Linked List: October 26, 2025

Sunday, 26 October 2025

The Talk Show: ‘You and Frank Sinatra’ 

For your weekend listening enjoyment, a new episode of America’s favorite 3-star podcast, with special guest Dan Moren. Topics include Atlas, ChatGPT’s new web browser (or anti-web browser) for the Mac; Apple’s loss in a “landmark” regulatory lawsuit in the UK regarding App Store commission rates; multiple reports of poor sales for the iPhone Air; and Apple’s M5 product announcements: MacBook Pro, iPads Pro, and Vision Pro.

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The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware Back in 2018, at the Tail End of the Intel Era 

Worth a re-link, following up on my post yesterday linking to Stephen Hackett’s “Boring Is What We Wanted”, here’s Rogue Amoeba co-founder Quentin Carnicelli, writing back in 2018:

At the time of the writing, with the exception of the $5,000 iMac Pro, no Macintosh has been updated at all in the past year. Here are the last updates to the entire line of Macs:

  • iMac Pro: 182 days ago
  • iMac: 374 days ago
  • MacBook: 374 days ago
  • MacBook Air: 374 days ago
  • MacBook Pro: 374 days ago
  • Mac Pro: 436 days ago
  • Mac Mini: 1,337 days ago

Worse, most of these counts are misleading, with many machines not seeing a true update in quite a bit longer. While the Mac Mini hasn’t seen an update of any kind in almost 4 years (nor, for that matter, a price drop), even that 2014 update was lackluster. [...]

Rather than attempting to wow the world with “innovative” new designs like the failed Mac Pro, Apple could and should simply provide updates and speed bumps to the entire lineup on a much more frequent basis. The much smaller Apple of the mid-2000s managed this with ease. Their current failure to keep the Mac lineup fresh, even as they approach a trillion dollar market cap, is both baffling and frightening to anyone who depends on the platform for their livelihood.

Five years into the Apple Silicon era, and Apple is doing exactly that. The situation has completely reversed. Apple Silicon has been an utter triumph for the Mac platform.

The Scenario Where ChatGPT’s WhatsApp Gateway Was Useful: Airplane Wi-Fi 

Yours truly on Friday, regarding the news that Meta is going to ban rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp:

Perhaps because I’m only a light user of WhatsApp, I had no idea that rival AI chatbots had accounts there. I just tried it with 1-800-ChatGPT and it seems pointless. It’s noticeably slower and uses an older model than just using the ChatGPT app.

A few readers have pointed to one good use case for this gateway: airplane Wi-Fi, particularly on airlines that offer “free” Wi-Fi for messaging apps like Apple Messages (iMessage) and WhatsApp. The ChatGPT app won’t work unless you pay for full Wi-Fi access on a flight, but WhatsApp does, and through January, you can interact with ChatGPT through that loophole. Clever.

Update: Similarly, these WhatsApp bot gateways are also useful in third-world countries with spotty Wi-Fi networking, but where Meta’s apps — including WhatsApp — are zero-rated against cellular network bandwidth caps. India is one prominent example. In some parts of the world, the only reliable networks are cellular, and the only “free Internet” is Meta’s suite of apps and services that are zero-rated on those cell networks.