How many digits do you have to have turn to icicles before it’s acceptable to turn the heating back on? Asking for a friend.

Published stuff

For Stuff, I ask: How will Apple respond to Google’s ten-year Chromebook update pledge? Apple is better than most in mobile, but now lags Google on desktop. And both companies are struggling with a desire to be (or at least appear to be) green while immersed in a marketplace that demands infinite growth. Top tip, everyone: we don’t have infinite resources. My take: devices have to last longer. And I mean that in a meaningful manner.

Over at iMore, I ask: Apple pitched the iPhone 15 Pro as the ultimate gaming handheld – but can Apple really take it to the next level? This is kind of a spiritual successor to my Wired piece last year about whether the M2 MacBook Air is any good for games. TL;DR for both: it’s not about the tech so much as the culture.

Over at TapSmart, Streaks Workout is added to my classic apps hall of fame, and I look at Apple’s balancing act – how a desire for profits impacts features and prices.

And in this here blog, I write about using Spoken Content to have your Mac or iPad read words back to you. I use this feature daily for proofing text. In fact, I’ll shortly use it to proof this text.

Upcoming stuff

I’ve got a shiny new iPhone here for review and so will be putting that through its paces soon. And given that I wrote about every other new Apple operating system, a tips feature will shortly rock up about watchOS 10.

I’m also mulling over how to pitch and write a new piece on accessibility. Speaking of, this coming week it’ll be ten years since I broke Why iOS 7 is making some users sick for The Guardian. So I’ll be writing up something about that too.

Other stuff

Updates to recent Apple kit have resulted in tech writers doing some entertainingly bonkers things. You might have seen that Federico Viticci over at MacStories used a Game Boy camera for FaceTime. And now Dan Seifert at The Verge put Samsung Dev on an iPad screen.

Apple’s probably removing Seifert from all Christmas card lists as I write. Mind you, his terrifying concoction did again make me think that my ideal iPhone would be the one device to rule them all. Now we’ve a USB-C capable phone that can play AAA games and run high-end apps, why not have it optimally output to any display? Apple’s answer: because money. My retort: but what of resources and sustainability?

Double tap is a new flagship feature of the new Apple Watch. But some folks will recognise it as recycled rather than new. That’s because it looks an awful lot like an evolution of existing accessibility feature AssistiveTouch. Which is good – Apple should do more to surface useful accessibility benefits.

As someone who’s spent a decade fighting for better accessibility features, I’m fairly well versed in what’s on offer. What people perhaps aren’t aware of is that you needn’t wait for Apple to bring an accessibility feature to the mainstream for more people to find it useful – loads of great stuff is in there already.

Something I make use of daily, and that always sparks interest when I mention it on social media, is proofing copy using speech features on Mac and iPad. I find that when text is read to me, I pick up more errors than I would from reading it silently myself.

On Mac, open System Settings and head to Accessibility > Spoken Content. Under System voice, you can choose from a number of voices and accents. I find those that present as female offer more clarity, due to being less bassy. Kate is a good option for Brits. But also, consider using accents that align with audiences when writing for people beyond your own country. Anyway, to add more voices, go to Manage Voices…

To preview how your voice sounds, press Play Sample. I find the default speed too slow for proofing and tend to increase it to about 75%.

Next, turn on Speak selection, click the info button, and gnash at how horrible this interface is compared to the System Preferences days. Create a keyboard shortcut to trigger speech selection. Make this memorable, accessible and something that won’t clash with shortcuts used elsewhere. I use Control+§  – § being the ‘section’ sign at the top-left of UK-English keyboards. You probably never use it.

Also set Show controller to Never, or it will appear whenever you use the feature. The remaining settings determine how your Mac visually keeps track of your place in the text as it’s being spoken. Settings here are a matter of taste. I tend to have Spoken Content highlight words and sentences – yellow for words; purple for sentences; background colour for style. 

Once you’re done, position your cursor in a document at the point you’d like the Mac to start reading from and use your shortcut. A second press will stop it speaking. You can also select text and have the Mac read just that selection.

Not all apps and websites behave. I’ve never been able to get Google Docs to work with Spoken Content in Safari, but it works in Chrome when you select text. (A good workaround is to hurl Google Docs into the sun and use something else.)

Note that iPad has Spoken Content as well. In Settings, go to Accessibility > Spoken Content and turn on both Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Adjust Typing Feedback and Voices preferences to suit.

When selecting and tapping a selection, you’ll see a Speak option. Alternatively, two-finger swipe down from the top of the screen (from the bezel) to read the entire document. This doesn’t work as well as the Mac equivalent, but it’s better than nothing. Of course, it doesn’t work with Google Docs. Tsk.

On Windows and/or using Microsoft Word? Search online for ‘read aloud’, which is in broadly the same space.

New iPhone week is over! *collapses in a heap*

Published stuff

A busy week for me at Stuff. I had guides published for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma and Apple TV/tvOS 17.

Two columns: USB-C for iPhone was nerfed by Apple – but does that matter? (Spoiler: this aligns with Betteridge’s law of headlines.) And Ultra Wideband chips in iPhone 15 and Apple Watch sound great – I want one in everything, where I reason I want Ultra Wideband chips in all tech because I once hid some SSDs in a hat beneath a pile of shoes.

Oh, and I celebrated the return to iPhone of the excellent Coolson’s Pocket Pack by adding it to Stuff’s best free iOS games list.

Over at TapSmart, I wrote an explainer about USB-C for iPhone, looked at replacements for Apple’s pre-loaded stock apps, and added a third tier to my classic apps series with ‘bring back’. This looks at a long-gone favourite and how to approximate it on your iPhone and iPad today. First up: the much-missed Status Board by Panic.

Upcoming stuff

Hopefully I’ll be transitioning soon from hands-on with Apple’s new software to hands-on with its new hardware. In the meantime, I just filed a piece for iMore that should be up soon, and am from a personal perspective getting slightly more serious about finally releasing some new music and figuring out what to do with over 250,000 words of retrogaming interviews.

What I discovered, to my surprise, was my monstrous Scrivener document is actually full of holes. So I’m going back through my email and document archives to find the original interviews I did with a whole bunch of people. I have considered various outlets for this stuff. But I’m still not sure what to do with it.

My thinking is the interviews should be available in as lightly edited form as possible. But even that will require many hours of work. The notion of Kickstarting a book fills me with dread. A Substack is a possibility, but I’ve no idea if enough people would be interested. So this and the music thing are both moving forward at a snail’s pace for now. Still, that’s better than not moving at all.

Other stuff

So, that Apple event. Judging by my Mastodon and NetNewsWire feeds, it was divisive. Personally, I thought it was a rare Apple event (of late) that lagged. The most recent ones have felt so crammed full of information that it was like being sandblasted with data. This one was more like a movie where you get to the end and feel like they could have cut a third of the runtime and lost nothing.

I’ve written more about the event here.

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.