Linked List: October 16, 2025

Thursday, 16 October 2025

M5 MacBook Pro Does Not Include a Charger in the Box in Europe ★

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 (I double-checked). 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.

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal: ‘A Cartoonist’s Review of AI Art’ ★

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 — or a photograph — was shot using a digital camera 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.