Tahoe
Another year, another macOS. Tahoe is sensibly unambitious but it has raised some ire amongst Mac users. You can tell how unambitious Tahoe was, when CNET had to do an article showing you how common app icons have changed because you otherwise probably didn’t notice. I know I didn’t.
Tahoe is neither here nor there as a release for me. I haven’t found features that are ‘can’t live without”. The app interface changes feel different for the sake of being different, but I quickly got used to them.
In terms of quality it still feels a bit ‘beta’-ish but I hope that the bugs get ironed out over time.
- The pop-up window to select my accent over the ‘o’ in my given name gets blanked out for some reason.
- When performing certain actions, the browser chrome all turns white.
Otherwise things have been fine so far. My anti-virus of choice launched an update soon after Tahoe came out. As has my VPN client and numerous utilities and apps that I use for work, or just keeping my Mac tuned up.
I have a Brother mono laser printer to connect up, (as my long-suffering HP unit finally gave up the ghost after a decade of service,) which might be a bit of a trial if Reddit is anything to judge by.
Last Week on My Mac: Tahoe’s elephant – The Eclectic Light Company – this critique points out the kind of issues with Tahoe that implies it isn’t the Macintosh operating system of Steve Jobs with its historic focus on art principles and typography right from the beginning.
China
From ‘guochao’ to ‘zìxìn’: China’s new era of cultural confidence | Jing Daily
Why anti-involution feels anti-Chinese? | Following the Yuan
Dutch seizure of chipmaker followed US ultimatum over Chinese chief | FT – the judgement paints a bit more of a nuanced picture with two independent actions. It also explicitly states that the government order is not final yet (and at that point would still be open to appeals). The actual matter involved is a (significant) breach of fiduciary duty by Zhang Xuezheng and the holding company (Yuching). Cited issues were:
- Placing of orders to another Wingtech subsidiary in China (that is in financial trouble) far exceeding demand (such that the expectation is that a significant share of the stock would need to be scrapped as it would not be able to be used in time)
- Replacing 3 people with banking authority (including the CFO) with 3 other people, without financial background, one not an employee of Nexperia at all. All in the context where urgent US sanctions mean that independence from China is important for continued operations of the company. The court called this “Voor een onderneming van de orde van grootte van Nexperia grenst een dergelijke handelswijze aan roekeloosheid” (“For a company in the order of size of Nexerperia these actions border on being reckless”).
- For the replacement no motivation was provided, prompting the chief financial officer and the chief legal officer from their own fiduciary duties as directors to object (and also to ask the court to investigate/intervene)
- Stated intent to dismiss existing directors (without motivation) or asking for mandatory consultation from the workers council.
As to the decisions:
- Suspension of Xuezheng as director/CEO
- Temporary appointment of a new non-executive director (with power to make final decisions)
- Place all (except 1) share under management/safekeeping with a lawyer
- This all motivated by (very) signifcant breach of the fiduciary duty, not based upon an Dutch government action. The application of the Entity list on Nexperia as subsidiary was a significant contextual driver though (as in the duty to minimize corporate risks).
Consumer behaviour
Piper Sandler Completes 50th Semi-Annual Teen Survey | Piper Sandler – teen spending down 6 percent compared to last year. Another point was that Dr Pepper was their favourite drink ahead of Coca-Cola, which makes this activist investor’s interest even more salient: tarboard builds stake in Keurig Dr Pepper after unpopular Peet’s deal | FT
Economics
UK risks higher inflation becoming entrenched, IMF warns | FT
Health
Mirador fundraising raises hopes of revival in US biotech market | FT
Ideas
Everything Is Television – Derek Thompson
Japan
Anime activism – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – I didn’t realise that in 1978 the president Marcos of the Philippines had banned a whole genre of anime (giant robots or mecha) due to the influence of Voltes V on Filipino student activists.
Marketing
Post | LinkedIn – The Future of Brand Building Begins Where Commerce Meets Creativity. – or P&G applying the radio soap opera format to the 21st century
Stopping agency burnout: the fight against ‘insidious’ work cultures and ‘inaccurate’ timesheets – Campaign found a long-hours culture continues to exist in adland, with pitching, client demands and poor role-modelling by managers part of the equation.
In the current climate of staff cuts, lingering threats of AI replacing the workforce and agencies dealing with economic constraints, late working – and the chance of burnout – continues to be a risk.
Shrinking teams can potentially lead to more demands being placed on remaining employees. WPP and Interpublic each cut thousands of staff from their global workforces in the first half of 2025, on top of headcount reductions in 2024. Last year, the collective global headcount across the “big six” holding companies declined by 1.6%, the first fall since the post-pandemic rebuild.
WPP boosts AI marketing with $400mn Google deal | FT – I would be concerned if they weren’t using video generators like Veo and Google Gemini – which does make me wonder what Mark Read was up to?
On the importance of good strategic writing in using AI: AI interfaces and the role of good writing | by Nick DiLallo | Oct, 2025 | UX Collective
Media
Apple sued over use of copyrighted books to train Apple Intelligence | Yahoo! News
Exclusive | Advertisers Push Big Tech to Adopt Standards for Transparency in Ad Sales – WSJ
How We Automated Content Marketing to Acquire Users at Scale | Spotify Engineering – Insightful blog post from Spotify’s ML team: they implemented their own pre-ranking algorithm to select the best ad variants to deploy to their advertising channels in their user acquisition campaigns.
Spotify’s marketing team developed a creative production pipeline that could generate and deploy ad creatives to marketing channels based on listening habits in a geographic region. The problem they encountered was that they were generating creatives from a high-cardinality dataset, and the number of variations they were uploading to their channels was overwhelming those channels’ ability to optimize ads effectively.
Spotify’s solution was to build a pre-ranking algorithm using XGBoost that would determine which creatives to upload to the channels. Their ML pre-ranking model outperformed a simple heuristic model, with 4%-14% lower CPRs and 11%-12% higher CTRs. The ML model utilized a rich set of features to predict sub_percentage (the percentage of contributed subscriptions from the artist) and relative_cps_ratio (the share of the artist’s cost per subscription in the marketing campaign) for premium subscriptions, whereas the heuristic model used three fixed features. The model is retrained daily based on a defined lookback window.
Moreover, although this was deployed before ATT, the team found that ATT didn’t impact its performance, as training relied on aggregated data.
This obviously remains a relevant issue as advertisers scale the volume of their creative production through generative tools. While this pre-dates Meta’s Andromeda initiative for pre-ranking, it’s still likely relevant for most other channels (and, depending on the volume of creative uploaded, Meta).
Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions | AdWeek – brands are rethinking how to spend their budgets. Chan said many advertisers are moving away from performance-focused, traditional search and towards top-of-funnel brand awareness—an area Perplexity may pursue down the line.
Online
US Amazon Prime Membership Finally Hits 200 Million | CIRP – Amazon Prime finally hit the 200-million-member mark in the US, after several quarters of slow, but steady growth toward that milestone.
Note: CIRP estimates the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime. That includes multiple family members for many subscribers, so this estimate is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership.
Amazon knows the difference between Prime shoppers and paid Prime member households, so as US Prime membership approaches its limit, there may be a growing focus on bringing those numbers closer together. Amazon does not want to reduce the number of Amazon Prime membership users, but it certainly would not mind having more paid memberships associated with them. We expect Amazon to continue its efforts to attract members by emphasizing the benefits of Prime, rather than policing shopping and limiting Prime membership sharing.
CIRP estimates 200 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the September 2025 quarter. That is an increase of about 6% from 189 million US Amazon Prime members in the September 2024 quarter and up very slightly from our 198 million member estimate last quarter.
Retailing
Why Did Walmart Just Buy a Shopping Mall? – The New York Times – reminds me of the local mini-shops that used to be inside Kwik Saves in many towns
Technology
China’s ‘Darwin Monkey’ is the world’s largest brain-inspired supercomputer | Live Science
I had been having lunch in the Google canteen with colleagues, and then came back to my desk, checked an email newsletter and this arrived: Smartphone-powered AI predicts avocado ripeness | Newsroom | Oregon State University
Web of no web
Palmer Luckey’s Anduril launches EagleEye military helmet with help from buddy Zuck | The Verge










