512 Pixels

This week on the podcast:

Clips has joined Music Memos and Cards in the Great Beyond, just as the M5 was announced for the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro.

Apple Newsroom:

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 4x the peak GPU compute performance compared to M4.1 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 M4.1 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.2 Together, they deliver up to 15 percent faster multithreaded performance over M4.1 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.1 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.

“M5 ushers in the next big leap in AI performance for Apple silicon,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With the introduction of Neural Accelerators in the GPU, M5 delivers a huge boost to AI workloads. Combined with a big increase in graphics performance, the world’s fastest CPU core, a faster Neural Engine, and even higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 brings far more performance and capabilities to MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro.”

(I think Apple really wants us all to know how great these chips are for AI, but it’s hard to tell.)

The MacStories crew has all the details:

• Apple Reveals the M5 Apple Vision Pro
• Apple Debuts New 14” MacBook Pro with the M5 Chip
• Apple Announces New M5 iPad Pros

One thing that caught my eye in Apple’s press releases was a comparison of the new MacBook Pro to both Intel and M1 models:

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 is a big upgrade. When compared to Intel-based systems, it delivers up to 86x faster AI performance, up to 30x faster GPU performance with ray tracing, and up to 5.5x faster CPU performance.1 M1 upgraders will experience up to 6x faster AI performance, up to 6.8x faster GPU performance with ray tracing, and up to 2x faster CPU performance.

It’s wild to see how far Apple silicon has come since the M1 launched five years ago. I can’t wait to see what the M5 Pro, M5 Max, and (maybe) the M5 Ultra will deliver when we see them, assumedly next year.

After seeing my buddies at Studio Neat launch an amazing new patch, I fell down the rabbit hole that is the NeXT logo.

Dan and Tom linked to this video, which shows Paul Rand delivering his work to Steve Jobs and his team at NeXT. I hadn’t seen this before, and boy, I wish it were longer than a mere 80 seconds in length:

Rand did powerful and authoritative work when it came to corporate logos, as reflected upon by Jobs in a 1993 interview:

I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, “No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.”

Andrew Cunningham, writing at Ars:

This end-of-support date comes about a decade after the initial release of Windows 10, which is typical for most Windows versions. But it comes just four years after Windows 10 was replaced by Windows 11, a version with stricter system requirements that left many older-but-still-functional PCs with no officially supported upgrade path. As a result, Windows 10 still runs on roughly 40 percent of the world’s Windows PCs (or around a third of US-based PCs), according to StatCounter data.

But this end-of-support date also isn’t set in stone. Home users with Windows 10 PCs can enroll in Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which extends the support timeline by another year. We’ve published directions for how to do this here—while you do need one of the Microsoft accounts that the company is always pushing, it’s relatively trivial to enroll in the ESU program for free.

Home users can only get a one-year stay of execution for Windows 10, but IT administrators and other institutions with fleets of Windows 10 PCs can also pay for up to three years of ESUs, which is also roughly the amount of time users can expect new Microsoft Defender antivirus updates and updates for core apps like Microsoft Edge.

As pointed out by Eric Slivka, Apple snuck in a little product news in its press release about F1: The Movie being available for streaming in December:

Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.

At this point, none of that vibrant new identity is live, but it’ll be fun to see it as it rolls out.

For months, the city of Memphis, xAI, and partners have been planning a wastewater plant to provide water for cooling the company’s first supercomputer in Memphis. Last week, ground was broken on the site, as reported by Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian:

The plant will take wastewater treated at the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson’s Wastewater Treatment Plant and push it through technology known as ceramic membranes. Those membranes — thousands of them — will filter contaminants out of the water and make it usable as an industrial coolant. It will then cool the data center and the TVA Allen Combined Cycle Plant.

Brent Mayo, xAI’s senior manager for site build and infrastructure, said that the membranes, stacked on top of each other, would be taller than four Empire State Buildings.

A nearby steel manufacturer was going to use the plant to recycle water used at their plant, but now no longer will. This means that Nucor Steel will still dump its used water into the Mississippi River, but could mean xAI could use the plant for its second datacenter as well:

Mayo said the facility could also potentially serve Colossus 2, the much larger data center the company is building about 8.5 miles away in Whitehaven, along the Mississippi border.

How the purified wastewater would get to Colossus 2 remains unclear. One way could be by truck. Another could be for xAI to purchase easements for a water pipeline through much of Southwest Memphis, which could be a difficult undertaking.

On its website, xAI says:

We are investing well north of $80 million to build a state-of-the-art water recycling plant in the next two years, protecting approximately 4.745 billion gallons of the Memphis Aquifer each year, and eliminating the need for our facility to draw from the Memphis Aquifer for industrial use.

In addition to serving our facility, the water recycling plant will serve other major industrial users in the area, which will further reduce demand on the Memphis Aquifer and protect the City’s current and future water needs.

Protect Our Aquifer, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the massive aquifers under the Memphis region, shared this statement:

This commitment by xAI sets a new standard for industry; we can and must use water responsibly in the Mid-South. Our drinking water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer should never be the default source for cooling water.

We expect Tennessee Valley Authority to continue being a part of this effort by signing the End User Agreement and reducing their aquifer use by up to seven million gallons of water per day. We are disappointed that Nucor Steel has decided not to move forward as an end-user at this time and instead stay fully dependent on the Aquifer. We hope they reconsider.

The group does have four areas in which it would like to see progress, and it’s hard to disagree with any of them:

• Charges xAI a fair fee for wastewater access;
• Invests in workforce development for Memphians focused in the nearby communities;
• Provides public and educational access for tours and STEM learning; and
• Reduces liability for the City through strong public-private partnerships.

Classic Mac Gaming on YouTube has a great video about a true classic for Mac OS:

This week on Mac Power Users:

Everyone’s favorite engineer-turned-blogger returns to the show to discuss the state of iPhone cases, the argument for LLMs, and his go-to automation tools — and why Shortcuts on the Mac isn’t one of them.

Apple Support:

The Clips app is no longer being updated, and will no longer be available for download for new users as of October 10, 2025. You can continue to use Clips on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 or earlier.

Save your Clips videos to your photo library or another location. You can save videos with any effects you might have added in Clips or save individual clips without effects. Then, watch your videos in other apps like Photos or make new videos with individual clips using iMovie or other third-party apps like InShot, VN Video Editor, and GoPro Quik.

If you previously downloaded the Clips app, you can still redownload it from your Apple account in the App Store.

Quick Look is a great Finder feature, and now it can see into folders thanks to a free Mac app named Folder Quick Look. Here’s what it is like in action:

John Gruber, in his link to it:

Looks, feels, and works like a feature that ought to be built into the Finder itself. Cool.

We just wound down our annual St. Jude fundraiser. The Relay community was once again incredibly generous, donating $753,756 to help end childhood cancer around the world. This makes 2025 our third-biggest fundraiser ever.

When we started this back in 2019, we just wanted to raise a few thousand dollars, but as of today, we’ve raised a total of $4.8 million!

That’s an eye-watering amount of money, and I am deeply humbled by it. I view this work as an important part of Relay’s legacy. When we’re gone and the RSS feeds grow stale, St. Jude will still be at work saving the lives of children around the world with the most advanced treatments known to humankind. That’s not a small thing, and as the father of a pediatric cancer survivor, it’s a very personal thing.

There are a lot of people who put a lot of work into the campaign each year. The folks we work with at St. Jude and ALSAC are just the best, and it’s an honor to be a true partner with them in this project. We spend a lot of time together putting this together each year, and it never grows old.

On the Relay side of things, my co-hosts have my forever gratitude. Every show at Relay — and beyond — have taken ownership of this campaign. This may have started with my story, but now our St. Jude work is seen as personal for all of us.

Then there’s this nutty bunch, who joined me for the best Podcastathon yet. Being on for 12 hours is not easy, but they made it so much fun:

(It’s hard to believe that back when we started, it was just me and Myke with a folding table and a ball pit. We’ve come a long way!)

Extra thanks goes out to the rest of our team at Relay for supporting this work. From Kerry working on our talking points to our Discord moderators cultivating excitement about the fundraiser, this is truly a team effort.

A few years ago, folks started hosting their own community fundraisers during September alongside us. The passion and creativity this has brought to the month has been inspiring, and has given the whole thing a much more community-driven feel, which I love.

Most of all, thank you. Each year, you take time and your hard-earned money and spend them on something amazing at St. Jude. While I hope you will never need the hospital’s care, know that families who do are eternally grateful for your love and support.

Online privacy isn’t just something you should be hoping for – it’s something you should expect. You should ensure your browsing history and app usage stays private and is not harvested by ad networks.

By blocking ad trackers in Safari, Magic Lasso Adblock stops you being followed by ads around the web.

And with App Ad Blocking in Magic Lasso v5.0, it also extends protection to all apps on your device including News apps, Social media, Games and other browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

Built from the ground up to protect your privacy, Magic Lasso is an efficient, high performance and native Safari ad blocker that blocks all intrusive ads, trackers and annoyances on your iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Users rely on Magic Lasso Adblock to:

• Remove ad trackers, annoyances and background crypto-mining scripts
• Browse common websites 2.0x faster
• Block all YouTube ads, including pre-roll video ads
• Block ads in apps using App Ad Blocking
• Double battery life during heavy web browsing
• Lower data usage when on the go

With over 5,000 five star reviews; it’s simply the best ad blocker for your iPhone, iPad and Mac.

And unlike some other ad blockers, Magic Lasso Adblock respects your privacy, doesn’t accept payment from advertisers and is 100% supported by its community of users.

So, join over 350,000 users and download Magic Lasso Adblock from the App Store, Mac App Store or via the Magic Lasso website.