I cover apps for selling things using your iPhone.

What is the iPad for? Matt Gemmell digs deep into this in Back to Mac, which inspired my own piece about how the iPad fits into my life.

Mega City Comics is saved. The owner was retiring, which threatened the existence of the much-loved Camden Town comics store. Forbidden Planet has bought it. I imagine that will change its vibe (hence a recent firesale of back issues that FP doesn’t care about stocking). But it’s great to know the shop will survive in some form.

Ian Dunt argues journalism is collapsing in the middle of an information war. Why? Money, mostly. A combination of people being unwilling to pay and analytics driving what gets eyeballs on sites has eroded quality media. But, as I wrote about for Stuff over ten years ago, this goes wider than hard news and politics. The message remains the same: support the media you want to exist, or it soon won’t.

Writer Matt Gemmell decided eight years ago to go all-in on iPad. Now, he’s switched back to the Mac. This should set alarm bells ringing on Apple’s iPad team, but I imagine Apple as a whole won’t really be fussed. After all, Matt simply swapped one Apple product for another. And he’s keeping the iPad. If anything, this is a victory for Apple and precisely what it wants people to do.

In his post, Matt notes part of the problem with the iPad is that it’s never been strongly defined. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, it was positioned somewhere between a phone and a laptop. Since then, users have argued for it to take over the capabilities of both devices – but especially the latter. However, while the iPad has the power of Apple’s ‘proper’ computers, it lacks the flexibility and, in some cases, utility. All of which is by design.

What some people tend to forget is that Apple is very opinionated on wanting people to buy (at least one) Mac alongside any Apple mobile devices. It’s my ongoing belief that arbitrary barriers have therefore been – at best – left in place for that purpose. Friction exists in part not because Apple cannot find a solution that works on a tablet, but because Apple wants more of your money, and it gets that through hardware sales.

Right now, any current-gen iPhone is more than powerful enough to run the vast majority of software the average person would want to use. And more. Mine happily runs Korg Gadget projects with an absurd number of tracks. But Apple absolutely does not want your iPhone to become the one device to rule them all. It hates the idea of you getting home and plugging your iPhone into a dock, and using it with a keyboard, display and pointing device. Because then you’d only buy one thousand-buck device, rather than two – or several. The iPad isn’t quite in the same space. After all, Apple is quite happy about selling iPad keyboards that cost as much as entry-level iPads. But it would still prefer for you to own an iPad and a Mac. And an iPhone. And maybe a second Mac. And so on.

I’ve struggled with the same issues as Matt. I for a time really wanted an iPad to become more. I love using the device. But I stuck with an iMac for the day job, primarily due to iPad frictions relating to external display support. Even when Stage Manager arrived, it was far, far too slow and clunky to replace my Mac set-up. My iPad subsequently largely turned into a combination of comics reader and sofa-based music-creation sketchpad, with the odd smattering of video and games. One holiday, I took only the iPad and found myself frustrated by how much longer key tasks took when I was trying to work at speed, in order to enjoy more of my spare time.

From a personal standpoint, things have changed a little since last September, in terms of my iPad usage. Although that’s not really been down to the iPad itself. There’s something very off for me about the iPhone 16 Pro. I’m reasonably certain I cannot use it for any extended length of time without getting dizzy. Despite my issues with vestibular triggers, I’ve never had this with any other Apple display when a device has Reduce Motion active. Perhaps something has changed with the display and PWM. I don’t know. But this does mean my iPad is now doing more work again, in being the device I read on at breakfast or noodle around on of an evening. Notably, though, the iPad is still not being used more for work. And I’m not sure that will ever change.

Last year, I argued that Apple never wanted emulators on the App Store. I suspected it felt strong-armed by EU regulators into allowing them, or was using them as a tool to blunt AltStore, which looked set to specialise in the kind of apps Apple wouldn’t approve. I also noted that MAME4iOS was in limbo. But the situation is in fact worse.

The developer had already renamed MAME4iOS to ArcadeMania, due to Apple raising concerns about ownership of the MAME brand. OK. I get that. But a couple of months back, the creator revealed (and I noted on Mastodon) that Apple rejected the app anyway because “they said it can only run ROMs owned by the developer”.

Still, this is app review, right? Mistakes happen. So the app was resubmitted. And computer said no:

The App Review Board evaluated your app and determined that the original rejection feedback is valid.

To address the 5.2.2 issue, please revise your app to only run ROM files created by you or that you specifically own.

We encourage you to review the previous rejection correspondence for this app, make the necessary changes to bring it into compliance with the App Review Guidelines, and resubmit it for review.

ArcadeMania’s creator adds: “I’m kind of at a loss of what to do at this point”. And, yeah, it’s easy to see why. Emulators, by definition, tend to run ROMs their creators don’t own. Apple’s demand is like mandating music player developers own every song users might add. And it’s a doubly baffling decision, given the existence of other emulators, including arcade emulators, on the App Store.

Apple isn’t serious about emulation. It never was. Right now, creating an emulator for iPhone, iPad or Apple TV is a waste of time, given that approval is a lottery with opaque rules Apple changes on a whim and does not apply evenly. And all this further damages the company’s gaming credibility. People who like emulators tend to really like games and they’re vocal. Right now, they continue to shout about Android.

See also:

• Apple isn’t serious about retro game emulation on iPhone – nor level playing fields for developers
• Apple vs emulation – three months of incoherence and idiocy