I wrote a post, some time ago now, about some initial plans to move my tech (software and hardware) stack away from U.S. companies and into some European alternatives. I've been fiddling around with this in general today so I thought I might finally dust of my blog and share a progress update on this.

Hardware 🇬🇧 / 🇰🇷

On the hardware front, I actually use no Apple technology whatsoever anymore. For my phone I alternate between a Samsung Galaxy Fold7 (which is just incredible fun to use) and a Nothing Phone 3 (this is also just a fun phone to have around). My headphones are also a mix of Samsung (Buds3 Pro) and Nothing (Ear 3, Headphones 1 and Ear Open). I'm using a Samsung Tab A11+, also, on the tablet front. 

I'm super happy with my changes on the hardware side and I've really been enjoying tech again. This isn't to say Apple technology is bad, of course. This switch up has nothing to do with that quality of the products, though that should be obvious I'd hope. 

Software and services

Now let's get into the crux of the discussion and take a look at the software / services changes. When it comes to services there seem to be a few more options than it would seem at first glance. 

Let me start with the first real hands down win in this little project. 

Cloud storage / Photo backup - Koofr 🇪🇺

Thanks to the great Mr Maique I discovered the excellent Koofr a fairly bare bones, but snappy cloud storage service. You get 10GB for free when signing up, and some incredibly reasonable prices on paid account upgrades. I paid, I think, about £120 for a lifetime 2TB account. It's been around for a few years now, so it doesn't feel like it's a fly by night service so I'm hoping it has some staying power. 

I've been able to set it up to sync files and photos between my Android devices and also as a backup tool replacement for OneDrive across my PCs and, so far, it's worked flawlessly. The sync speed is lovely and fast. This has, hands down, been a great win. Good price, good service, and European. 

Password manager - Bitwarden 🇪🇺 (kinda)

This is a bit of a weird one, because I was actually using 1Password for the last year and I, stupidly, assumed it was a U.S. services, but it turns out in an idiot and it's actually Canadian. And the real stupid part is I moved to Bitwarden which is a U.S. company though I'm still taking the win a little as it's fully open source and also my data is hosted in Europe so it's still a step away from both 'big tech' and having further data in Europe. 

I saw today that Proton seems to be offering a permanent 25% discount on Proton Pass, which I did actually like a lot, so if I can get that deal I may just switch back over to that. This one's a little iffy, as I say. 

Browser - Vivaldi 🇪🇺 and Zen 🇪🇺/🇺🇸/⁉️

This is a little iffy, yet again, I'm afraid. My primary browser on Android and PC is Vivaldi and I've been enjoying it a lot. They've been embracing being a big tech alternative and European so it ticks a lot of boxes. It is, however, still just a fork of Chrome and can look a little utilitarian out of the box. 

This led to me dabbling with Zen, a 'privacy focused' Firefox fork. So, as with Vivaldi, still quite tied to US big tech, or at least semi big tech. That being said, I really love the look and feel of Zen (which is essentially Arc prior to the enshitification and abandonment) so I've been using this quite a lot on my PC. It's another open source project and I've been unable to find out where the main team are actually based so it could well be predominantly European, but I have no way of verifying this. Because there is no Android app I can't use it there as well, but it syncs to Firefox, which has a pretty nice Android app to be honest, so I've been sharing some time with that as well. 

Overall this is actually another case of clear 'non big tech' win, but not so much European. 

Search - Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage 🇪🇺 (and still some Kagi)

This one is a little bit of a shame, because while before starting this mission to move to European / non big tech services I started using Kagi and I really, really like it. If you're unfamiliar with Kagi it's a paid for search engine that has some really good ideas on search that works for you. The results are really impeccable, but after I realised I set Reddit as the priority answer source I've noticed I'm basically getting answers to 90% of my non-local queries from Reddit data. Just an interesting aside really, not all that relevant, but it did make me realise perhaps Kagi itself isn't all that important to me. I am still using it a fair bit, however,  because once again it at least ticks the non big tech box, despite it very much being U.S. based. 

Alongside this I've been supplementing my search with the following, in this order:

• Ecosia - A German based search engine that plants trees powered by your searches. It doesn't quite work like that but it's interesting nonetheless. I've prioritised this one because of this, but it uses the Bing and Google indexes I believe. They have partnered with my next choice, Qwant, to start building their own index, which will be interesting. 

• Qwant

• Mojeek- This is ugly, and has a terrible name, but it's one of the only UK based services I've found so far so it's on my list just out of some kind of loyalty to the King, or something. 

• Startpage 

To be honest, I have very little loyalty or interest in my search engine. As I say it seems a vast majority of the things I search for are answered on Reddit for some reasons and everything else seems to come up just fine on whatever search I use (probably because most are just using the same index as I say) so I'm not losing any sleep over this or what I use. This is an easy win away from both U.S. services and big tech in one hit. 

Entertainment - YouTube 🇺🇸

A huge amount of my online time is spent in YouTube. I essentially listen or watch it in the background at work most of the day (when not on calls or in meetings). I use it as my music service, basically the only video content I watch and my podcast service. This is, I'm afraid, a portion of my internet usage that I am pretty sure is never going to be free from U.S. services or big tech. Even if a European service sprung up, it would be a near impossible hill to climb to get any traction with viewers or getting the fantastic content creators over. It's a real shame, especially because it's said creators that make the platform the thing I love, and it has nearly nothing to do with the big tech ghouls that facilitate it. 

All in all, I think I can call these changes an overall win on the 'avoid big tech' front and only a partial victory on the non-U.S. services side. That is still a battle with some of the big services, but this is a slow process and it's not a binary answer either. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some steps in the right direction is still positive, in my book. I also don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face, so if a service is not right then it'll need to grow and improve first. 

I haven’t published a post on this blog since March 2025. I’d like to say that the reason for this is because I’ve been busy doing incredibly important things though, sadly, that’s not the case. I have, instead, been burning those hours away each evening playing games …

I try to experience as much of the rich gaming industry as I can, but more often than not I revert back to playing my Forever Games, games that have been with me for a while, and / or games I can envision coming back to day after day, and week after week.

In an effort to ease myself back into posting, why not combine my gaming obsession with a little writing? So, without any further waffle and preamble, here are my Forever games:

World of Warcraft

This is the OG ‘forever’ game for me, which I’ve been playing for the best part of 20 years at this point which is a little crazy to say. My Blood Elf Paladin and I have been on quite the journey over all of those years.

I know this game world inside and out and, whilst I take breaks here and there, it’s a world I have always come back to. It’s pure comfort food at this point and a great escape when I need it the most.

This game is, by its nature, a social game but, by my nature I’ve always played it solo and it works around my schedule wonderfully. There’s always plenty to do and achieve but it’s never all that time consuming to catch back up after a break.

This is a game I can confidently say will be in my life for as long as it exists. With [ player housing now also finally coming to the game, I will soon be able to really get cozied up in Azeroth!

Old School RuneScape / RuneScape 3

My awakening to RuneScape has been relatively recent, but in the last 6 months I’ve fallen in love with both of these games (a subscription covers both games so I dabble with each) and it has quickly jumped into the category of ‘forever game’ for me.

Much like World of Warcraft, it’s an MMO, but in a very different way. RuneScape is a ‘sandbox MMO’ which means you can really just go off and do what you want to do, rather than being shoehorned into a set storyline. The main title of the two I focus on is Old School RuneScape, which is the newer of the two, strangely. It’s based on the version of the ~20 year old RuneScape from 2007. It’s still getting constant updates, but it retains the retro stylings and core game throughout.

Thanks to the sandbox nature of the game, despite its age, it’s a very approachable game because even 10 year old content is still relevant to new players so, unlike in World of Warcraft, the progress you make is always valuable to your character and account. Despite not having nostalgia for the 2007 game itself, I can still appreciate the charm of the retro styling. It’s just a gorgeous little game in its own way.

A huge part of the appeal of RuneScape, for me, is the community and works surrounding the core game. It’s got a real community feel, from players having a chance to vote on new features that should be added before the team work on it, to plenty of dev Twitch streams. How can you not love a community and company that puts out bangers like this and a whole load of remixes:

If you’re considering trying it don’t let the graphics themselves fool you because there is incredible depth and soul to the game and it will keep you entertained for years to come. I can’t recommend this charming little game enough. It also runs on just about anything and it also has a very nice mobile client.

Warframe

Last, but by no means least, we have Warframe. Warframe is a little hard to explain to be honest. At its core irs a little similar to Destiny 2 in that you visit planets to do missions, and collect weapons and new avatars (or Warframes), but there is so much more to it. If you’re interested in the game itself there are plenty of videos that explain the game far better than I can here so I would highly recommend you check some out if you have an interest. It’s a game, essentially, about space ninjas. What more could you possibly want?! 

Much like with RuneScape, a big appeal of this game comes from the fantastic developers and team at Digital Extremes that have been running this game for over a decade. They are an open team, constantly streaming and sharing news with the community via live streams. They hold an online and offline community conference each year (TennoCon) and all just seem to have a huge passion for the game. Unlike with most online games these days, the team genuinely feel like they just love creating this game for their players. Their passion really shows.

This passion shines through in the game design elements as well, in particular the monetisation. Yes, you can buy a couple of ‘Frames’ directly in the store, but generally speaking every single item can be built in game without spending a penny in it. In theory you can do and collect everything in this game without paying any money, if you so wish, but I can almost guarantee that if you get into it it’s a community you’d almost be happy to throw a little money to every so often just to help keep the lights on.

The game is also very casual friendly. There is nothing really all that time gated or FOMO fuelled that would drive you to feel like you need to play every hour of the day. It’s a game I enjoy in short bursts every so often when I want something relaxing to play, and can always feel I’ve made small little progressions every time.

Just like with RuneScape, the music department are absolutely top notch as well! Just listen to this beauty …

I wrote a post a few months ago about trying to ‘fight the lock-in’ with U.S. based Big Tech companies and since then America’s slide into a fascist state has accelerated at a scarily fast pace, and it seems clear that I need to double my efforts in this space, and to move as much as I can out of the U.S.  Before I get into that, however, just in case it’s not clear, my disdain is for the current U.S. Administration and not a large chunk of the U.S. citizenship itself. As someone that’s living through the repercussions of a Brexit vote me, and many people in this country, did not vote for I understand the feeling of having to cope with other people’s mistakes. It’s not quite the same level, granted. Many U.S. citizens remain our ‘friends across the pond’.

That being said, the fact remains that I have lost a lot of faith in U.S. Big Tech companies, and my own personal ties to so many American service providers. This has spurred on my wish to move, as much of possible, away from these companies, including my money, and my data, in to European companies. Yes, the U.K. is still in Europe, just not the E.U. (which seems to confuse a few people).

This isn’t an easy task, and there is certainly going to be some pain points along the way. It’s not realistic to unhook entirely, right now, so there will be some services that will have to remain, for the time being at least. If things keep going the way they have been going so far in Trump’s current reign of terror, however, I fully expect European tech companies will quickly start to take the challenge to U.S. Big Tech, and I’m here for it.

So, how are things looking so far? Here are some initial areas I’m exploring:

Storage

I currently pay for Microsoft Office 365 at £50 a year for storage that I use across my PCs and iOS. This was a deal price, which increases to about £89 I believe. This hooks into Windows well, so felt like a no-brainer, but I didn’t really use it all that much. 

I recently saw internet legend Maique testing a European alternative, Koofr and also found a screaming good deal on a lifetime offer of 1TB of storage for a single payment of about £120. I was already testing this previously, and had been impressed with it, but I hadn’t taken the plunge, until now. 

The app is basic, but works very well across iOS, Android, and Windows, which is perfect. It offers automated photo backup as well. Whilst the viewing of these photos is not as flawless as it is via Apple Photos, it’s a real nice cross platform solution. 

So far, this was a really easy switch and I’m pleased to have broken the seal, so to speak, in starting to make a switch. 

Everything beyond this point is going to be a lot trickier, or even impossible for some situations, I think. Here are the things I’m going to look at:

Email

I’ve recently switched everything over to Fastmail and it’s been truly excellent. I’ve thought very little about my email, which is exactly the way it should be.

Prior to Fastmail I was using Protonmail, and I have been considering a switch back there just to satisfy my European requirement, but I’m a bit torn. Fastmail is, as I said, a great service. It’s also not one of the major big tech companies I’ve had concerns with, so I think for now they’re a relatively safe pair of hands. 

This is one I’m going to need to keep an eye on, I think. I’ve not, yet, heard about US overreach into people’s email accounts, but I’d not put it past them. As I say, one to keep an eye on, but I’ll remain with Fastmail for now. 

Password Managers

I started using 1Password a few months ago, having been keen to find a better cross platform option than Apple Passwords. It’s been very good so far, as is expected, and hooks well into Fastmail for private email addresses. 

They fall into the same camp as Fastmail for me. Certainly not European, but not Big Tech either, so not necessarily the ‘bad guys’, but one worth keeping an eye on. 

To be honest, this one may come down to cost rather than anything else. With Proton I can get Mail, VPN, and a password manager for £10 a month, all of which I use and need. This may just make the most sense, but I’m going to keep my options open on this one. 

Browsers

This is actually another easy win, as I'm already using Vivaldi, a European offering, and it's been very good. It's got a quite dated design, in my opinion, and is a little utilitarian, but it's very powerful and works well across platforms. Many of its key features may be overkill for some, but it fits my needs perfectly. It's my default browser for work, and on my PC and phones. 

As you can see from the above, there are a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes with my approach so far, and I'm fine with that. I'm not going to rush this, and spend a load of money duplicating services, without a lot of research and dabbling. As previously mentioned, I think (hope?) we’re going to start seeing a bit of an explosion of European based alternatives to a lot of U.S. Big Tech offerings so I think it's a space worth looking at and seeing how things evolve over the coming months. 

I'm going to take Koofr as a win, for now, but stay vigilant and keep testing any possible further alternatives. 

For those keeping count:

Browser - Vivaldi 🟩

Cloud Storage - Koofr 🟩

Email - Fastmail 🟧 (Maybe Proton 🟩)

Password Manager - 1Password 🟧 (Maybe Proton 🟩)

Photo Storage - iCloud 🟥

Search - Kagi 🟧 (Maybe StartPage 🟩)

Hardware - Apple / Microsoft 🟥 (Maybe Nothing 🟧/🟩)

Whilst this is all a bit laborious, and may seem a little over the top to many, I feel strongly about not supporting things I disagree with and the U.S. administration has given me a lot to be concerned about and, besides, I'm a nerd so I'm honestly having a great time trying out new services and, in some cases, even alternstive hardware. 🇪🇺

Joan Westenberg, writing on her personal blog joanwestenberg.com: Why personal websites matter more than ever

Personal websites matter - now, more than ever - because we can see, clearly, with our own eyes, what happens when a handful of companies control and own the medium and the message. It gets silenced, suppressed, and subtly reshaped without us.

This thought piece by Joan is beautifully written and cuts straight through to the fact that not only is owning the content you put out into the world incredibly important, but the simple acts of just putting it out there in the first place, or supporting people who do the same, has become hugely important. As Joan rightly says, now more than ever, it’s important to ensure we have a voice, but that everyone and anyone around us also has a voice. 

I’m not going to turn this into a political post by going too deep into this, but it’s clear that concerted efforts are being made to control, and limit, the voices of many people, especially marginalised communities, as possible. We can help push back on this growing trend by supporting (either financially or just by reading and engaging) those without your remit or community to keep sharing their thoughts and insights with the world.

If you’ve not yet started a personal blog, but are interested in getting started, I can highly recommend these fantastic services to get the ball rolling:

• Pika

• Bear blog

Those of you who already have a blog, just keep posting! One thing, among many, that makes me post less often is the constant nagging at the back of my mind that no one cares about the topic I’m planning to write about. Let me tell you, they do! Your posts will find a niche, if you want them to, and if not you would have still carved out your own little patch of the internet, ripe for growing something special. 

I’ve started, and failed, multiple times in the past to start a series of posts on a certain topic, such as trying to review all Apple Arcade games (which lasted about 10 posts) or tips for Apple users on Windows (which lasted 1!). It’s been a good few weeks for stuff that I enjoyed so I considered trying yet another series of ‘weekly highlights’, but let’s be honest, I’d never keep up that kind of consistency. 

For now, however, I wanted to share a few things that caught my eye in recent weeks that I wanted to share so these are a few things that made a dent for me recently (totally not a series!). 

I’m proud of my friends

Firstly, I want to call out some very impressive app releases from some of my friends¹, Mr Greg Morris and Mr Matt Birchler.

Greg recently released his very first iOS app, Micro Social, a Micro.blog client and it really is fantastic. I’m not a micro.blog user, sadly, but I couldn’t resist trying the app out so I made a temporary account and I was super impressed with it. The design is really up my alley, so I’m a bit bummed I can’t get more use of the app.

Next up, the exciting release of Matt Birchler’s app Quick Reviews! You may be familiar with the web version over at QuickReviews.app and Matt has done a super job of migrating this over to iOS. The interface is clear and concise and the feature list is growing already! The app does exactly what it says on the tin, and Matt has done a truly fantastic job of porting this excellent web app into App form.

App development has always impressed me, and I’ve often thought about trying my hand at it as well, but never have, and most likely never will, but Matt and Greg have gone out there, taught themselves what they needed to know, and have apps in the App Store. I’m really impressed with their tenacity and hard work.

Great job guys!

Matt’s at it again

Whilst on the subject of Matt, one of his recent videos really caught my eye, which I wanted to share. All of his videos, which he shares on his YouTube channel A Better Computer, are bangers, but his recent video about ChatWise really resonated with me. I’m not a big AI user, to date, but I’ve been keen to not fall behind in this space so have been trying to embrace it. One limiting factor was the cost, which I couldn’t really justify for sporadic use. Matt’s suggestion of using, essentially, a ‘pay as you go’ model, to access various LLMs through their APIs was a genius move. With the Claude API, and ChatWise, I’m able to get a lot more out of AI recently, and at a tiny cost.

I found an incredible MMO, 24 years late

This could be a whole post on it’s own, but I recently discovered, 24 years post its launch, the wonderful RuneScape, and I am hooked. It would require a post of it’s own to dissect exactly what I love about RuneScape, or more accurately Old School RuneScape, or OSRS, but suffice to say it’s really scratching my MMO itch recently. I’ve played through the vast majority of MMO releases over the years, starting with Ultima Online back in the day and have played World of Warcraft off and on for it’s whole 20 year existence, but the questing in OSRS is second to none. It’s an incredibly relaxing experience as well.

The above screenshots show a little of the diversity of the game, ranging from some standard questing on the left, and some relaxing farming on the right.

As I say, I’d need a lot of time to explain what it is that makes this game feel so special to me, so maybe I’ll dive in a little deeper later on, but for now I will just say this is, unexpectedly, one of the most engaging and enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time.

One thing to note, which again feels pretty unique when compared to basically every other MMO I’ve played is the game is not region locked! By this, I mean you can freely jump between any ‘world’ you want, at any time, so I’m finally not locked away on a European server, when a lot of potential online buddies are on US ones. This likely seems small to most people, but in the world of MMOs and online games in general, that’s pretty huge.

Murmel

The last thing I wanted to highlight today is a new service I found called Murmel. Murmel hooks into your Mastadon profile and simply provides a daily (or whatever schedule you want) aggregation email highlighting the top stories from your feed. 

It’s a simple idea, which has been done before on other networks, but I’ve not yet seen one dedicated to Mastodon, which is by far my most used, and trusted, social network these days.

The emails are clean, and concise, and provides details about who in your timeline has been sharing the piece of content. 

The service costs $5 a month, which is relatively high, but these small independent services do cost the developers a lot of time, effort, and hosting overheads, so it seems pretty fair if you want to support such a thing. You also get a generous months trial period, which I’m using currently.

Unless you’re a Mastodon completionist, and quite frankly who has time for that these days, this is a great way to still keep up with the biggest posts, or items, shared by your network of friends or community.

1. Are people you know only online considered friends? I’m always a bit hesitant to call online buddies friends. It feels a bit prosumptious I suppose. They didn’t necessarily choose to interact with me, but at the same time they haven’t blocked me so …

I’ve been going through a bit of a weight-loss ‘journey’ since last summer, and I recently passed 8 stone lost since July. I was pretty pleased with this, so bought a few new outfits to replace my now baggy older set. I put on a cheeky little cardigan over a white t-shirt, feeling quite positive about myself.

I woke my daughter up for school, as usual, before I headed off to work. I, stupidly, asked if she liked my new fit¹. She took one look at me, deadpan expression on her face, and declared: “You look like a grandad”, and then moved on with her life.

I mean, to be fair, I bet at least 50% of those people reading this, if not more, did automatically associate the word ‘cardigan’ with a grandad, so the kid has a point to be fair. Nothing quite beats a kids ability to take you down a peg or two, does it? Who’d have ‘em, hey?

1. As the kids would say … 

I’m a big fan of all things omg.lol and use it for a lot of the pages that support this blog, from my profile page, /now page, and more recently to store and share my photos. 

A huge part of what makes omg.lol so special, to me, is the lovely community that surrounds it. It’s full of some very friendly, interesting, and talent folks. One such talented person is Joanna who made the wonderful Status.log app. In my attempt at making shorter, more punchy posts, I’m not going to write a few review right now, but I just wanted to share my love and appreciation for a such a nice app from a community member. 

The app hooks into both status.lol and some.pics, which is yet another omg.lol service. 

Both status.lol and some.pics are pretty active, given the size of the community when compared to something like Bluesky or Instagram, so I’m regularly checking into both components to see what people have been sharing. Some.pics has a real mix of day to day life photos and some really incredible photography, as you can see in the screenshot above.

The app has been on my home screen for a while now and, for the type of photos I share, it’s been my go-to app for sharing photos or snaps I’m taking. It feels like it may be a bit more stable than Pixelfed, in more ways than one. If you pair this app, and the connected omg.lol services with Echofeed, another wonderful service from omg.lol community member Robb you can push your photos, or status updates, directly to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or a multitude of other places. 

Thanks for the fantastic app Joanna!

Diablo IV is now very close to taking over the 3rd place spot in my most played games on Steam. 

The only games keeping it at bay currently are Call of Duty in second place and New World Aeternum in first place. I’m still dabbling with New World for the seasonal stuff, but I doubt it’s long for this world. Call of Duty is not being touched anymore so I can see Diablo eventually taking over. I’ve got a lot of time in New World, however, so it’s going to take some time. 

Diablo IV has a perfect setup for me currently. I’m getting a bit of Battlepass fatigue these days, but the Diablo IV one has been pretty great each season. They don’t feel all that grindy because you earn plenty of levels in it just by playing the game and progressing as you naturally would. It also gives me a perfect ending point for the season. I get to max level and grind the end game just enough to finish the pass and I then have a couple of months before the next one when I just take a break and just play something else. I then come back next season and rinse and repeat. This keeps everything fresh.

A big plus point for the game is just how relaxing it is. It’s a wonderful game to just unwind with. It requires no thought and can easily be played whilst watching a movie or some YouTube videos. This is a big reason Warframe has hooked me in so much as well I think.

Just a quick aside, but if you’re seeing this in your RSS feed after kindly following me I just wanted to remind you that if you want only ‘real’ actual blog posts you can follow THIS feed and you’ll be restricted to only posts tagged with ‘blog’. This post is labelled as a ‘micro’ post and is visible on the home screen but not the main blog page. 

Lastly, if you want the lot you can just follow THIS one. Thank you!

I started writing my 2024 Denties award post at the tail end of 2024, as I have for the last few years. As I was going through the categories, however, I came to the realisation that I’ve really not had much to do with most of the standard categories at all in 2024.

I had a look at which movies, released in 2024, I’d actually seen and there were literally one or two to choose from. Despite there being some amazing TV shows released in the year, I’d essentially not seen any of them either. To that end, instead of trying to shoe horn some thoughts into categories I have very little to input into I decided to scrap the post and change up the format this time around.

So, instead of listing my favourite X things in certain categories I’m just going to forgo the categorisation entirely and just list out a few things that I loved, or enjoyed, in 2024. Categories be damned! This is going to be a scattergun post of my personal joy for 2024.

Just before I dive in, after reviewing the items I was going to list, I was a little struck by the fact there were absolutely no Apple products or services that fit into this post. That isn’t to say I’m not still enjoying the Apple products I have (phone, headphones, watch etc) but they’ve become such a part of my day to day life they’re not really sparking all that much joy. I won’t go into this at this point, but I just found it interesting. I like the fact I’m not so much into the so called ‘walled garden’ and have been able to enjoy various products and services because of a love of technology, and not due to a devotion to one company or another. I think an open mind is always important, especially when it comes to products designed to enhance our lives.

Anyway, without any further ado, here are my Denties award winners (in not particular order) for 2024.

Microsoft Surface Pro 11 (the iPad killer!)

I’ve got to start with this one, because it changed my life! Ok, that’s a little hyperbolic, but finally making a switch over to the Surface Pro, after what felt like a lifetime of wrangling an iPad to be my main computer felt like a breath of fresh air and, in a weird way, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Unlike the vast majority of the people I follow and interact with on ‘the socials’, I actually really like Windows 11 so, for me, the Surface Pro includes my OS of choice alongside some really gorgeous hardware. After so many years literally fighting with an iPad to get it to do the most basic of things it’s so great to have a device that is actually allowed to be an actual computer. On paper, even with the relatively punchy ARM based Surface Pro 11 line, the M4 iPad Pro models are a lot more powerful. The hardware is certainly not the iPads issue, but when it comes to functional needs it’s incredibly restrictive.

I was so excited to finally get proper external display support with the iPad Pro recently but was quickly disappointed that connecting up a screen literally made almost no difference to the experience. It was still a touch interface now just more difficult to touch. Compare this to connecting the Surface Pro up, which does exactly what you’d expect it to and functions just like a laptop would, and it’s worlds apart. The iPad is an amazing tablet, and a very poor laptop. The Surface Pro is a decent tablet (believe it or not) and an absolutely amazing laptop. Given that was my primary need, I really found my device and I couldn’t be happier with it.

I could gush on and on about the Surface Pro 11, but this isn’t a review and I’d imagine most people reading this couldn’t care less about my love for it, but I finally appreciate how Mac folks have felt for all of these years about their love for a device that fits their needs so well. I can’t see myself ever going back to an iPad now, which is fine with me (and my wallet!) and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a device that is such a joy to use.

Rabbit R1

I wrote a review of the Rabbit R1, back in July last year, in which I stated that’s it’s just a simple and ‘fun’ device and I stick with that completely. I’ve not been using it heavily, but I still enjoy just looking at it sometimes. It’s a lovely design and has been useful for a few tasks here and there.

When I wrote about the device last year I didn’t expect it to still have a regular place sitting on my desk, but here we are. As before, I can’t really recommend it as a must have product but it’s certainly a joyful little toy. It feels like, more so then ever, 2025 is going to be a year when little nuggets of joy are going to be more important than ever.

A month or so ago the Rabbit folks added a way to earn ‘carrots’ that you can then use in a gum ball machine of sorts that spits out a new item for your on screen rabbit to wear. Yep, it’s pointless once again, but it encourages me to use the device here and there and I’ve got a few things to collect. Can’t go wrong!

The R1 is not going to set the world on fire, but the fact the company are even still alive, and still updating it regularly is a bit of a miracle to be honest. With 2025 supposedly being the ‘year of the agents’, which Rabbit have been exploring for some time, they may even have a way of taking some advantage of it.

Nothing / CMF Products

I wrote about my ambitions to avoid lock-in a few days ago, during which I wrote a little bit about the Nothing / CMF products I’ve been trying recently, so I wont go into these in too much depth, but allow me a little bit of a gush¹ about them a little bit more.

The CMF brand is Nothing’s extra budget range, seemingly positioned to emerging markets. They are super cheap, but really impressive for the price. At release I bought the CMF Phone 1, CMF Buds Pro 2 and CMF Watch Pro 2, all for about £250 which is a bit insane. The Buds, again, for the price are really impressive. They have ANC which is very decent, a cool charging case and a little dial in the case that can control volume, and switch sound modes. They quick pair with Windows devices, so they’ve become my de-facto work headphones. There’s even an iOS app so you can control the sound quality etc. on that side as well. The bright orange colour I got is a real gem as well, especially coming from Apple’s dull hospital colour scheme for their headphones.

The Watch Pro 2 is probably the weakest device of the set, feeling very light and plasticy. That being said, the various tracking elements it includes are not a million miles away from what the Apple Watch Ultra records, at less than 1/10 the price of my Ultra. The lightness may actually appeal to some, as it really can just disappear on your arm its so light. There are a load of faces built in, and even an AI-power face generation option which is a fun addition. Once again, it has a stand alone app as well so unlike many Android Wear watches, it’s compatible across Android and iOS, and you can hot swap between devices at will.

Lastly, the CMF Phone 1 has been the most impressive device of the set. This cost me £169, has a great screen², the latest / current version of Android, and a truly incredible battery life. It’s so, so light as well. It’s so light, and snappy, I’ve found myself using this around the house day to day, rather than ‘lugging’ my heavy iPhone 16 Pro Max around with me.

As I wrote in my lock-in article, the CMF Phone 1 has made me realise there is very little I actually take advantage of with a top of the range phone each year. Yes, the camera of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is incredible, but my favourite photos this year were taken on the tiny camera on my sunglasses. I’m far from a pro (or even slightly good) photographer, so I know most smartphones would have a camera good enough for my ability (and need). I couldn’t make a jump from the iPhone 16 Pro Max down to a CMF Phone, but it has given me a lot to think about on this front and, most importantly of all, I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with it, which is what it’s all about.

I wont even go into the Nothing Ear (Open)’s and how much I love these things. They are just a fantastic set of open headphones. If you take one thing away from this article, go get some of those badboys (as long as you actively want / don’t mind full sound bleed through).

ARPGs

The sole reason that I’ve had to do The Denties like this for 2024 is the fact I spend all of my free evenings playing video games. I’m not especially proud of how much time I spend playing them (which is only really 1-2 hours a night) and how much they’ve taken me away from other forms of media, but man I have been having a blast with gaming in 2024.

A genre that I’ve aways dabbled on, but rarely got into this much are Action Roleplaying Games, or ARPGs. I picked up Diablo IV at launch, and this quickly catapulted me into a year long (and still ongoing) love affair with the genre. Something just snapped and I can’t get enough of them currently. I’ve been chewing through every season of Diablo IV, exploding screen after screen of hellspawn. It’s not stopped at Diablo, however. I’ve gone and got myself hooked on Path of Exile 2, a far more hardcore and time consuming experience than Diablo IV. I’ve also gone back to older titles like Grim Dawn and even Diablo II has been an absolute blast.

My genre of choice, for forever I think, has been MMO’s, so my drive for progression and loot etc. has been with me for a long time. MMORPG’s can be relatively slow paced, and story driven, however. ARPGs on the other hand can give or take a story, it’s all about destroying as many monsters as you can, but it also includes the mechanics that push my buttons like a lot of looting and progression.

Seasonal content is also something that has started to appeal a lot to me, yet is in direct contrast to my MMO lifestyle. My World of Warcraft character has been with me for 20 years at this point, so seasonal content in most AARPG’s, which makes you create a brand new character every few months to grind it up again with new content, felt painful to me. I was very wrong, however. This kind of content gives you a reason to try new character types, and new builds, every few months and also means you can’t fall behind in anything. I play for the season that is launched, finish the new content and battlepass, and then stop for a month or so. It’s a short time consuming burst of fun, but then leaves me to move onto something new without missing out on anything.

ARPG’s are not going to be for everyone, and I may well drop the genre again and go back to FPS’s games like CoD when I want my mindless fun, but for now I’ve not played CoD in months and have been having such a relaxing and fun time online.

Warframe

Warframe has been out for over ten years at this point, and I’ve dabbled in it on and off for a few years, but I recently had a hankering to dip back in at the end of 2024 and, my goodness, am I hooked?

There’s quite a lot to Warframe, so it’s a little tricky to describe it fully, at least quickly. Let me just say that it’s a game about kick-ass space ninjas with a bizarre, confusing, yet strangely compelling storyline which is very generously free to play you’d have a rough idea. To be honest ‘space ninjas’ should be more than enough for most people to at least give this beauty a try.

Warframe is an FPS game (with lots of sword wielding melee combat) where you take on various missions across a huge star chart. Apart from the story the main draw is collecting and levelling up various ‘warframes’ or space ninjas, weapons, skins and a load of other stuff. As I say, there’s a lot to it and it can seem a bit daunting, but believe it or not it’s a great game for casual players.

The game is free to play, but the things they do sell are all obtainable by just playing the game. Yes, the pace of collecting stuff could be quite slow, but it’s all unnecessary and you will find plenty of stuff just playing the game. It also lends itself very well to casually jumping in, doing a few missions (which take about 10 minutes each at most), and getting out again.

You are constantly collecting resources, unlocking various things, levelling up, and progressing the story so it’s hitting both my MMO and ARPG obsessions right now and I’m just having a blast. Just look at the clip below and tell me this doesn’t look incredibly satisfying?

I have to admit I’ve spent a little bit of money on some ‘platinum’ to buy a few new warframes that looked cool, but only because I was having so much fun and didn’t want to wait for some new toys to play with, but considering the hours I’ve got out of it already, this felt like a fair trade. From what I’ve read and seen the developers, Digital Extremes, are actually well liked and respect their players a lot. They interact with the community a lot, and the community itself actually seems very friendly. I’ve had a lot of people helping me with various questions I’ve come across in-game as I’ve started to dig a little deeper in the game.

The fact Warframe is available basically everywhere is also not helping my current obsession. It plays extremely well even on iOS, and the Switch.

Much like the ARPGs I mentioned above I would imagine Warframe is a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of game, but if you’re into ARPGs, MMOs, or even just fast and intense FPS games I can’t recommend it enough.

Well, that wraps up this slightly different Denties for 2024. Hopefully 2025’s version is a little more diverse, but at this point I’m predicting it’ll just be a wrap up of my 3000 hours of Warframe …

1. ‘Gush’ really is a kinda gross word isn’t it? I’m going to have to get my thesaurus out at some point and find an alternative …

2. Once again, this is relative to the price. That being said, the screen is impressive for any low, or even mid range phone.

I’ve been experimenting a little recently, in my tech life, with some of the products and services I use. With the way big tech are bending the knee to Musk and Trump et al I’m keen to avoid the ecosystem lock in that all of the big corporations strive for. 

Many years ago I made my big tech decision and jumped in bed with Apple. They were always considered the ‘good guys’ and, whilst they are still better than some, the writing’s on the wall for me and I can see the next four years eroding their good guy status at record speed. 

So, to this end, my experiment has begun. It turns out, however, that avoiding the big tech companies entirely isn’t all that easy, so my first step has been to look at products and services that interact with each other a little better, or can be used across ecosystems. I might write about some of these things in more detail as I progress, but for now I’m going to summarise some of the things I’m trying and my initial feelings so far. 

Apple Notes > Craft

Apple Notes was my first target, as this was a pretty simple one to tackle. I’m not a big note taker so I could give or take this one, but Craft looked very interesting and they offered a very good lifetime discount of their subscription over Black Friday / Christmas so I gave it a shot. So far I’ve been super impressed.

The ability to publish your notes is a fun addition, which I’m currently using for my /Now page and Reading Tracker and it seems to be an incredibly well put together service.

In terms of cross platform support, given that is the main focus here, it performs very well. The amount of functionality they support in the iOS app is extremely impressive and it features a lot of custom UI elements (which may be a negative to some). It also has an excellent web app and even the Windows app is very good. I think, because their web app is so robust, I believe the app is just a wrapper, but it seems very snappy so I can only assume their web version is massively optimised.

I’ve been using Craft a lot recently for work, but also writing up some blog posts (which I should really post at some point …) and it’s been an enjoyable experience.

Apple Watch > Fitbit Charge 6

This is an example of potentially replacing one tech giant for another one, but my interest here was more about how much I need an Apple Watch in particular. I love the look of the Apple Watch Ultra, but I really don’t use any other features of it. So, my thought process here was would something more basic do the job for the tracking, freeing me up to wear a more traditional watch (or nothing at all).

I had my eye on the lovely Garmin Instinct 2 Solar, which looks a bit like a G-Shock watch, but with health tracking functions. I knew a new model was due, however, and the price was quite high for an experiment so I picked up the Fitbit Charge 6 in their sale. So far, a week or so in, I am again impressed.

The device itself is extremely light and comfortable. I’ve still been wearing my Ultra, but having this on my other wrist is subtle and unassuming. I’ve turned off the always on screen so it just looks like a thin, black band on my wrist. The battery life blows even the Ultra out of the water, as you’d expect. I’ve been using it for just over a week at it has 60% battery left. That’s with 24 hour usage (for sleep tracking testing).

When it comes to the health tracking itself it compares very well with the Ultra in terms of the metrics it tracks. There is a slight variance between the two, but it’s very minute. Given I’m no athlete it’s more than good enough. Along with the usual steps and distance tracking it also measures breathing rate, heart rate, skin temperature and oxygen saturation so, I believe, essentially 1:1 with the Ultra. Given it’s about 1/7 the price the other 6/7 of the cost is going on looks and the Apple Tax.

The big benefit here, from the experiment point of view, is the Fitbit service. Despite the fact it’s not owned by Google, the app is available across iOS and Android so I can easily move my health info with me if I move to another mobile platform. Whilst there are some services to extract Apple Health data to port it over, I would imagine this is easier said than done.

My Ultra is, at the moment, constantly asking me for my Apple password, which is driving me mad. It’s almost asking to be replaced, so if this experiment goes well I may well be the proud owner of a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar very soon. This new model looks glorious.

Apple AirPods > Nothing Ear (2) / Nothing Ear (Open)

The AirPods Pro’s are really an amazing device and it’s actually one of my favourite Apple products I’ve bought in years. These are, also, not really a lock-in device. They work with Android and Windows just fine. Using them on a non-Apple device, and then trying to switch back to the iPhone however does seem to be a bit of a pain, at least for me. The AirPods seem to require completely removing from my iPhone and re-paired. It’s minor, but a ballache nonetheless.

I didn’t go out seeking a replacement for my AirPods, but in recent years I’ve been really impressed with the Nothing brand, mainly just because they are London based and have a really unique and interesting aesthetic. 

A few years ago I bought the Nothing Ear (2)’s which looked very cool, and sounded fine. The middle of 2024 they released another model, however, and again my interest was peaked just because of their interesting design. These were the Nothing Ear (Open).

As the name would suggest, these are ‘open’ headphones so they don’t go inside your ear, they just kind of hover over the top of them. They are the complete opposite, really, of the AirPods Pro and their fantastic noise cancellation. However fantastic the pass-through that the AirPods has it is still a bit restrictive and I found going for walks, or working in the office (when I don’t want to just block everyone out) is so much better to hear my surroundings. They are also insanely comfortable.

They are not, to be fair, a direct comparison to the AirPods Pro, in any stretch of the imagination, but just based on how I use them the most these have, surprisingly, become my go to when I walk my dog, or go into the office. I love the look, I love the price, and I love the performance. I also love that I can easily switch between my PCs (with the quick pair functionality) and back to my iPhone with zero of the messing around I have with my AirPods.

iPhone > Nothing CMF phone

Ok, this is not going to happen, but I picked up the excellent CMF Phone 1 (also by Nothing) for £169 and it kind of blew me away. It is, in no way, a peer to my iPhone 16 Pro Max (which I do love, despite finding the iPhone incredibly dull recently) but it’s t has taught me a bit of a lesson when it comes to the potential of moving away from Apple at some point.

The device is powered by Nothing OS 3, which is a skinned version of Android 15, the latest version. Having spent a lot of time playing around with the CMF Phone, and Android, it became clear that there is now a massive convergence between iOS and Android in 2025. Many of the apps I use on iOS were available, including things like Apple Music, and had feature parity. The OS was snappy and my home screen ended up looking very similar to my iOS setup. This will be obvious to most people, but it did go a long way to highlight to me how simple a transition from iOS to Android could potentially be, and just how little I’d actually lose in such a transition.

This ease of transition, coupled with my efforts to keep my services platform agnostic, does leave my open to have a bit more fun with my most used tech item in my life. Depending on how things pan out with this years iPhone model I might just pick up a flagship Nothing phone, or similar, save myself half the cost and just try something new for a year with almost zero negative imapct to my life. From a nerdy perspective this is actually quite an exciting prospect. 

For years I’ve been an ‘Apple guy’, but my interest has always really lay with being a ‘tech guy’. With small brand like Nothing, and services like Proton and Kagi opening up the Services space, being platform agnostic and open to services that focus on privacy are easier to do than ever before. Given how things are looking so far in 2025 and beyond, exploring this stuff may not only be smart, it may well be a necessity for some.

There was a ‘default apps’ trend, about a year ago, which I took part in. I looked at this post earlier today, whilst looking for a different post and realised that I’ve made a few changes to this list since then, so it felt like time for a refresh.

These are my default apps, for 2024:

- ✉️ Mail service: Proton

This is the first change from last year. I’ve been using iCloud mail since the .mac days, but recently it has just been getting so incredibly flakey. I’ve moved multiple (important) emails to folders and they simply disappear. With the updated Mail app in iOS 18.2 now also messing up (it’s a beta, I know), I’ve decided to just filter iCloud and Gmail emails into Proton and live in that world for now.

- 📬 Mail client(s): Proton Mail (iOS) / Thunderbird (PC)

Another change on client here, on the iOS front. The Proton Mail app is not the most powerful, and it’s a shame that you have to use that app to use Proton, but it does the job well, and with tags as well as folders available, I’m yet to have an email magically poof out of existence, so that’s a win in my book.

- ✅ Tasks: Craft

This is an extremely new addition to my toolkit, and replaces Apple Reminders on iOS, and Microsoft ToDo on PC. There is definitely some ‘new shiny’ syndrome going on here with Craft, I’ve only been using it about a week, but it’s already slotted into my life so well. The reminders / task functionality looks a lot like Things 3, actually, which isn’t a bad thing. The fact its cross platform, and has a great iOS app, are big plusses for me.

- 📰 RSS service: Inoreader

- 🗞️ RSS client: Lire (iOS) / Vivaldi (PC)l

My old go-to, Reeder, has gone through a large redesign and, whilst it looks lovely, I’m not really ready for the ‘one feed for everything’ approach they’ve opted for. Lire is clean, and simple. A pure RSS reader that’s fast and kept well updated.

On the PC front, I’ve been using and enjoying Vivaldi, which has a great integrated RSS feed reader. Most of my reading is done on Lire via my iPhone, but when I’m on my PC and fancy a quick catch up, that’s my go to.

- ☁️ Cloud storage: iCloud (iOS) / OneDrive (PC)

- 🌅 Photo library: iCloud

- 🤳🏻 Photo editing: Darkroom

- 🌐 Web browser: Orion (iOS) / Vivaldi (PC)

I’ve recently switched to paid search service Kagi, and enjoying that a lot. The company also make a basic web browser called Orion, which I’ve been using for a while on iOS now. I don’t really do that much on the web via my phone, so this is really just a portal into Kagi search for me, but it’s a decent browser nonetheless. It’s snappy, and clean.

On the PC front, I’m still dabbling between Edge and Vivaldi. Vivaldi is incredibly powerful and, in my eyes, has achieved what the cringe-inducing Arc has been trying to achieve, and make it your home / portal to not only the web, but to a lot of activities you do on your device.

- 📆 Calendar: iCloud / Calendar.app

- 📖 Reading: Craft

Another move here, to Craft yet again. Omnivore, my previous app, was sadly acquired and promptly killed, so I’ve been in limbo for a while, but this seemed like another decent use case for Craft, whilst I’m dabbling. I can share items into my ‘Reading List’ document, from the iOS share sheet. Once in the app, I can use the Craft Assistant (which is powered by ChatGPT) to summarise the articles if I want to add a short detail prior to reading.

This is 100% about me justifying buying a years subscription to Craft, rather than it just being the best choice, but I’m enjoying it regardless.

- 🌤️ Weather: Apple Weather

- 🎙️ Podcasts: Castro / YouTube Music

More changes here, with a drop of Apple Podcasts, to be replaced by Castro. I’ve used Castro, off and on, since day one, but it’s had a bit of a troubled past, having moved between companies mulitple times over its history. It was recently acquired again, and the new team said all the right things about wanting to get things back on track. I wanted to support the attempt, so subbed for another year. I’ve not been disapointed. The app is working well, and is getting consistent quality of life updates. I don’t listen to a huge amount of podcasts these days, but like to have a varied set of options, so the triage feature is ideal for me. I can sub to a high volume of shows, but just swipe away those I don’t like the sound of that week.

YouTube Music has also become a big podcast player for me, strangely. A lot of podcasts that I enjoy recently seem to have made the move over to creating video podcasts as well, which I’ve really been enjoying. YouTube Music seemed like the best place to consume these.

- 🎶 Music: Apple Music

- 🔐 Passwords: Proton Pass

- 🐘 Mastodon: Ivory

- 💁🏻‍♂️ Social: Mastodon and Bluesky

Whilst I enjoyed Threads for a short while post Xitter, Bluesky has really taken off recently and I’ve been enjoying my time there a lot. I was in the first 6,000 users on the platform, and it’s now exploded to over 22,000,000 users. The userbase seems to be a wonderful mix of the nerdier / techy side of Mastodon, alongside news outlets, and others, so I can get a far broader timeline of my interests than Mastodon can offer. Whilst Mastodon is still my main network, Bluesky is growing a lot.

- 🎮 Gaming service: Steam / GOG

There is no chance I’d ever move away from Steam. It’s a fantastic storefront and Valve seem to be an incredible company in general. That being said, I have started to pick up a few titles here and there on GOG. They have recently announced an extension of their project to maintain and curate old / abandoned titles which is great, and getting more and more important over time. I’ve also got a real affinity for retro gaming, so GOGs mission is close to my heart  

- 📝 Notes:  Craft

At the moment, I’ve moved my work notes away from OneNote and personal notes from Apple Notes.

On the personal front, a cross platform note taking application makes a lot of sense and Craft seems like a great alternative so far, and far more powerful in many ways. It’s a real joy to use, and very flexible for things like hosting some sub pages for my blog.

Craft as a replacement for OneNote, on the work front, has worked well in my first few days, though I’m so used to OneNote it may be tricky to replace it right away. Craft is certainly powerful enough for the job, but the organisation in OneNote works very well indeed for me.

- 🔎 Search: Kagi

I have, for the most part, moved away from Bing onto the excellent Kagi  For those unfamiliar, Kagi is a paid for search engine. Paying for a search engine does seem a bit mad, to most, and I wasn’t initially sold on the idea either, but after going through a free trial I was converted.

The result quality is fantastic and the UI is super clean and uncluttered when compared to Google or Bing. I won’t turn this into a full review of the service, but suffice to say I’m a convert.

- 📓Journaling: Day One

- 💬 Chat: Discord

- 🌍 VPN: Proton VPN

The new, new, new social network Bluesky has exploded in popularity in the last few weeks. It recently flew past 21,000,000 users, following a large spike after the US election results. I’ve been enjoying it myself a great deal, but have started to see a lot of media discourse about it being a ‘leftie echo chamber’.

I thought about this myself, but came to the conclusion that, does this really matter? If I’ve learnt anything over the last few years, with the rise of Trumperism and people like Tate, and Farage, it’s that there is no arguing with these people. If they are unwilling to believe in provable scientific  facts and principles, what hope do you, or I, have in convincing them otherwise?

Let me be clear, this is not a call to give up, to roll over and accept this rise in extremism. There are places, and processes, to take this on in a more suitable and effective way, however. We can vote for the parties we believe in to uphold our values. We can offer support and help to our neighbours and communities. We can take change into our own hands. That does not mean, however, that our rest and relaxation must also turn into a battle. DO fight for what you think is right, DO work within the system to make the change you want to see, but also DO take time to relax, and enjoy yourself. 

When I’m relaxing playing World of Warcraft, I don’t seek out the racists and misogynists in the game world to poison my relaxation. When I’m chilling in a coffee shop, writing a blog post about echo chambers, I don’t move to the table next to me to listen closer to the muppets there talking about how children shouldn’t be immunised against deadly viruses because Bob down the pub told them about mind controlling nano bots. In the same sense, when I have some down time and want to read my social feed I don’t need it poisoned by nonsense. My Bluesky (and Mastadon) feeds are 100% echo chambers, but I’m just fine with that. The fight goes on to make the world something I want my daughter to grow up in, but when I’m browsing social media it’s time for great photography, tech news, and a whole lot of gaming fun, and I’m VERY happy with that.

The best summary I’ve seen of this viewpoint comes from the great Mr Scott Johnson. Please take 5 minutes out of your life to give this short video a watch, it perfectly summarises how I feel about social media, and my online life, currently:

It was reported over the weekend that Apple has purchased Pixelmator, the company behind a variety of image and photo editing products. As is the norm now, with acquisitions of this nature, the news quickly lead to many online commentators wondering what would become of the excellent suite of products, so I thought I’d have a look into what has become of other Apple software acquisitions over the years, to see if this would shed some light on Pixelmators eventual fate.

Whilst I’m not a heavy AI tool user, I did think this topic may actually be a good use case, so I used Perplexity for some assistance with a little research. I used the tool to compile a list of Apple’s more prominent acquisitions in recent years, filtered to software only:

The results were interesting, and don’t bode all that well for Pixelmator’s chances of sticking around in the long term as independent apps. On their future plans now the team are part of Apple, the company said:

There will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time. Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.

I think the ‘at this time’ part is quite telling, and given Apple’s track record it seems far more likely that Pixelmator, or more likely the fantastic Photomator, will be integrated into the lacklustre Photos app. With Apple’s commitment to real photography, and not the AI driven hallucinations Google are opting for, this would be a great time to push the editing capability of an iPhone up a notch. Who better to power that that Pixelmator? Photomator is my go to photo editing app, so I’d be sorry to see it go, but if it can be absorbed into the OS as well as Siri (quality aside) was that would be a big win for everyone overall. 

The purchase breakdown above certainly seems to lead credence to the idea that Apple tend to purchase technologies, and the brains behind them, to integrate both into the company and its products, and I’d expect to see the Pixelmator go the same route. Photomators fate seems clear, to me. Pixelmator’s less so, however. I wonder if we’ll see a rebrand back to Aperture?

If you’ve seen any Apple advertising recently it’s pretty safe to assume it was pushing Apple Intelligence. This is the marquee feature, or feature set, of the iPhone 16 range, and is really the only reason the iPad Mini had a recent revision. 

Despite this being a much lauded and headline feature, if you visit Apple.com right now you will see the tagline ‘Hello Intellgience’, with a small caveat below saying ‘Apple Intelligence coming this Fall’ … I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally greet someone a couple of months before they walk through my door. This, to me, really speaks to Apple’s seeming desperation to get something AI related into their marketing to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ whilst their poor engineering teams try to spew something out. And spew something out they have. 

The first iteration of ‘Intelligence’ in iOS 18.1 is limited to say the least. Some very basic text re-write capabilities, and a new UI for Siri (but no further changes). I think it’s safe to say that we’re still not saying ‘hello to intelligence’. Apple then promptly released the iOS 18.2 developer beta to continue to push out the previously promised feature set. The latest release adds ChatGPT integration into Siri, alongside a few more features which I’ll touch on a bit later. The ChatGPT integration was touted as, essentially, a fall back option just in case Apple’s new vast Intelligence couldn’t find the answers. The fact it’s been added before any actual Siri enhancements once again shows Apple’s struggle to keep up with their own AI efforts. In testing, it basically seems to rely on ChatGPT for everything that isn’t a phone command, or that it can find on Wikipedia. As seems to be the norm with anything AI related, it’s also quick to point out that the answer you’re given is quite possibly wrong anyway, and you should just look it up yourself to check. In what other tech world would that be seen as acceptable?

The other addition is Image Playground, an app and toolset to generate your own images, via AI,  by combining your own images with text prompts. The results are, as expected, pretty rubbish, and very soulless. I know there are people out there that like AI ‘art’, but I find it incredibly bad. It just feels completely dead inside and I find it disheartening that Apple, a company usually famed for their support for creatives, push such tacky nonsense. Yes, I know this is beta software, but AI generated rubbish is AI generated rubbish and I can’t see this quality changing a lot over the beta cycle.  Here are some images it created for me. One is nightmare fuel, the other looks fine, but just so generic and, as I said, dead behind the eyes. 

I am, once again, going to have to deflect cries of hyperbole but, for me, this entire Apple Intellgience rollout and feature set has really cheapened the Apple brand for me. Historically, Apple has rarely been the first to release a new technology, but they’ve often waited, and eventually released a more refined version of whatever it is they’ve worked on. With Apple Intelligence this is not the case. They’re both late to the game, and look to be releasing stuff even worse than the AI stuff competitors have released. It all has a bad cobbled together feel to it and some of the UI elements, like everything in Image Playgrounds, would look more in place on a Xioami device than Apple flagships. So much of this also feels like something users will use once or twice to check it out, and then never touch it again. A tick box to keep investors happy, but in reality a wasted two+ years of development time.

I don’t like to write overly negative posts, if I can help it and wanted to end on a positive note, but I actually can’t think of anything genuinely helpful or well implemented in iOS 18.0, .1 or .2 so far, so I guess I better leave my rant there for now. I hope we can get over this trend soon, however. 

One of the small pleasures, for me, about the web in 2024 is the sheer amount of interesting independent and niche products and services that are available. 

There are some fantastic independent blogging platforms like Pika and Scribbles, privacy focused email services like Proton and Tuta and, as I’m discovering, even some search offerings that are really trying to move away from the Google’s of the world when it comes to customers data being the product. 

One such offering is Kagi, a ‘user centric’ search offering that I’ve been enjoying quite a lot recently. I don’t feel like I’ve used it enough yet to provide a full review here quite yet, but if you’re interested about more from Kagi in general, Matt Birchler posted a great video about it about a year ago which is well worth checking out. The folks at Kagi have added quite a bit since this video, but it gives you a very good overview. 

Whilst I will leave the reviewing to others at this point, something that did catch my eye with Kagi that I wanted to share was the great ‘small web’ section that they are curating. The aim is to collect as many feeds from indie bloggers as possible, so they can help amplify their voices. Not only will this help the blogging scene, but it will help Kagi to present these people focused viewpoints into search results, when it’s relevant to do so. On this, Kagi say:

Imagine the internet like a huge neighborhood. There's a lot of folks around, but we rarely bump into each other, right? Kagi's all about humanizing the web and we want to help surface the people behind the posts and stories that zip by. This less known corner of the web is also known as the "small web".

They have what is, essentially, a webring available to find random posts from the various small web bloggers and the entire list is maintained, out in the open, via a GitHub repository. Even if you aren’t a Kagi user, this is an amazing resource of some excellent creators. I’ve seen a few familiar names on there, but also found a lot of new people to follow also. You can submit your own recommendations as well, if you fork the repository and then submit your suggestions. 

Whilst I’m not fully onboard with paying for search, I do think I will be a paying Kagi member after my free uses have been exhausted. It looks like they have a good mission, very much aligned with my viewpoint so I’m keen to see if they can continue to grow and add some cool features like this. 

Space Karen Jr, Matt Mullenweg, has continued his scorched earth policy on his reputation with another strange post. This time defending his mother (which is admirable) against some pretty weird accusations. 

The following sentence stood out to me, however, as a sign of his detachment from the reality of every day creators that are worried about what he’s doing to damage the tool many of them have built a career off of:

My advice for any other founder: As you gain wealth this may happen to you with household staff as well.

This is possibly unfair, and reading too much into a simple statement,  but it this sounds like something a plantation owner would say and not the steward of a beloved platform that supports half of the current web. 

Regardless, it reeks of privilege. I’m not even sure why it surprises me to be honest. Money seems to corrupt all eventually. 

I saw a post on Mastodon the other day, suggesting you post about the 20 games had a big impact on you. The challenge was to share one game a day, for twenty days. I’ve posted two so far but, being the impatient sort, I thought I’d just list them out in a post instead. The poster suggested you include no reasons, or ratings, just a dump on game titles that influenced who I am as a gamer today. 

So, I present ‘me’, in the form of 20 video games. These are in a completely random order, for now.

1. Stargoose - Atari ST

2. Magic Pockets - Atari ST

3. Commander Keen 4 - PC

4. Castle Master - PC

5. Half-Life - PC

6. Ultima Online - PC

7. World of Warcraft - PC

8. Halo: Combat Evolved - Xbox

9. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge - PC

10. Star Wars: X-Wing - PC

11. Command & Conquer Red Alert - PC

12. Super Mario All Stars - SNES

13. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - SNES

14. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - N64

15. Goldeneye - N64

16. Tomb Raider - PlayStation

17. Castle Master - PC

18. Wolfenstein 3D - PC

19. Discworld - PlayStation

20. Cyberpunk 2077 - PC

What’re yours?

I’m pretty sure that my incessant blog hosting changes have lost me most subscribers to my RSS over the years, but for those of you still following, or for those kind enough to want to follow along now you can follow just my main / full blog posts via the blog only feed. If you follow the main feed you’ll get both the main blog and the small ‘micro’ posts like this one.

Well, it looks like Matt Mullenweg of Automattic / Wordpress fame has finally achieved the illustrious title of lunatic CEO, joining the ranks of such infamous ding dongs such as Elon ‘space Karen’ Musk and Twiddle Dee and Tweedle Dum, DHH & Jason Fried.

Matt’s vendetta with WPEngine has taken another turn, as he seems to have offered those that disagree with his new scorched earth approach money to leave the company. 

For those of you interested, YouTuber Theo has posted a good summary of the latest insanity.

A few months ago I waxed lyrical about services now under Automattic, like Day One and Pocketcasts being in good hands. As Mr Super Mario himself would say (probably): What a mistaka to maka!

I’m sure this will blow over, as these things tend to do, or Matt will be ousted and things will still just blow over, but this debacle has solidified one thing in my mind, and it’s that bloggers and internet folks are extremely lucky these days to have so many amazing and, perhaps more importantly, independent blogging platforms to use that are not the mega business that Wordpress is. The likes of the excellent Scribbles, Micro.blog, Pika, and Bear blog are, to name just a few, all incredible. They’re well made, thoughtful and out the power in users hands to control their content. As a serial blog host switcher, I would recommend any one of them over Wordpress for independent writers (I can’t bring myself to use the term content creator I’m afraid. 

Despite the fact the title of this post is still a mouthful, and even bigger than the introduction posts title, here we are with the first post in a series of tips and tricks for those of you in the (likely small) niche of iPhone users who also use Windows PCs or laptops instead of Macs. 

I’m going to start off with a very small, yet helpful, tip regarding sharing images and text between devices. 

One very helpful feature for Mac and iOS users is the ability to copy in one location and have that copied item available to then paste on another device. You, sadly, can't currently do that between iOS and Windows (though you can between different PCs / devices that you're logged into via your Microsoft account), but with the help of the Edge browser, and the Drop tool, you can easily send text or images between iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

You can access Drop via the Sidebar in Edge and it's basically just a chat window that you have with yourself. You can share images or text in here and 'drop' it, at which point it will instantly be made available to other devices logged into the same Microsoft account, including into the iOS Edge app. It's very simple, yet hugely helpful and effective for sharing small text snippets.

If you have them enabled you’ll get a nice little notification when either device receives a new item  

And that, as they say, is that! This does, obviously, rely on you using, or at least having, Edge installed on both devices which will not be the case for many people, but whilst I have you here I would actually highly recommend giving Edge another try if you’ve given up on it in the past. Microsoft have added a load of fluff over time, but some of it is really helpful (like the split screen functionality) and some can just be quickly turned off (like bad news articles, or AI guff). What you’re left with, in my opinion, is a very clean and fast basic browser. As I say, I’d say it’s worth another look. I also like the iOS version, but that’s a tale for another day perhaps.