This is a post that I’ve known was coming for quite some time, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write. After more than 16 years TouchArcade will be closing its doors and shutting down operations. There may be an additional post here or there in the coming weeks as we try to honor any previously agreed to obligations, and a proper farewell post is in the works too, but as of now our normal daily operations have ceased. The reason we’re shutting down probably isn’t a surprising one: Money.

Many of you who have followed TouchArcade for a long time are well aware that we’ve had financial troubles for many years now, and to be frank I think it’s a miracle that we’ve been able to last as long as we have. The truth of the matter is that a website like ours just doesn’t make money anymore. To our own detriment we’ve resisted things like obnoxious in-your-face advertising, egregious clickbait headlines, or ethically questionable sponsorships, which sadly are the types of things that actually still make money in the internet of today.

Pity to see this. TouchArcade reviews were something I regualarly used to read in the earlier days of the App Store, and a website I have linked out to here a few times.

It’s not surprising that money was the big issue. The industry has moved on and it’s difficult for this type of website to remain sustainable without ad overload.

There was a brief shining moment where it seemed like Apple might really have cracked the automotive industry–it wasn’t necessarily for the reasons you might think. Yes, the company tried hard for years to build its own car in a variety of ways, everything from designing the underlying automotive systems to building the whole thing from the ground up.

But it wasn’t Apple’s own ambitious car project (now by all accounts dead and buried) that saw it make inroads into the automobile sector. It was the relatively more modest addition of CarPlay.

Now, the question of where CarPlay is heading has become increasingly murky in the wake of Apple’s car project’s demise. The company announced a next-generation push that can use all of a car’s displays, with an interface tailored to each specific maker, but it’s been slow to garner adoption amongst its partners.

As CarPlay embarks upon its second decade, what might its future hold?

Easily one of my favourite iOS features. I wouldn’t buy a car without support for it.

There definitely is a question over its long term future as car companies are now putting more focus on their infotainment systems and will be reluctant to hand over control to external companies like Apple and Google.

I hope there will always be a place for CarPlay among that.

Apple intends to slim down the MacBook Pro, Apple Watch, and iPhone, with the new ultra-thin M4 iPad Pro a sign of the company’s new design trajectory, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

iPod Nano vs iPod Pro Ad Feature 1 When the M4 iPad Pro was unveiled last month, Apple touted it as the company’s thinnest product ever, and even compared it to the 2012 iPod nano to emphasize its slim dimensions.

Writing in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Gurman says that like the iPad Pro, Apple is now focused on delivering the thinnest possible devices across its lineups without compromising on battery life or major new features.

The M4 iPad Pro has convinced me that this is the way forward. Thinner is better as long as battery is unaffected.

Ever since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, some of the most thrilling James Bond action sequences have taken place in the coldest climates. The 007 action unit have found myriad ways to create unique snowbound set-pieces on skis, to aircraft and even a cello case. Here are the behind-the scenes stories from some of Bond’s most iconic ice capades…

In an effort to not completely abandon this website, I have updated some basic stuff behind the scenes to keep it in a state where it can be updated properly.

The updates include:

• Creating a ‘development’ branch for testing changes
• Adding a gitignore file to shrink the size of the repo
• Updating the Gemfile versions where necessary

I had not been using Jekyll or GitHub Pages correctly for a long time. I would usually just create/update posts from within the GitHub website directly.

That is admittedly a useful benefit of GitHub Pages and cuts out a lot of effort, but it leads to loads of unnecessary commits and makes testing any config or library changes more or less impossible.

These changes are minor ¹ but they allow me to test changes locally on the website before pushing them, and bring some form of SDLC to the content here.

FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem revealed at last weekend’s Acropolis Rally that the three-time WRC constructors’ winner (1995-1997) is considering a possible return to the championship.

Subaru has a rich history in the WRC, running Colin McRae (1995), Richard Burns (2001) and Petter Solberg (2003) to world drivers’ titles before exiting at the end of 2008 due to the global financial crisis.

Ben Sulayem’s comments emerged from a meeting he had with Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, who is actively trying to encourage more manufacturers to join the WRC.

🙏

Well, it happened.

We knew it was coming.

A prick pulled the plug.

The decisions over at Twitter continue to get more and more baffling..

I don’t see Mastodon replacing Twitter any time soon, but in any case here’s my profile.