Developers are great – an ongoing series

Did they even look at this stuff before presenting it to the public? Talking of which here is the farcical nonsense from the i newspaper. They changed their puzzle pages to some weird (presumably) vibe coded nonsense created by a teenager on their phone. While holding your iPad in a landscape position you are told to rotate it:

I rotated it 180º but that did not help. Apparently you need to turn it to a portrait orientation to enjoy the clutter of clues and colours and characters (just in case your iPad came without a functioning keyboard) to partake of their crosswords – which would look exactly the same in a landscape orientation.

These changes certainly generated some cross words and one star reviews:

While rotated one can better enjoy even more of them.

Did they even look at this stuff before presenting it to the public?

Update 27th August:

For some reason my one star review has been removed. Perhaps referring to the inept buffoons as “inept buffoons” was going too far. Their latest update to rectify this embarrassing disaster means you now no longer have to rotate your device. It does, of course, look exactly the same whichever way you look at it.

Big Mics

The One Thing newsletter had a splendid piece on The Banality of the Video Podcast. I have long been troubled by the proliferation of big chunky microphones in such videos when television has mostly moved to the barely noticeable clip on microphones.

Alas the article missed the wonderful Why We Bleep where we can enjoy bald, bespectacled, bearded blokes talking to each other:


From there I was searching for a clip of Stewart Lee and his observations about people filming themselves talking for YouTube – but am yet to find it.

What could possibly go wrong?

From the UK government’s response to the petition objecting to the introduction of a digital ID system:

Privacy and security will also be central to the digital ID programme. We will follow data protection law and best practice in creating a system which people can rightly put their trust in. People in the UK already know and trust digital credentials held in their phone wallets to use in their everyday lives, from paying for things to storing boarding passes.

From reports that the government continues to press for access to the private data of UK citizens:

The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a means to allow officials access to encrypted cloud backups, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens’ data, according to people briefed on the matter.

The past governments catalogue of failures in implementing large scale systems and the damage done by the ridiculous Online Safety Act does not inspire confidence but I am sure AI will save us.

Or…

App Store update listing explaining it now handled large advertisements that blocked the game's board.

…get rid of the advertisements. Make something good enough to buy rather than sullying your apps with cheap and tacky ads.