Apple finally lets you touch the Mac, Cybercabs take over Texas, and Starship gets ready for a catch

Apple spent three straight days announcing hardware, Tesla's robotaxi numbers moved again, and SpaceX lit up both halves of its next rocket. Too much for one topic, so it's roundup time again.

Apple puts a touchscreen on the Mac (yes, really)

For years Apple's answer to "will the Mac ever get a touchscreen?" was some version of "no, and here's why your arm would get tired." This week the answer changed. The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is Apple's first touchscreen laptop, and CNBC called it "a major reversal for Apple, which has resisted putting touchscreens on its laptops for decades" ^[2].

The hardware list is long. It's a tandem OLED screen at up to 2000 nits with a 120Hz refresh rate, in 14- and 16-inch sizes, with the Dynamic Island making the jump from iPhone to Mac as the home for Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI ^[1]. Apple says up to 24 hours of battery life, and the 14-inch model weighs 3 pounds ^[1][3]. The glowing Apple logo on the lid is back too ^[3], which will make a certain kind of laptop owner very happy.

Now the part your wallet will notice. The 14-inch starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399 ^[1]. MacRumors points out the OLED models carry a $400 premium over comparable mini-LED models, and that they use the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips from earlier this year rather than the new M6 ^[4]. Preorders are open now and it arrives November 6 ^[1].

The rest of the week was quieter but useful:

• iPad mini: an 8.5-inch OLED screen, the A20 Pro chip, and an IP67 rating for water and dust, starting at $699 ^[3]. MacRumors notes it's the first iPad with an official water and dust rating ^[4].
• 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6: same design, new chip, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, starting at $1,999 ^[3].
• iMac with M6: same design and colors, new chip, starting at $1,499 ^[3].

My take: the touch MacBook Pro is the headline, but I'd watch it before buying it. Touch on a laptop lives or dies on the software, and CNBC makes the same point: touchscreens have not usually been what gets people to buy a laptop ^[2]. If you need a Mac now and don't care about touch, the M6 MacBook Pro at $1,999 is probably the smarter buy. And if you've been waiting for a small tablet you can take near the pool, the iPad mini just got a lot more interesting.

Cybercabs now outnumber Model Ys in Tesla's Texas fleet

Texas DMV data shows 1,051 Tesla vehicles authorized for robotaxi service, and for the first time the purpose-built Cybercab is the majority: 544 Cybercabs against 507 Model Ys ^[5]. One important caveat from the same report: the registry shows vehicles that are authorized, not whether they're actually on the road giving rides ^[5]. Tesla also says it wants Cybercabs in Dallas next month ^[5].

Elon Musk also claimed the race with Waymo "was never a real contest" after Tesla logged 438,000 driverless miles in Austin in one week ^[6]. Electrek did the math: that compares Tesla's latest week to Waymo's spring average, and across the US Waymo still drives about seven times more driverless miles per week ^[6]. Meanwhile in Houston, Tesla's expanded service area is shaped like a rocket, and Musk's response on X was "I swear it's just a coincidence." ^[7]

My take: the Cybercab count is genuinely impressive growth, but "authorized" and "driving you to dinner" are two different things. I'll get excited when the rides follow the registrations.

SpaceX test-fires the Starship it wants to catch

SpaceX ran static fires on Ship 42, the upper stage for Flight 15, on October 26 and 27. In SpaceX's words: "Ship 42 static fires complete. The Starship preparing for Flight 15 performed a full duration, six-engine static fire, and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn." ^[8] The booster for the same flight had already done its 33-engine static fire ^[8].

This is the flight where SpaceX wants to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship with the tower, if it gets regulatory approval ^[8]. Boosters have been caught three times; nobody has caught a Ship yet ^[8]. The FAA's current target date is November 12, pending approval ^[9]. If it works, that's a fully reusable rocket coming home in one piece, which is the whole point of Starship. I'll have the livestream on.

UniFi stretches Ethernet to 800 meters

The UniFi news this week is for anyone who has ever stared at a camera spot at the far end of a property and thought about trenching fiber and running power. Ubiquiti's new Long-Range PoE Switching delivers power and data over a single Ethernet cable up to 800 meters, compared with the usual 100 meters ^[10]. The switch has eight long-range ports with up to 90W of PoE per port, aimed at remote cameras, access devices and IoT sensors, with a dedicated outdoor endpoint that adds surge protection ^[10].

Also worth knowing: UniFi Network 11.0.97 is now an official release, rolling out gradually ^[11]. Read the notes before you click update. It needs UniFi OS 6.0 or newer, the upgrade can take up to 20 minutes, your existing statistics history is cleared, USG gateways are no longer supported, and every site moves to the Zone-Based Firewall automatically ^[11]. That last one is the change I'd plan a quiet evening around.

PHP2Shell update: it's being exploited now

Last week I said every PHP server needed a patch. This week CISA added both PHP2Shell bugs, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, to its list of actively exploited vulnerabilities on October 26 ^[12]. TechCrunch reports federal agencies were given three days to fix their systems ^[13]. CISA's guidance is plain: update to PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 or 8.2.35, and if you're stuck on PHP 8.1 or older, take those systems offline until they're updated ^[12].

BleepingComputer also reports the PHP team shared a mitigation, with no patch yet, for a separate remote code execution bug, CVE-2026-115560, that needs "an unusual combination of configuration and application code" to exploit ^[14]. Not a panic item for most people, but worth a read if you run your own servers.

If you didn't get to last week's homework, now's the time: check your PHP version, update, restart PHP so the new version actually loads, and look for PHP processes doing things they shouldn't, like launching shells ^[12].

The takeaway

Apple finally gave in on touch, and it's priced like a statement. The robots, the robotaxis and the rocket catch are all getting closer to real. But the item most likely to bite you this week is still the one from last week. Patch first, shop second.

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