eXtensions - Friday 28 August 2026
By Graham K. Rogers
We were sorry to hear of the deaths of two well-loved entertainers this week: Dolly Parton, and Tim Curry. An Apple "Surprise and Shine" event is scheduled for 9 September. We expect new iPhones and maybe more. There were unexpected surprises this week from Apple with new M6 and M5 Ultra chips, plus new Mac Mini variants and a Mac Studio with new chips. A week of surprises extended to television from Apple and Netflix, including the finale of 100 Years of Solitude.
This week one of the most famous, and best-loved entertainers, Dolly Parton passed away after a briefly illness. Praise for her was almost worldwide and my timeline was full of articles about her and her life. One of the most interesting was from the renowned publication, Nature who mentioned her performances and that "she also left a mark on science, public health and education" adding that "[s]he donated to medical centres, vaccine research, and disaster relief" (Elizabeth Gibney & Dhruv Shenai). The article goes on to mention some of the positive ways Dolly Parton helped others: $1 million to help the development of the Modena vaccine; raising money for a center for women's services; donating $1 million to paediatric infectious disease research at Vanderbilt; an undisclosed gift for East Tennessee Children's Hospital in Knoxville to fund a new paediatric residency programme, rural telehealth and specialist recruitment. Unlike some well-known billionaires, Parton used her wealth to make the world a better place.This week also saw the death of Tim Curry who will ever be remembered as Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He had suffered a stroke in recent years and was clearly unwell. My own best memory of the movie was seeing it at a British university that catered mainly to engineers and sports students (Sebastian Coe was there at the time). I felt that most of those watching had missed the point. My favorite part was early in the movie when he invites Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick up to the lab and pauses, with magnificent timing in the middle of the word, "antici . . . pation" which delightfully emphasises the meaning of the word. Curry also played the impatient concierge in Home Alone 2 a movie that also had a cameo by the current US president. The Guardian (Michael Coveney has an obituary that includes other productions he appeared in, showing a full range of his talents.
It is widely reported that Apple has announced a "Surprise and Shine" event that is to be held at Apple Park on 9 September. The date means that John Ternus is expected to be the ring master, although Cook may well be in the audience. We were reminded this week that on the resignation of Steve Jobs, already quite ill, on 24 August 2011 - 15 years ago this week - that Cook took over as CEO. Despite this being the personal choice of Steve Jobs, many commentators were unforgiving, some insisting that he be replaced. Despite the subsequent growth in the company, those same critics have been reluctant to give him much credit, finding a way in almost every case to suggest that Jobs was initiator.
This event is expected to be when the iPhone 18 will be officially announced, although there may be other products and surprises outlined during the event, like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Some reports also suggest that the long-rumored foldable phone (iPhone Ultra?) will be announced. There is an interesting conflict here as Ryan Christoffel (9to5Mac) reports on a rumor from Evan Blass who insists that as well as black and white phones, there will be a red version too. This apparently contradicts what Mark Gurman has reported. A clash of rumors.
We may also expect information at the event on when the OS 27 releases will be available. The live broadcast (including much pre-recorded video) takes place at 10 pm Cupertino time, which is 12 midnight here. Andrew Orr also notes that this is "1 a.m. in China, 2 a.m. in Japan, and 3 a.m. in Sydney". Apple released developer beta versions of its operating systems on Tuesday and I later saw that public beta 5 for macOS had been made available (Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac). I installed this after making sure that I had backed up the MacBook Neo I am using for this version of Golden Gate. I have seen almost nothing in the betas that could cause problems when I eventually update the other Macs I have. None of the online comments I have seen have suggested that this or the other OS releases will be problematic when the final versions are released. I only ever had one beta release that ever gave me problems, but that was a few years ago. With the Time Machine backups of the previous OS that I had it was fairly easy to return to that version and carry on working. That should be a normal process for all users, but I am aware that so many fail to make any backups and run the risk of problems if ever something goes wrong either during normal operations or installing an updated operating system.
Recent comments online had been hinting at a number of products that Apple was about to release, although these were said to be coming after the announcement of the new iPhones which has been normal in the past. Online sources were therefore thrown into a bit of a tizzy on Tuesday evening (here) when new Apple silicon and new Macs were announced, including an unexpected update to the Mac mini. Chance Miller (9to5Mac), among others, reported on the announcement of two new Apple silicon chips: the 2nm M6 with 12-core CPU, and the M5 Ultra. The M6 had a new configuration, with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. Hartley Charlton (MacRumors) comments on the 2nm process used for the M6 chip and how this contributes to "the chip's overall gains in performance and power efficiency." The 9to5Mac article has fairly full technical details of the chips. Miller also outlines the M5 Ultra. The UltraFusion technology used by Apple, connects two dual-die M5 Max chips producing the "first quad-die chip architecture".
These chips debut in a new Mac mini, which was a surprise to some, and an updated Mac Studio, making it the most powerful Mac ever. Chance Miller follows up with information on the new Mac Studio which has two configurations depending on the chip: the M5 Max and the M5 Ultra which he calls "[t]he real star of the show". The M5 Max Mac Studio starts at $2,499, with the M5 Ultra device at $5,499. These are shown here with the Mac Studio Max starting at 89,900 baht, and the Ultra at 199,900 baht. Both are currently unavailable here. Several sources have reported that those who have the M4 Mac mini on order currently will be receiving the M6 instead (Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac). In another article Chance Miller outlines the new Mac mini which has two configurations: one with the M6 chip ($899) and the Mac mini Pro with the M5 Pro chip ($1699). Like the Mac Studio, there are several configurations depending on memory, storage and the specific chip core setup. In Thailand, the base M6 Mac mini is shown as 32,900 baht, which should be considered in the light of other recent increases to the price of chips worldwide. The Mac mini with the M5 Pro chip starts at 69,900 baht. As with the Mac Studio, neither is currently available. Jason Snell (6 Colors) also offers input on the new chips and the Macs, while Jermey Gray (Petapixel) also outlines the chips and the new computers, with a nod to the photographer.
Another feature of the updated Mac Studio is that they can be clustered using Thunderbolt 5 and remote direct memory access (RDMA), "creating a shared memory pool for running larger AI models" (Hartley Charlton, MacRumors). Another small note from Hartley Charlton reports that genlock is now available on these new Macs. For those interested in video production, this means that devices attached to the Mac will have the frame rate synchronized so (one benefit) no black bars in the playback. Reader comments were informative and positive in the main. William Gallagher (AppleInsider) provides more information on this feature and why it will be useful.
In another article William Gallagher looks at how the Mac Studio Ultra is able to support up to eight screens. The M5 Max Mac Studio can support up to five. In the article he plays out some of the scenarios in which multiple screens are of value to the users. He mentions movie and image editing; engineers; and surgeons. The article has an image of racks that will hold up to a dozen screens, presumably for multi-computer setups. I have also seen multiple screens used in transport technology, for signaling and route designation.
|
|
There was a total surprise for me on Facebook this week when one of the short clips that Apple seems to favour these days appeared. I recognised this immeditely as Invasion, but as I have mentioned before there has been almost nothing on this since the end of Season 3. Now this unexpected clip of Series 3 has appeared reminding us of the existence of Invasion. I am left wondering if this is a teaser for a further series some time in the future. That was followed a few minutes later in my timeline by a couple of minutes of clips from Foundation. Is Apple about to announce new series of each of these? I do hope so.
This idea took root a little deeper a short while later when a similar clip of Murderbot was shown with a release date of 16 May, but as that was last year and there are already reports related to the second season, things may be looking up, particularly with the list of releases that are known to be in the pipeline. Further clips suggested that a second series is in production.
Episode 9 of Silo (series 3) appeared this week and there was a massive surprise for me. Peter Gabriel appeared, playing himself, as one of the potential silo denizens in the flashback to current times. He was rehearsing "Here comes the flood" (appropriately as it turns out) on a piano. He spoke to Per Stenson, the wealthy mastermind behind the construction, who is played by Colin Hanks, looking and sounding more like his father every year.
And then, right at the end of the episode, a massive surprise.
A posting on Facebook tells us that The Gentlemen, Series 2 is to arrive on Netflix on 3 September and hinted about a third series as well. I enjoyed Series 1, but I would also like to see the previous movie version of The Gentlemen, also by Guy Ritchie, that came out in 2019 with a cast that included Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrel, Hugh Grant, and several others. That is available on AppleTV now, but I will have to connect through Monomax. I have been avoiding these external links, but this may break that dam.
Recently, Netflix has been making several older series available for users here, and a number that I have been seeking for years are now available, although there are not enough BBC series, and those that were available rarely have the final series. One of the new arrivals that popped onto the Netflix screen when I turned on the tv this week was The Tudors, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I watched episode 1 right away.
The BBC has a stellar reputation for TV drama going back several years. It maintains that even if the news programs are less credible these days. One of the most famous dramatisations was of The Forsyte Saga. This appeared in 1967 and when it was repeated on Sunday evenings in 1968 had the effect of causing some churches to change the times of their evening services (BBC).
I read the book, which won Galsworthy the Nobel Prize for Literature, several years later and was surprised by the symbolism I saw in the pages. Not just the rise and fall of a family, but the changes and decay of Victorian society. This week I saw the final episode, of the second part of 100 Years of Solitude, a highly symbolic work by Gabriel García Márquez who also won a Nobel Prize for his work. The Netflix series was made by the Colombian company, Dynamo, who have been faithfull to the original work. It is wonderfully filmed. The cast are all Colombian. The colors in the series are beautifully presented, especially in the Buendía house in the fictional town of Macondo (itself based on Aracataca, the home town of Márquez). There is no attempt to conceal the magic or the symbolism (magical realism), so surreal events are accepted as normal (See also: Gabriel Garcia Ochoa). When the final (extended) episode was over, I sat silently, not wishing to spoil the moment. This was good television.
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.
For further information, e-mail to
Back to eXtensions
Back to Home Page