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I have lied. It's just an entry to talk about Apple Arcade.

I recently bought a refurbished iPad Air M1 with an Apple Pencil 2. It’s seems great, and old enough to be more affordable than the latest models.

There are a few things I want to try with this device that are totally new to me. I’m a little excited, as you’ll probably feel it. I’ve never owned a tablet. The last time I used one was an Android tablet at my grandparents’ house when I was in high school, so it’s been a while. I know in advance that my candid take on many things here will feel obvious to others.

This is only my second experience with a mobile Apple device since the iPhone 3. I barely remember using that phone; I only had it because I’d lost my Android LG. For the last year or so, I’ve been on an M1 MacBook as my main workstation, and it has somehow reignited my interest in computers. That’s what opened me up to testing other Apple devices, as long as I have a clear use case.

I don’t plan to change my phone for something more shiny given my usage of it. What I’ve been missing is a medium-sized device for browsing, media, handwriting, and light visual work. The iPad fits that gap nicely.

My first impression is that it’s a really good device for media consumption. Many of the little things that annoy me in macOS feel better here with a tactile screen. I think I finally understand the people who discovered Apple devices 15 years ago and now feel locked in. I definitely feel the pull of all this built-in stuff. At the same time, I don’t want to pour more than necessary into Apple software, even if I really like their hardware.

I’m also surprised by the quality of some native apps on the device, especially Raindrop. Others, like Notion Calendar, feel sluggish, so inline with my experience on other tactile devices. I can already see the limits of the iPad for true desktop-level tasks, but that’s not really what I’m after. It seems ideal for moodboards, annotations, light reading, and side research. I’m excited to use it more in my design watch/curation and future projects.

Okay, cool, now for the fun part. With the iPad came a few free months of Apple services. I decided to start with Apple Arcade. I’ll use this page as a personal journal of the service and the games I play.

About Apple Arcade

I don’t know what the subscription looks like on iPhone, but on iPad it feels extremely limited. It's immediately clear that the glory days are behind us. Most of the games are free‑to‑play titles without ads or stores, but the game design still carries all the stigma of that model. You end up with games that don't respect your time.

Even the "Classic" Fruit Ninja feels bloated with unnecessary layers of progressions and grind. The curation is all over the place, with uninspired offerings sitting alongside genuinely great premium games.

Apple Arcade looks like a dead service at this point, except for the recent What the series and a few classics. If you want to play Downwell or The Last Campfire, you might as well just buy the game directly. Alba and Monument Valley are good games, but I've already played them. And the latest episode, Monument Valley 3, isn't even in the subscription—it really feels like a missed opportunity. Why does the Netflix subscription have a better game offering?

Games

Fruits ninja

App StoreApp Fruit Ninja Classic+

I've already shared my thoughts in the previous section. It's a game you've already played, but now with blade levels to grind for no clear reason. It was a good game for the same reasons as 10 years ago, but this time with more bloat.

Cornsweeper

App StoreApp Cornsweeper

Its minesweeper and an UX nightmare.

Castle Crumble

App StoreApp Castle Crumble

I've played 20 levels that feel exactly the same—no challenge at all. It takes longer to see the score screen and select the next level than it does to actually complete one. It could have been fun if the content wasn't diluted to the extreme.

INKS.

apps.apple.com/fr/app/inks/id1549914519?platform=ipad

An excellent take on pinball with a relaxing puzzle approach.

The sound and visual feedback are juicy yet elegant. The game is packed with subtle details. For example, when you finish a level, the thumbnail—which shows the layout—is replaced by the board after your successful attempt. The layout becomes painted with splashes of color and circular lines that chisel into the cream background.

The game really vibes with the device. It's not my jam, but it's made with a great sense of flair.

Mahjong

App StoreApp Mahjong Titan

I like mahjong, it feels like a brain massage, the same way picross does.

This isn't a particularly great mahjong game, but since I enjoy mahjong, it could give me hours of free and dumb entertainment.

Note

2026/02/18

Simple Sudoku

App StoreApp Sudoku by MobilityWare+

Been a picross “amateur," sudoku is never far away. Simple Sudoku lives up to its name, and I mean that in the most literal way. There are many convenience options, but I end up spending more time in the hint UI than in the grid itself. It’s polished, but it strips away what I like about this activity; it's not as relaxing. I don't want to clear the grid more efficiently; I just want to clear the grid.

Creaks

App StoreApp Creaks

I have played most of Amanita Design’s games, but Creaks was one of the few I had missed and want to play the most. I’d been curious since release because it’s a puzzle game rather than a point-and-click, which I strongly prefer, and it feels unusual for the studio.

As expected, the drawing and atmosphere are off the charts. I think it's their best work yet, with attention to detail and the way they build a deep sense of space that transpires through the zoom and the way level design loop all over himself. It's certainly their most ambitious game, and I really like that it falls into the fantastic genre, one of my favorite subgenres. It's such an evocative game. I was reading a review where the person was comparing the game to a book, describing that feeling when something drives your imagination, and I couldn't agree more.

The puzzles are very well tuned for me, and they keep getting more interesting. They are not as hard as I could have imagined, which is a good point in my book. It's well balanced between planning and execution. The most remarkable thing is the way they have successfully built visual aids in the background without compromise. The game is sort of grid-based, and it makes all the later puzzle games clearer, but like before, you could tell it's from a visual standpoint.

It's good food from start to finish. One of the must-plays, in the subscription but also elsewhere.

Finity.

App StoreApp finity.

seabaa.comfinity. limited moves. infinite fun!

An excellent puzzle game. A mix between a match 3, a dash of 2048, and certainly some other things that don't come to my mind right now. It's really juicy and addictive. Finishing the platinum rank feels great, and the way the game adds and ties up some elements to make things just a little more complex each time is well-tuned for a mobile-first puzzle game. I'm not into endless mode or even rogue mode, so having what feels like just a set of challenges that have an end is right up my alley.

Gallery

Notion recently announced they're shutting down their mail client. As a goodbye, they pushed users toward Notion Agents as a replacement. Offering a pure AI product where a well-designed interface should have been got me thinking more broadly about how AI tends to get deployed like everything is just a chat.

The clearest example I can offer is right inside Notion: formula properties. A formula is a deterministic function — it takes property values as inputs, computes something, spits out an output. It's a real feature, fully exposed, editable. Notion AI lets you take a shortcut using natural language to edit that function. I think that's the right mental model for this kind of case. You describe your intent, it generates the function, you can read it, correct it, edit it manually, own it. The AI is a bridge to a capability that already exists. Natural language is a shortcut to the real thing, and every deterministic thing stays exposed to the user.

Notion Agents are the opposite story. You set a trigger, write instructions in natural language, and hand them to an LLM that executes actions in your workspace based on those prompts. What these agents do is often trivially simple: things that could have been handled with a decent UI, or basic webhook-based automations that have existed for years. But now the functional logic is hidden. Nothing is exposed. You're not describing an intent that gets translated into a function or a workflow you can inspect. It's nothing new, just with a worse user experience.

When the agent operates, it's executing a deterministic set of actions: creates a new page, fetches the favicon, adds tags, fills the URL property from webhook data. AI only enters where it's actually needed (generating a title, say). At the end of the day, a computer operates on deterministic instructions. Notion has just chosen not to expose them, and charges you more for it.

That's the distinction that matters to me: AI as a path toward something deterministic, versus AI as the permanent destination for everything, anything, all the time. When a sad input box becomes the only interface, it's a black box on top of a black box, one that exists mostly to justify a pricing tier and avoid designing a proper UI for a power-user feature. Good AI integration doesn't undermine your control over the software.

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