Some quick(ish) thoughts on Apple’s recent event, over and above anything already published in the press.

Apple’s notably been simultaneously praised and lambasted for a sketch on its green credentials. I found the sketch itself cringeworthy, but others loved it. More broadly, though, I’m glad Apple is taking action on green issues, and I hope that acts as a catalyst for more of the industry to do the same. However, claims from companies being parroted helps no-one. Yet I can’t see anyone paying for the research and journalism required to deep dive into Apple’s facts and figures. And, let’s face it, there is going to be at least some sleight of hand in there. Just the mention of carbon credits alone is enough to give people in the green industry pause. A net positive, then, but not yet a slam dunk.

Looking at the hardware, the Apple Watch line got a minor iterative upgrade, albeit with a new SIP that made developers happy (more power) and annoyed (dropping support for older models makes vocal uses angry). The new double tap gesture is interesting and appears to build on an earlier accessibility feature. That’s smart thinking from Apple, but I do sometimes think more of its accessibility settings should be surfaced in the other settings sections across its hardware – and that publications should do more to alert people to them.

The iPhones were suitably souped up. You can see with the iPhone 15 where Apple believes users will and won’t care about things, in trade-offs regarding profitability and features. It having a 60Hz display when a slew of cheaper Android blowers are way beyond that is strange to me. But perhaps not enough people outside the geek sphere give two hoots. And, to be fair, while once I went ‘Retina’ I couldn’t go back, the switch between 60 and 120Hz displays isn’t nearly as pronounced.

Dynamic Island now being a default feature of the latest iPhones is a good thing. I imagine eventually Apple will figure out how to hide its front camera tech beneath the display, but until then I still think this is a smart compromise, making a feature out of what would otherwise be a negative. However, it’s underused. There has been developer interest, but not as much as Apple would have hoped for – and that must come down to it until now being exclusively part of the iPhone Pro models. The risk was another Touch Bar. This latest change should counter and end such concerns.

Beyond that, the new iPhone colours all seem dull and muted, presumably because that’s what people will buy. The new camera system in the iPhone 15 is welcome. The Pro using titanium suggests it’ll no longer be a finger magnet. Those phones being lighter is extremely welcome, as is the custom side button. The Pro’s positioning as a gaming powerhouse now needs to be matched by Apple itself having a cultural shift at the most senior level to support such efforts. And, for once, seeing pricing drop for iPhones in the UK was rather fun. (Apple’s gymnastics in the US – that the iPhone Pro Max isn’t more expensive because it’s the same price as that memory tier was last year – aren’t needed in the UK, where the base price is unchanged. Which means here the low-end Pro Max nets you an 128GB of additional storage for no extra outlay.)

Still no Home indicator off switch, mind. Gnash.

Summer! In autumn! Because UK. This country is weird. Anyway…

Published stuff

Shortly after I wrote my weeknote last week, I headed to a real-world shop and bought some pieces of paper with words on. I know. Weird, right?

One of them was issue 300 of Stuff. Any magazine reaching that milestone is a big deal, but it feels like more of an achievement in the current climate, where magazines are under fire and so many people want articles to be free.

Issue 300 was special for me in another way, because an editor asked me to write a big feature celebrating all of the best gadgets that had appeared since the mag’s debut. This was split into time periods, giving people a real sense of how technology has evolved since the late 1990s.

The piece was a pleasure to write, and I do hope you enjoy reading it if you buy a copy of the magazine.

Also for Stuff – this time online – I wrote Apple to zap Lightning: why a USB-C iPhone 15 is good – and why it’s also bad. This is my take on Apple’s switch to USB-C, and noting that regardless of the good/bad details, most folks are just going to be angry. I also had fun making an image for the piece, inspired by Susan Kare’s wonderful Mac artwork. (Far better than stock art! Although I’m very aware I’m not Susan Kare. Still, I gave it my best shot.)

Elsewhere, TapSmart published my feature on creating a toolkit to make memories. This one’s all about techniques and apps to help you capture, save and share precious memories.

Upcoming stuff

Much of my brain and output over the coming week will be responding to what Apple does on Tuesday. But away from the new iPhones and such, I spent quality time properly digging into Apple TV recently (rather than, you know, just watching shows). A tips feature will therefore be winging its way to the Stuff website shortly.

Other stuff

Stuff wasn’t the only magazine hitting a milestone with its current issue – Retro Gamer hit 250. It says everything about the state of games magazines in the UK that I had to look for the section in my local WHSmith. And it turned out there no longer was one. Instead, just four games mags were lurking above the comics.

But Retro Gamer survives – thrives – after 18 years of stewardship under editor Darran Jones, who took over (if my memory’s not playing tricks) for issue 19. 250 issues. 18 years. Both major achievements. And it’s a great mag, which across those many issues told the stories of hundreds of amazing games – stories that in many cases otherwise would never have been told.

It’s been a long time since I wrote for the mag myself. From the mid-20s to the mid-70s, I was a very regular contributor, and fortune enough to write about many of my absolute favourite classic games. I remember a comical ‘interview’ with Alexey Pajitnov, where I asked about the genesis of Tetris and he spoke for half an hour about making the game as I quietly ticked questions off my list that I no longer needed to ask. Easiest interview ever. (And such a privilege to have what amounted to a one-on-one lecture of sorts about the creation of such a seminal title.) There was Mark Cerny’s sheer surprise that anyone would be interested in Marble Madness. The infectious enthusiasm of Eugene Jarvis. The generous input and unseen background work from Steve Golson. And so many more.

I have a retro itch again. I need to find a way to again contribute to the mag occasionally. Regardless, I hope it continues for many years to come.

Finally, a different flavour of retro, in Jamie Montgomerie bringing back two wonderful mobile games – meaning I can remove them from my 32-bit folders of sadness. Over on his blog, he writes about Coolson’s 10th Anniversary and resurrecting Coolson’s Artisanal Chocolate Alphabet and Coolson’s Pocket Pack. Generously, both are free. If you’ve the relevant kit and you enjoy word games, download them right away. Well, after reading his blog post, obviously.

Meteorological autumn is here. Bah. Shouldn’t be allowed. *waves fist at sky*

Published stuff

My column for Stuff this week is: Apple endorses right to repair – here’s why it’s not the big win you might think. It is a win of sorts, but from some coverage, you’d think tinkerers had won the lottery. In reality, we’re seeing demands for making the system more equal, not making the system better. And, of course, the proposed legislation does nothing for those who want to truly make devices their own.

Over at TapSmart, I dig into Apple reinventing answering machines. Warning: may contain snark.

Issue 283 of TapSmart’s sister mag, Swipe, is now available too. We offer a free trial and then it costs $2/£2 per month, for which you get two issues. If you can support our indie journalism, please do.

Upcoming stuff

As Retro Gamer gears up for issue 250, I recently realised how much I miss talking to people who created ancient games. Over at Mastodon, I scratch my retro itch with #DailyRetroGame, but… it’s not quite enough. And so I’ve been noting down gaps in Retro Gamer’s making-ofs and looking at what I might be able to do with games I’m keen to explore.

No guarantees. In my experience, it’s quite random whether people who put together amazing games back in the day will talk about them decades later. But I’m hopeful to at least get one or two new articles in this space out sometime over the coming months.

Other stuff

Quite a few apps I’ve written about in the past have abruptly moved to subscriptions. What’s interesting is how they’ve done this and what they’ve decided to charge.

One, notably, appears to be charging an annual fee equivalent to the original one-off price. That seems reasonable for something you use often. But others have decided on annual figures that are many multiples of the original one-off price. In one case, the annual cost rivals six months of a streaming TV service, for an app that’s good but not anywhere near a daily driver.

I do struggle with this. I get that devs need to make a living. But I’m also one of many people with subscription fatigue. I’m not sure what the solution is. Really, Apple should long ago have allowed devs to offer upgrade pricing, but it obviously prefers subscriptions, because that means ongoing revenue. The question is how many subscriptions an individual can tolerate, and what levels of pricing can be sustained for anything beyond apps and services people consider vital. Alas, I’m not sure I have any answers.

Now back in the land of the living. Mostly.

Published stuff

It was bizarre-o-week in games land. I wrote about the Atari 2600+, which mimics the ancient console and lets you plug in original carts and controllers. And then I wrote for Stuff: What unites the PlayStation Portal and Atari 2600+? They’re confusing, weird and very niche.

Both of these products baffle me, for different reasons, as you’ll find out in the column. I know some folks are enamoured by them, mind. There’s a big nostalgia factor to the Atari, and a convenience one to the PSP, as noted by Matt Tate for Stuff, who is eager to throw 200 quid Sony’s way. Even so, both of these for me have ended up filed under ‘no need to exist’.

Over at TapSmart, I look into better and friendlier streaks apps (Apple, take note!), Home Screens eroding app usage, and Monument Valley, which is the latest entry in my classic apps series.

A new issue of sister mag Swipe went out recently too, if you fancy supporting our work for the tiny sum of two bucks per month.

And finally: for this blog, I smashed out some cathartic words: iCloud sucks and it really shouldn’t.

Other stuff.

I was very ill recently and could barely move, let alone exercise. My streaks all went away. It’s almost a relief, and yet I noticed yesterday that when I got to the end of the day, having forgotten to do my 30 minutes on the elliptical, I just thought: sod it.

I’m going to try and rewire my brain using the Streaks app, with settings more generous than Apple’s YOU MUST BE A ROBOT line of thinking. Perhaps that will give me a sweet spot closer to motivation than drudgery. (Also good: Gentler Streak, which when I first tried it basically told me to chill for a bit, on the basis of my stats nose-diving. Nice.)

Elsewhere, I’ve started digging into the guilt piles, which in this house mostly comprise Lego and comics. Two recommendations. Tales of the Space Age is a gorgeous display set for fans of, well, space. And Saga is wonderful comics. I’m about to delve into the third deluxe hardcover. Here’s hoping the fourth will rock up before the heat death of the universe. (The creative team’s hiatus last time was impressive in terms of duration, but a touch frustrating for fans – if understandable, given the creators’ workloads!)

Hello. Rant time. I hate iCloud. I’m so sick of it. Of everything I’ve ever used by Apple, there’s no single other thing that’s this awful. And that includes Game Center, which literally didn’t work for months, because Apple apparently forgot it existed. (Games didn’t – they failed to load when Game Center itself failed.)

iCloud is great when it works. Seamless. You don’t notice it’s there. But it’s dire when it fails. Last year, it broke for a whole lot of people. Widgets and apps stopped working. And because iCloud is opaque, it wasn’t possible for users to do anything to fix the problems.

During that period, I suffered unrecoverable data loss for the first time in over a decade. I now cannot trust iCloud to house documents created by one of my key daily driver apps. It’s just too risky.

There are other niggles. Last week, iCloud populated my shared Downloads folder with dozens of empty folders, making me temporarily freak out until I found they were folders I’d deleted months ago. (Thanks, Time Machine! At least you work.) When you move a folder, iCloud sometimes (not always) inexplicably updates its creation date. And then there are times when it just won’t sync data.

I had that happen this morning. I was happily populating an app with a bunch of data, and the iPad and Mac versions were oblivious to this. And also each other. The solution? Turn iCloud off and on again for all those apps, which naturally nuked the new data. It was only half an hour of time wasted, but this shouldn’t happen. It should just work. Why iCloud is still as flaky as it is, despite being the backbone of dozens of Apple services – and instrumental to countless Mac and mobile apps – baffles me.