At the end of December, stories began to break about Grok being used by X users to generate non-consensual sexual imagery of people, including children.
I’ve been writing about xAI for over a year, as the company has built two massive data centers here in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. There have been concerns about the natural gas turbines powering the data centers and the amount of water xAI was using to keep its hardware cool.
This week on Mac Power Users, we talk through the new Apple Creator Studio bundle and then I share my notes with David after switching to the Apple Weather app for a month.
Elon Musk’s xAI has been illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines to power its Colossus data centers in Tennessee, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled Thursday. The AI company has argued that because the turbines were being used on a temporary basis, they were exempt from regulations. The EPA disagreed and issued its final rule on the matter, which has been in the works for over a year, declaring that xAI was in violation.
The two chairmen (and Myke) regroup to discuss beige accessories and Apple Creator Studio, including its icons. They then dig into what Apple could achieve by moving Siri onto Google’s foundation models.
For members, we spoke about how our moms responded to iOS 26.
Back in the day, Apple had three suites of applications:
Apps like Aperture and Final Cut Express were also around for a while. Meanwhile, Logic and MainStage are just out there doing their own things. I don’t even know what’s going on with Freeform, as it’s updated with OS releases, not as a standalone app like the others.
From fancy pens to blank screens with a blinking cursor, there are more ways to write than ever. This week, the guys discuss several of them, weighing their pros and cons, and share how they get the words out.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the original MacBook Pro. In the spirit of this article, I’m going to review it as if I were blogging about Macs back in 2006. Just go with me here.
I have been a PowerBook G4 user since 2002, when my boss handed me a 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook to use for page layout, audio editing, and other media tasks at the non-profit where I spent time after school and on weekends.
This week on Connected, we grade the predictions we made way back in January 2025, then make new ones for 2026.
If many years-long rumors are true, 2026 will be the year when Apple’s long-gestating folding iPhone becomes a reality. But there are a lot of different approaches to folding phones out there, and there’s no guarantee that the folding iPhone you imagine is the one that Apple is imagining.
Leaks from Apple’s supply chain have begun to strongly suggest the shape and size of the product we’ll call, for lack of a better name, the iPhone Fold. And since it’s likely going to be nine months before anyone holds one of these things in their hands, this seems like as good a time as any to consider the story Apple is likely to tell when it’s selling this device.
S.M. Oliva writes an amazing blog named Computer Chronicles Revisited, a site dedicated to reviewing episodes of the seminal television show.
(This article covering an episode that includes a look at A/UX is a great example.)
The host of Computer Chronicles passed away at the end of the year. Here’s a bit from Oliva’s post in honor of him:
This second incarnation of Computer Chronicles would be, as [Stewart] Cheifet later put it, less of a “televised computer user group meeting” and more closely related to the long-running PBS public affairs program Washington Week in Review. Cheifet himself would now serve as the host of a pre-recorded program, which would feature a combination of product demonstrations, interviews with industry officials, and remote segments.
This coming weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Apple unveiling the first Intel Macs, which included the MacBook Pro that replaced the PowerBook G4.1
It was no secret that Apple couldn’t shoehorn a G5 into a laptop, but very few details are known about that project’s progress.
That may have changed. A user by the name of Nullcaller on the MacRumors forums has delivered the goods in the form of a set of schematics that looks a lot like a PowerBook G5.
Happy New Year! I’m back with some horrific AI news.
Elissa Welle at The Verge:
xAI’s Grok is removing clothing from pictures of people without their consent following this week’s rollout of a feature that allows X users to instantly edit any image using the bot without needing the original poster’s permission. Not only does the original poster not get notified if their picture was edited, but Grok appears to have few guardrails in place for preventing anything short of full explicit nudity. In the last few days, X has been flooded with imagery of women and children appearing pregnant, skirtless, wearing a bikini, or in other sexualized situations. World leaders and celebrities, too, have had their likenesses used in images generated by Grok.