2025-10-17 02:57:15
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, according to Apple’s online store. In the U.S. and all other countries outside of Europe, the new MacBook Pro comes with Apple’s 70W USB-C Power Adapter, but European customers miss out.
Apple has gradually stopped including chargers with many products over the years — a decision it has attributed to its environmental goals.
In this case, an Apple spokesperson told French website Numerama’s Nicolas Lellouche that the decision to not include a charger with this particular MacBook Pro was made in anticipation of a European regulation that will require Apple to provide customers with the option to purchase certain devices without a charger in the box, starting in April.
I’m not sure why there’s no power adapter in the box in the UK. The cited regulation is for the EU, and the UK, rather famously, left the EU in 2020.
But, still, amazing stuff continues to happen in Europe.
2025-10-16 21:40:49
Good and thoughtful graphic essay by Matthew Inman, expressing why he dislikes AI-generated art. It’s been widely linked to, largely approvingly. I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Near the start, Inman writes:
When I consume AI art, it also evokes a feeling. Good, bad, neutral — whatever.
Until I find out that it’s AI art.
Then I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored. This feeling isn’t a choice.
I think it very much is a choice. If your opinion about a work of art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else. If you refuse to watch Woody Allen movies because of his personal life, that’s a choice, but you’re choosing not to watch some of the best movies that have ever been made.
Stanley Kubrick said, “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically. Or whether a movie whether a movie was shot using digital cameras or on film. Or whether a novel was written using a computer or with pen and paper.
I think most “AI art” today completely sucks. But not because it was made using AI generation tools. It just sucks period. Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming.
2025-10-16 05:04:41
Apple today announced M5, delivering the next big leap in AI performance and advances to nearly every aspect of the chip. Built using third-generation 3-nanometer technology, M5 introduces a next-generation 10-core GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, enabling GPU-based AI workloads to run dramatically faster, with over 4× the peak GPU compute performance compared to M4. The GPU also offers enhanced graphics capabilities and third-generation ray tracing that combined deliver a graphics performance that is up to 45 percent higher than M4. M5 features the world’s fastest performance core, with up to a 10-core CPU made up of six efficiency cores and up to four performance cores. Together, they deliver up to 15 percent faster multithreaded performance over M4. M5 also features an improved 16-core Neural Engine, a powerful media engine, and a nearly 30 percent increase in unified memory bandwidth to 153GB/s. M5 brings its industry-leading power-efficient performance to the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro, allowing each device to excel in its own way. All are available for pre-order today.
Some thoughts and observations:
Apple Newsroom: “Apple Unveils New 14‑Inch MacBook Pro Powered by the M5 Chip, Delivering the Next Big Leap in AI for the Mac”.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the no-adjective M-series chip has always been an odd duck in the MacBook lineup. This “Pro”-but-not-pro spot in the MacBook lineup goes back to the Intel era, when there was a 13-inch MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar. That was the MacBook Pro that, in 2016, Phil Schiller suggested as a good choice for those who were then holding out for a MacBook Air with a retina display. (The first retina MacBook Air didn’t ship for another two years, in late 2018.) It’s more like a MacBook “Pro” than a MacBook Pro. The truly pro-spec’d MacBook Pros have M-series Pro and Max chips, and are available in both 14- and 16-inch sizes. The base 14-inch model, with the no-adjective M-series chip, is for people who probably would be better served with a MacBook Air but who wrongly believe they “need” a laptop with “Pro” in its name.
Here’s a timeline of no-adjective M-series chips and when they appeared in the 14-inch MacBook Pro:
M1 13-inch MacBook Pro: 10 November 2020. This MacBook Pro was one of the three Macs that debuted with the launch of Apple Silicon — the others were the MacBook Air and Mac Mini. The hardware looked exactly like the last generation Intel MacBook Pro. The M1 Pro and M1 Max models didn’t ship for another year (well, 11 months later), and those models brought with them the new form factor design that’s still with us today with the new M5 MacBook Pro.
M2 13-inch MacBook Pro: 6 June 2022. This model also stuck with the older Intel-era form factor, including the 13-inch, not 14-inch, display size.
M3 14-inch MacBook Pro: 30 October 2023. The “Scary Fast” event. This model debuted alongside the pro-spec’d M3 Pro and M3 Max 14- and 16-inch models.
M4 14-inch MacBook Pro: 30 October 2024. Exactly one year after the M3, and also alongside the M4 Pro and M4 Max models. What was different in 2024 with the M4 generation is that the M4 iPad Pros debuted back in early May, all by themselves.
M5 14-inch MacBook Pro: 15 October 2025 (today). What’s different with today’s announcement is that it is not alongside the M5 Pro and M5 Max models, but is alongside the M5 iPad Pros.
This raises the question of when to expect those M5 Pro/Max models. The rumor mill suggests “early 2026”. I suspect that’s right, based on nothing other than the fact that if they were going to be announced this year, Apple almost certainly would have announced the entire M5 generation MacBook lineup together.
Basically, this is just a speed bump upgrade over the just-plain M4 MacBook Pro. But annual — or at least regular — speed bumps are a good thing. The alternative is years-long gaps between hardware refreshes.
Apple Newsroom: “Apple Introduces the Powerful New iPad Pro With the M5 Chip”:
Featuring a next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 delivers a big boost in performance for iPad Pro users, whether they’re working on cutting-edge projects or tapping into AI for productivity. The new iPad Pro delivers up to 3.5× the AI performance than iPad Pro with M4 and up to 5.6× faster than iPad Pro with M1. N1, the new Apple-designed wireless networking chip, enables the latest generation of wireless technologies with support for Wi-Fi 7 on iPad Pro. The C1X modem comes to cellular models of iPad Pro, delivering up to 50 percent faster cellular data performance than its predecessor with even greater efficiency, allowing users to do more on the go.
I think the N1 wireless chip and C1X modem are more interesting generation-over-generation improvements than the M5 chip. Thanks to the N1, these iPad Pro models support Wi-Fi 7 — today’s new M5 14-inch MacBook Pro does not. I would wager rather heavily that the upcoming M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models will support Wi-Fi 7 (probably via the N1 chip, or perhaps even an “N1X” or something).
Other than that, this too is a speed bump upgrade.
Apple Newsroom: “Apple Vision Pro Upgraded With the M5 Chip and Dual Knit Band”:
The upgraded Vision Pro also comes with the soft, cushioned Dual Knit Band to help users achieve an even more comfortable fit, and visionOS 26, which unlocks innovative spatial experiences, including widgets, new Personas, an interactive Jupiter Environment, and new Apple Intelligence features with support for additional languages.
The new Dual Knit Band ($99 on its own) looks like a hybrid of the more attractive Solo Knit Band (which did not have a strap that went over the top of your head) and the Dual Loop Band (which did have an over-the-head strap, but which looked somewhat orthopedic). It’s a tacit acknowledgement that physical comfort has been a real problem for many people who’ve tried Vision Pro. (Me, personally, I find using it with the Solo Knit Band comfortable for as long as I care to use it — which is typically just 2–3 hours, tops.)
There are over 1 million apps and thousands of games on the App Store, hundreds of 3D movies on the Apple TV app, and all-new series and films in Apple Immersive with a selection of live NBA games coming soon.
Translation: Hey, there’s actually a growing library of immersive content to watch, software to use, and games to play for this thing now.
With M5, Apple Vision Pro renders 10 percent more pixels on the custom micro-OLED displays compared to the previous generation, resulting in a sharper image with crisper text and more detailed visuals. Vision Pro can also increase the refresh rate up to 120Hz for reduced motion blur when users look at their physical surroundings, and an even smoother experience when using Mac Virtual Display. Vision Pro with M5 works alongside the purpose-built R1 chip, which processes input from 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones, and streams new images to the displays within 12 milliseconds to create a real-time view of the world. The high-performance battery now supports up to two and a half hours of general use, and up to three hours of video playback, all on a single charge.
It’s merely another speed bump upgrade alongside the other two speed bump upgrades today, but a bit more dramatic given that the Vision Pro is jumping from the M2 to M5. No price drop, no change to the form factor. But Apple’s interest in the platform is very much alive.
2025-10-16 00:46:12
Luke Bouma, writing for Cord Cutters:
In a seismic shift for the television industry, TiVo Corporation has quietly pulled the plug on its storied digital video recorder line, effectively ending an era that redefined how consumers interacted with broadcast content. As of early October 2025, the company’s official website has scrubbed all references to its hardware DVR products, including the once-revered TiVo Edge models designed for cable subscribers and over-the-air antenna users. Visitors searching for these devices now encounter a streamlined catalog that omits any mention of physical recording hardware, signaling a complete withdrawal from the retail DVR market.
This move culminates decades of gradual decline for TiVo’s hardware ambitions, which peaked in the early 2000s when the brand became synonymous with effortless time-shifting of television programming. Launched in 1999, TiVo’s DVRs introduced features like one-touch recording, commercial skipping, and intuitive search capabilities that made traditional TV schedules feel obsolete. At its zenith, the company boasted millions of subscribers, forcing cable providers and networks to adapt to empowered viewers who could pause live broadcasts or binge-watch at will. The TiVo Edge, introduced in 2021 as a hybrid device supporting both cable cards and streaming, represented the final evolution of this hardware legacy, blending OTA tuners with 4K support and expanded storage options. Yet, even as it garnered praise for superior interface design and reliability, sales dwindled amid the cord-cutting revolution.
The writing has been on the wall for years. We’ve been a TiVo house for 25 years, but their hardware has gotten worse over the years. I forget what our second-to-last TiVo model was, but it died in 2021, and we bought a TiVo Edge. The Edge was often unreliable, and sometimes needed weekly reboots to keep working. (System software updates eventually fixed that.) But the hardware failed this summer. We’d only had it four years.
And, the Edge system software UI was a disaster, and a huge regression from the old TiVo interface. Almost everything was worse in the new “modern” TiVo interface from the old one: navigating shows you’d already recorded, the live-right-now TV guide, the interface for setting up a show to record — all of that went from really good and intuitive to clunky and confusing and slow. The one and only thing our TiVo Edge remained excellent at was playback. Fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing — nothing else compares to TiVo for that. Even Apple’s own TV app on an Apple TV box doesn’t fast-forward or rewind with anything close to the precision and low latency TiVo’s devices have always offered. My first TiVo from 25 years ago had better fast-forward and rewind than anything on Apple TV (let alone other, lesser streaming boxes) today.
But the overall TiVo experience has been so bad — and getting worse — for so long that I’m not sad at all that they’re getting out of the game. TiVo’s one job was to provide a best-of-breed experience and they lost the plot on that a decade ago. Fuck ’em.
2025-10-15 21:44:39
Halo Fund:
Halo Fund, a new $1 billion growth fund founded by Ryan Smith and Ryan Sweeney, today announced a strategic secondary investment in 1Password, a leader in identity security and pioneer of Extended Access Management. Halo Fund is joined in this investment by legendary technology leaders, including Flume Ventures with Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy and former Zscaler Chief Strategy Officer Manoj Apte. This transaction underscores strong demand from innovators and investors to join 1Password’s journey.
Well I’m sure this will halt 1Password’s descent into enterprise/cross-platform shittiness.
2025-10-15 02:45:39
Adam Engst, at TidBITS:
Apple’s new Liquid Glass interface design brings transparency and blur effects to all Apple operating systems, but many users find it distracting or difficult to read. Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable. Although the relevant Accessibility settings are quite similar across macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, I separate them because they offer different levels of utility in each.
Comprehensive, illustrated overview of the various Accessibility settings (and, on MacOS 26 Tahoe, hidden command-line defaults settings) that let you adjust the transparency and contrast of Liquid Glass across the various Apple OS 26 interfaces. A useful guide for today — and, I bet, a useful look back at the first versions of Liquid Glass for the future.
