eXtensions - Monday 6 July 2026
By Graham K. Rogers
Apple's Q3 20236 earnings call will be on 30 July. Updates last week covered some bugs, but there are a few more, including with AirDrop (and with Quick Share). It was also found that email hiding can be easily made to reveal the address. Apple does not like its secrets revealed. We look at historical leaks and a couple of current ones, including a huge data theft from Tata. There is plenty of good viewing on the way from Apple and Netflix, especially for sci-fi watchers.
Apple has announced that its Q3 earnings will be revealed on 30 July this year Marcus Mendes (9to5Mac). The article suggests that because of the timing, the recent price increases are unlikely to have much effect on the figures. However, shortages of some Mac models could reduce income. We look forward to the increase in Wall Street scare articles and rumors about Apple that are likely to appear in the coming 4 weeks. Malcolm Owen (AppleInsider) notes that this is expected to be Tim Cook's last appearance as CEO at a financial results event. He adds that forward-looking statements a the Q2 2026 event suggest "revenue growth at between 14% and 17% year-over year".
This week we saw updates to iOS, iPadOS and macOS (26.5.2). There was little information about what the updates contained but Howard Oakley (Eclectic Light Company) writes that there were "about 29 vulnerabilities, including three in the kernel and a whole slew in WebKit." None appears to have been exploited so far. Oakley mentions other small updates to apps and some behind-the-scenes software that were included in the macOS release. Mr Macintosh also provides details about the Tahoe release. Jason Snell (6 Colors) highlights a point in the Apple document on the release, that the fixes were first made available in the 26.6 beta releases. Jason's comments on this are worth reading.
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In a related post, Andrew Orr (AppleInsider) notes that some insecurities affecting AirDrop and QuickShare have been identified. For iPhone/iPad users the risk is reduced if Everyone for 10 minutes is Off. Apple has fixed one of the vulnerabilities, and is sure to be working on the other problems revealed by the researchers. One problem with modern operating systems, the features and the apps that go with them, is the complexity of the coding that goes into supporting them. Following the shortcomings reported above, it was also revealed that the Hide My Email feature has a bug and is allowing all real email addresses to be revealed. Ben Lovejoy (9to5Mac) and several others sources report on this. This was apparently reported to Apple some months ago, but remains unfixed.
Last time I commented on the price rises of some Apple devices which seemed to have been inevitable with the run on chips following the growth in AI. Apple had already made some adjustments with the withdrawal of its lowest end Mac mini (with 256GB storage). A week after Tim Cook hinted to the Wall Street Journal that there would be price rises, Macs and iPads took the brunt of the increases. At the lower end this was $100 for US users, although with the MacBook Neo, this was 5000 baht, which seemed an unreasonable extra cost for users here. The Thai Baht has weakened 2.54% in the last year (Trading Economics) while the extra (1,445 baht) is 41% over the expected rise of 3,555 baht (inc VAT 7%).
Those buying Macs at the top end were dealt a stiffer blow with the M5 Max 16" MacBook Pro with maximum memory installed, now reaching a staggering 5 figures: "an eye-watering $10,149" in the USA (Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac). The specifications are listed and that is a powerful Mac indeed. Lovejoy notes that although Macs went up 13-15% in some cases the RAM increases reached 100%.
The waters were muddied a little a few days ago by the chief business officer of Micron, Sumit Sadana. He suggested that Apple caused the price rises in some part by its aggressive negotiations when ordering chips and that Micron was "unable to fund capacity expansion during the industry's previous slump" (Hartley Charlton). Throughout history, there have been some who do not understand that sometimes silence is best. Some current politicians spring to mind.
There are unsubstantiated reports that the picture may not be as cut and dried as was made out. Andrew Orr (AppleInsider) reports that Micron, along with Samsung and SK hynix are being sued in California for price-fixing: they are alleged to have coordinated DRAM cuts and this drove up prices. Orr writes that Micron disputes the claim. Instead of expanding production as the prices went up, all three companies shifted focus to HBM (high bandwidth memory RAM) that is more attractive for AI. The report notes that, of course, "[c]ompanies are free to pursue more profitable products", but antitrust laws prohibit agreements among competitors. Those suing the companies claim the decisions added to the price rises, while the companies say their business decisions were made independently.
I have had my current 11" M4 iPad Pro since it was released here in 2024. This is my workhorse. Although Mike Wuerthele (AppleInsider) suggests the M7, will be coming next, Juli Clover (MacRumors) reports that these new iPads could have the M6 or M7 chip. That would be a deal breaker for me. If I am upgrading, I want a real performance boost and not be in a digital purgatory where the next chip jump would leave me far behind. Currently, after the price increases, the 11" iPad Pro is $1199. With 7% VAT that converts to 42,776 baht, so the price of 42,900 in the Apple Store here is about on a par, unlike the heavy increase that the MacBook Neo saw here (extensions).
Apple tends to keep new product information under close guard. When I wrote about Apple in the Bangkok Post, Database, I frequently sparred with (then) Apple Director, Tony Li when he visited Bangkok to make product announcements. This banter was quite friendly, to the extent that once when a local reporter asked Tony a question, he waved in my direction and I said, "Apple does not make comments on possible future product releases." It all goes back to the Osborne Effect and the multi-billion risks of leaks. In several years of writing about Apple, and signing a number of NDAs, the best I had were a couple of mild hints.
If Apple personnel leak or lie (say on the résumé) the result at best is to be shown the door. Some have been prosecuted. Currently, Apple is engaged in litigation with John Prosser (a blogger who has a good record on rumors) over leaked information and images concerning the (then-unreleased) iOS 26 that were taken from the iPhone of an Apple employee (who was dismissed). This is ongoing. More information on the background to this is provided by Joe Rossignol (MacRumors). Outlining the latest response from Prosser, Marcus Mendes (9to5Mac) notes that he puts the blame firmly on co-defendant, Michael Ramacciotti.
In 2010 another Apple employee left a disguised version of the as-yet-unannounced iPhone 4 in a bar. The publication, Gizmodo managed to acquire this and that part of the story is interesting in itself. On 20 April, "the 20th, Gizmodo's Jason Chen published a hands-on with the headline: "This Is Apple's Next iPhone." He went on to detail why he believed the device was a legitimate Apple product." There was a promise of more to come. That included outing the engineer who had lost the phone (who did not lose his job). Apple reacted to the reports initially with a lawyer letter. The police later raided Jason Chen's home and seized computers (Dan Noswitz, Fast Company).
That was not the end of the story and Apple's part in this is not all good guy stuff (Luke Dormehl, 9to5Mac) and we also saw some erroneous predictions from Charles Arthur (Guardian). Steve Jobs contacted Gizmodo and asked for the phone to be returned. There are many articles and videos about the whole story online.
Recently it was revealed that there had been a data leak at Tata in India, with some 630 GB of data reportedly stolen. This was confirmed by Tata some time after information from the files appeared on a hacker website. Jagmeet Singh (TechCrunch) reports that a sample of the files appeared to contain what "appear to be Apple supplier specifications and Tesla manufacturing documents." Among the documents are iPhone 18 photographs and much more data that Apple would not wish to be available. Marcus Mendes (9to5Mac) quoting a Reuter report, adds that "Apple's security team is working closely with Tata on near- and long-term measures following the incident, the person added."
With videos and other information from the leak now being shared online, Malcolm Owen (AppleInsider) reports that Apple is working to take it all down. Evan Blass, who denies any involvement "pointed out that Apple has managed to suspend the account, something that "Samsung never could."" Owen points out that Apple's uncharacteristic aggression with such sites, is probably because unlike rumor sites, "the leaked information is legit, stolen directly from an Apple manufacturing partner that had lax security," adding that in this case, "actual documents, images, and video are being spread around."
Returning to AppleTV this week is Silo. Series 3 takes a split view, looking at the return of Juliette Nichols who is unable to remember anything initially, and the past. The initial setting up of the silos and the reasons behind the project are aired and we understand the disasters that these constructions were designed for. There are some sinister goings-on with the head of security and his wife (now head of IT) in whose interests it is that Juliette's memories stay hidden. Linked to the return of the series, Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) reports that Apple has launched a "How did we lose this world" site that "contains exclusive clips, cryptic images, and more". Apple followed this the next day with a teaser clip of something called Lucky in Facebook. This featured a leather-jacketed Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit, The Gorge), walking away from a burning car on its side.
Needless to say by the time I typed a few words about this, the clip had disappeared, although there is a longer clip which reminds me of Luc Besson's, La Femme Nikita which was later made into a series, and also Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda. This new version from Apple arrives 15 July. Ryan Christoffel helps put this in a better context by listing 5 new movies Apple is releasing soon, starting with The Dink, about a washed-up tennis player which on first look will need to have quite something to be better than Tin Cup or the Apple Series, Stick, with Owen Wilson.
Christoffel also lists MayDay with Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh in a spy thriller; Matchbox the Movie based on the model cars so many of us owned in our childhoods; Tenzing a drama based on the Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on the first conquest of Everest; and Way of the Warrior Kid, about a bullied school student who is coached by his former SEAL uncle (Chris Pratt). That last one arrives in November.
My Apple Watch was busy Friday morning with announcements of the latest sibilant releases: Silo, Sugar, Star City. I watched the second episode of Sugar earlier last week, and while I thought that Episode 1 of series 2 was slow, the second one gave me a better impression of a noir slow burner. I saved that for the weekend. The last season of Silo and the last episode of Star City had fiery endings, so I wonder who survived. With Silo we know that Julia did, but the Mayor (Tim Robbins) did not. With Star City, the 3 cosmonauts faced a fire after a hack - following the KGB shutdown of the capsule - went wrong. It seems doubtful that there were survivors. One might speculate about the fallout and the coverups that will follow. But, as befits such a series, there is a surprise. Maybe there is a survivor. On the AppleTV store, I see that (finally) Project Hail Mary is now available so I have added that to my watch list.
Coming to Netflix at the end of July is The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a movie I have wanted to see for several reasons, including some of the scenes I have already watched online. And because it was one of the deadliest, most horrific, most cowardly attacks on a civilian aircraft ever, that also killed several villagers in Lockerbie, Scotland (FBI). All countries have specific routes for air traffic and the one that carries transatlantic flights from Heathrow seems to follow the A6 initially, so when I flew from London to Chicago I used to spot specific landmarks I could recognize, like Bedford, Leicester, further north looking out over the Lake District, then a little further over the Solway Firth and to Lockerbie. My planes turned left on the way back over the Atlantic. Pan Am 103 did not reach that stage.
I was surprised this week by a short trailer on FaceBook that appeared to reveal that the AppleTV version of Gibson's Neuromancer was coming. I later saw a report from Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) who also saw the teaser. Most comments on the FaceBook page were unhelpful as usual. I do remember reading rumors that this was in the pipeline, but I have seen nothing more until this clip. I had read this around 1990, but have little memory of the story now. If I remember correctly, it was in this book that Gibson first coined the term, "Cyberspace". The Oxford English Dictionary reports that "cybernetics" comes from the Greek, kubernetes (steersman) with an original use in the 1940s. Its dictionary definition is, "the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things". World Wide Words confirms that "Cyberspace" appeared in Neuromancer, although it was first used by Gibson in a short story in Omni. Ryan tells us that, apparently, the show is almost ready to run. With my love of Sci-Fi this is another must-see.
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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