Riding the Press Release Tidal Wave

What a week it has been! I’ll be honest, the week-long rollout of press releases from Apple has left my head spinning a bit. When Apple holds a keynote, it’s very natural that I weigh products by their importance and focus on the ones that have the most to unpack. But when they release everything individually like this, it forces me to pay more attention to every product. It ends up feeling like a tidal wave of information.

And this is probably why they do it this way — especially when the majority of the updates are smaller, like they were this week. I think this is clearly the model for what we’re going to see going forward, especially with the rumour that Apple may split up future iPhone releases. I expect that next March we might get another week of announcements that could include updates to the iPhone “e”, the MacBook Neo, some iPads, and the iPhone 18. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it all culminated in another Apple Experience. This probably isn’t a one-time brand for this kind of thing, but rather what they’ll use when a full Apple Event isn’t necessary.

I shared some first impressions of these announcements on Connected this week, and I’m really looking forward to recording Upgrade next week — especially since Jason was in New York and got to try many of these products in person.

Something else that’s been vying for my attention this week is Pokémon Pokopia. I’ve only been able to put a couple of hours into the game so far, but I’m totally hooked. This is one of those games I already find myself thinking about when I’m not playing it. If you’re not familiar, it’s essentially a cross between Animal Crossing and Minecraft, but set in the world of Pokémon.

Keen readers will already know about my love of the Pokémon franchise, so any new game is always something I’m going to check out. But this one feels different from anything we’ve had before from the Pokémon Company. It looks fantastic, it’s very fun, and it has a surprisingly intriguing story. I think this game is going to be a huge hit for Nintendo, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it in the future.

Before I sign off for the weekend, I wanted to mention the current Relay merch we made available yesterday. Stephen puts it best:

These stickers and shirts explore an alternative timeline in which Relay dominated the early decades of computing.

I’m so pleased with how these turned out — you should give them a look.

Have a wonderful weekend!