Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week: I love my Apple TV – so why doesn’t Apple? Apple used to call its little streaming box a ‘hobby’ and all evidence suggests it’s one that the company is losing interest in. I also wrote up some iOS 18 tips and tricks and updated the best upcoming Lego sets list.

Over at TapSmart, I explored 10 great apps for learning new things, updated the site’s iPhone buyer’s guide and added the much-missed Squareball to my classic apps series. That game was so good. It’s also one of the very few 32-bit games I’ve never been able to get running again on my iPad Air. 

Other stuff

Starved of Netflix, the ten-year-old is now mainlining Animal Park. This BBC show is a behind-the-scenes look at British safari park Longleat, and is objectively very good. But it’s driving me bonkers that the voiceover exclusively uses imperial measurements. While this is a family-friendly show (rather than broadcasting on a children’s channel), I think it’s wild in 2024 that this is still happening. At the very least, you’d think the show would use constructions like the giraffe is five metres – or about 16 and a half feet – tall, not least because British children haven’t been taught imperial in about 50 years. It’s not the 1970s, BBC!

As someone who’s been keen on iPhone gaming since the beginning, I always find it sad when sites go away. But TouchArcade shutting down is a really big one. The signs have been ominous for a while, but reading the linked post was nonetheless a gut-punch. Time to double down on supporting remaining iPhone gaming outlets, such as the excellent AppUnwrapper.

Finally, this was the week my follower count on Bluesky sailed past Threads. I’m not obsessive about such numbers – engagement and enjoyment are what really matter on social networks. But numbers are an indication of momentum. 

For me, Bluesky started out way behind every other network when it came to followers. I joined very early (user 40,269 – one of the first one per cent), and it was like typing into the void. Which was oddly freeing. But today it’s the only social network where it feels like a bunch of new and excited people are joining all the time. It’s also fun, with an energy that’s lacking elsewhere.

This shift also means a post-X social landscape has finally clicked into place for me. I ‘abandoned’ about 7,000 followers there. More importantly, I lost hundreds of great accounts that I followed. I miss what it was, but not what it became, and quit posting publicly in 2023. Other networks swirled around, and for a while Mastodon was the only one that mattered. But many people came and went, annoyed at not immediately getting the audience and engagement they’d enjoyed on Twitter but without working for it. Threads threatened to become good but now bibbles along; worse, Meta prioritises what it wants you to see rather than what you want to see.

Right now, I dip into Bluesky first (plenty of friends, writers and comics folks, retro gaming, politics and pundits), still spend a fair chunk of time on Mastodon (great conversation, tech geeks and devs, academics, wonderful photography accounts), and zoom through Threads in about five minutes daily, to catch up with the few friends who’ve landed there and decided to stay.

I still miss those people who have – for whatever reason – decided to stay on X. But I did twice check in and browse through 24 hours of my ‘filter’ feed – a ‘best of’ I put together during more optimistic times. It was mostly empty. I took that as a sign.

Published stuff

No weekend column this week for Stuff. Instead, my interview with Apple about gaming was published – Apple says the Mac has become a serious gaming platform: here’s why. This is, note, an interview with Apple, not analysis of Apple nor a wider discussion about what the games industry thinks of Apple. Nonetheless, there are interesting insights into how Apple perceives itself in this space, not least in how it differentiates its ecosystem from Windows.

Also at Stuff, I wrote about why Camera Control is the best new iPhone 16 feature and refreshed my best upcoming Lego sets list.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote a guide to using MindNode and jotted down my thoughts on Apple’s Glowtime event

Other stuff

My covid recovery continues but it’s clear everything didn’t snap back to normal, apart from my sense of taste/smell. A month after my first positive test, I’m still tired all the time. I hope that changes.

I mowed the front lawn. First time, bar a border, since April. I think that’s our future now. Pull out the long grasses but just let everything else grow. I like the crickets and the bugs. That’s way better than a boring space of 3cm high grass. That said, the anthills I found were terrifying.

Bluesky is increasingly fun. I’ve been trying to figure out a post-X social landscape for myself, and over a year after quitting that site things are starting to make sense. Mastodon is where most of my dev/tech friends live. Bluesky is comics, writers, and politics stuff. Threads is… for everyone who doesn’t want to be on Mastodon and Bluesky. And X is still dead to me. I just wish a few more people would make the leap to something other than the hellsite.

The CDs piece I wrote got another readership bump last week from somewhere, and I’m still receiving messages about it. Notably, they’re all friendly ones. That piece clicked with a whole bunch of people, which makes me happy. Sometimes when writing columns, it’s like shouting into the void. When a bunch of people make the effort to email a reply, that’s properly old-school and gratifying all at once.

Published work

My column for Stuff this week is: The new iOS 18 Home Screen feature I’m most excited about is not the one you’d expect. It’s kind of a journey through my Home Screen, from an overly complex monster to something dead simple, which iOS will soon refine in a very good way.

Also, last week’s piece, Why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years, went absolutely bonkers. I’ve had (positive) emails and messages all week about it, and it did silly numbers. Thanks to everyone who read it and those who got in touch with their tips about what CD player to buy.

Other stuff

An Apple event is looming, and so I imagine I’ll soon be further immersed in new kit. I’m interested to see how Apple moves its hardware on this year, with the iPhone rumoured to be a reasonably minor update but the Apple Watch getting more substantial changes. Personally, I’ll also be looking at software for Apple Watch – I’m still recovering from covid and so being able to pause my rings can’t come soon enough. (Although it won’t help this time. Still, at least I won’t have to complain about this basic missing feature again.)

Over on Threads, in a response to requests for writing tips, Scalzi suggested reading your work aloud to catch copy errors. This is an old trick, but one I always find many writers surprised by when you mention it. Similarly, relatively few realise you can get your Mac to read text back to you. I outline how on Threads.

Published stuff

For Stuff this weekend, I wrote about why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years. We have a thousand shiny discs and nothing to play them on, which seems daft, not least given how favourite songs and albums randomly vanish from streaming services all the time. This one also appeared to strike a chord – I’ve had a bunch of (very nice) DMs, social media posts and even emails (old-school!) about the column.

Elsewhere, I wrote about The Spectrum and added Phantolex to my free iOS games feature. And for TapSmart (which just released issue 309 of sister mag Swipe), I wrote Bring back: Weightbot.

Other stuff

Yes, this one’s late. I almost forgot. Still recovering from covid, which is taking time. A day out at London Aquarium wiped me out, although the family had a great time, and I was very happy to squeeze in the trip that should have happened two weeks ago, just before my daughter returns to school.

In tech, Capcom has now decided iPhone versions of its console-grade games like Resident Evil 4 and Village need an internet connection to run. Given that half the point of mobile is being able to play anywhere, I’m not sure ‘anywhere you happen to have a data connection’ is going to go down well. And by extension, this is another point against App Store gaming Apple really doesn’t need right now, not least given Monument Valley 3 is heading to Netflix. Developer ustwo said this is so it doesn’t have to “compromise in order for it to survive in the kind of App Store that exist in the modern day”. Ouch.

Published stuff

Two AI articles this week. For Stuff, I wrote about smartphone photography and Halide’s new Process Zero in Why I’m excited about an anti-AI iPhone camera app that does less, not more. And for TapSmart, I looked at apps that give you AI on any iPhone or iPad right now.

Outside of AI, I wrote up an iPhone toolkit for minimising distractions, griped about the lack of sort options in the iOS 18 Home Screen, and checked out the best upcoming Lego sets. 

Other stuff: new music and old covid

Last week, I caught covid for the first time. I’m still isolating. Day nine now. I’ll take another test this afternoon, but still expect it to be positive. I’m… so over this. And it’s increasingly depressing to be away from my family and confined to a room. But it is what it is. At least neither my wife nor my daughter have caught covid from me. And isolation did spur me on to release a new piece of music for the first time in over a decade. You can listen to Where I Want To Be on YouTube. (I’m pretty happy with that bass line. A good reminder of why I need to write more music with actual instruments, rather than prodding at a screen. Anyway…)

If nothing else, catching covid has also been a reality check. My wife mentioned my covid to our elderly neighbour, who looked shocked and asked how I managed to catch it, as if I’d made a special effort to do so. Friends who’ve caught it recently say they’ve had similar responses from people. In the UK at least, it’s as if covid doesn’t exist, despite us just having had the biggest wave in a long time.

Worse, our medical service has no interest whatsoever in helping anyone who’s not ‘at risk’. So while I hear from people in the US and Switzerland who received medication and boosters in recent years, in the UK it’s a case of “take a couple of paracetamol and hope you can shake it off in a couple of weeks”. Oh, and no boosters again for the majority of the population this autumn either (unless you can find somewhere to buy one, for the first time), because the way to stop covid is still apparently to have people repeatedly catch covid. Bonkers.

Heaven help us if a more dangerous disease ever sweeps this country.