eXtensions - Tuesday 14 October 2025
By Graham K. Rogers
Rumors of updates to iOS (and more) as well as expectations of an M5 Week from Apple with new Macs and iPads. AI needs to be tempered and some users are wary of letting the technology take over. My own views of AI in writing are reinforced by the dross I am asked to check daily. Before the transistor was the vacuum tube, or valve: imagine 28 billion vacuum tubes in a modern computer. We also look briefly at camera technology, plus what I am interested in on AppleTV and Netflix
There are strong rumors of a 26.0.2 update to iOS, Joe Rossignol (MacRumors) writes. Code has been seen that hints at this which could be a bug fix or for a special security problem
Rumors about new Macs and iPads have heated up in the last few days with some predicting the new arrivals could be announced this week. If so, invitations (virtual or otherwise) will need to be sent out right away. To add to the pressure, Ed Hardy (Cult of Mac) reports that the M3 iPad Air is being offered by Amazon for a "lowest-ever price" of $499. Low prices indicate stock clearing and suggest new products on the way to me. Jonny Evans (Apple Must) is calling this "M5 Week".
Those who are forever complaining that Apple is falling behind in its incorporation of AI - already too much in my opinion - might want to look at the opposition view. Chris Hoffman over on PCWorld, is pleading for less not more, and I am rooting for him. He is concerned about the promised voice-first approach for Windows which will mean "handing over control to "AI agents" who perform and handle tasks on our behalf." What users need most is an AI that works. . . with a keyboard and mouse. Not that I know much about how Windows works, but on the Mac, several aides to efficiency have been made available over the years for those who wanted (or needed) them long before AI.
Dictation is quite good these days, and I can remember communicating with a quadriplegic a few years ago who wrote quite lengthy emails, dictating the main content then using Accessibility features to edit and correct the text. And send the email of course. The ability to control the computer (and Apple handheld devices) is available for those who would rather use that than the keyboard, mouse or trackpad. Generally, Apple does not force these features on the user, which appears to be what Hoffman objects to (and I agree). He outlines many ways in which Windows seems to have lost the plot.
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Other assistance on the Mac comes by way of key commands. I know that at least some of these are available on the PC using the Control key instead of the Command key on the Mac. Simple examples are Control (Cmd) + A, Select All; Control + C, Copy; Control + V, Paste. When working with particular and repeating commands on the Mac, it is far easier to use key commands than keep accessing the menus each time. I have put examples of these on my site a few times in the past, but why bother when Apple has provided a complete list of Mac keyboard shortcuts. At the bottom of that list are links to Accessibility and app-specific shortcuts. On the iPad Pro I can use several of these shortcuts with the Magic keyboard. Many also work with an external keyboard (USB or wireless).
I read an article on AI proofreading by Dr. Drang a few days ago. He noted that one of the ways he proofreads text is to make the device he is working on read it out. I have a couple of twists on that suggestion, but I was interested in the results of his tests using AI to check the work. He found similar to my experiences in checking work from graduate students here, and a few academics, who are convinced that AI is the answer to all their prayers. I was going to expand on these comments today, but with a couple of other examples, illustrating the problems with trusting AI, I have decided to write about this separately and will put something online in a day or two.
In the last posting (10 October) I added a late note regarding the demands by OpenAI for access to Google, Apple and Microsoft data. I usually list things alphabetically, but this time the main aim of the request for doors to be opened was aimed at Google. OpenAI whined that Google were being difficult about allowing access. I would hope that they were. And Apple, and Microsoft.
In what is intended as a humorous article, Jacy Reece Anthis writes in the Guardian about Altman and the AI behemoth. There is a particular comment that I found interesting in the light of the OpenAI request to EU regulators, regarding the comments a few months ago when it was revealed that the Chinese AI DeepSeek may have been trained on OpenAI data.
The statement from AI suggested that they were incensed about this theft. What utter hypocrisy. Most of the data that Open AI (and others) use has been stolen from sources which, despite some fights in legislatures, has just been given up. My own site regularly sees comparatively massive amounts of data lifted. On the opening day of the month, there were some 5 million hits, when usually the number is far more modest. In previous months, other large data hits have taken place - Microsoft for one - each skewing the statistics for the month. I am of course not alone, thousands and thousands of such sites are being used to train the ever-hungry AI engines, perhaps explaining why the output should not be trusted, and why such word salads are par for the course, along with the errors and odd word choices. I also see that a Facebook crawler is accessing a lot of data on the site, as well as an Apple News Bot (I don't mind that one of course).
As far as I can remember, I first visited Bletchley Park in 1971 or 1972 when it was still a secure establishment: something to do with the Post Office I was told. I was a policeman at the time and had to deliver a message to someone working there. Years later the significance of the establishment became apparent, but by that time it had been closed down. It was taken over by enthusiasts who are dedicated to keep the memory of the place alive and I visited again around the year 2000 or 2001. At that time I met Tony Sale who was reassembling Colossus, one of the first electronic analytical computers. After World War 2, Churchill had ordered all versions be destroyed, although some did find homes. The whole program was kept under a veil of secrecy and no one spoke about it until the mid-1970s. Several books were published later and I read a couple, for example The Hut 6 Story (Welchman, G; 1982).
In one of these books, the work of Engineers at the Dollis Hill, Post Office engineering unit was mentioned and particularly the work of Tommy Flowers who had been instrumental in the development of Colossus. This week an article by Andrew Smith (Guardian) goes into some detail about Flowers and his significance in the breaking of the codes. I use the photograph I took at the time in teaching engineering students and explain that Colossus used valves because there were no transistors at the time. The size of these valves is quite apparent, and so the space-saving (and heat reduction) even with early transistors would have been significant. The Guardian article fills in a gap: Colossus used 1,600 valves. The M4 iPad Pro I am working on now has 28 billion transistors. It is a useful lesson for students.
I am curently considering a new mirrorless camera, so an article by Alex Cooke (FStoppers) on some serious camera problems caught my eye.
He examines 5 cases when problems with camera parts from 3 manufacturers caused problems for users and a rethink on how the manufacturers dealt with such defects. He also notes that there have been other cameras that have had problems, although they did not reach the recall/rethink stage. All the cameras were digital so these are fairly modern cases: a mix of hardware and software causes.
One however was a materials problem. Chemicals used in a handgrip caused allergies in some users. To their credit, Canon, once they had identified the problem, had a world-wide recall of some 70,000 cameras to replace the parts (or in some cases, the camera). This problem also changed the way that companies test for potential allergies.
We note that AppleTV+ has now been rebranded as AppleTV (Chance Miller, 9to5Mac), which seems more sensible. It is also claimed by Apple that the service is to have "a vibrant new identity" which sounds like more bad ideas from the PR department. It is reported by Hartley Charlton (MacRumors) that the F1 movie will be available for AppleTV viewers on 12 December. A long wait - a friend saw this in a cinema here weeks ago - but I prefer watching at home these days. We also note that Drops of God Series 2 will be available on 21 January.
I was planning to order 28 Years Later from the Apple Store, but I see that Netflix has released information that this will be on that service on 20 October this year. A few days earlier (16 Oct) the 3rd series of The Diplomat will be released. I am currently watching Wayward, which has Toni Collette (Unbelievable) as villain of the peace in a school for misbehaving youth, some of whom do not survive, although none of the rest appear to come out mentally intact. The series was developed by Mae Martin who is nonbinary and plays a transgender police officer in the series.
Also coming late in October (22nd) is The Monster of Florence: a series on an Italian serial killer. An article in the Guardian this week (Tobias Jones) goes into some details about the cases (and the number of suspects), bringing in a potential satanic link. That is followed a couple of days later (24th) by A House of Dynamite: a lone missile with a nuclear payload has been launched and is heading for the USA. This takes an unusual approach by replaying the same time period from 3 different perspectives, each filling in more details. I was reminded of Vantage Point (2008) - Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt - which looked at the same time-scale from different viewpoints. The Gulliermo de Toro movie, Frankenstein is also listed on Netflix, but with no date as yet.
Last week I finished the House of Guinness, which I enjoyed immensely. The final scene of the final episode in the series was a cliffhanger. A Fenian attends a meeting held as part of the election process of the eldest Guinness brother. The bullet is loosed and the scene freezes. We were led to assume that the older brother was the target, but there are at least two other potential victims on the stage at the time. Will there be a series 2 so we find out who was intended to be assassinated?
Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. After 3 years writing a column in the Life supplement, he is now no longer associated with the Bangkok Post. He can be followed on X (@extensions_th). The RSS feed for the articles is http://www.extensions.in.th/ext_link.xml - copy and paste into your feed reader. No AI was used in writing this item.
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