# Excited, Expected, Disappointed In the past two days, among the tech news I read, three pieces particularly caught my attention. One of them made me very *excited* about the future of computing, another one was pleasant yet *expected*, and the last one *disappointed* me about the current digital world we live in. ## Excited: OpenAI Atlas After months and months of rumors, OpenAI announced their [web browser](https://chatgpt.com/atlas/) on October 21. This is far from the first AI-agent-enabled browser, but OpenAI entering this space as one of the leading AI groups can make waves in the browser industry and push the *classic* web browser developers to consider integrating well-designed AI agents, which is why I put this news in the *excited* group. In my brief experience of using Atlas today, I really liked the nice onboarding, including the "Joined ChatGPT N days ago and Joined Atlas 1 minute ago" graphic at the end of the onboarding process. (My minor issue: what does "joining Atlas" even mean? Atlas is a browser that you "start using," not a club that you "join.") The only part of the onboarding that was not straightforward was logging in to my ChatGPT account, as the embedded browser did not have access to the saved passwords in macOS. I did not experience major issues with using the browser, except that it asked me three times to allow notifications even after I'd accepted them. The LLM responses were slower than the video on the OpenAI [website](https://chatgpt.com/atlas/), but still fine. I see the agent mode as particularly nice for less tech-savvy people, because although it takes a long time to perform simple actions through this mode, it could be helpful when someone is stuck about which action to take in a web page. Final note: the app is macOS-only for now. This is the second time OpenAI has *initially* released a macOS-only app (the previous case was with the main ChatGPT app). I wonder what the reason is, especially as OpenAI seems to have a close partnership with Microsoft. ## Expected: M5 Reviews The reviews of the new iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro with M5 processor were out today (see, for example, the ones from [The](https://www.theverge.com/tech/803105/apple-ipad-pro-2025-review-fast-faster-fastest) [Verge](https://www.theverge.com/tech/803349/apple-macbook-pro-14-m5-2025-review)), and, of course, as *expected*, the devices were praised (e.g., score of 9/10 by The Verge) for being *just a bit better* than their already-great predecessors. None of the new devices with M5 are redesigns or come with particularly new features; they are merely spec bumps. But, sometimes, with already-established products, a spec bump is all you need. It should be noted that among the three M5 products, the new Vision Pro seems to have received a relatively higher amount of backlash (e.g., from [MKBHD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU9aqBv0YdY)), especially because the issues related to the weight and size were not particularly resolved (with the exception of the improvements to the new strap). However, I do not see this as a problem. There have been Apple products before that mainly received spec bumps, with no or few major changes, in their *second* generation (e.g., iPhone and Apple Watch), and the Vision Pro is following the same route. ## Disappointed: AWS Outage A DNS-related outage in AWS, lasting more than three hours, [affected](https://www.theverge.com/news/802486/aws-outage-alexa-fortnite-snapchat-offline) many services from a range of companies (e.g., Amazon, OpenAI, Apple, etc.) earlier this week. Outages, unfortunately, happen from time to time. What *disappointed* me was not the temporary outage itself, but seeing how many web-based services depend on single points of failure. When I was a kid, the web felt more like a true *network*, but now, with the rise of cloud providers, the web is becoming more centralized than ever. On X, I saw a [couple](https://x.com/typicalvogon/status/1980384375922700654) [of](https://x.com/surasb11/status/1980201105855516784) [posts](https://x.com/MissyIsMaga/status/1980460047881945589) mentioning the issues caused by the Alexa outage in smart houses. Reflecting a bit with a [labmate](https://dogl.de) this morning, we started to analyze the role of digital technologies in our lives and whether we are really dependent on technology. In other words, we wondered what would happen (apart from our work) if suddenly all of our digital devices [stopped working](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnl1aazs98). Our conclusion was that our lives are *still* independent enough from technology, and we would still be able to live in that imaginary world; the most prominent problem would be the loss of real-time connection to our family and friends who do not live with us. However, 1) communication is a crucial part of our lives, and 2) there is no guarantee that the increasing abilities of digital devices, and particularly AI-based agents, won't make us dependent on technology for more aspects of our lives in the future.