To my right, I have something which I’ve not had anywhere near me for many, many years. Decades, possibly.

It’s a CD drive. And it’s connected to my MacBook Pro. It’s currently chirping, clunking, and clicking its way through a FLAC rip of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It’s making our dining room sound like an office from the 90s. This ancient device (although purchased brand-new, recently) is joined by two piles of CDs (cased and un-cased) which I unearthed from a rather damp storage facility last weekend.

I spent the remainder of last weekend washing those CDs in tepid soapy water and peeling off bits of the cardboard booklets that had welded themselves to the CDs’ surfaces after seven years of abandonment in a farm unit (that was the ‘storage facility’). It was messy, frustrating, slightly tragic, and felt like it might be an ultimately pointless endeavour given how bad a shape some of the CDs were in.

I soldiered on, though, because regular readers of this newsletter might recall that I have a plan. I’m going to buy an old iPod and give it a new lease of life with an upgraded battery, tons of storage, and a fresh lick of paint. And that has prompted me to finally re-digitise my music collection and do it properly.

It’s taking forever - I won’t lie. And lots of my original music collection wasn’t at the farm (sorry, storage facility), which means it’s costing me in second-hand CD purchases, too. This is a long and possibly expensive project, but one I’m totally committed to. The sight of those albums making their way into the digital realm as uncompressed FLAC files is extremely satisfying and exciting. I’ll keep you posted on my progress (and, if you’re wondering, yes, several CDs didn’t make it - I’ll be holding a memorial service soon).

I love the iPad mini, but I also came around quite significantly to the idea of foldable phones last year, thanks to the Samsung Z Fold 7. That has made the prospect of an iPhone Fold dropping later this year incredibly tantalising and also confusing. If the iPhone Fold is basically a tablet/phone 2-in-1, then is that the end of the beloved mini?!

Does newer mean better? That question gets harder to answer each year as brands release iterative upgrades that hardly register unless you’re really paying attention. Nowhere is this more applicable than in the world of audio gear, so I thought it would be interesting to see if the AirPods Pro 3 are actually worth buying. The answer is not what you’d expect…

👉 Huawei FreeClip 2 Review: Much Improved Sound! - If you’ve never seen these earbuds before, then it’s absolutely worth checking my review out. They’re weird, a bit frustrating, but ultimately very good. →

👉 Sennheiser HDB 630 Review: Best Wireless Headphones for iPhone Users? - And yes, more headphones. But I’ve been waiting ages to try the HDB 630 and its accompanying dongle out, and now you can see my full thoughts here! →

iPhone 17: Set a charge limit 👉
Go to Settings > Battery, then find ‘Charging’. Here you can use a slider to set the limit at which you want your iPhone to charge. Something around 80% is optimal to avoid long-term battery degradation.

🔌 BYD Sealion 5 DM-i review: 2026’s Best Plug-In Hybrid? (The Next Drive) - SHAMELESS PLUG.

🫏 Joe Rogan Experience #2439 - Johnny Knoxville (PowerfulJRE) - If you’re of my generation, you’re going to LOVE this.

🚗 BUGATTI RESPOND TO ME REBUILDING A WRECKED CHIRON PURSPORT (Mat Armstrong MK2) - As someone accurately put it in the comments, we used to have Top Gear on Sunday nights. Now we have Mat Armstrong.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! Next week I have something very exciting and totally new for the channel, so make sure to tune in!

~ Mark