I always feel a certain sense of guilt when I don’t write on my personal blog (i.e. here), even when I’m doing daily news write-ups of Apple news for AppleTalk. It’s not that I have a shortage of stuff to write about, but finding time in between part time work and Dota 2 just doesn’t happen, most of the time. Anyway, I have been writing, just not here, which I have summarised below.

AppleTalk has been up for about a month now, and already we’ve had some great content up. Some of the highlights, written by yours truly:

• I think I Just Became OK With In-App Purchases — my look at the world of in-app purchases on both mobile and desktop platforms, and how I’m totally OK with paying for stuff in free-to-play games, so long as the game itself isn’t a shameless money-grab.

Ask any game developer, and they’ll tell you that in-app purchases are the new “in” thing. Big publishers like EA, as well as smaller indie developers like Halfbrick, are using it as a new way to make money. The thinking goes that instead of offering titles for a set fee up front like traditional software, developers and publishers can make more money over time, which more closely aligns with the subscription payment model. Whether it’s working out for them is another story entirely, but judging from the continued adoption and uptake of in-app purchases in many new apps, I’d say the results speak for themselves.

• Quick Review: Birdbrain — Statistics for Twitter — my look at one of my most-used apps on my iPhone, not because I’m inherently a narcissist, but because I find statistics interesting.

Of course, Birdbrain gives you basic information like your following and follower counts, tweets, mentions, retweets, and how many users you’ve blocked. But the real power of Birdbrain lies in its ability to give you those numbers over time — as you use the app, it updates those numbers so you can get a feel for how your numbers change over weeks or months.

• Review: Captured — Screen Capture Sharing for Mac — I’ve been wondering if I’ll ever be able to find a Skitch replacement, now that it doesn’t work that well with Retina displays. Is Captured the app I was looking for?

Captured has a few things going for it: for one, it’s super easy to use. Take a screenshot and it’ll automatically upload it and copy the URL to your clipboard, meaning all you have to do is paste the image somewhere for people to see it. Imgur is the default location for uploaded images, but you also have the choice of your own storage in way of Dropbox, Amazon S3, or SFTP, all configurable via the the Preferences window in Captured.

• And more recently, a wrap-up of Apple’s WWDC 2014 keynote. It wasn’t any longer, running-time wise, than any previous Apple event. But Apple announced so much stuff — both for consumers and developers — that the potential ramifications will be felt years from now.

The keynote from this year’s WWDC has just wrapped, and Viticci is right when he says this isn’t just Apple skating to where the puck is, this is Apple creating an entirely new ball game. Apple kicked things off by saying it was an event with three main focuses — OS X, iOS, and developers — and then they went on to deliver one of the biggest Apple events in recent history. Let’s dance.