I had more time than usual for video games last year, and thought I’d make some quick notes on what I played and what I liked — in order of most played to least played, roughly.

1. Forza Horizon 5: This gets my vote for the best racing game of all time, and it made its PlayStation debut this year. I got a buddy into it and we play for a few hours together every week. It’s pure fun. It has the worst menu design I’ve ever seen, and it explains none of its copious systems to you. But if you’re willing to figure out how it works, it’s got great multiplayer.
2. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II: I end up playing this when I’m sick, and when I’m healthy, I have little interest. I don’t know the last time I played a game that felt so much like work. It’s fun, but it’s also a little much for me.
3. Ghost of Yotei: A measurable improvement over Tsushima in every way for my tastes. These games are too long, though.
4. Oblivion Remastered: I am a sucker for these games, and Oblivion is one of my favourites. Great fun. I’m aware it’s as buggy as all get out, but so was the original, and if all those bugs got fixed, it just wouldn’t be Oblivion anymore. This is basically the perfect ​“eff around and find out” game.
5. Tears of the Kingdom: Much better in 60FPS on the Switch 2, and made the buy-in of the Switch 2 worth it. I’ll be playing this for years.
6. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows: I hadn’t played an Assasin’s Creed game since Assassin’s Creed II. I loved this for the first forty hours, and then I fell right off. Needlessly overstuffed with ​“content,” not gameplay.
7. Split Fiction: My wife and I love these games. This gets a lot of replay value in our house. (See also: It Takes Two.)
8. Mario Kart World: A bold new entry in the franchise, but not one without problems. Looking forward to Mario Kart World 2, where I hope they take the time to right a few wrongs and enhance the multiplayer in particular.
9. The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II on PS5: I nearly died in Christmas 2024, and played these as I recovered into the new year. They were really depressing. I loved them.
10. Mass Effect 2: I am replaying these, and I’m the weirdo who holds this up as his least favourite in the series. Kind of a slog to get through.
11. Lies of P: I love Souls games. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are both in my top 5. Bloodborne is in my top 10. Lies of P is the closest game I’ve played to a Souls game from a developer who isn’t Fromsoft, but it makes the same critical mistake a lot of imitators make. Parts of the game quickly escalate from challenging to unfair. I haven’t beaten this because I don’t have the patience for unfair. (And I beat DLC Radahn in Elden Ring before he got nerfed, so I’m pretty good at these games in particular.) Might pick it back up later though.
12. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: A total blast. It was a birthday gift in late December from my wife, so I’m not that far in it, but this is excellent.
13. Assassin’s Creed Origins: I loved this for the first fifteen hours, and then I fell right off.
14. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4: I was so excited for this. I played THPS3 for hundreds of hours as a kid. I paid full price for this, played it for five hours, and had my fill. I don’t know why. If this scratches an itch for you, though, it’s the real deal. I just don’t have that itch anymore.

That’s it for 2025. This year I’d like to start fewer games and finish more of them. Right now I’m focused on Mass Effect 3, and I’m doing weekly Forza sessions with a buddy. I’m looking forward to the new Wolverine and to Forza Horizon 6. I’m sure I’ll buy the new Grand Theft Auto if it releases this year, but I am also positive I’ll mostly be disappointed because it’s not Red Dead Redemption.

A lot of great nominations in this list.. 16 nominations for Sinners, which is a record. 13 nominations for One Battle After Another. Somehow, F1 is nominated for best picture. One thing I didn’t have on my bingo card: Eddington was entirely snubbed with no nominations. (That was one of my favourites last year.) I’m also surprised that The Phoenician Scheme was completely ignored when it seemed a shoe in for best costumes and cinematography.

A lot of these categories are really tough. The Best Actress category is a real competition; I’ve have trouble picking between Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Emma Stone in Bugonia. Best Actor is similarly stacked. Timothée Chalamet is apparently remarkable in Marty Supreme, which I haven’t seen yet. Dicaprio was fantastic in One Battle After Another. Michael B. Jordan is operating on a whole other level with Sinners, and I sort of hope he wins the category.

Also, holy smokes, the best director category is stacked. No idea how I’d pick between Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderon, Chloé Zhao, or Josh Safdie.

If I had to make a few guesses in categories I’m confident in:

• Sean Penn seems likely for his supporting role One Battle, and if he doesn’t get it, I’d guess it has little to do with merit in the role and mostly because he’s not well-liked. (Or so I hear. I don’t really know or care.) I would love it if Benicio del Toro won for One Battle, though.
• I think it’s a toss up for One Battle and Sinners for best cinematography. If somebody else wins, I suspect the vote was split and third place got it.
• If Sinners doesn’t win for best costume design, the Academy has a problem.
• If F1 has a shot at any category, it’s best editing. Even then, I am not certain.
• Music is a tight category this year. I think it will go to Sinners, which was a very musical film. The soundtracks for Bugonia and One Battle were both phenomenal too.
• I hope ​“I Lied to You” (Sinners) wins best original songs, but I could see ​“Golden” (KPop Demon Hunters) winning the category too.
• Best picture this year probably goes to One Battle. Paul Thomas Anderson probably wins best director too. But both categories are filled to the brim with great options.
• If Avatar doesn’t win for best special effects, I don’t know what we’re doing here. James Cameron is doing mind blowing work with that franchise.
• Train Dreams goes home with no wins.

I find the Oscars are kind of hard to predict; it’s not a meritocracy. Even if it were, art is subjective. I’m curious to see who wins.

There are also a couple films on the list I’m eager to see once we can get them in our home theatre. I’ve been looking forward to Marty Supreme and Hamnet for the better part of a year. I also need to make some time for Frankenstein, which I’d like to see but honestly keep forgetting about. And KPop Demon Hunters is very near the top of our Netflix queue as well.

Ten years from now, I think we’ll find the obsession with One Battle and Sinners to be a little much. Both are great movies, but they’re each bloated in every sense of the word. Around that same time, I think smart cinephiles will start asking why Black Bag was snubbed this year. I just wanted to make sure it was clear I asked first.

Loved Caity Weaver’s essay about the Louvre heist for The Atlantic. One of the funniest things I’ve read on the internet all year:

The people of France, upon learning that two tiaras, two brooches, two necklaces, and 1.5 pairs of earrings had been stolen, reacted with humiliation and apoplexy. The director of the Louvre called the theft a ​“terrible failure.” The French president labeled it an ​“attack.” The crime, the minister of justice said, had given the country an ​“image terrible” — this last remark raising uncomfortable questions: How exactly do French people imagine the rest of the world conceives of their hexagonal nation? As a futuristic police state where the rule of law is rigorously enforced? Surely, to everyone outside the republic, a pair of cat burglars cleverly robbing a museum in broad daylight and escaping—Beep! Beep!—on mopeds is very nearly the Frenchest thing that could have happened.

This week’s edition of James Clear’s newsletter is on fire. I want to highlight almost everything, but let me share a couple things that grabbed my attention.

On the superpower of focus:

“What looks like a talent gap is often a focus gap. The ​“all-star” is often an average to above-average performer who spends more time working on what is important and less time on distractions. The talent is staying focused.”

On discipline and creativity:

Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky explains that discipline precedes inspiration: 

“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.” 

Source: ​Letter to Nadezhda von Meck (1878)

And this quote made me think about how bloody revolution often leads to bloody revolution, but a revolution of peace — the kind of nonviolent revolutions led by Jesus, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. — start within us.

American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin reminds us that change always begins by taking responsibility for how you live: 

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

Source: The Dispossessed (1974)

Anyway, go sign up for his newsletter if you haven’t already.

Really appreciated Matthias Ott’s take on the new Affinity suite. I love the marketing overall, and Affinity is a great tool for those who don’t want to rely on Adobe, but the now-free price point makes me uncomfortable. 

Edit to add: Jessica Hische, who serves on the Canva Design Advisory Board, posted an encouraging thread about Canva’s intent and goals.

I haven’t updated to Tahoe yet, but I did update Safari, and my word this version of Safari (on Sequoia) is unbearably slow. Using the URL bar is slow. Typing a URL or a search query is slow. Scrolling is almost broken.

Between this and the awful Safari design on iOS 26, I’m very close to making Chrome my default browser.

Does anybody know how to fix this? I tried updating to the Safari beta, which apparently has the fix, but it’s still entirely broken.

For years, it’s been obvious to me that Apple should open up the iPhone and let users download apps from the web. This week, after the ICEBlock drama in the United States (see John Gruber’s post), I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of many asking Apple to allow people to download apps from the web on iOS. As Jason Snell once wrote, the Mac is the model. He was right then, and he is more right now.

Ghost of Yotei is really good. I coincidentally was on ​“staycation” last week when it came out, and thought I’d give it a whirl. It’s been about a week, and I’m twenty hours in or so. I haven’t even cleared the second ​“region” yet, but I wanted to share some early thoughts.

In my opinion, Yotei is a meaningfully better game than Ghost of Tsushima by every imaginable measurement. The story is more interesting. The music is better (and the sound is crazy too). The side quests are far and away more interesting, and much less repetitive. There are fewer fox dens, but each fox den is actually fun, which is a nice change. The cinematography, when they include recorded cut scenes, is fantastic. I never thought Tsushima compared to Kurosawa, and I never understood why they would invoke that comparison. But Yotei has moments where I get it. (And I love Kurosawa.) 

The combat (which was already excellent) is better, if only because there’s more weaponry and variety.

The world design is leagues better. Tsushima had some of the least inspired open world design I can recall; Yotei​’s world is actually interesting to explore. I want to see every nook and cranny. 

I’ve seen some folks compare Yotei to Red Dead Redemption II. This is a terrible comparison. RDR2 is a much better game. Yotei isn’t operating in that weight class.

But Yotei reminds me constantly of the first Red Dead Redemption, which I replayed only a couple years ago and am also currently re-replaying on my PS5. Red Dead Redemption evokes a particular feeling: I am a western cowboy acting as a sort of bounty hunter, taking on quests from people in a world that seems (to me) plucked straight out of a spaghetti western. Red Dead Redemption II did not scratch the same itch (but it is one of my all-time favourite games). Ghost of Yotei feels like a game in which I am a samurai bounty hunter, taking on quests from people in a world that feels plucked straight out of Kurosawa’s Sanjuro or Yojimbo.

This is, from my perspective, the highest praise I can give it. It evokes a feeling that Tsushima never did. 

This has been a big year for games. I’ve bought more than I would care to admit. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, the Oblivion remaster, AC: Shadows, Split Fiction, Donkey Kong: Bananza, THPS 3 & 4, Mario Kart World, Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2 (where it finally became playable), etc. 

Out of all of them, Yotei is maybe my favourite. It feels like the samurai game that was made for me specifically. (If TOTK was a new game, that would be my favourite, but as it is, I am deeply enjoying my replay.)

Thus far, it is highly recommended.

I really enjoyed Nick Heer’s review of iOS and macOS 26. I wish I wrote something as thoughtful; after my summer spent fighting Safari’s new design, I had a lot to say, but I never wrote it down.

The whole thing is worth reading, but I’ll highlight one section I particularly enjoyed. Nick writes about macOS here, but there are many apps in iOS and iPadOS where this same critique could be levied, including Safari. (The emphasis below is mine.)

The way toolbars and their buttons are displayed on MacOS is, at best, something to get used to, though I have tried and failed. Where there was once a solid area for tools has, in many apps, become a gradient with floating buttons. The gradient is both a fill and a progressive blur, which I think is unattractive.

This area is not very tall, which means a significant amount of the document encroaches into its lower half. In light mode, the background of a toolbar is white. The backgrounds of toolbar buttons are also white. Buttons are differentiated by nothing more than a diffuse shadow… the sum of this design language is the continued reduction of contrast in user interface elements to, I think, its detriment.

Apple justifies these decisions by saying its redesigned interfaces are ​“bringing greater focus to content”. I do not accept that explanation. Instead of placing tools in a distinct and separated area, they bleed into your document, thus gaining a similar level of importance as the document itself. … in my experience, the more the interface blends with what I am looking at, the less capable I am of ignoring it. Clarity and structure are sacrificed for the illusion of simplicity offered by a monochromatic haze of an interface.

Even if I bought that argument, I do not understand why it makes sense to make an application’s tools visually recede. While I am sometimes merely viewing a document, I am very often trying to do something to it. I want the most common actions I can take to be immediately obvious.

The passage I emphasized is the very same problem I have with the design, particularly as a designer. When the tools of the OS bleed into my document, particularly when designing a website, my design has to accommodate Apple’s UI, and that deeply frustrates me. 

But Nick also writes about something else vexing. Tools are now hidden in junk drawers, and often more difficult to find. Apple’s software is great graphic design, but it is becoming frustrating interface design. These are different practices, with different goals. Graphic design is intended to draw attention, often for the sake of branding or advertising. Interface design is not unlike designing a hammer: it is the practice of making a tool useful and usable. For Apple’s software to be a great piece of graphic design, but not a great interface design, is a dramatic failure of purpose.

Nick also asks why Apple feels the need to do this now:

Why is this the first time all of the operating systems are marketed with the same version number? And why did Apple decide this was the right time to make a dedicated ​“operating system” section on its website to show how it delivers a ​“more consistent experience” between devices? I have no evidence Apple would want to unify under some kind of ​“Apple OS” branding, but if Apple did want to make such a change, this feels like a very Apple‑y way to soft-launch it. After all, your devices already run specific versions of Safari and Siri without them needing to be called ​“Mac Safari” and ​“Watch Siri”. Just throwing that thought into the wind.

Stop giving them ideas, Nick.

Apple has worked to unify their designs for years, despite the cries from the design community that this is a fruitless idea. Large, multi-window operating systems like the Mac (and now the iPad) naturally demand different interfaces than a modal OS running in a device you hold in your hand. I don’t know why they did this now. I like Craig Hockenberry’s thoughts on this, where he posits that this all might be in preparation for a foldable phone, but I question anybody who thinks Apple plans that far ahead. I think Apple looks 12 – 24 months out at a time, like most organizations I’ve worked with. 

What I’ve pieced together from years of rumours is that Apple started this redesign process shortly after Ive departed. There was a rumour years ago that Apple was working on a design that embraced ​“neumorphism,” which is a word I never hoped to have to spell. 

What Apple ended up with isn’t exactly — look, don’t ask me to spell it again. But it’s not far off. Listen to the criticism of neumorphism, directly quoted from the Wikipedia page:

Neumorphism has received criticism from UI designers, notably for its lack of accessibility, difficulty in implementation, low contrast, and incompatibility with certain brands.

That sounds about like where we’re at to me. From Wikipedia’s Liquid Glass entry:

However, other users noted that certain elements were too transparent, making text difficult to read in low-contrast environments, such as direct sunlight. Designers interviewed by Wired felt that the visual effects distracted from app content. One designer said developers with smaller teams might struggle to meet the high visual standards set by the new interface.

Neumorphism and Liquid Glass are by no means identical, but one could argue they share the same etymology. Based on when neumorphism was trending (2022 and 2023), I’d wager they’ve been working on Liquid Glass for two years. I’d also wager they might have waited another year to ship this redesign, if it weren’t for the disaster that Apple Intelligence was for the company last year. They needed a win.

If Apple was working on this for at least two years, and it involved redesigning everything (including macOS), I’m not convinced it was for a foldable phone. I’m also unconvinced their plan is to make one unified operating system. If I worked at Apple, the major selling point of a cohesive design is a manageable component library. Every large platform I’ve worked on is obsessed with minimizing components across all their apps. Apple makes a lot of operating systems and need to avoid both design and engineering complexity. It is easiest to share parts where they can. 

I don’t think they have a plan. While a unified design library makes sense to me as a design practitioner, I am not certain it works in practice (particularly on macOS). As far as asthetics, I think Apple thinks design is partially fashion, and that they need to be a forward-thinking fashion house. They are not wrong. But is OS 26 forward-thinking or merely a façade? I suspect the latter, but only time will tell.

LG’s new 6K display with Thunderbolt 5 looks very interesting. Looking forward to reviews. No HDR support though. I’m curious if the upcoming Studio Display revision will match or exceed these specs.

With rumours abounding about an updated Studio Display from Apple, this seems like a good time to review the state of Apple’s current slate of desktop monitors, and maybe compare the competition.

I have not kept secrets about how badly I want to buy Apple’s Pro Display XDR. That would be a terrible decision, because the display is practically ancient at this point. It’s a Mini LED display with over 500 dimming zones, but that number is paltry across its 32″ canvas. The MacBook Pros are also Mini LED, and the 16″ model — a quarter of the size of the Pro Display XDR — has over 2,500 dimming zones. 

I know specs aren’t everything, but basically, that’s a lot more lights, which means a lot more consistency in brightness across the display. 2,500 is five times more than 500, but it’s also in a quarter of the space, so a new Pro Display XDR would need 10,000 dimming zones to keep up. That’s twenty times more dimming zones than it has now.

The Pro Display XDR’s matte coating is also less effective than similar technology in the MacBook Pro line. In the MacBook Pro, the nano-texture coating is chemically etched, which is far more subtle than the physically etched coating on the Pro Display XDR. On my matte MacBook Pro, there is barely a perceptible loss in brightness or contrast. With the physically etched implementation on the Pro Display XDR (and Studio Display), I get a headache.

So the technology in the Pro Display XDR needs a rethink.

However, the Pro Display XDR is not rumoured to get a revision right now. Apple apparently only plans on updating the Studio Display next year. In my mind, the Pro Display XDR needs this revision much more than the Studio Display does. Apple could do nothing to the Studio Display for another five years and it would keep selling like hotcakes.

That’s because the Studio Display is a great monitor. It looks good on a desk, and despite the fact it’s ​“only” an IPS display, the colours and brightness are consistent across the entire panel (according to my calibration device). Competition is only now starting to catch up, with similar panels from ASUS and Samsung hitting the market this year. 

The Studio Display’s rumoured updates include Mini LED, which would be interesting because it would supplant the Pro Display XDR if it were done well. There are apparently two Studio Displays in testing at Apple. I have a few theories about this:

1. One of them could be an iMac.
2. The rumours could be right and this is Apple’s way of experimenting with production and doing a coin toss on which one to ship.
3. My dream scenario: we’re getting back to 2004, an era when Apple shipped multiple monitors simultaneously, in different sizes but otherwise with similar specifications. I would love to see a revised Studio Display available in 27″ and 32″ sizes.

What I want is the Pro Display XDR. But the technology in that display has come down in price, and it seems reasonable that a panel with similar tech (and a more modern implementation of that tech) could be made for around the same price as the current Studio Display.

Historically speaking, top-of-the-line monitor tech from Apple works its way downstream, and then the top-of-the-line monitor disappears. (See the high-end Cinema Display becoming the affordable Thunderbolt Display somewhere around 2011.) So Maybe Apple plans on removing the Pro Display XDR from the lineup entirely. 

If Apple ships a 32″ Studio Display with 10,000 dimming zones next year, I will happily replace at least one of the two Studio Displays on my desk.

(It’s worth noting that ASUS just released a 32″ 6K display with similar technology to the current Studio Display. YouTubers have posted a couple reviews, and while the panel itself looks totally fine, I can’t imagine working with a flimsy, plastic thing on my desk. I have to stare at that thing all day. I would genuinely rather set money on fire and buy a new Pro Display XDR if I were forced to pick one.)

I had no idea Joe Bonamassa was offered Greeny before Kirk Hammett bought it. I’d often wondered why nobody tried to sell the guitar to Joe, the man with more Les Pauls than anybody. Turns out they did.

Love this Bondi Blue iMac made out of LEGO . If 10,000 people upvote it, LEGO will consider turning it into an actual product. Go vote!

Jack Conte, who is the founder of Patreon, gave a talk last year on the death of the follower and the future of creativity on the web. I can’t believe I didn’t see this before today, but it was a great talk and well worth your time.

In short:

• The 2000s were about the follow.
• The 2010s were about ranking systems.
• The 2020s are about algorithms, and what Conte calls the ​“Death of the Follower.”

What follows that are some terrific thoughts on what creators can do to mitigate TikTok-style algorithms (which are now all over YouTube and Instagram), and what the responsibilities are of creator-focused platforms.

I’ve been designing a creator-focused media platform for a client for a couple years. It’s a massive project. It launched last week. (I can’t share a link yet; I’m waiting for the go-ahead from the client. Sorry.) It was great to watch this talk and hear some of what we’ve been discussing internally reflected in Conte’s conversation. 

Part of the problem is that this is a huge task:

• A lot of creators are multifaceted now, so doing just video isn’t enough. Similarly, just audio is a tall order. A lot of musicians are on YouTube. Even podcasts will be often be delivered in audio and video formats. And a lot of creators want to live stream video these days, which is, from a technical perspective, yet another format.
• On top of that, consumers want ways to stream the content and ways to download it locally (even if they merely want to archive the content, which is reasonable), and there are a lot of potential legal pitfalls to embracing either approach for a media company.
• Similarly, you have to give creators control how they communicate with their fans. This gets back to that Follower idea. (I have a lot of thoughts on this, but don’t want to divulge any strategic discussions I’ve had with my client.)
• And finally, you have to let creators sell what they want to sell, how they want to sell it.

So one could easily imagine a wide variety of features that need to exist on a creator-focused platform before that platform will capture the eyeballs of its target audience. Building all those features costs a lot of money, and if you don’t already have a platform, requires a lot of investor capital.

Patreon is in a unique position to do this. I hope my client can make a bit of a splash in that market as well.

My design and front-end dev studio turns twelve today, and I’ve now been freelancing for fourteen years. I asked friends and family on social media if they had any retrospective questions I could answer in a blog post, and they were kind enough to indulge me.