Apple Music gets an Android widget

Apple Music on Android is pretty much identical to its iOS counterpart, but its latest update adds a unique feature for the platform: a widget. You can now add an Apple Music widget on your home screens if you want quick access to the service. Like any other standard music widget, it gives you a way to pause, play and skip tracks without having to launch the app itself. There’s a heart that you can tap to let it know that you like what’s playing, but if you need to access other features, you’ll just have to go into the app.

Besides launching the Android widget, Apple Music’s latest update also brings the ability to add songs to custom playlists without adding it to the library. You can now redeem iTunes gift cards to renew subscriptions and see what’s playing on Beats 1 from the Radio tab, as well. The update’s already live on Google Play, so you may want to clear up some space on your home screen if you pony up $10 a month for what Music offers.

Source: Google Play

Evaporating Bitmoji cost Snapchat around $100 million

SnapChat is buying Bitstrips, the company behind those weird (and depending on your Facebook News Feed) sometimes offensive personalized avatar comic strips. Fortune reports that the deal between Bitstrips and the ephemeral messaging company is somewhere around a $100 million purchase in cash and stock. How the avatar-minded outfit will fit in with Snapchat’s temporary nature is anyone’s guess at this point, but given the latter’s big push into face-morphing tech and emoji for its evaporating stories that’s probably a good bet.
Just think: Instead of seeing someone vomit rainbows or turn into a panda, you could watch a cartoon version of their face bouncing around the concert they just got pulled onstage for. The future, ladies and gentlemen.

Source: Fortune

Apple issues new iOS 9.3 build for older iPhones and iPads

Apple has released a fix for the iOS 9.3 bug that prevented some people with older iPhones and iPads from installing the update correctly. See, the mobile platform’s latest update bricked older devices if users forgot or mistyped their Apple ID passwords. Trying again didn’t work — their devices were locked in an activation loop. Cupertino admitted to iMore that the bug could affect the iPhone 5s, the iPad Air and anything older than the two. As a result, the company temporarily pulled back version 9.3 for those devices and promised to issue a new build that doesn’t require users to key in their passwords. Thankfully, Apple addressed the issue quickly.

The patched-up version of iOS 9.3 is now out and available for download. Users can plug their affected iPads or iPhones to a computer to update them via iTunes — just make sure the build is called 13E236 — or download version 9.3 over the air if they haven’t yet. We hope that unlocks any device affected… and that those who preordered the new iPad Pro or iPhone SE thinking that the bug was a sign to upgrade don’t regret it too much.

Source: iClarified, iMore

Snapchat might soon let you add Bitstrips to photos and videos

Snapchat is looking for new ways to spruce up its app.

According to Fortune, Snapchat just bought the company behind the Bitmoji app for around $100 million. The app basically lets you create an avatar or comic of yourself, and then you can share that with your friends and family over social media or text. It has customisation features that let you choose different hair styles, clothing, face shapes, and more.

The company, called Bitstrips, is four years old and rose to popularity on Facebook, where users commonly shared the cartoon versions of themselves in various situations. You can even insert yourself into comic strip situation and include avatars of any friends also using the service. The mobile app was developed after 2014, when it raised $8 million in funding.

It’s not clear why Snapchat purchased Bitstrips, but last year Bitstrips added a feature that allowed users to overlay avatars onto images. We can imagine Snapchat allowing its own users to overlay Bitstrips onto snaps. Currently, Snapchat has filters and emojis and effects that you can put onto any photos and videos. You can even distort your face with different animations.

It’ll therefore be interesting to see what Snapchat has in mind with Bitstrips.

The first Oculus Rift has shipped, deliveries start 28 March

OMG. If you were among the lucky few to pre-order the Oculus Rift in January, you’ll be beyond happy to know that it should finally arrive on your doorstep by the end of the month. We’re not kidding.

Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus VR, has tweeted a photo of a boxed Rift bundle in order to notify the world the “first Oculus Rift has shipped” and deliveries will begin 28 March, meaning the company has kept its word about sending out pre-orders of the finished Rift by spring. The virtual reality headset launched on Kickstarter four years ago but was later acquired by Facebook.

It’s priced at $599 in the US, £499 in the UK, and €699 in the Eurozone. This price does not include taxes or shipping, which will vary by country. There are also official bundles that went up for pre-order on 16 February. The bundles include not only the headset but also the certified PC required to run it. They start at $1,499 but can cost upwards of $3,000.

For instance, Alienware’s Area 51 desktop, which has a Haswell Core i7 chip with 16GB of memory and GTX 980 graphics, costs $3,149. Oculus VR has also partnered with PC makers Dell and Asus for Rift-ready PC bundles. If you didn’t place a pre-order for one last month and decide to place an order today, you’ll likely have to wait until July for deliveries.

You can read more about how to get an Oculus Rift from here.

The first Oculus Rift has shipped, deliveries begin Monday 3.28.2016. pic.twitter.com/C0MMKmezun

— Brendan Iribe (@brendaniribe) March 24, 2016

Atari Vault PC bundle with 100 classic Atari 2600 games is now on Steam

Atari diehards can go ahead and lose their minds now.

The games publisher has rounded up 100 classic Atari 2600 games into a single title called Atari Vault and just released it on Steam for PC gamers. The bundle was first announced in January. It costs $19.99 and includes fan-favourites like Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Tempest, and Warlords. But if you grab it right now, you can get it on-sale for $16.99.

There have been many Atari collections released over the years, but none of this size or with these type of upgrades. It supports online and local multiplayer, allowing you to go dual-screen with a friend either online or at home. It even works with Valve’s Steam controller, comes with original cabinet and box art, and is paired with original 70s and 80s game soundtracks.

“For the first time ever, fans from around the world can challenge other players on Steam Leaderboards and compete for arcade supremacy – all while rocking out to the games’ original 70s and 80s soundtracks,” explained the company in a press release, while confirming that Atari Vault was development by Code Mystics and only requires a PC running Windows 7 or up.

You can see a full list of 8-bit games from here.

Steam

NASA to use the ISS as a testbed for inflatable living modules

NASA, perhaps more than anyone else, knows that there’s only so much room for packing stuff onto a spacecraft. That’s why it’s testing expandable living modules on the International Space Station prior to sending them to Mars for work and living spaces. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module will ride along in an upcoming SpaceX Dragon resupply mission to the ISS and from there will be unpacked and attached to the side of the station.

After that it’ll be filled with air to expand from just over five feet in depth and almost eight in diameter to 12 feet deep and over 10 feet in diameter and have its pressure equalized with the rest of the station. In the video below, NASA says that it’s all going to be done pretty slowly given that it’s the first experiment of its kind.

The BEAM needs to prove its mettle against cosmic radiation, durability and long-term leak performance prior to going into deep space, however. Before the expandable spaces go near the red planet, they’ll have to survive two years on the ISS with crew members poking and prodding it for the aforementioned reasons. The video below is a rendering, and admittedly moves along much faster than NASA says the installation process will actually go, but it should give you an idea of what the ISS will look like when the bolt-on test module is in place.

Source: NASA (1) (YouTube), (2)

It’s time to toss your paper owner’s manuals – CNET

Tucked away in the back of a file cabinet, I have an overstuffed folder of owner’s manuals, many of which are for products I no longer own. I’m getting a jump on my spring cleaning this year and throwing out the entire folder.

I no longer need any of these printed manuals in my house — even for the products I still own and use — when any and all owner’s manuals can be found online. The best part? You can do keyword searches to jump to a topic more quickly than paging through a paper manual or using a table of contents or index.

Just Google it

A quick Google search for a product name and model number plus “manual” will find almost alwyas find your desired manual. I went through my printed owner’s manuals, found a PDF online of each manual I still needed, and then tossed the paper versions in the recycling.

Goodbye, old manuals.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Storing your digital manuals for easy access

You have a few options for storing your collection of PDF owner’s manuals. You could download them to your computer and keep them stored locally in a folder. Or you could pop them on Dropbox, Google Drive or another cloud storage service so you could access them from any of your devices.

How to store PDF manuals in iBooks

My preference is to use iBooks so I can refer to my manuals from my iPad, iPhone or Mac.

To get PDFs to iBooks, use the Safari app. When you are viewing a PDF in Safari, tap the screen to bring up a banner at the top with Open in on the left side and Open in iBooks on the right. Tap the latter and you will download the PDF to iBooks.

In iBooks, I created a folder to store all of my manuals:

• To create a folder, called a Collection in iBooks, tap All Books at the top and then tap New Collection. Give this new Collection a name — say, User Manuals — and then go back to the All Books view where your PDFs reside.
• To move your PDFs to this new Collection, tap Select in the upper-right corner, tap the PDFs you want to move, and then tap Move in the upper-left corner. After tapping Move, you can then choose your new User Manuals folder from the Collections pages.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

To share your iBooks library across your iOS and OS X devices, make sure you are using the same Apple ID for each device and have the sync settings enabled.

In iOS, go to Settings > iBooks and make sure Select Sync Collections and Sync Bookmarks and Notes are both turned on. On a Mac, open iBooks, go to iBooks > Preferences, and make sure the box is checked for Sync bookmarks, highlights, and collections across devices.

5 reasons to pick the iPad Pro over the iPad Air 2 – CNET

The iPad Air 2 can run two apps at the same time, has Touch ID, has a Retina display, and looks (and weighs) the same as the iPad Pro. Oh, and it starts at $399.

So why would you pick the Pro over the Air 2? It’s what’s under the hood.

More storage

In order for the iPad Pro to truly replace a laptop, the storage allotments needed to go bigger; and so they did. The 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes in three different storage options: 32 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB.

The iPad Air 2 is only available in 16 GB or 64 GB models.

Apple Pencil support

The most obvious reason you’d choose the iPad Pro over the iPad Air 2 is for the Pencil. Unlike the iPad Air 2, the Pro has a display designed to work with the Pencil. With it, you can jot notes, draw, meditate over adult coloring book apps and have one less reason to carry around a dead-tree notebook.

Yes, you can use a regular stylus with the iPad Air, but the accuracy is no where near the Pencil. Its two sensors react to pressure and tilt, giving you the sense that you’re using a pencil and paper.

As Scott Stein puts it, the Pencil is “far more accurate than the mushier capacitive styluses you’re probably used to trying on an iPad. It’s more like Samsung’s S-Pen for its phones and tablets, or Microsoft’s pen for Surface.”

That “Smart Connector”

Starting with the iPad Pro line, a feature called the Smart Connector automatically pairs any compatible accessory using a magnetic port. That means you don’t have to pair a Bluetooth device manually — the pairing will happen when you “snap in” the accessory.

The Smart Connector also provides power to the accessories; meaning no more bulky batteries in keyboards. For example, Apple’s Smart Keyboard and Logitech’s Create keyboard are both extremely thin keyboards for the iPad Pro.

Right now, it’s not a game-changer, but it’s only a matter of time before Apple releases more accessories that work with its Smart Connector technology, adding to the iPad Pro’s capabilities. No such connectors are found on the iPad Air 2.

4K video shooting, better selfies

Owning the iPad Pro might change your mind about taking photos with tablets.

The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is the same size as the iPad Air 2, but the camera is a huge step up. It has a 12-megapixel shooter on the back and a 5-megapixel shooter on the front. (For comparison, the larger iPad Pro features the same 8-megapixel rear camera, and 1.2-megapixel front camera as the iPad Air 2.)

You can also shoot 4K videos, up from 1080p on the Air 2 and larger iPad Pro.

Better audio

The iPad Pro has four speakers–two on the top, two on the bottom when in portrait mode–compared to the iPad Air’s two speakers along the bottom, near the Lightning port. But what makes the iPad Pro’s speakers so different is that they adjust as you move and reposition the iPad, in order to provide the best sound quality.

iPad Pro 9.7 (pictures)

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Other features worth noting

There are more reasons why you might pick the iPad Pro over the Air 2.

• The iPad Pro’s A9X chip is a powerhouse compared to the the Air’s A8X chip. You’ll get clearer, smoother graphics, faster response times and the feeling that the Pencil writes like, well, a pencil.
• With the M9 coprocessor, Siri is always listening on the iPad Pro, so you can say “Hey, Siri” and she’ll respond without you holding down the home button.
• The new True Tone display feature that dynamically adjusts the hue and saturation of the iPad Pro’s display based on the ambient light.

You’ll pay a $200 premium should you decide to go with the base iPad Pro, but as you just learned, you’re getting more tablet for your money.

C by GE Life and Sleep LED Starter Pack review – CNET

The Good The C by GE Starter Pack is surprisingly affordable given that it includes color tunable bulbs that sync with your circadian rhythms. The app makes it easy to create preprogrammed scenes that you launch with a single tap.

The Bad As of now, you can’t sync these bulbs up with any larger smart-home platforms or third-party devices, and you can’t control them with voice commands, either. You also can’t set basic timers or schedules for when lights should turn on and off.

The Bottom Line These appealingly low-cost smart bulbs are too dependent on their in-app controls, and don’t actually offer much by way of automation.

Visit manufacturer site for details.

Smart lighting is a common starting point for the connected home, but with a lot of your options, you’ll need to keep a control hub plugged into your router or understand what ZigBee is.

GE wanted to lower that barrier of entry with its C by GE LED Starter Pack. For $50, you’ll get four smart LED bulbs that need no hub, and instead, connect directly with your phone over Bluetooth. Two of these four bulbs — the C by GE “Sleep” LEDs — will even change color temperatures automatically throughout the day, going from a hot, bluish, get-the-hell-out-of-bed tone in the morning to a warm, orangey, you-are-getting-sleepy shade in the evening. The other two bulbs, the C by GE “Life” LEDs, are more basic, offering remote smartphone dimming control at a fixed color temperature in between those two extremes.

Four smart bulbs for 50 bucks is an attractive deal, especially when two of those bulbs are color-tunable. Compare that with the Wi-Fi-enabled Lifx White 800 LED, a color-tunable competitor that costs $40 apiece. Osram’s Lightify LEDs are another color-tunable alternative — they cost $30 each, but you’ll need to buy a one-bulb starter kit for $60 in order to use them. GE’s lights are the best bargain of the bunch — but I’m not sure I’d recommend them — at least not yet.

The “Follow the Sun” feature lets you program the Sleep LEDs to change tone automatically throughout the day — but those changes will only work if you’re within Bluetooth range.

Screenshot by Ry Crist/CNET

The problem? These Bluetooth bulbs don’t work with any larger smart-home platforms yet — that means that you need to be within Bluetooth range (about 50 feet) in order to use them. You also can’t make a lighting schedule or set a timer for when things should come on or off.

The only scheduling option you’ll get is the “Follow the Sun” feature, which changes the color temperature on the Sleep LEDs automatically at pre-programmed times. Even those changes won’t work if you aren’t in Bluetooth range.