2025 47-100% (fashionably late edition), featuring: mishaps, mermaids, and the Mayhem ball

charli x*x was at the same cafe as me today and she clocked me staring way too hard at her with my resting rude face 🤡 fab way to start the new year

I don’t upgrade often (compared to nerds), but 2025 saw me upgrade some of my oldest tech and I suspect 2026 will see more. Here’s what I’m using going into the new year.

iPhone 15 Pro Max → iPhone Air / Cloud White / Light Grey Bumper. Never intended to upgrade. But a Portuguese sprinter van accident, surprising trade-in credit, and irresistible iPhone Air made it happen. Couldn’t be happier.

iPad Air 4th Gen / Silver / Magic Keyboard / Apple Pencil. My main ‘personal computer’. iOS 26 both gave it new life and made it feel incredibly long in the tooth. Likely to be upgraded in 2026.

M1 Mac Mini / Samsung S4 / Keychron K3 / Magic Mouse. Pretty old, but I held onto my trash can Mac Pro for 11 years before it. Mostly a home server. Monitor is diabolically bad, but given I rarely work from home, upgrading isn’t a priority.

Corporate Issue M2 MacBook Air 13" / Space Grey. A good computer, in a bad colour, with worse corporate junk pre-installed.

Eero 6

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Apple Watch Series 5 / Silver Titanium → Apple Watch Series 10 / Natural Titanium. The S11 didn’t feel like enough of an upgrade to justify passing up a refurbished Series 10, even with a discount. My first refurbished Apple product: flawless, as expected. Back on a polished finish, I can finally wear my Milanese loop and Hermes bands without worrying about mismatched metal. It’s been a while.

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AirPods 4th Generation / Active Noise Cancelling

Sonos Ace / White. New xmas gift. Surprisingly unopinionated sonically, but fabulously well built. Nice design too.

Sonos Beam Gen 1 / White. I miss my vintage speaker setup back in Australia, but for my small London flat the Beam is capable enough for music and punches well above its weight for TV & movies.

HomePod Mini / Space Grey / x2

[ To buy: Turntable, and some way to listen to it. Is it a hack with Airfoil through to my Sonos Beam? Or do I replace the Beam with a more standard music setup. Then, shipping my vinyl from Australia. ]

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Hisense 43A6K The cheapest TV I could stomach, bought the day I got the keys for my London flat. Surprisingly capable given how cheap it was. Literally never have to see the built-in OS. Unfortunately, I connected it to the internet for a firmware update recently, which made the rock solid HDMI-CEC less rock solid. Would love to replace, but for now it works.

Apple TV 4K 2nd Gen Apple, I’m begging. Release a new one. I will buy it instantly.

PS5 Disc Edition

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Phillips Hue Bulbs → Nanoleaf Matter Bulbs My Hue Hub went on the fritz, and heaps of my bulbs didn’t survive the cross-continent move. Nanoleaf was a cheap and easy replacement. No hub is nice, not fading on and off is gross.

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In 2025, I largely ran with stock Apple apps and it worked well. Apple Mail, Calendars, Reminders, Maps, iCloud Drive, Apple Music, etc. I tried productivity apps designed for people with ADHD, but the overhead meant they never stuck.

For work, the global IT team no longer allows us to use Apple stock apps—we must use Outlook. Yuck.

I use MyMind for dumping miscellaneous files into.

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Not strictly tech but worthy nonetheless:

MeacoDry Arete One Stoßlüften wasn’t cutting it this winter, my flat was too damp. Impressed with the build quality and effectiveness of this mostly bland dehumidifier.

Ninja Foodi Max Air-fryers are the hive mind in Pluribus. Nobody knows where they came from, but one day they were everywhere. They claim to be good for the planet and your health, and that you’ll never be happier. I resisted for a long time. It’s atrociously ugly, but indeed I am happy.

I didn’t realise that the Bump app has a ‘drag you to filth’ feature 🥸

generally kinda into the cold london christmas vibes, but just saw oomf in australia post a story of them eating manoushe on a sunny beach, and the homesick is suddenly REAL

Watched: Avatar: Fire and Ash ★★★½: boxd.it/ccLlGZ

In Marrakech, Mitchell and I played a fun game where we each got a colour and had to create an album of things we found of that colour. I think mine turned out cute 🥹

💿 On my stereo:

Rewatched: The Muppet Christmas Carol ★★★★½ 🍿