27 October 2026
By Graham K. Rogers
Apple updated its operating systems, probably in anticipation of new products this week, but also released a new iPad mini with OLED display and A20 chip. AI has caused many changes, and not all for the good. While scraping my site, Google discovered that one of my pages that had been online for 11 years seemed to be asking readers to click on advertisements so stopped all advertising. In the meantime, in preparation for building data centers, Google has stripped some 330 hectares of trees without waiting for approvals. Meta made misleading statements about privacy in New Mexico and has been fined $25 billion: a drop in the ocean.
I woke up on Friday morning to find updates ready for Keynote, Numbers and Pages, noting that iPhone Duo support and a a new Intelligent Assistant had been added. However, a couple of hours later, in a report from Juli Clover I noted that the updates had been pulled, and the Mac versions had been replaced later with non-AI versions: "The Mac versions are back without the new update. The iOS versions don't seem to have returned to the App Store yet." A later reported indicated that the update was available again following the temporary removal of the apps from the App Store.
This morning (Tuesday 27), Apple sent out its latest 27.2 updates. One by one I backed up my devices, starting with the iPhone which shows the download as 18GB. It was only 16.1 GB for the update to macOS and 1.0 GB for watchOS 27.2. Information with the iOS release shows that "This update provides enhancements to Siri Al with the ability to retain useful context from previous Siri interactions as well as draw from a wider range of personal context. It also introduces Suggestions in Messages that help you take quick actions in apps like Calendar and Reminders based on context from your conversation. This release includes additional features, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPhone." Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) reports that the iOS update added 5 new languages to Siri: French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. He adds that there will be 4 more by the end of the year: Chinese (traditional), Norwegian, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
Although Apple sent out invitations for its "Pro and Tell" event planned for Wednesday, there was a bit of a surprise Monday evening (here) when a new iPad mini with A20 chip was announced. It has a slightly larger 8.5-inch OLED display and supports the Apple Pencil and Apple Pencil Pro. This was carried on several sites. With a $699 starrting price in the USA, it will be sold for 24,900 baht here. The $699 converts to 23,612.22 baht. Add 7% for VAT and tgat gives 25,265, which means the Thai price is lower than that in the US when taxes are added. That of course may change. This is currently marked as unavailable.Pre-orders in the USa beguin 28 October. Hartley Charlton (MacRumors) reports that the sound system works through the screen, pairing "specially designed woofers through the display to deliver . . . punchier bass and higher volume." Malcom Owen (AppleInsider) compares the new version 8 with the previous iteration: this time, "the OLED screen is the star".
So, what is next? If Apple have dropped this significant iPad update as an appetizer before the main course, what are we to be given in the 28 October announcements I sort of dread the criticisms of Apple when, or if, a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen is announced. We've gone through all this before. Although Steve Jobs did say it wasn't suitable back in 2010, times have changed. We are so used to the touchscreen of a tablet device that this is a nothing-burger. Unfortunately, many writers will spend a lot of time writing a lot of criticism about nothing.
While several sources online and Apple have reported on the unexpectedly high sales of the iPhone Fold, Mark Gurman found that surrounding every silver lining there is a cloud. He claims that Apple made a major mistake with inventory. The shortages that are being experienced and the delays delivering the new device to those who ordered it, must mean that Apple did not make enough of them (Jo Rossignol, MacRumors). Bad John, bad Tim or something. I note that, this is just a few days before the Q2 results and while some analysts are predicting higher share prices, already at record levels, Bloomberg often seems ambivalent about Apple, so finding defeat in victory is no surprise.
I was saddened to read about the existential crisis that is facing Scientific American, a magazine I have used for years, and regard highly: an icon of excellence in scientific publishing, at least until this moment. Emmett Fraizer (Nation) outlines the problems that have faced the magazine for the last couple of years as, like many media organization, they have had to face the petulance of the current administration. Springer, the owner for part of the period under review, facing pressure itself, has increased the pressure on the editorial staff and freelancers, including restricting which words, phrases or names to use when writing. Scientific American has now been sold off to to LabX. Salary cuts, and mass layoffs followed.
Although the problems with Scientific American probably stem from the politics of fear, AI has also taken a toll on media. Printed magazines are rarer these days. Web sites are suffering from the ways in which the AI companies steal the information, then churn it out as if it were original writing. It is not. Much of it is poor. Unfortunately, many of those - particularly non-native speakers of English - cannot see that what the output from chosen AI tools is not really good English at all. With the long sentences, multiple (often 3) subjects and objects, odd word choice, and excess adverbs, they have been gifted a poisoned chalice.
Many websites these days are also suffering from a lack of income. Advertising used to provide enough support to run a site and give the site owner a comfortable income. Now they are forced to shift to subscriptions, losing readers along the way. I used to have PayPal for the odd donation that came my way, but banking rules changed here and as I do not have a Thai ID card, I am unable to use this to receive payments.
A few months ago, Google Adsense contacted me and I was informed that a page (a single page) that had been online for over 10 years apparently had transgressed. I had asked readers to click on the advertisements, which is a no-no. My advertising account was suspended. I guess that Google had found my sin as it had scraped my pages for AI content (along with others, including Microsoft). As income for the last couple of years had been abysmal, that did not hurt as much as Adsense executives might have hoped. I left the current pages (a sort of archive that is still accessed) and changed my template to remove all Google advertising.
This week I had another message from Google Adsense reminding me in large red letters that Ads have stopped showing on my site and providing a link to the affected page, adding that I "need to fix the issue(s) then request a review in the Policy center." Google was kind enough to send a link to the offending page from 2015. This was about the logistics of switching from a notebook computer while it was in for repair, to a Mac mini. The problem lies in the opening paragraph, and the sentence, "I do not actually need to write anything (apart from the commitment to the Post [then]) as the eXtensions website is not for profit. It would be nice if it were, of course - feel free to click on the ads [added italics] - but my main priority begins and ends with my teaching commitments." That is all. Happy to steal my writing without payment, but unhappy that I had jokingly asked for clicks. AI and/or Google obviously do not have a sense of humor. I should sent them a bill.
I was tempted to send an ungentlemanly reply, but I stopped myself. In the meantime, coinciding with that e-mail, my site statistics have shown an unrealistic increase as the AI bots scrape the site again. This time, there appear to be 5 main sources. I used iTools on the iPad and iPhone to see who was stealing my stuff. Of the 5, one could not be traced, one was from an unnamed source, while the other 3 were each from Oracle. Most hits seem to be on the index files (links to the individual content items), skewing my statistics for this month.
The arrival of AI and its phenomenal growth has brought about several changes even to ordinary people who buy technological devices: the price of chips has increased. These AI systems require great computing power. This has required the construction of massive data centers, churning away endlessly, consuming and polluting water for cooling, increasing electricity costs for consumers and in some cases leading to service disruptions, while disturbing the peace of those who live nearby with endless noise. From what I read of the people closely connected to the AI industry, many are totally out of touch. Listen to people like Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Peter Thiel and Alex Karp (Palantir) or Jensen Huang (NVidia) and their ideas are extreme. By comparison Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt who would often go to extremes sound like sages in comparison. Like Meta's robotic Mark Zuckerberg (see below) many of those who are intent on building the future seem out of touch and behave as if the real world is something of an inconvenience.
Although many people have expressed surprise and anger, it was no real surprise when it was reported that, without waiting for the necessary approvals, Google cleared an area of some 330 hectares (850 acres) of trees, "illegally stripp[ing] the entire area to build a datacentre" - about 250,000 trees (Miranda Bryant, Guardian). Google's Finland country manager apparently apologised, claiming they had acted "on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time". New lawyers and a new country manager might be a start. Of course, no one will go to jail for this, despite the damage and continuing effects. There will be a fine , but with a $3.88 trillion valuation how will that deter anyone.
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In another report on this, Mark Tyson (Tom's Hardware) tells us that this is not simply a case of clearing the site for building and the actions have caused changes in the environment too: "wolves, who used to live in the forests, are roaming into villages neighboring these man-made muddy wastelands." There is no forest, the wolves will be unable to eat, and they have to go somewhere. There is, of course, a food chain and other species will have been affected.
A recent New Mexico court decision went against Meta for its continued abuse of its platform. In this particular case Meta was found to have made misleading statements about customer privacy. They have a track record of faults on abuse of user data. The whistleblower, Christopher Wylie (whose book MindF*ck I have on Kindle) who worked at Cambridge Analytica showed how that company injected processes into the Facebook system to garner data from thousands of users.
Brittany Kaiser also worked at Cambridge Analytica and was able to provide additional information about how the company misused Facebook data. This particularly applied to swaying the votes in the Brexit referendum.
These were not isolated incidents, and the CEO, Alexander Nix can be seen on several YouTube videos, explaining what his company was capable of. At the Concordia Summit he outlines the capabilities of the company. The incredulous faces of a panel of experts are revealing. In another video Nix is filmed explaining to some faux African politicians how the company would be able to fix an election. . . .
Using Facebook they may have had a significant effect on voter turnout (dissuading black voters) in America (Carol Cadwallader & Emma Graham-Harrison (Guardian). In that article, Wylie is quoted: "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons." Related information is reported by Janet Burns (Forbes) and by The Washington Post (Paywall). Carol Cadwallader who has done much good reporting on subjects such as this and related politics, is now at The Nerve.
One of the lawyers for New Mexico, Randi McGinn, said, "This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price." The Guardian report includes 9.9+17+25. This week it reported "a 26% increase in quarterly revenue up to $64.6bn". The valuation is $1.637 trillion, so like Google/Alphabet (above) this is not even going to put a dent in the spreadsheet. Those attorneys need to keep digging.
Lucas Ropek (TechCrunch) notes that "The tale of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal is long - and it keeps costing Meta gargantuan sums of money." Will Shanklin on Engadget calls these court decisions, "self-inflicted blows" and notes that the judge, "found that the company made misleading statements about the privacy of consumers in the state." The jury in the case found that there were some 43 million violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act and with $5,000 for each of these, the award could have been $219 billion. The state had asked for $35-40 billion, with Meta asking that this be no more than $3.45 billion so the $25 billion is a little over the average of the lowest and highest figures from the lawyers. The judge called Facebook's investigation, "willfully ineffective" noting "the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook's repeated misstatements." Meta has said it will appeal (unsurprisingly) and their chief legal officer called it "a tax on speech".
The fourth series of The Diplomat on Netflix has ended it with something of a blockbuster finale. I am in two minds as to whether there should be a series 5. Some rumors suggest that this is about to be confirmed by Netflix. I am not convinced. Fans of the series definitely want a new season after the stunning ending of series 4, and there is much more for the cast to do. The realist in me - the student of literature - sees that the drama surrounding that finale is an underline for the series. It would enable fans to speculate for more as to, what if. After Series 5 of Breaking Bad there was much speculation and Netflix spoiled it in some ways by a one-off special/ Leave them guessing. I have really enjoyed the series and wish all of the actors and the writers the best. It has been a lot of fun and there was some great writing.
Returning to Netflix this week is Lupin. Micha Frazer-Carroll (Guardian) presents an enthusiastic preview of series 4, noting how in earlier episodes Lupin. preceded the real life raid on the Louvre, but at the end of Series 3 was sent to jail. Just before his release in Series 4, and the possibility of a new crime-free life, Diop appears to be setup when a series of online attacks use the name Lupin suggesting he is about to take part in a number of heists even though he is still in prison. This French language series is worth watching for the inventiveness of the scenarios. English viewers may remember The Saint, done best by Roger Moore (I was not a fan of his Bond) whose chariot was a Volvo P1800, although there were a number of other versions with Val Kilmer doing a good job in the 1997 movie.
Also on Netflix, Matt Growcoot (PetaPixel) dropped a note this week that soon to arrive is a documentary on the photographer, Richard Avedon. I found this easily using the Netflix search option and have saved it for when it arrives on 11 November
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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