eXtensions - Sunday 12 April 2026
By Graham K. Rogers
I switched to Macs in the 1990s so never used Windows. France is among countries switching to Linux distancing themselves from US technology. I wonder what prompted that. A colleague took delivery of a working Macintosh 512KE this week. It is still in the original box that contains and has all the disks. There is some good television on AppleTV and Netflix right now.
24 hours after Apple updated iOS and iPadOS, it released a 26.4.1 update to macOS. Apart from the usual security updates and bug fixes, several sources later reported that a fix to a problem for certain Macs that had problems joining 802.11X networks is part of this update.
I had also noted noted earlier a fairly large number of app updates on the iPhone and iPad Pro, including Keynote, Numbers and Pages, as well as Final Cut Camera and Photomator. The latter had a number of updates for compressed RAW images from specific Sony and FujiFilm cameras. These formats were also updated for Pixelmator Pro on the Mac. Looking through the list of updates, I noted that Final Cut Pro and the Apple Store app had also seen updates. Andrew Orr (AppleInsider) also reports the update to Pixelmator Pro and to Logic Pro as well as some of the other apps (above).
With Apple's Q2 2026 financial statement coming at the end of this month, there are usually a host of negative stories that suddenly appear, perhaps just to push the share price down. Investors can then buy at a lower price and wait for the inevitable bounce. Analysts also make predictions about Apple's figures, including their revenue and profits. And sales. Not all reports are the same. Horace Dediu (ASYMCO) looks at comments from MacTech.com (Dennis Sellers) who writes, "The Omdia research group says Mac sales grew 10.7% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026, while the IDC research system says the growth was 9.1%. Now Gartner says Mac sales grew 12.7% year-over-year." I guess it may be more important to consider what Apple says. The article also includes the various figures on Mac sales from these analysts. Either they know or they don't.
I have a couple of surprise comments when talking to different people here. On a cultural note, one which surprises those I am talking to is that I have never been to Pattaya. Read the British tabloids or social media and that is all that Thailand is. I guess I have been living in a different world. The other comment revolves around my Mac use and when I say that I have never used Windows, some (particularly my students) are taken aback. I started my computer use with Microsoft DOS 2.4, and I did try a Mac in 1986. For several years I worked with MS-DOS and wrote columns on PC use for the Bangkok Post before the turn of the century. My last PC was a no-brand 386 tower with (I think) a 30MB (Megabyte) hard disk. After all, that was all I would ever need. Plus ca change.
When that machine broke after a couple of years, a colleague who was heading back to the USA offered me his Mac Quadra for a reasonable price and I made the switch about the time Windows 3.1 was released. I have never looked back. In the early days, after the Quadra I had a mix of Apple devices, until eventually buying my first new Mac: a G4 iMac (which i still have). Around that time I also had access to a G4 Power Mac at work. I later changed that iMac to an eMac. I have since had a variety of Macs: mainly MacBook Pro and Mac mini, with the iPad Pro coming to the fore in the last few years.
I was prompted to consider my switch to Macs, System 7 (then) and later OS X, now macOS, by the news that the French government is [planning to] dump Windows and move to Linux (Zack Whittaker, TechCrunch). I am not sure about the Linux bit, but there was much dissatisfaction with the latest Windows release, and the relationships between several countries and the USA is calling into question how much those countries can rely on the software.
Will Shanklin (EnGadget) writes that this is "part of a broader movement across Europe toward digital sovereignty, aimed at reducing reliance on foreign tech" and includes comments from a selection of European experts. Nick Heer (Pixel Envy) also has an interesting take on this move to digital independence, concluding with, ". . . it is not surprising that governments able to do so are looking at the power of the United States and recognizing how irresponsibly it is being used"
Early this month a museum dedicated to 50 years of Apple products opened in the Netherlands. The display of the original G3 iMacs pictured in the article by Juli Clover (MacRumors) is stunning. While some of us are mourning the loss of the Mac Pro (good in its time, but technology and Apple silicon have moved on), while enjoying the new MacBook Neo, there was another nod to Apple history this week in my office. A message from a colleague included a picture of one of the first Macs. He had just purchased this after a 2-year hunt. When it arrived and he was delighted. In one of the images he sent, he showed me that it was still working. We arranged to meet the next day.
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The device he had bought was in quite good condition, with all of the accessories and the original box. There are a couple of problems. The printer may well be beyond repair. The Mac came with several of the original 3.5" diskettes and it does start up. Some of the disks have software and he will be checking those out to see which programs work. It also came with a huge (by today's standards) Power Drive that connects to the Mac via a SCSI cable (Small Computer System Interface). Although this powers up, it is not recognized by the OS or a repair utility. He is considering his options on repair and replacement.
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As well as some of the essential diskettes, the box contains a selection of stickers, still in their original plastic wrapping, and a casette (remember them?) which I am told contains a recording of Steve Jobs (unconfirmed) introducing the Mac to the new owner.
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Other interesting items that came in this box are the mouse and the original plug. Alas, unlike later Macs which can switch between the 120V (standard) US and European power system, and the 240V used in the UK, Thailand and several other countries, this only works with 120V. My colleague bought a voltage converter to cover this problem.
While we are on old stuff, Will Shanklin (Engadget) reports that a hacker has managed to make OS X run on a Wii device. This is the original version of OS X: 10.0, Cheetah and this was done on a 2006 Nintendo console. The article makes some interesting points and is worth looking at. Why did he do this fairly useless (on the face of it) task? For one of the best reasons: because he could. He was motivated somewhat because he was told it would not work, noting that "[he] was reminded that the projects that seem just out of reach are exactly the ones worth pursuing".
I am not a fan of Adobe. Some of this antipathy stems from when we ran Flash on Macs. This needed updating far too often because of insecurities (See Steve Jobs letter on why Flash was not on the iPhone or iPad). However, accessing the downloads page for the latest version of Flash was a time-consuming and frustrating task. When Adobe went all-subscription I was even more annoyed: not for myself as I was not using their software by then, but for all the users who would be affected, long-term, by this. And of course, if payments do not go through for whatever reason, there is a risk that the work could be locked or lost.
Watching as an outsider, I have become more concerned with the way fees have increased. Users have sought out alternative software and moved away. The reliance on AI is another concern and I prefer not to use this at all. Or to have my work used (always without payment) by the companies that download the data from my site and the sites of many others.
Adobe has now managed to upset more people recently as it was discovered by a Reddit user that an update had changed the /etc/hosts file on the Mac. It is worth quoting the comments of John Gruber (Thursday 9 April) in full here: "They didn't have to do this, of course. In fact, quite obviously, they definitely should not be doing this. Adobe is just a third-party developer, no better, no more trusted, no more important than any other. Imagine if every piece of software on your computer added entries to your /etc/hosts file. Madness. Adobe should be ashamed of themselves. Adobe used to be a bastion of best practices for developers to follow. Now their installer/updater is indistinguishable from malware."
I must admit I really enjoyed all of The Man in the High Castle. I watched this from end to end, with one brief exception to view a movie that appeared in my timeline. I did note that at the end the speech Smith gave on the rock ledge before he died was somewhat similar to that by the replicant, Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer) at the end of Blade Runner. Both The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, on which Blade Runner was based, were written by Phillip K Dick.
Following the end of the series, I did watch a couple of episodes of different series on Apple TV, but switched back fairly quickly to a Norwegian series, Detective Hole. I was a bit reluctant to watch this at first because of the family name but I am really glad I did. I was not alone as this was the number 1 watched Netflix show worldwide. It was quite violent at times and with plenty of surprises plus plot twists this kept me going for a week or so. The anti-hero seemed familiar to me although his Norwegian was as good as anybody else's in the series. He was played by Joel Kinnaman. He has been in several English language movies since 2010 right up to this year. His English language and Scandinavian TV credits are good too. And then it hit me.
I was watching the latest series of For All Mankind (like The Man in the High Castle an alternative view of history), when Admiral Ed Baldwin had some flash-backs to the Korean War. As soon as I saw the younger Baldwin, I recognized Kinnaman. His portrayal of the wayward and at times manic detective channels his inner Jack Nicholson and shows what a talented actor he is. Playing the title role of Detective Hole, was Tobias Santelmann, who is German-born. He looks something like a tired Daniel Craig (Bond). I hope to see him in more TV and movies. Online rumors suggests that later this year there is to be a film, titled Harry Hole, but I have doubts, particularly as Richard Roeper (Roger Ebert) discusses a disappointing 2017 movie in which Hole was played by Michael Fassbinder. In this review, he uses the term, "Nordic Noir" which may explain why I like this type of police series. He also suggests that the series might have been better served had it been shortened to 5 or 6 episodes.
This week on Apple TV I watched the new Keanu Reeves comedy movie, Outcome. I was somewhat disappointed and almost switched it off, particularly when the loud lawyer, Ira Slitz, played by Jonah Hill made me think I was watching an extended episode of The Studio which has far too much shouting. Despite the awards this never appealed to me although I forced myself to sit through the first 3 episodes. It was only the presence of Cameron Diaz, in Outcome, with cameos by Martin Scorsese and Drew Barrymore - and of course Keanu Reeves himself - that made me stick with this to the very end.
We recently saw Matthew Rhys in The Beast in Me on Netflix, where he was creepy-good as serial murderer Nile Jarvis stalking wealthy neighbor, Aggie Wiggs: Claire Danes at her paranoid best. Now, Rhys is to appear in an AppleTV series, Widow's Bay: the mayor of a town in New England wants to turn it into a tourist hotspot although he is warned that it is cursed. Dennis Sellers (AppleWorld Today) notes that the second season of Dark Matter will be released on Friday, 28 August. Also about to appear is the second series of Criminal Record, with Peter Capaldi, and Cush Jumbo. I found the first series highly enjoyable, so have been looking forward to this for a while. Dennis Sellers (MacTech) reports that this is to be released on 22 April.
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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