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Steam vs PlayStation: Why Killing Discs Makes Steam the Easy Winner

Marty
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Steam vs PlayStation: Why Killing Discs Makes Steam the Easy Winner

I bought a PS5 a couple of years ago and I have barely looked at a disc since. Digital was just easier. No case to lose, no drive whirring away like a small aircraft, no trip into town to a shop that may or may not still be there. Sure, I was losing the value of trade in, but I was ok with that. Then I built my own PC, Steam opened up in front of me, and I found the one feature that has quietly ruined every other games shop for me. If I buy something and it turns out to be a dud, I get my money back. No quibbles.

That habit suddenly matters a lot more, because Sony has just confirmed it is killing off physical PlayStation discs. So the question I have been chewing on is a simple one. Now that both PlayStation and PC are heading fully digital, how much more attractive is Steam as a result? The short version is a lot more attractive, and not for the reason the headlines are shouting about.

What Sony actually announced

From January 2028, no new PlayStation game will ship on a disc. That is the whole announcement in one line. Anything released before that date is safe, so your shelf of PS5 games is not about to stop working, and the disc drive in your console keeps spinning the games you already own. After the cut-off, every new release arrives as a download, either straight from the PlayStation Store or as a code in a box picked up at a retailer. Sony framed it as a natural response to how people already buy, and honestly the numbers back that up. On its own figures, digital made up 85% of full-game sales across PS4 and PS5, with physical clinging on at just 15%.

This did not come out of nowhere. The PS5 Pro shipped without a disc drive at all, GTA 6’s so-called physical edition in Ireland is a download code rattling around inside a box (a decision that has already caused quite a stir for prospective buyers), and now the discs themselves are being switched off. Read Sony’s own wording in the official PlayStation announcement confirming the end of new game discs and it is fairly clear the next console, whatever the PS6 turns out to be, is being built for a world with no drive in it.

Why discs were never really my problem

Here is where I have to be honest. I am exactly the buyer Sony is describing. I do not trade games into CeX when I am finished, I do not lend them to a mate, and I have not held a boxed game in about three years. With one exception — my Switch 2. For someone like me, the disc decision changes almost nothing on paper. If you are a collector, or you rely on the second-hand market to knock a few euro off the true cost of a game, that is a genuine loss and I understand the anger. Trading in or reselling a dud was always the physical buyer’s own version of a safety net, a way to claw back some value on a game that missed. That just is not the loss I feel.

What the decision does do, quietly, is remove the last structural reason a digital-first buyer had to pick PlayStation over PC. Discs were the one thing consoles offered that Steam could not, and take them away and you are left comparing two digital shops on their merits. Game libraries still count for something here too. Some Sony first-party exclusives eventually land on PC, but usually years later, while a genuine PS5 exclusive never touches Steam at all, so that factor cuts both ways depending on what you actually want to play. But once you set exclusives aside and just look at how each platform treats every other purchase, the comparison stops being close, and it comes down to one word.

The two hour rule that changed how I buy games

Refunds. On Steam, if you have played a game for under two hours and you bought it within the last fourteen days, you can hand it back and get your money returned. You do not need a reason. You do not have to prove it is broken. You can simply decide it is not your vibe and walk away. The first time I did it I genuinely did not believe it had worked until the notification landed. You can read the exact terms on Valve’s Steam refund policy page, and the two hour, fourteen day window has quietly become the standard everyone else is measured against.

This matters far more than it sounds. A new game in Ireland is knocking on €80, and €80 is a lot to gamble on a trailer and a few reviews. The refund window turns that gamble into a try. I have bought games on a whim, played them for forty minutes, realised they ran badly or just were not for me, and gotten every cent back. That safety net is the single reason I now buy first and ask questions later on Steam, when on any other platform I would agonise for a week and probably not bother.

What happens when you try to refund a PlayStation game

You mostly cannot. That is the blunt answer. PlayStation gives you fourteen days to change your mind, but only if you have not started downloading or streaming the game. The moment it begins landing on your console, the refund door shuts, unless the game is genuinely faulty. So the thing you actually want to do, play a game for an hour to see if it clicks and then hand it back, is the one thing you are not allowed to do.

On Steam you can play a game and still get a refund. On PlayStation, downloading it is the moment you lose the right to one. Same €80, wildly different level of risk.

So how much more attractive is Steam now?

For some, considerably more, but the discs are almost a red herring. Killing physical media is the symbol, not the substance. The substance is that when two shops are both selling you the same digital download, the one that lets you undo a bad decision is the better shop. Every time. Sony has spent this week telling its customers that the box and the disc no longer matter, which is fine, except it has nothing to put in that gap. Steam already filled it years ago.

There is a longer game here as well, and it is about permanence. A Steam or GOG library tends to follow you from one machine to the next, and some titles are DRM-free, which means they can outlive the shop that sold them. A PlayStation library lives and dies inside PlayStation. If you want proof of how that ends, look at the fact that Sony is also closing the PS3 and PS Vita stores and even recently 551 movies customers had “purchased”. Games that were only ever sold digitally on those platforms are effectively vanishing. That is the quiet risk of going all-in on a closed console shop, and it is the risk Steam is far better insulated against.

The Goosed verdict

Steam has quietly become the default home for anyone who buys their games digitally, and Sony’s disc decision only makes that clearer. I want to stress that I am not upset about the discs themselves, because I stopped using them the day I unboxed the console. What gets me is that Sony has now removed my last excuse to stay, and offered me nothing to match the one feature that keeps me on PC. The freedom to try an €80 game (a price point that makes the GTA VI pre-order questions everyone’s been asking feel a lot more urgent) and get my money back if it is rubbish is worth more to me than any disc ever was.

If you are a digital buyer weighing up where your next few hundred euro of games should live, Steam is the easy answer, and it has been for a while. If you still care about owning something physical on PlayStation, the timeline is now fixed. New PlayStation discs stop in January 2028, everything you already own is safe, and the shelf you have is the last shelf you are getting.

If you want phyiscal media, it appears the Switch 2 just got a little more appealing for now at least.

GTA VI pre-order goes live on Smyths

Marty
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GTA VI pre-order goes live on Smyths

One of the most popular places to pick up Grand Theft Auto VI when it releases, should you want the physical box, will be Smyths. And shortly after midnight, Smyths started to stock both Xbox and PS5 versions of the game.

For PlayStation 5 gamers and Xbox gamers €79.99 will secure you a launch day copy of the game. But remember, the box itself will only contain a download code. Messaging on the Smyths website is also a little confusing. While it states they are expecting stock on the 19th November, collection will be possible from the 12th. This is due to allow for early downloads and installs ahead of the November 19th launch date.

Some additional terms include confirmation that the box “will only contain a download code inside the box to support pre-load starting on November 12. A disc will not be included in the box”.

Also worth noting that “the PlayStation 5 version can only be used by users holding an account for PlayStation® registered to the Republic of Ireland”. Which does make me wonder what would happen if you moved country, so I’ll ask someone that.

As of right now, just the €79.99 copy of the game is available but this could change by morning. Some speculate that it may be as simple as buying this copy and upgrading in your consoles store for a €20 feel

But the big news right now is that you can part with hard earned cash for GTA VI for the first time ever.

You can read more about the GTA VI launch and pre-order.

AIB set to release a new app experience for customers

Marty
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AIB set to release a new app experience for customers

There’s a specific kind of nervousness that comes with any fresh start, and from the end of this month the 2.8 million people who use the AIB app are about to feel it whether they realise it or not. The bank is retiring the app it has nudged forward in small steps for more than a decade and replacing it with something rebuilt from scratch. That takes a bit of nerve. It’s also a gamble, because your banking app is one of the very few bits of software, when built right, you open every single day, and getting it wrong costs a lot more than a few one-star reviews.

So here’s the optimistic bit first. If AIB has nailed this, it’s genuinely good news for customers. A banking app that opens fast and feels pleasant to use is one you’ll check more often, and checking more often is exactly how you stay on top of your money. This is where Revolut and Monzo has absolutely excellend. A slow, clunky or confusing one is the opposite. You avoid it, and avoiding it is how a credit card payment quietly slips past you, or how you talk yourself into believing the balance is healthier than it actually is. The app was never the point. Your relationship with your own finances is the point, and the app is the thing sitting between you and it.

Why getting the banking app right matters more than it sounds

AIB ran the numbers alongside the launch, and they make the case better than I can. A third of adults in Ireland check their banking app at least once a day, and another 44% log in a few times a week. We are, clearly, a nation glued to our balances. The more revealing figure is that while most of us trust digital tools to help manage our money, almost half rarely or never actually use the app to get any insight into where that money is going. That’s the gap AIB is chasing. Logging in to check you haven’t gone overdrawn is not the same as understanding your spending, and the bank knows it.

The research also found a confidence gap, with 31% of people saying they don’t feel on top of managing their finances. Stick that next to the finding that 55% of us are juggling two or three different apps just to keep tabs on our money, and a clear picture emerges. People are busy, a bit overwhelmed, and spreading themselves across Revolut, their main bank, and whatever else is on the home screen. AIB wants to be the one app you open. The only way it earns that is by being good enough that you stop reaching for the others.

When does the new AIB app launch?

AIB starts rolling out the new app to customers from the end of June, on a phased basis that will run over several months. You might get it before your neighbour or weeks after them, because the update lands for different people at different times rather than arriving for everyone at once.

If you’d rather not wait, you can turn on automatic updates so the new app arrives as soon as it’s ready for your account. Until then, the old app keeps working exactly as it does now. AIB has published the full rollout details for the new AIB mobile app if you want to check where things stand.

What’s new in the AIB app?

The headline change is in how your money is presented. Instead of a wall of cryptic transaction codes, the new app shows categorised spending with brand names, logos and locations, so you can see at a glance that you spent more on coffee than you’d care to admit. There are budgeting tools layered on top, along with deeper insights into your spending patterns. This is the part that actually backs up the argument above, turning the app from a place you check a number into a place you understand a habit.

Security gets a proper upgrade too, with passkey sign-in, a faster log-in, and simple controls like freezing your card the instant something looks off. On payments, you get clearer visibility of recent and upcoming transactions, plus SEPA instant, standing order setup and Zippay, the instant transfer service AIB now shares with Bank of Ireland and PTSB. There’s also an AI chatbot for help with issues, and to AIB’s credit, the bank has been clear that it can’t see your data or payment information. Savings and investing sit in there as well through the AIB Life hub, with more features like savings pots promised for early next year.

Is AIB catching up with Revolut?

Is AIB playing catch-up with Revolut? Of course it is, a little, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. Categorised spending, budgeting, instant transfers and tidy little card controls have been standard in Revolut and Monzo for years, so AIB arriving with them now is hardly pioneering. The bank insists it isn’t playing catch-up, which is the kind of line a press office is more or less contractually obliged to produce. Take it with a pinch of salt.

That said, AIB isn’t wrong that it offers something the neobanks don’t. You can walk into one of its 170 branches, ring a 24-hour fraud line, or speak to an actual human when something goes sideways, and for a lot of people that combination still matters more than a slightly slicker interface. The bank is keen to point out a €66 million investment in those branches since 2024, which is a fair reminder that it’s playing a different game to a digital-only rival. Revolut might have the app, but it doesn’t have a branch on your high street. The honest read is that AIB is closing the feature gap whilst leaning on the things a digital-only competitor can’t easily copy.

This is likely a case of “I don’t need to outrun the lion – I need to outrun you”. While only having a neo-bank has increased in popularity, AIB is moderising to ensure they are the most attractive traditional bank. Since KBC exited the market even I will admit AIB arguably has the most modern app.

The Goosed verdict

I’m cautiously hopeful, and I’d genuinely love to be proven right. The features are sensible, the focus on insights rather than raw balances is the correct instinct, and the security improvements are overdue. The nerves come from the fresh start itself, because rebuilding from the ground up means there’s far more that can go wrong than with another careful tweak. A confusing redesign or a rocky rollout could undo a decade of slow, steady progress in a fortnight, and AIB’s apps have not exactly been immune to the odd outage.

For now, the smart move is to switch on automatic updates, give the new app a proper go when it lands, and actually use the insights rather than just glancing at your balance and locking the phone. If AIB has got this right, it won’t simply be a nicer app. It’ll be the thing that nudges a few hundred thousand people into managing their money a little better, and that’s worth getting excited about. The new AIB app begins rolling out to customers from the end of June.

Questions I’ve had to ask and answer ahead of the GTA VI pre-order

Marty
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Questions I’ve had to ask and answer ahead of the GTA VI pre-order

I have bought Grand Theft Auto V more times than I would ever admit out loud, across more consoles than is reasonable for one man and one game. So when GTA 6 pre-orders go live tomorrow, I went in with a list of questions I actually wanted answered before handing over a cent. Most of them now have answers, and a couple of the answers are not the ones the rumour mill was selling.

The short version is that this is more expensive than a normal game but cheaper than the doomsday €200 headlines, the launch is single player only, and there is far less reason to rush a digital pre-order than the hype suggests. Here is how I worked through it.

The numbers that matter. Pre-orders open on Thursday 25 June at midnight local time, and the game lands on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. Rockstar has confirmed two editions, a Standard at $79.99 and an Ultimate at $99.99, which almost certainly means €89.99 and roughly €109.99 here in Ireland. There is no PC version at launch and no Switch 2 version at all.

How much does GTA 6 cost in Ireland?

Expect to pay €89.99 for the Standard edition and around €109.99 for the Ultimate. Rockstar has now officially priced the game at $79.99 and $99.99 respectively, and while the announcement was written in dollars, €89.99 is the obvious Irish landing spot. It is the exact price Mario Kart World launched at here last year, and it matches a since-deleted listing that, as it turns out, was bang on the money.

For weeks the story was five separate editions climbing all the way to a wallet-flattening €200. That came from a retailer leak, and the official line-up has quietly buried it. Whether there are two editions or five, and the €200 collector’s box remains to be seen. The difference between the two is in-game content, with the Ultimate throwing in extra vehicles, matching revolvers for Jason and Lucia, and a pile of customisation options. Anyone buying either version before 20 November may also gets the Vintage Vice City Pack thrown in, so a portion of those “pre-order bonuses” are really just early-buyer bonuses.

Yes, €89.99 is a tenner more than the usual blockbuster, and yes, that probably nudges the whole industry upward. For the one game with a reported billion-plus budget and a thirteen-year wait behind it, I find it hard to be too precious about the increase.

As long as we’re not paying to pay by hour constantly as was once suggested, I’m happy.

Is there any real point in pre-ordering a mostly digital game?

Honestly, not much. The thing that would have sold me, getting to play a few days early, simply is not on the table. There is no confirmed early access, and everyone unlocks the game at midnight local time on 19 November regardless of when they paid. The pre-order carrot is that reported Vintage Vice City Pack, which apparently nets a ’55 Vapid Stanier, a garage on Ocean Beach, and some retro outfits, and as noted above you still get it if you wait and buy in the first day.

The bigger thing to keep in mind is what you are actually buying in November. GTA 6 launches as a single-player game first, with the online side following at a date Rockstar has not announced. If Red Dead Redemption 2 is any guide, online could be a fair few weeks behind the campaign at best. So if the multiplayer is the only reason you are excited, there is genuinely no rush. Digital storefronts will not sell out, the price will not change, and you can pre-load closer to the time. Pre-order if you know for certain you are buying it. Otherwise, sit on your hands and lose nothing.

Physical or digital for GTA 6?

For most people, digital is the sensible call, because the physical box barely earns its place this time. Rockstar has confirmed there is no disc inside, just a download code in the box. A physical copy of GTA 6 is a printed code and some nice cover art, nothing more.

There is one quirk in the physical version’s favour. The boxed copies may arrive a week ahead of the digital launch, specifically so you can pre-load the files and be ready to go the moment the clock ticks over. If you are on a flaky Irish broadband connection, that head start on the download is the real prize, not the cardboard but lets not forget, pre-downloading is an option for digital too. Digital pre-orders pre-load too, just nearer the date. If you do want something physical for the shelf, the likes of Smyths will take pre-orders, but be braced for any limited collector’s runs to turn into a bun fight with scalpers and bots.

PC or console, and can I just wait for the PC version?

You cannot wait for PC if you want in at launch, because console is the only option in the room. Rockstar has confirmed pre-orders for PS5 and Xbox Series X and S only. There is no PC release date, and based on how GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 played out, a PC port could be the guts of a year or more away, likely landing in 2027 or beyond. There is also no Switch 2 version, and frankly I would be amazed if that hardware could carry this game natively anyway.

This is the part that stings for me personally. I have ended up with GTA V on PlayStation, on Xbox and on PC through Steam, which tells you everything about how long this series has been milking me. I deliberately stuck with a base PS5 for the big stuff because I have a powerful AMD 7900 XTX gaming PC sitting right there for everything else. With no day-one PC release, I am now staring down the barrel of buying GTA 6 on a somewhat underpowered PS5 in November and then almost certainly buying it again on PC whenever that port finally shows up. Well played, Rockstar.

But that brings me to the next quesiton.

Will GTA 6 run on a normal PS5 or do I need a PS5 Pro?

A standard PS5 runs GTA 6 perfectly well, so no, you do not need to go out and buy a PS5 Pro. Both the regular PS5 and the Pro are confirmed launch machines, alongside the Xbox Series X and S. A leaked retailer FAQ points to the usual pair of graphics modes, one chasing performance and frame rate and one chasing visual quality, and that lines up with how nearly every modern console game works. Treat the specifics as strongly indicated rather than nailed down until Rockstar publishes the technical detail, because that information has not come from Rockstar itself yet.

Where the Pro pulls ahead is in having its cake and eating it, ray-traced effects and a higher frame rate together, where a base PS5 will more likely make you pick one or the other. Worth saying that some of the sharpest hardware analysts out there are not convinced a locked 60 frames per second is a given even on the Pro, given how dense Vice City looks. So the honest answer is that the standard console is grand, and the Pro is a luxury, not a requirement. One last bit of irony for me. I parked myself on a base PS5 precisely because the heavy lifting was supposed to happen on my high-end PC, and now the lack of a PC launch means the very platform I avoided spending on is the one I am stuck buying for. Sorry, started ranting there.

Is it really launching in November this time?

It is about as locked as these things get. The fact that Rockstar is now taking money is the strongest signal yet, because the digital storefronts only allow pre-orders to open inside the final twelve months before release, which effectively slams the door on another slip into 2027. Take-Two’s chief executive has reaffirmed the 19 November date more than once, after the game already moved from 2025 to May 2026 and then to this November.

That said, something about this still feels slightly off. We are being asked to pre-order a game we have only ever seen in trailers, with no proper hands-on gameplay shown, only beautifully rendered cinematics. A third trailer may well drop alongside the pre-order launch, which would help. Until I have actually watched the thing being played, a part of me keeps a sceptical eyebrow raised, even as the rest of me gets the wallet out.

So, am I pre-ordering?

Of course I am, unless a review code lands, because I am exactly the mug this whole machine is built for, and I made my peace with that several GTA V purchases ago. Even if I did get a review code, I’d end up buying this for another platform if not two down the line. The difference is that I am doing it with clear eyes. The price is fair for what it is, the early-buyer bonus is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have, and a base PS5 is all the console I need. If you are even slightly on the fence, especially if online is your reason to play, there is no penalty for waiting until you have seen real gameplay and made up your mind. Pre-orders open on 25 June at midnight local time, the game arrives on 19 November 2026, and you are looking at €89.99 for the Standard or around €109.99 for the Ultimate.

Commodore is back and it’s made a flip phone that blocks social media

Marty
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Commodore is back and it’s made a flip phone that blocks social media

I didn’t have “Commodore releases a phone in 2026” on my bingo card, but here we are. The brand behind the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of all time, has announced the Callback 8020. A flip phone designed to sit somewhere between a dumbphone and a smartphone, running a European mobile operating system that traces its roots directly back to Nokia.

The phone is real, it’s coming later this year, and it looks genuinely interesting. Whether it holds up is another question, but the concept alone is worth paying attention to.

What the Commodore Callback 8020 actually is

The Callback 8020 is a flip phone built around a deliberate limitation: it blocks social media and web browsers at the system level. There’s no Facebook, no Instagram, no doomscrolling at 1am. Commodore describes it as a “not dumb dumbphone”, and that framing is accurate. You still get WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Google Maps, Spotify, and SMS. You can even sideload apps. What you can’t do is mindlessly tap your way through a feed for two hours without noticing.

The spec sheet is modest. There’s a 3.25-inch 480×640 display on the inside, a MediaTek Helio G81 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a headphone jack, an FM radio antenna, and a replaceable battery. No 5G either, which will put some people off. To be honest, the hardware is firmly mid-range at best, and at a starting price of around $500 (roughly €460), you’re paying a premium for the concept rather than the components.

The external shell has a small 1.77-inch screen showing just the time, date, battery, and signal. Instead of notification pop-ups, five dome LEDs along the spine light up in Commodore’s classic rainbow colours. It’s a genuinely clever idea, and one that looks great in the photos.

That transparent blue design

Here’s the part that actually got me excited. One of the colour options, the Starlight Edition, is transparent blue. Clear-back plastic with the internals visible. It’s a direct callback (sorry) to the translucent iMac G3 era, to the Game Boy Color, to every piece of late 90s and early 2000s tech that decided looking cool mattered. The other variants include a BASIC Beige, ProtoPET White, and SX Silver. The housing shells are interchangeable and the battery is user-replaceable, which is a detail worth celebrating in 2026.

The beige-brown colourway is also worth a mention. It’s very deliberately retro, and it will either delight you or make you shudder. I’m in the delight camp.

Sailfish OS and what that means in practice

The operating system powering the Callback 8020 is Sailfish OS, built by Finnish company Jolla. Jolla was founded in 2011 by former Nokia engineers who worked on MeeGo, which Nokia had been developing before Microsoft came along. Sailfish is a Linux-based OS that’s been in active development for over a decade, and it claims compatibility with more than 99 per cent of Android apps via a runtime environment.

That Android compatibility is important. It means the Callback isn’t stranded in an app desert the way some alternative OS phones have been. The key difference is what Commodore and Jolla have chosen to exclude rather than include: no Google services tracking your every move, no data sold to advertisers, no cookies passed to third parties. For privacy-conscious users, that’s a meaningful distinction from a standard Android handset.

Jolla has had its own turbulent history, having gone through a management buyout in 2023, but the company is back on steadier footing. Interestingly, the announcement also notes that Jolla is preparing to ship its own new smartphone, with a showcase event planned for Helsinki on July 8th.

A few honest caveats

The app allow-listing system sounds promising in theory. The plan is that users can request Android apps be added to the Callback’s own store, with human reviewers and AI making the call on what’s acceptable. That’s a reasonable approach, but it depends entirely on Commodore maintaining that process. A small company running a curated app store is a meaningful ongoing commitment, and it’s fair to wonder how that scales.

The MediaTek Helio G81 chip is not fast. Paired with 4GB of RAM, day-to-day tasks will be fine, but anyone expecting a snappy experience on par with a modern smartphone is going to be disappointed. That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker for what this phone is trying to be, but it’s worth knowing before you hand over €460.

There’s also no mention of Irish or European retail availability yet, which is the kind of thing that tends to complicate what might otherwise be a straightforward purchase. Pre-orders open on June 30th via commodore.net/callback, with shipping targeted for winter 2026.

The Goosed verdict

The Commodore Callback 8020 is one of the more interesting phone announcements in years, not because of what it does, but because of what it deliberately refuses to do. The transparent design is genuinely eye-catching, the flip form factor is a joy in an era of identical glass slabs, and the privacy angle is coherent rather than just marketing. That said, the specs are underpowered for the price, and there are real questions about long-term app store support and European availability.

If you’ve been looking for a legitimate middle ground between a dumbphone and a full smartphone, this is worth keeping an eye on. Pre-orders open June 30th at commodore.net/callback, with delivery expected before the end of the year.

Anthropic pulled Claude Fable on US government orders, and the EU should be worried

Marty
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Anthropic pulled Claude Fable on US government orders, and the EU should be worried

I spent a good chunk of last week getting to know Claude Fable. As of Friday night, I can’t, and neither can you. The model wasn’t taken down for maintenance or quietly retired. It was pulled on the direct order of the US government, less than a week after Anthropic put it in front of the public.

It is shocking, and somehow not surprising in the slightest, that a single government (particularly a US Government) letter can switch off a frontier AI model for the entire planet overnight. If you’re reading this from Ireland, or anywhere else in the EU, that last part is the bit that should make you sit up.

What actually happened

On Friday evening, Anthropic confirmed it had received an export control directive from the US government. The order told the company to suspend access to its two most capable models, Fable 5 and the more restricted Mythos 5, for any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States. That sweep included Anthropic’s own foreign-national staff.

There’s no realistic way to filter foreign nationals out of a live product in real time, so Anthropic did the only thing that guaranteed compliance and switched both models off for everyone, everywhere. Every other Claude model, including Opus 4.8, stayed online and running as normal.

The timing is brutal. Fable had only launched on 9 June, Anthropic’s first publicly available model from its top “Mythos” tier, the class of system that until then had been locked to cyber-defence partners and a handful of researchers. Three days of life, then the plug.

Anthropic isn’t taking it quietly either. The company says the letter arrived with no real explanation of the national security concern, and that its best understanding is the government got spooked by a narrow jailbreak, essentially asking the model to read a codebase and flag software flaws.

Anthropic says that trick only surfaced minor, already-known bugs that other publicly available models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, can find without any jailbreak at all. It’s complying with the order, but it’s calling the whole thing a misunderstanding and says it’s working to restore access as quickly as it can.

Why this should unsettle everyone

This is the part that genuinely gets under my skin. One letter, sent at twenty past five on a Friday, and a product deployed to hundreds of millions of people is gone worldwide by bedtime. Whatever you make of the security argument, the mechanism is the real story here. The order was aimed at foreign nationals, but the practical effect was a global kill switch, simply because selective compliance wasn’t possible.

There’s a smaller, more cynical read too. None of this is terrible publicity for Anthropic. “Our model was so capable the government stepped in” is not the worst sentence to have written about you, and the company gets to look like the responsible adult in the room while pinning the disruption on Washington. Free marketing, in a roundabout way. Sorry, started ranting there.

Why the EU should be taking notes

Here’s the thing that should bother European readers more than the headline. When the EU’s own rules cause a feature to vanish, it vanishes here and nowhere else. When the US acts, it can take the thing away from all of us at once.

We’ve watched the first half of that dynamic play out with Apple for a while now. iPhone Mirroring, the feature that lets you control your iPhone from your Mac, still isn’t available in the EU. Apple’s stated reason is the Digital Markets Act and its interoperability requirements, which would force it to open the feature up to rival hardware and software. Apple argues it can’t do that without putting your data at risk, so it has simply never switched the feature on here.

It’s the DMA’s interoperability demands doing the blocking, not data-protection law, and Apple has said as much. AirPods live translation went the same way at first, held back from the EU at launch, although that one did eventually arrive once Apple had done the extra engineering work.

Annoying as that is, it’s contained. Apple withholds a feature from the EU, and Americans carry on mirroring their iPhones regardless. The Fable situation is the mirror image of that. A decision made in Washington reached into every market on earth, Ireland included, and removed something we already had in our hands. Anthropic arguably had a chance to play a strong card here, keeping Fable live outside the US where an American export order has far less grip, and the politics at play almost certainly killed that option stone dead.

There’s an even more nuclear option on the table, moving operations to Ireland outright, where Anthropic already has a registered entity in Anthropic Ireland Limited and a fast-growing Dublin operation. Realistically though, it’s a non-runner. The bulk of its computing power still sits on US soil, and pulling a move like that would only make a far greater enemy of the Trump administration.

So what’s the answer? Tech independence, and we are nowhere near it. We have European models, Mistral AI being the obvious flag bearer, and they’re genuinely good bits of kit. But let’s be honest with ourselves, nothing built in the EU is standing toe to toe with Claude or ChatGPT at the absolute frontier right now. It can hold its own against something like Copilot, sure, but the top tier is American, and last week showed exactly what that dependence costs. When the model you’ve built your workflow around can be switched off by a government you didn’t vote for, that stops being a hypothetical and starts being a Tuesday.

If you upgraded for Fable, here’s what to do

During its short life, Fable was bundled into existing Claude plans, so Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise, at no extra cost for the launch window. That means there was never a standalone “Fable subscription” sitting there to cancel. If you upgraded your plan, or took out a fresh Max subscription, largely to get your hands on Fable, you’ve effectively paid for something that has now disappeared mid-cycle. It’s well worth contacting Anthropic support to ask about a refund or account credit.

If you’re in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU, you’ve got consumer law on your side as well. Online and other distance purchases come with a 14-day cooling-off right, so mention where you’re based and don’t sit on it, because that clock runs from the date you bought. The right does narrow once you’ve actively started using a digital service, so it isn’t a cast-iron guarantee, but there’s no harm in asking and the timing here works very much in your favour.

The Goosed take

Fable might be back in a day, or a week. Anthropic clearly wants it back and reckons this was a mistake on the government’s part, and I hope it’s right, and I hope it’s quick. But the lesson lands either way. The most capable AI most of us can actually get our hands on sits behind a switch in Washington, and last Friday someone leaned on it. For Europe, that should read less like a news story and more like a wake-up call.

For now, every other Claude model is unaffected and still running normally, and Anthropic says it will share more detail within 24 hours.

Doro Aurora A30 review: a senior-friendly smartphone that gets the important things right

Marty
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Doro Aurora A30 review: a senior-friendly smartphone that gets the important things right

This isn’t my first time setting up a Doro for an older family member, and that experience is exactly why I was keen to get hands on with the Aurora A30. Phones designed for older users, or anyone who needs something a bit simpler, used to feel like an afterthought. Cheap plastic, dated software and a vague promise of being “easy to use”. The Aurora A30 is proof that this corner of the market has improved dramatically in recent years, though it’s still not the magic answer for every situation. More on that shortly.

Design and build quality

The build quality here genuinely surprised me. The Aurora A30 feels solid in the hand, and the size is spot on. The 6.1-inch screen is big enough that text and icons have room to breathe, without the phone becoming an unwieldy slab that’s hard to grip. At just over 200g it has a reassuring heft without being heavy.

The physical buttons are the real win. There are dedicated keys for answering and ending calls, adjusting volume plus a physical home button, and for anyone who struggles with touchscreens these make an enormous difference.

Which makes it all the more baffling that there’s no physical mute button. If you’re building a phone around tactile, physical controls for people who find touchscreens fiddly, a mute button. Is helpful, particularly here in Ireland when slotting the phone onto silent before mass is so important. It’s a strange omission on an otherwise well designed phone.

There’s also a nice bit of comfort in knowing this is a European phone. Doro is Swedish, which is genuinely rare in the smartphone world these days, and for plenty of buyers that will matter. Something I should note when speaking about European phones again.

Screen

The display is lovely. It’s a 6.1 inch HD+ panel and it’s nice and clear, with good legibility for larger text sizes. You’re not getting flagship resolution here, but for the intended user that’s irrelevant. What matters is that contacts, messages and icons are easy to read at a glance, and they are.

The emergency button and Doro Response

This is the feature that justifies the phone’s existence, and I can speak from experience here. The emergency button sits on the rear of the phone and it’s extremely convenient to find by feel. Press it and an alert goes out to nominated contacts, complete with location.

What elevates this is Doro Response, the companion system that lets family members manage the safety side of things remotely. Having used it before with an older family member, I’d comfortably call it one of the best features on any Doro phone. It dictates who receives emergency notifications, but it goes further than that. You can remotely turn the phone’s volume back up if it’s been accidentally set to silent, check the battery charge and locate the phone. Anyone who has rung a parent’s mobile fifteen times only to discover it was on silent down the back of the couch will understand exactly how valuable that is.

Is the Doro Aurora A30 easy to use?

Yes, but with an important caveat. The simplified Doro interface, built on top of Android 14, is great for people who need a cleaner, less cluttered experience. You can strip the home screen back to as few apps as you like, and TeamViewer support means a trusted family member can remotely take control to fix something without a frustrated phone call full of “now what does the screen say?”

That said, it’s really important to understand that it’s not as simple as “buy the Doro, it’ll suit everyone’s needs”. Because it won’t. Doro builds a generalist phone for being easier, but easier is not the same as right for every situation.

Depending on the person’s needs, you may still find yourself installing custom launchers or making other tweaks to simplify things even further. If you’re buying this for a family member, go in with realistic expectations and be prepared to do some setup work tailored to them. For some users, an even more stripped-back solution might honestly be the better fit, and it’s worth assessing that before spending the money.

The case and lanyard

I also picked up the official TPU case, and it’s a quietly brilliant accessory. It comes in a gorgeous bright pink and includes a lanyard, which means the phone can be worn around the neck. That sounds like a small thing, but it directly reduces the likelihood of the phone going missing, and it massively increases the value of that emergency button and location sharing. A safety button is only useful if the phone is actually on the person, after all. At €40 it’s an easy recommendation alongside the phone itself.

Specs

  • 6.1 inch HD+ IPS display
  • 50MP main camera with secondary rear lens, 5MP front camera
  • 6GB RAM, 128GB storage with memory card slot
  • 5,000mAh battery, USB-C charging (charger not included)
  • Android 14 with Doro’s simplified interface
  • Doro Secure Button, Doro Response and TeamViewer remote support
  • IP54 dust and splash resistance

The Goosed verdict

The Doro Aurora A30 is one of the best phones you can buy for an older family member or anyone who needs a simpler smartphone experience, provided you understand what you’re buying. The build quality, clear screen, physical buttons and that rear emergency button backed by Doro Response add up to a phone that delivers genuine peace of mind, not just for the person using it but for the family supporting them. The missing physical volume button is a frustrating oversight, and you should be ready to put in some setup work to tailor it to the person’s specific needs. The Doro Aurora A30 is priced at €350, but can be gotten for €100 off with the TPU case and lanyard available for €40.

Google Fitbit Air review: the fitness tracker that found the gap

Marty
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Google Fitbit Air review: the fitness tracker that found the gap

I have a Garmin on one wrist and a growing sense of guilt about fitness app subscriptions I keep paying for and barely using. So when the Fitbit Air landed, I was curious whether it would add to that pile or actually replace something. After a week wearing it, the answer is more interesting than I expected.

The Fitbit Air is a screenless fitness band priced at €99, built to feed data into Google’s new AI health platform. It tracks heart rate, SpO2, sleep stages, heart rhythm with Afib alerts, and general activity, all from a tiny pebble that sits so low on your wrist you genuinely forget it is there. The old Fitbit app has been rebranded as the Google Health app, and paired with a new Google Health Coach built on Gemini. That combination is where things get genuinely interesting.

Who Google is actually targeting here?

This is aimed squarely at Whoop. The screenless form factor, the recovery focus, the subscription model sitting behind the hardware. Google has looked at what Whoop built and identified the gap it left wide open.

Whoop’s problem is that it pitched itself at elite athletes, secured the brand ambassadors and the pro sports partnerships, and then priced and presented itself in a way that puts the actual data out of reach for most people. The metrics are dense, the learning curve is steep, and you are paying between $200 and $350 a year, every year, for a device that becomes completely useless the moment you stop. That is a punishing business model when the real audience is mostly enthusiastic amateurs who wanted to feel like professionals.

Google has spotted that gap, the space between total beginner and borderline obsessive athlete, and planted a flag right in the middle of it. The Fitbit Air does not try to out-Whoop Whoop. It offers something more accessible, more legible, and considerably cheaper. At €99 for the device and €9.99 a month for the full coaching experience, the maths are just different. And if you already pay for Google AI Pro, which bundles 5TB of storage, enhanced Gemini access, and a range of other benefits into a single plan at €174.99 a year, Google Health Premium is included at no extra cost. For anyone already in that ecosystem, fitness coaching does not become an additional line item. It just appears, already covered. For me personally, that meant one less subscription rather than one more, which changes the conversation entirely.

To be honest, the aggressive price is not purely altruistic. Google is a data company. It always has been. A subsidised fitness tracker that sits on millions of wrists collecting health data around the clock is a very Google-shaped ambition. Should you be worried about that? Probably a little, yes. But every fitness tracker on the market is monetising your data in some form. At least with Google, you know the scale of what you are dealing with.

The branding confusion nobody needed

Before we go any further, something needs to be said about the setup experience, because it is baffling for a company this size.

Google has retired the Fitbit name from the app and replaced it with Google Health. Fine, that makes sense as a long-term brand play. But they have simultaneously called the physical product the Fitbit Air. So you open the box, see Fitbit on the device, go looking for the Fitbit app, and it does not exist anymore. I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out what I was supposed to be downloading before I worked out it connects through the Google Health app, moved it to my home screen, and got on with it.

There is no user experience logic behind that decision. If you are retiring the Fitbit brand, retire it. If you are keeping it, keep it. Doing both at once just creates confusion, and it will trip up plenty of less patient buyers who will assume something has gone wrong with their setup.

The AI coaching is the real product

Once you are past the setup, the experience is genuinely impressive in ways I did not anticipate.

I sleep with headphones on, which means it takes me an age to actually drift off. The app flagged the long sleep latency and we tested introducing a sleep timer to cut the audio before I fell into deeper sleep phases. Within a few nights, my sleep score improved noticeably. A few days later, the Coach brought it up unprompted, referenced our earlier conversation, and explained why it had worked. We had been testing using Spotify podcasts at bedtime with a timer to cut out to give my brain a break in.

Even the fact I’m saying “we” is wild.

That kind of continuity, an AI that remembers the context you gave it and follows up with results, is not something I have come across in a consumer health product before.

I also told it about the Gym Monster 2 I have at home. No native integration exists between the two, but the Coach went away, figured out what the machine could do, and built workouts around it. That is AI doing what AI should actually be doing, filling gaps intelligently rather than just presenting you with data and leaving you to interpret it alone.

I have had a personal trainer in the past. The gap between that experience and what the Google Health Coach offers is smaller than I expected it to be. The more context you give it, the more useful it becomes, and it adjusts in real time. Travelling this week, knee playing up, work schedule a mess. It adapts. That flexibility is the whole pitch, and it delivers on it.

Battery life and day-to-day wear

The battery is excellent. Up to seven days between charges, with a five-minute top-up giving you a full day if you are pressed for time. For a device Google wants you to wear through sleep as well as exercise, this matters, and it holds up in real use.

The form factor helps too. The pebble is small and light enough to genuinely disappear on your wrist. The Performance Loop band that comes in the box is comfortable through workouts and overnight, but there is one thing worth flagging before you get too attached to it. It is fabric. I wear my wearables in the shower to keep them clean and free of sweat build-up, and the Fitbit Air came with me without a second thought.

What I did not account for is that fabric holds water the way a small towel does. I sat down on the couch afterwards and spent the next five minutes wondering why my t-shirt was inexplicably soaked. If you shower with your tracker, the silicone Active Band is the smarter daily choice. The fabric loop is genuinely comfortable, but it needs a few minutes of airing out before you put a sleeve over it.

There is also a more dressed-up Elevated Modern Band if you want something that does not read as a fitness tracker at a glance. The Stephen Curry Special Edition at €129.99 is a co-designed version of the Performance Loop in rye brown and game-day orange, and it looks considerably better than it has any right to at that price.

One common complaint I have with this, similar to what I have with Garmin, is that it is a proprietary charger that comes in the box and I am so sick of this happening. Yet another cable that in a matter of time will break or I’ll lose and I’ll just go back to my Garmin or something else because I have the cable for it. It’s frustrating that companies always find a way to use proprietary chargers and not USB-C, which should be the standard.

Could this replace MyFitnessPal?

Possibly, and that surprised me. Nutrition logging through the Coach lets you photograph a meal and have it broken down automatically. Cycle tracking, mental wellbeing, and hydration are all rebuilt into the same experience. The more you consolidate here, the less you need elsewhere. I can see a version of this where someone cancels two or three separate subscriptions and lands in a genuinely better place. For a lot of people, this will not be one more subscription. It will be one fewer, but only if you’re smart about it.

The one barrier

The Fitbit Air has no screen, and that is a deliberate design choice. It keeps the form factor slim, the battery long, and removes the notification loop that turns most smartwatches into distraction machines. I understand the logic completely. Now it does still have an alarm but no screen.

But it means this is not a watch. You cannot check the time, see a message, or glance at your pace mid-run without your phone. It can’t double up for payments or anything like that. I have owned the Pixel Watch and a couple of Garmins, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion. I don’t know if I’m ready to give up the watch face.

That said, I am increasingly aware that what I love about my Garmin is the watch face, not the health insights. Going into the Google Health app and having what I can only describe as an AI companion dad talk me through my day has been a bigger pull than I expected. I am not ready to declare the Garmin dead, but the gap between what it offers and what this offers is narrowing faster than I thought it would.

That extra context that the AI coach gives you around specifics that you give is nothing short of amazing. Wearing two devices is not really the answer. The more useful question is what you actually want from a wearable in the first place, and whether the thing on your wrist is genuinely delivering that.

The Goosed verdict

I’ve gotta be honest I wasn’t excited about this product coming over, but it has overdelivered massively on what I expected.

The Fitbit Air is a smarter device than its price suggests, and the Google Health Coach is the thing that makes it worth talking about. The AI coaching, when you lean into it and give it context, produces something that genuinely feels like a personal trainer rather than a glorified step counter. The sleep tracking is excellent, the battery is class, and the form factor is about as unobtrusive as a health tracker gets.

The missing screen is the real dealbreaker for anyone who wants one device to do everything. And the branding decision, shipping a product called Fitbit Air that connects to an app called Google Health, is the kind of own goal that makes you wonder who signed off on it.

At €99 with three months of Google Health Premium included, it is a well-priced entry point. Google’s long game is clearly the subscription revenue, and the data that comes with it, but they have built a product that makes the subscription feel worth paying. It’s absolutely worth noting that the tracker will work without a subscription, without as much detail, but this is a lot more than can be said for Whoop.

For anyone already on Google AI Pro, it is essentially free after you purchase the device itself. That is a clever move, even if the name on the box is still causing unnecessary confusion.

The Google Fitbit Air is available now for €99.99, with the Stephen Curry Special Edition at €129.99.

Roborock Saros 20 launches in Ireland priced from €1,289

Marty
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Roborock Saros 20 launches in Ireland priced from €1,289

Roborock has officially launched its new flagship robot vacuum and mop, the Saros 20, in Ireland today. It sits at the top of the company’s current lineup, above the Saros Z70 that I reviewed earlier this year, and brings a bit of a spec bump alongside a price to match.

The Saros 20 is available now from Harvey Norman at an introductory price of €1,289 until 14 June, after which it rises to its standard retail price of €1,489. It is also listed on Amazon and the Roborock Official Store.

What the Saros 20 actually does

The headline hardware additions centre on three systems. The AdaptiLift Chassis 3.0 allows the robot to climb over dual thresholds up to 8.8cm, adjust its body height for carpet cleaning on rugs up to 3cm thick, and free itself if it gets stuck. The StarSight 2.0 navigation system can identify and avoid over 300 obstacle types, and the unit’s slim 7.95cm profile means it can get under low furniture most robots cannot reach.

On the cleaning side, suction is rated at up to 36,000 Pa via a digital motor. The dual spinning mops apply up to 13N of downforce for harder stains, and a FlexiArm extension reaches into corners and along edges. Roborock claims up to 100% coverage in those areas, though we’ll put that to the test when our review unit arrives.

What the dock does

The bundled RockDock is a notable part of the package. It washes the mop heads using water heated to 100°C, which Roborock says removes 99.99% of bacteria, a claim verified by TÜV. Drying runs at 55°C to prevent odour. The dust bag is rated to last up to 65 days between changes, and the dock can handle automated water refilling and drainage if you set it up for it.

The mops detach automatically when the robot moves onto carpet, so there is no manual intervention required there either. I’ve really liked this feature on the Saros z70.

App and smart home

The Saros 20 runs Roborock’s SmartPlan 3.0 software, which builds cleaning routines based on room type and usage habits over time. It supports Matter, and works with Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. There are also granular carpet controls and privacy certifications, though Roborock has not detailed the specifics of those in the launch material.

Pricing and where to buy

The Saros 20 is available now at Harvey Norman and through the Roborock Official Store. The introductory price of €1,289 runs until 14 June 2026, after which the standard price of €1,489 applies.

We have a review unit on the way. If the Saros 20 is anything like the Saros Z70, which impressed us considerably, it should be worth the wait. We’ll have a full hands-on verdict up as soon as we’ve had sufficient time with it.

How To Add ITV To Sky In Ireland For World Cup 2026

Marty
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How To Add ITV To Sky In Ireland For World Cup 2026

It’s time for another big summer of football. The 2026 World Cup is in full swing across the US, Canada and Mexico, and tonight brings one of the ties of the tournament so far. England face co-hosts Mexico at the Azteca, kicking off at 1am Irish time. That one is actually on BBC One, which is already sitting on your Irish Sky box, so you’re grand for tonight. But if England win, their quarter-final lands on ITV next Saturday, and ITV has a stack of knockout games between now and the final. If you’ve had enough of Didi Hamann or Kevin Doyle (sorry lads, I actually quite like you, honest), or you just want your fix of Roy Keane, you’ll need ITV tuned in. We’ve got you covered with this simple guide to adding ITV to Sky.

One important thing before we start. If you tuned ITV in for a previous tournament, your settings are almost certainly broken. ITV moved its channels to new frequencies in late 2024, so you’ll need to delete the old channels from your box and tune them in fresh using the settings below.

How to add ITV to Sky

ITV doesn’t come preloaded on your Sky box in Ireland. However, because Sky uses a satellite dish, you can manually add the channel in settings once you know the configuration. The settings are the same regardless of your box, but the menus differ slightly between Sky Q and older Sky+ HD boxes, so I’ve covered both.

These are the settings you’ll need either way.

  1. Frequency: 11.386
  2. Polarisation: V
  3. Symbol Rate: 27.5
  4. FEC: 2/3
  5. Standard: DVB-S2
  6. Modulation Scheme: 8PSK

Adding ITV on a Sky Q box

Most Irish homes are on Sky Q at this stage, and thankfully the process is fairly painless.

  1. Press “Home” on your Sky remote
  2. Scroll down to “Settings”
  3. Select “Manual tuning” and enter your PIN if prompted (0000 by default)
  4. Choose “Add channels” and enter the settings above
  5. Select “Find channels” and wait for the search to complete
  6. You’ll see a list of ITV channels. Highlight the ones you want and a tick will appear beside them
  7. Save your selection and you’re done

Adding ITV on a Sky+ HD box

Still rocking the older Sky+ HD box? Fair play. The steps are slightly different but the settings are identical.

  1. Turn on your Sky box
  2. Press “Services” on your Sky remote
  3. Select “Options” from the menu
  4. Scroll sideways to the “Add channels” tab and enter the settings above
  5. Press the yellow button to find channels
  6. Once the search completes, you’ll see a list of ITV options
  7. Highlight the ones you want and press the yellow button
  8. Press the green button to save your settings
  9. Finally, press the “Select” button

One caveat worth knowing. ITV now broadcasts in HD only on satellite, so if you’ve an ancient standard definition Sky box gathering dust in the spare room, it simply won’t pick these channels up. And if you’re on Sky Glass or Sky Stream, there’s no manual tuning at all because those run over your broadband rather than a dish. You’re stuck with the Sky lineup as it comes.

How to watch ITV on Sky

Now that you’ve added ITV to your Sky box, it’s time to tune into the football. Unfortunately, adding a channel manually doesn’t assign it a channel number. This means the only way to access ITV is back through the same menus.

On Sky Q, head back to “Settings” and then “Manual tuning”, and the channels you’ve saved will be sitting there waiting for you. On a Sky+ HD box, press “Services”, choose “Options”, scroll sideways to the “Other channels” tab, highlight ITV and press “Select”. Not exactly elegant, but it works, and it’s a lot cheaper than a trip to New Jersey for the final.

Why watch ITV coverage of the 2026 World Cup?

Two words. Roy Keane. The Corkman is once again the heavy hitter on ITV’s panel, broadcasting from the channel’s studios in Brooklyn for the tournament. Mark Pougatch, Laura Woods and Semra Hunter are leading the coverage, with Keane joined by Ian Wright, Gary Neville, Patrick Vieira, Karen Carney, Ange Postecoglou, Juan Mata, Emma Hayes, Duncan Ferguson, Jobi McAnuff and Bradley Wright-Phillips. That’s a seriously strong lineup, and Keane sharing a desk with old sparring partners Neville and Vieira is appointment television in itself.

As for the football, tonight’s England versus Mexico clash is on BBC One with coverage from 12.10am, so no tuning required there. But should England get past El Tri at a raucous Azteca, their quarter-final kicks off at 10pm Irish time on Saturday 11 July, live on ITV. The final on Sunday 19 July is on both BBC and ITV, as tradition demands, which means one last chance to pick Keano over the alternative. I know which button I’m pressing.

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