eXtensions - Sunday 30 March 2025
By Graham K. Rogers
With an earthquake to end a busy week, my output has been limited. Developer releases suggest that Apple will soon be putting out new versions of its operating systems; and with just over 2 months before WWDC there are ideas on what might be coming. Adolescence is still being discussed widely online and there is other good television to be had. AI and related problems have been to the forefront at work, with student writing, and a workshop on AI and writing. An old favorite, GIMP, has been updated.
Everything went haywire here on Friday afternoon while I was helping a couple of students with project proposal writing, I suddenly felt dizzy. I looked at the students who had confused looks on their faces, and outside the office (it has a glass front), others were obviously worried about something. I remembered feeling the same a few years back when I lived in a Bangkok condo. I realized it was an earthquake and not a senior moment. I said to the students, Out. Out now. Already several more were beginning to exit.
Where I work (and live) some 20 kms outside Bangkok, the effects seem to have been fairly light, but those in Bangkok had it far worse, with tower buildings swaying, high-level swimming pools dumping water on the ground, and one building under construction collapsing. This was a progressing collapse, like the 1993 Royal Plaza Hotel in Nakhon Ratchasima, leaving several floors of the building stacked up with no space left between each level. Some 43 souls were reported missing (later revised to 113). Some have been rescued from the rubble. The earthquake was close to Mandalay with some reports giving a magnitude of 7.7 (others 8.2). There were 4 aftershocks. The wide-availability of devices that record video and photographs, and the use of social media, meant that within a couple of hours images of the damage, and the panic, were available world wide.
These are also likely to be valuable in analysis. For example, the collapsing building can be seen from several angles so it will be possible to pinpoint the points that failed initially. One of the videos that went out to news media worldwide made me smile as the comments of one person witnessing the collapse used words that will probable not be in any guide book. I was in awe of the way the building collapsed, but reminded myself each time that I was also watching the probable death of several people. Another video was of a collapsing crane (there were several), but in some transmissions this was slowed down and as the clip zoomed in, sadly we were able to see the crane operator come out of the cab and fall towards the ground.
Most malls, and many condos were closed for checks, although with the way building regulations have developed over the years, including references to earthquakes, the tall buildings swayed but did not fall. The one that did fall here (above) was still under construction so the protections had yet to be installed. Bridges were also seen swaying, but these also had been built properly and did not fail. The same applies to the metro systems, with bridges, elevated sections and tunnels. Videos showed these taking a good shaking.
Those in charge stopped the trains running immediately and checks were carried out overnight. The trains were running by 5am Saturday. My only inconvenience (apart from my office experience) was when I went into Bangkok on Saturday to find that the malls opened at noon rather than the normal 10am. I also noticed that some menus were unusually reporting items unavailable. If those were the only problems I had to face, I am extremely grateful in the circumstances.
We can expect new releases of Apple's operating systems in the next few days. With macOS (15.4) the developer releases suggest that the same Mail organisation that inflicted iOS in 18.1 will appear on the Mac Karen Haslam (MacWorld). I was disappointed by this so will probably turn this part of the Mac update off too. The iOS and iPadOS updates will have other new features and Jeff Benjamin (9to5Mac) outlines some of the 50 new features that the Release Candidate has revealed.
One of these is the Mail feature on the iPad as well as the Mac (I will have the same response) and new features in Photos. I am always keen on such changes although not always happy with what Apple has done to this app (on all platforms) over the years. As always there are to be more new emojis. I am totally unmoved by this part of the announcement. A second release candidate was released on Friday, Juli Clover (MacRumors) reports, so there is still some tinkering to be done (the actual release will doubtless be followed by 15.4.1 not long after). She adds that the release is expected in early April, which is next week.
Looking to the future, Chance Miller (9to5Mac) reports that Apple has announced the dates for this year's WWDC. These follow the usual early June schedules of previous years: 9-13 June. The event(s) will be held at Apple Park although we can expect that most developers will take advantage of the free online format. Not all: one of my former students has attended the past couple of years, giving me some unique photographs, although I am not sure if he will be going this time. Amber Neely (AppleInsider) outlines details of how to apply to attend WWDC live.
The event will give us a look at the features that are to be expected in the upcoming OS releases and will also give a hint at what the next iPhone can do, although confirmation of the devices will not come until later in the year. However, WWDC information will fix the direction that the upcoming devices will take as this is the time the specifications are fixed for ordering of parts and for manufacturing. Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) outlines 15 new Apple products that are expected to be released this year, including the iPhones.
I have had a little time to watch television in the last week or so after recovering from the Netflix drama, Adolescence. This has garnered high viewing numbers not only in the UK, where it has opened a lively debate (including in Parliament), but in the USA too. Not all UK shows are well received there, but this one seems to be working. Two weeks after I saw it, the series is still generating online content. I followed that with a Polish series, Just One Look (with English subtitles), based on a Harlan Coben book. This week I ran through an American series: The Residence. Set in the White House, it stretches the imagination a little. It focuses on the investigation of a murder of a White House usher, played by Giancarlo Esposito, that is investigated by a detective played by Uzo Aduba. It is described by IMDb as a "screwball whodunnit. It is entertaining, if a little far-fetched at times.
A pleasant surprise for me was the arrival of TotenFrau (Woman of the Dead), Series 2, an Austrian murder series. The Woman in the title is a mortician and uses her skills to dispose of the bodies of 5 men who were responsible for the death of her husband, and a whole lot else besides. After watching the first 2 episodes, it looks as if the follow-up series is as strong as the first.
After my Netflix binge, I had a look at Apple TV where there are a number of offerings lined up for me. I still cannot pluck up the enthusiasm to watch the rest of Severance, Series 2 (I saw episode 1 only). It is highly rated, but I feel uncomfortable with the whole unreal concept. This week, The Studio became available and I did watch the first episode, although my view formed (in part) earlier when I saw the trailer a while back still holds: Why does everyone shout so much? I have now added to that with, Why does everyone swear so much? (noting that Tammy Duckworth is (last week) the first to drop the F-bomb in a Congressional statement, as related by Bob Beszchizza of Boing Boing.
I stopped watching The Witcher because of the excessive and unreal (medieval context) swearing. I am not averse to swearing in context (see Adolescence), but some writers seem to use it as a substitute for dialogue. In The Witcher and in other programs, it had become unrealistic. Malcolm Owen refers to The Studio as Apple's new Severance. I am yet to be convinced, although the appearance of Martin Scorses and Steve Buscemi as themselves was interesting. Owen notes that critics are happy with it, viewers less so. I find California-centric viewing tedious at times. Roll on the reappearance of Slow Horses, Foundation, and Invasion. These feel long overdue.
Once in a while, I am extremely busy at work. This is one of those times. I am now at the end of a series of writing workshops that took much preparation. The final session had me a little worried. I also have a regular task helping undergraduate students from the Electrical Engineering Department. All engineering students need to have an internship and complete a senior year project to qualify for graduation. Before they can start the project, they must write a proposal. Electrical Engineering students write this in English and for years I have guided the students. The consultations - face to face learning is more effective than online submissions - take a lot out of me (and them) as much as I enjoy this.
The students used to write these proposals in the first semester of their final year. For years I pushed for moving this to the 3rd year, to leave them more free time to work on the projects. For the last couple of years, this has been the case, so I work with year 3 students in the second semester. That is now. At the start, they produce an outline showing what they hope to do and how they intend to do it, but with no experience of project work or planning, they do not understand how to go about things. That is part of my job. In my outline of the task, one of the things I say to the students is, "I am not inside your brain." Just because they understand what they are going to do - that also changes during the process - they have to learn that others need to understand as well.
Each group is different. Some are properly motivated, others less so. Most have limited English, and little experience of writing (even in Thai), so this is a learning experience for all of them. I have some tight guidelines for the initial writing, but not all students manage to follow these and need firm advice. As each group brings its work for me to look at, I have to read, consider, analyze and comment. I then send them away: Go fix.
Last weekend, I also had to read an article by a graduate student that was being prepared for submission to a journal. Like undergraduate students, the graduates (from Thailand and other countries) produce writing that is affected by their own languages, their high school learning and their respective cultures. This one was also heavily affected by AI input. I understand why non-native speakers are going overboard with this as it seems to make writing in English, which they must do for articles and thesis work, much easier. Google Translate also makes output easier, except any output from that source is more likely to be ungrammatical, include word-choice problems and more. It gives the basic idea, but not an accurate translation. AI may not be the solution they think it is.
Input from AI sources has other problems and, for someone with experience of reading and writing English content for many years, it just looks wrong, even though the text generally has quite good grammar. There is more to a sentence or paragraph than grammar and AI is fraught with problems that the less-experienced writer will not be able to see. I asked the ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence to write me a paragraph giving reasons why AI causes problems.
Although the ideas were fair, the word choice and sentence structure were just not me. I would never write like that. Some of my academic colleagues, whose own writing causes me sleepless nights, cannot see that their output, or that of their students, has serious shortcomings: sentence constructions, wordiness, questionable word choices, repetitions, and other problems that need much work before the content would be suitable for publication.
If any good came out of the work I did on that paper, it is that it provided me with information that I was able to use to bolster my third workshop presentation: on the use of AI in academic writing. I view this as unethical. Worse, however, is that if students increasingly use AI to replace their own writing, they will lose the writing skills they now have. And if schools and universities are more willing to allow their students to rely on AI output, down the road we will have fewer people who know how to write. I was pleased with the presentation, which produced some useful questions and comments at the end. I will consider those too if I manage to produce a written article from the information.
I did take some time in the last week to download some new software. Mark Tyson, writing on Tom's Hardware tells us that, after some while in development, Version 3 of the Open Source, graphics editor, GIMP, has finally been released. After reading Tyson's article, I looked up the URL for GIMP and found the downloads page.
There are different versions available for Intel and Apple silicon Macs (and different ways to download the files - BitTorrent or direct). I chose the Apple silicon direct download, which at 232.1MB took only seconds to download with my home internet link. The download was a few minutes at the office. Release Notes are also available online. Once downloaded the DMG file expands to something over 733MB and this can be dropped onto the Applications folder icon. Clicking on the app, activates a warning about provenance: "Are you really sure you want to open it?" The panel also notes that the file has been checked for malicious software.
The one thing I was disappointed about was the inability to open the Photos Library folder (Operation not permitted), so to try out an image and look at the available features, I exported an image and opened that. When I tried at the office, I also dragged an image from the Photos Library display and dropped it on the GIMP icon. That opened OK, but was sized 360 x 360 px (at 300 pixels/inch). Exporting would have allowed me to set the size a little differently. There is a lot to take in here as the application has a wide range of tools. Most of these are available in other programs I have (Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, et al) but the advantage here for some would be the cost. Although it is Open Source and maintained by volunteers, there is an option for a donation.
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.
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