Steve Litchfield

Forgive the click bait(y) title, but there's actual evidence here, I promise. Note that I did write an article before availability, putting forward worries and concerns , but I've now had hands-on to confirm a few things and report back.  Cased (of course, read the blooming' article!) Pro Maxes - 15 and 14 (with XtremeSkin, Aged Oak , in case you're wondering!) In fact, it's the first time ever in the iPhone line-up/evolution that I seriously think the old 'Pro Max' model can be argued to be  better than the new one. (Admittedly, that I already own the old one [14 Pro Max] and didn't really want to spend over £1000 on the 15 Pro Max possibly helps my argument from a personal perspective.) (There's one big win for the new model, of course. Type C connectivity has been a long time coming - but this will take several generations to become established in iPhone/Lightning households and maybe I'll come back to this in a future article.) My observat

I have to confess that I don't totally 'get' the fascination of some for old vinyl records - of course, the huge cardboard area for artwork and lyrics is enviable and I loved this too in the 1970s. But the sound quality, in terms of scratches and rumble and constant wear and tear every time the vinyl is played had me running for CDs when the format came in, in the 1980s. So, forty years later, surely I'm sorted in terms of all my favourite albums? Well, not really. Not 100%. You see, first vinyl, then cassettes, then CDs were all produced from imperfect workflows in one way or another. Regardless of being produced from original studio master tapes. Vinyl would have been stamped from a gold master, itself created from a stereo mix of the original audio, itself often 'bounced around' within the studio track/tape system. And then each copy degrades, as I said just now. Ditto cassettes, though with at least one extra copying step, added to all the fragility and (aga

So we had the big Apple event last Tuesday, with a new flagship, the iPhone 15 Pro Max. In theory, a direct replacement for my iPhone 14 Pro Max. And, while I'd never recommend upgrading any phone every year since improvements are so small, there are several things to be concerned about in this year's iteration. (We cover the other new iPhones, plus other changes, in the PSC podcast , etc.) Titanium Meh, I guess lighter is nicer, but it’s also just a thin shell, with an aluminium sub-shell fused to it. Plus, titanium may be light and strong but it also scratches much more easily than stainless steel (used in the 14 Pro series), so Apple is also coating most 15 Pro Maxes with a ​​PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition) coating - which will also scratch easily, as it did on some MacBooks in the past. (If you have to go titanium, then get the plain one without the coating.) So... I'm not sure that going to titanium is a step forwards overall. Mind you, real users use cases on their