Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy:

First of all, the dollar is not the currency in any of these countries. Second, the charger in European countries is €65, which is more like $76 right now. Third, Apple is allowed to bundle an A.C. adapter, it just needs to offer an option to not include it.

Practically speaking, though, the EU directive regarding included chargers means Apple won’t include one, and likely no other laptop maker will either. They’d have to create, and stock, double the SKUs for every standard configuration. (If you buy a build-to-order configuration of the M5 MacBook Pro in Europe, you get a choice to include an adapter in the build-to-order workflow for an upcharge. If you buy a standard configuration model, you get the option to purchase a power adapter as a separate accessory.)

Fourth, and most important, is that the new MacBook Pro is less expensive in nearly every region in which the A.C. adapter is now a configure-to-order option — even after adding the adapter. [...]

Countries with a charger in the box, on the other hand, see no such price adjustment, at least for the ones I have checked. The new M5 model starts at the same price as the M4 it replaces in Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. [...]

Maybe Apple was already planning a €100 price cut for these new models. The M4 was €100 less expensive than the M3 it replaced, for example, so it is plausible. That is something we simply cannot know. What we do know for certain is that these new MacBook Pros might not come with an A.C. adapter, but even if someone adds one at checkout, it still costs less in most places with this option.

The fact that the new M5 MacBook Pro costs less than the M4 models, even when paying extra to include a new power adapter, leads me to suspect that Apple was planning price cuts in these countries regardless. As Heer points out, Apple cut the price by €100 when the base MacBook Pro went from the M3 to M4 a year ago. (MacBook Air prices have been getting lower worldwide, too.)

Anyway, the reason this regulation is subject to ridicule was never that European MacBook buyers were, effectively, paying for a charger that was no longer included. It’s that this is a silly law, and likely causes more harm than good. If Apple thought it was a good idea to no longer include power adapters in the box with MacBooks, they’d just stop including chargers in the box, worldwide. That’s what Apple started doing with iPhones with the iPhone 12 lineup five years ago. That wasn’t because of a law. It was because Apple thought it was a good idea.

The problem I see with the MacBook power adapter situation in Europe is that while power users — like the sort of people who read Daring Fireball and Pixel Envy — will have no problem buying exactly the sort of power adapter they want, or simply re-using a good one they already own, normal users have no idea what makes a “good” power adapter. I suspect there are going to be a lot of Europeans who buy a new M5 MacBook Pro and wind up charging it with inexpensive low-watt power adapters meant for things like phones, and wind up with a shitty, slow charging experience.

While poking fun at EU regulations leading Apple not to include a power adapter with the new M5 MacBook Pro across Europe, I wondered why the U.K. — which left the EU five years ago — was affected. DF reader C.A. wrote, via email:

We did indeed leave the EU, but remain aligned to some of their standards like food and consumer goods through a thing called the Windsor Framework. Because the UK includes Northern Ireland, which has an open border with the Republic of Ireland, and the RoI is part of the EU, and the border MUST remain open for historical reasons, there has to be a way of ensuring UK goods that don’t meet EU standards don’t enter the EU via Northern Ireland. Hence, we agreed to align to a selection of their standards to ensure the border can stay open.

That’s why everything has to be USB-C and power supplies aren’t in the M5 MacBook Pro boxes, but we aren’t affected by the DMA shenanigans — those don’t apply to physical goods, only the configuration of the software.

Something similar (the EEA) is the reason why the power adapter isn’t in the box for Norway, either — a country that has never been part of the EU. Here’s Wikipedia’s entry on the Windsor Framework, and here’s a UK government “Call for Evidence” from a year ago regarding a requirement to follow the EU’s Common Charger Directive.

Ben Zotto:

Name every pioneering personal computer you can think of from the 1970s. The MITS Altair 8800. The Apple-1. The IMSAI 8080. You may even know about the SWTPC 6800 or Processor Technology Sol-20.

There’s a computer missing from that list, and it’s an important one: Sphere Corporation’s Sphere 1. While far ahead of its competitors in 1975 in what it delivered as an all-in-one PC, Sphere’s manufacturing operations and cash flow lagged immediately behind. The company collapsed so quickly that it was nearly erased from the collective memory of that period.

But I know about Sphere. So does Bill Gates! And it just might have sparked a few ideas in Steve Wozniak — though not as many as Sphere’s founder later claimed.

I have a story to tell about this remarkable Utah-based company, one that fills in the gaps in other histories of the era, and puts Sphere in the context of the computers we have heard about again and again for a half century. I want to tell you why Sphere was important and worth remembering — and explain why they were forgotten. While first to market with some important technologies, “firsts” are not as interesting as how their visionary, imperfect founder could see around corners. His reach far exceeded his grasp, leading to his early exit and the company’s quick downfall.

I’ll admit that before I encountered this Kickstarter campaign (via Glenn Fleishman, who edited the book), I can’t recall ever even hearing about Sphere. Count me in as a backer.

Lizzie Dearden and Amelia Nierenberg, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

For years, London’s police assumed most of the phone thefts were the work of small-time thieves looking to make some quick cash. But last December, they got an intriguing lead from a woman who had used “Find My iPhone” to track her device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Arriving there on Christmas Eve, officers found boxes bound for Hong Kong. They were labeled as batteries but contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones. [...]

The police are now using that information to map where stolen phones are transported by street thieves. After the Heathrow seizure, a team of specialist investigators who normally deal with firearms and drug smuggling was assigned to the case. They identified further shipments and used forensics to identify two men in their 30s who are suspected of being ringleaders of a group that sent up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.

When the men were arrested on Sept. 23, the car they were traveling in contained several phones, some wrapped in aluminum foil in an attempt to prevent them from transmitting tracking signals. At one point, the police said at a news conference, they observed the men buying almost 1.5 miles’ worth of foil in Costco.

There’s shopping in bulk at Costco, and then there’s shopping in bulk.

Update: I forgot to apply one of the core tenets of Brian Kernighan’s wonderful book Millions, Billions, Zillions ($19 in hardcover from Amazon; BookShop.org link to indie booksellers): always do some back-of-the-envelope double-checking of the math in news stories. 1.5 miles of aluminum (or even aluminium) foil from Costco is just 12 rolls at 200 meters each. I wouldn’t blink my eyes at someone with a dozen rolls of foil in the cart at Costco.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple and NBCUniversal today announced the launch of the Apple TV and Peacock Bundle, available beginning October 20. The first-of-its-kind bundle offers the services’ complementary array of award-winning originals, marquee live events and sports, beloved franchises, and blockbuster movies, including Ted Lasso, Severance, The Paper, The Traitors, How to Train Your Dragon, the NBA (tipping off October 21 on Peacock), F1 The Movie (coming later this year), and much more, all through one convenient monthly subscription.

Customers in the U.S. can save over 30 percent by subscribing to the Apple TV and Peacock Premium bundle for $14.99 per month, or Apple TV and Peacock Premium Plus for $19.99 per month, through either app or website. Apple One subscribers on the Family and Premier plans can subscribe to Peacock Premium Plus and receive a 35 percent discount — the first benefit of its kind for Apple’s all-in-one subscription bundle.