Apple may ditch traditional USB ports on the MacBook Pro
Apple reportedly plans to eliminate the UBC 3.0 and Magsafe ports on its next-gen MacBook, and kill the 11-inch MacBook Air altogether. That’s according to Macotakara, the Japanese rumor site that was among the first to predict the company would kill the traditional headphone jack on the iPhone 7. The site also claims that Apple will unveil a 15.4- and 13.3-inch MacBook Pro at an event sometime this month.
If the report is accurate, MacBook Pros will only pack USB Type C and Thunderbolt 3 ports. As with the new MacBook, you’d presumably charge it through the USB-C port and connect peripherals via Thunderbolt 3. That means you’d need some kind of USB 3.0 adapter, since the majority of storage and other peripherals still use the traditional standard. For the MacBook, Apple sells a $79 USB-C dock that gives you USB 3.0, USB-C for power and an HDMI connection.
The company will also release a new 13.3-inch MacBook Air, but discontinue the 11-inch model, according to the report. That lines up with previous rumors that Apple would kill the smaller Air model, since it has been made effectively redundant by the 12-inch MacBook. However, it also shows that it isn’t discontinuing the MacBook Air completely, as some feared.
The MacBook Pro will allegedly have an OLED touch bar and go on sale shortly after the event. That would be good news to MacBook Pro lovers who’ve been waiting a long time for a new model, assuming the report (based on a “reliable Chinese supplier”) is accurate. However, Macotakara said exactly the same thing in June, and the August launch it predicted didn’t happen.
‘Family Vault’ Lets Amazon Prime Members Share Free Photo Storage
Amazon today launched a new Prime Photos feature called “Family Vault”, which extends the unlimited photo storage that Amazon Prime subscribers get to their friends and family members (via TechCrunch).
For those unfamiliar with Amazon Prime, a $99 per year subscription includes free two-day shipping, unlimited streaming of movies, TV shows, and music, and unlimited photo storage, among other benefits. With the arrival of Family Vault, Prime subscribers can now invite up to five family members or friends to join their online account, where they can combine photos and each get another 5GB of storage for uploading videos and other files.
The thinking behind Family Vault is to allow close friends and families to see each other’s photos and videos in a single location, and be able to access them on their own devices, at no cost to those added by the Prime account holder.
The Family Plan announcement also ushers in some new search technology for Prime Photos users, including keyword-related searches for photos with a specific theme or subject (e.g. cat, wedding, beach, and so on) and a face-finding feature called “People”.
Amazon is also formally announcing a new low-cost photo printing service, with prints starting at 9 cents, with free shipping for Prime members.
Further details of all of the company’s newly announced features can be found on Amazon’s Photos minisite or through the Amazon Photos mobile app.
Tag: Amazon Prime
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Qualcomm announces first gigabit LTE device and network, 5G modem
The first gigabit LTE network will go live in Australia.
Qualcomm has announced that it is partnering with Netgear, Ericsson, and Australian carrier Telstra in delivering the world’s first gigabit LTE device and network. Telstra has worked with Ericsson in developing the gigabit-ready network, which will go live before the end of the year.
Simultaneously, Netgear is rolling out a mobile hotspot called the Mobile Router MR1100 that can hit gigabit speeds by leveraging 3x carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, and 256-QAM modulation. The hotspot is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 gigabit LTE modem, and will work on Telstra’s network. Other carriers are also expected to start offering gigabit speeds over the course of the next 12 months.
Qualcomm has also mentioned that the next-generation Snapdragon 800 SoC will feature the X16 modem, making it compatible with gigabit-class networks. The SoC is expected to make its debut in the first half of next year.
Even though the X16 modem has gigabit connectivity, chances are you won’t be able to hit those speeds in the real world. In Qualcomm’s simulated testing, the company saw average speeds of 112Mbps to 307Mbps on devices with the X16 modem, going up to 533Mbps. That still translates to a significant increase over the current average of 19.61Mbps in the U.S.
Enabling real-world speeds in excess of 100Mbps allows for seamless access to cloud storage services, as well as immersive VR experiences in 4K.
Qualcomm is also launching the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, which works on the 28GHz millimeter-wave spectrum. The device supports 8x100MHz carrier aggregation to deliver 800MHz of spectrum, enabling download speeds of up to 5Gbps. Qualcomm will begin sampling Snapdragon X50 in the second half of 2017, with commercial availability slated for 2018.
Qualcomm rolls out the Snapdragon 653, 626, and 427
At its 4G/5G summit in Hong Kong, Qualcomm announced two new SoCs in the mid-range Snapdragon 600 series, the Snapdragon 653 and Snapdragon 626. For the entry-level tier, the company is rolling out the Snapdragon 427.
All three SoCs come with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which delivers speeds of up to 300Mbps (Category 7) on the downlink and 150Mbps (Category 13) on the uplink. Also new is support for dual cameras and Quick Charge 3.0, as well as the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec for VoLTE calls.
The Snapdragon 653 retains the octa-core CPU configuration of the 652, offering four Cortex A72 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. Qualcomm increased the frequency of the A72 cores to 1.95GHz from 1.80GHz in the 652, which it says will lead to a performance increase of up to 10%. The A53 clusters is still clocked at 1.44GHz. The 653 also retains the Adreno 510 GPU, which has seen an increase in frequency as well. Qualcomm has doubled the addressable memory, making the Snapdragon 653 compatible with 8GB of RAM.
The Snapdragon 626 also sees a 10% increase in performance from the 625 thanks to a bump in CPU clocks on its two Cortex A53 clusters to 2.2GHz from 2.0GHz. The 626 comes with Qualcomm’s TruSignal antenna boost technology, which is designed to improve signal reception in congested areas.
The Snapdragon 427 features the same quad-core 1.4GHz CPU as the 425, but benefits from the X9 LTE modem and TruSignal antenna tech, as well as dual ISPs.
The Snapdragon 653 and 626 will be available before the end of the year, while the Snapdragon 427 will be making its way to consumer devices early next year.
Watch Face Roundup: 5 bright, colorful watchfaces
One of the beautiful things about smartwatches is the ability to change watch faces to your heart’s content. You can have a feature-packed watch face with information from edge to edge, a clutter-free watch face with only the time displayed, or any watch face in between. Today, we’re taking a look at five colorful watch faces that are sure to add some brightness to your smartwatch. Most of the watch faces we feature will be free; however, there may be a few paid options here and there for the millionaires among us.
Bouncing Isaac
Bouncing Isaac, from developer Fathom information design, is one of the most interesting watch faces on this list. It is described as Android Experiment, and it uses the sensors in your smartwatch to create an ever-changing, colorful pattern for your watch face. As your watch moves, more patterns and colors will emerge, which makes each watch face unique to the person wearing it. It can also work as a representation of how active you have been that day as the more you more the more the watch face will change.
Of course, will all of this animation and the reliance on sensors, it will probably take a hit on your battery life. If you already have difficulty enough making it through the day with a normal watch face, you might want to skip Bouncing Issac. For those of you with battery to spare or those that are just too interested, you can download Bouncing Issac for free from the Play Store.
Fiore
Fiore is from the WatchMaker devs who are a group of artists looking to forward the style of smartwatches, and I definitely think that this watch face fits the bill. Usable on both round and square watches, Fiore has super colorful, floral backgrounds that change depending on the day. I found that mine changed every time the watch’s screen turned off. Each design is absolutely beautiful, and the animations are basically nonexistent, which is a plus for battery life.
For some guys, the design may be a bit too floral, but that does not detract from the fact that Fiore has some of the best-designed backgrounds I have seen. There are a few customizations that can be made to the time layout as well as Ambient Mode. Best of all, Fiore is completely free to download and use so check it out!
Masque Simplicity
Masque Simplicity, from developer Alex Pasquarella, is the most customizable watch faces in this list. The watch face itself is extremely colorful, but you can change just about every aspect of it. Along with the analog watch hands, you also have four dials that display the current weather, phone battery percentage, watch battery percentage, and the date. There are several preset styles to choose from in the app that cover a variety of colors to suit almost anyone’s preferences. After choosing a preset, you can go further back changing the hand style, tick marks, and even how the information circles look.
If for some reason this is not enough customization for you, you can pay $0.99 to create your own styles or $1.99 to unlock all of the options in the app. I went with the $1.99 tier, and it gave me the options to change all the colors of the watch face along with unlocking all of the options for hand styles and tick marks. For those who are content with the base level of customization, the app is free to download in the Play Store.
Jagger
Jagger, from developer Pierre-Yves Ricau, is my favorite watch face on this list just because of the sheer creativity behind it. The premise behind the app is dead simple, the time (hour, minute, second) is displayed has a hex-code that corresponds to a particular color. As time progresses, your watch face will switch to whatever color the time represents and also display the color’s name under the time. When it comes to a colorful watch face, nothing matches that description better than Jagger.
Customization is limited with only a couple of options for ambient mode and date, but you won’t be using this for features anyway. You’ll get this because it is a completely unique watch face idea that is implemented perfectly. It has been my main watch face for the past week and will be for a while yet. Best of all, it is free in the Play Store!
Nature Gradients
Finally, we end with the only paid watch face on the list (aside from the add-ons with Masque Simplicity). Nature Gradients, from developer Marco Uberti, is a super minimal watch face that pops with is brightly-colored, gradient backgrounds. There is a large selection of color gradients to choose from, and you can choose the gradient you want straight from your smartwatch. Unfortunately, this is as far as the customization goes. You are stuck with the same font and color for your time, date, and second hand.
For the $1.99 price tag, I would definitely like to see some other options added to this watch face, but it is hard to deny that Nature Gradients isn’t a beautiful addition to your smartwatch. If you have a couple of extra dollars laying around and want a colorful but simple watch face, you can’t get much better than this one. Best of all, animations are almost nonexistent aside from the second hand, which means this watch face shouldn’t eat much into your battery life.
What do you think of our list? Are you going to check out any of the watch faces we recommended? Did we miss one of your favorite colorful faces? Let us know in the comments!
The post Watch Face Roundup: 5 bright, colorful watchfaces appeared first on SmarterWatching.
Source: SmarterWatching
Qualcomm-powered 5G devices may arrive in first half of 2018
As we saw back at MWC, 5G trials are already well under way around the world, and such efforts are recently boosted with support from the FCC plus the EU. Verizon has stated that it’s aiming to implement 5G at some point in 2017, but today, a mobile chip giant has given us a more specific time frame. At the Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong, the company announced its very first 5G modem, the Snapdragon X50, which will support download speeds at up to 5 Gbps — a super impressive number considering that we’ve only just started tapping into the Gigabit space with 4G LTE, let alone the more common 450 Mbps, 300 Mbps or even just 150 Mbps download speeds on our phones these days.
Furthermore, we’re told that X50-powered devices “are expected to be available during the first half of 2018.” The timing makes sense as the finalized 5G standard should arrive in the same year, and operators like Verizon will certainly be needing test devices soon — especially since it’s been trialling the 28 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) band which is what the X50 will support initially (on top of 4G LTE). That said, Qualcomm does stress that this modem is designed for early 5G deployments, in the sense that it’s leaning more towards the experimental soft rollouts. There’s also no word on the specific type of devices — be it mobile routers or smartphones — that the X50 will land on, so don’t expect to hear any flagship product to be announced with this chip any time soon.
The whopping 5 Gbps download speed is achieved by using a generous 800 MHz bandwidth in the mmWave spectrum. While it’s true that such a high frequency is limited by its penetration range, such modems and cells will make use of MIMO antenna technology with intelligent beamforming and beam tracking to bounce signal off walls, in order to go around obstacles. It’ll be years before we go fully 5G so early deployments will likely have limited coverage, but don’t worry, as the X50 can seamlessly switch between 5G and Gigabit LTE, so long as it’s paired with a Snapdragon processor with an integrated Gigabit LTE modem — like the X16 announced earlier this year. Such a boost in connection speeds will let us look forward to new use cases in the mobile world — real-time augmented reality plus virtual reality, super high quality multimedia content, instantaneous cloud computing applications, you name it.
Watch DARPA’s autopilot system fly a turboprop plane
It’ll likely take a long time before DARPA’s autopilot system flies military planes on its own, but this latest demonstration proves that it works. Aurora Flight Sciences, the aviation company that’s developing the technology for the agency, has successfully tested it on a Cessna Caravan turboprop aircraft. Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System or ALIAS is comprised of a robotic arm and a tablet-based user interface with speech recognition, among other components. When installed on a plane, it acts as the co-pilot in charge of flying the aircraft — its human companions can chill and spend their time keeping an eye on the weather or looking out for any potential threats.
This is the technology’s third demonstration in merely a year, following two test runs on a simulator and a Diamond DA-42 plane. But Aurora isn’t done yet: the team is currently installing it on a helicopter for its next round of testing. If you want to see how a system like ALIAS flies a plane, watch the tech and its human companion pilot a Cessna in the video below.
Source: Aurora Flight Sciences
Australia gets first dibs on Gigabit LTE network and router
We’re still years away before 5G fully goes live, so for now, Qualcomm continues to build on top of current 4G LTE technology to bridge the gap. The latest development on this end is the launch of the Netgear Mobile Router MR1100, which is the first mobile device to feature Gigabit LTE connectivity thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem. If all goes well, the lucky folks in Australia will be the first to use this device, as it’ll be launched on world’s first Gigabit LTE network courtesy of Telstra and Ericsson. According to Qualcomm’s announcement at its summit today, Telstra will be launching its new speedy service “in the coming months,” which means it could be this year or next year.
For the rest of us outside of Down Under, we’re told that many more mobile devices — especially smartphones — will come packed with the same connectivity in the very near future, as the next-generation Snapdragon 800 series processor will integrate the same awesome X16 LTE modem, as teased by President of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies Cristiano Amon on the stage.
The exec added that the development of Gigabit LTE is both a natural progression and also complementary to 5G — as in the two technologies will co-exist for at least several years. With the company’s upcoming X50 5G modem designed to work alongside future Gigabit LTE-enabled Snapdragon processors, we can expect mobile download speeds between 1 Gbps and 5 Gbps to be the new standard for a good while. Let’s just hope the carriers will be ready in time.
Angela Ahrendts Talks Concepts Behind Next-Generation Apple Stores at Most Powerful Women Summit
Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail, was the opening speaker for Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit, speaking a little about the next-generation Apple retail stores, her vision for Apple’s physical presence and more.
Ahrendts started the evening by talking about her background and how Apple CEO Tim Cook recruited her, mentioning that she originally tried to convince Cook she wasn’t right for the job. Ahrendts said that her big pitch for Apple was to integrate Apple’s retail and online stores and turn the company’s physical prescence into a bigger part of the communities they operate it. Cook, much to her surprise, loved the idea.
She said that she believes that “the bigger the company, the bigger the obligation” of that company to do something other than rake in profits. One of the things on her agenda was education, so Ahrendts planned on a next-generation of Apple retail stores that could function as something more than retail stores.
The new next-generation store designs are the culmination of that vision, featuring a town square concept that’s focused less on selling things and more on enriching lives. She notes that the retail side of the company tries to hire candidates based on their empathy and compassion so that they can enrich lives rather than salesmanship. For instance, Apple wants to teach kids things they can’t learn in school, which is why the retail stores will start hosting Swift programming lessons for kids, teachers, and parents.
The lessons, which are currently available for teachers at Apple Union Square in San Francisco, will slowly roll out to next-generation stores by next year. Kids, teachers, and parents will be able to attend Apple retail stores and learn to code for free three times a day. Currently, Apple provides educational camps for kids during the summer.
Another driving force behind the next-generation stores was making the retail spaces represent the products better. “How do we make it so the best of Apple can come together in one place?” Ahrendts said they asked as they designed the new stores. Their solution was to map out everything people did on their devices and integrate them into the stores, which meant a larger focus on the liberal arts.
Ahrendts said that she’s always been in a believer of Steve Jobs’ “technology married with the liberal arts” philosophy, and that she wanted to increase the presence of liberal arts in the stores. She explained the new Creative Pro position at Apple retail locations is the liberal arts equivalent of the Genius, and that the two are equal in terms of importance. Creative Pros are supposed to help you figure out what to do with your Apple product, which could range from photography lessons to coding to learning how to make movies or music.
Another way of integrating the liberal arts with the retail stores is turning the stores into community centers. “On the weekend you’ll see an artist sketching things or a guy playing a guitar,” Ahrendts said. The goal is to help foster human experiences that draw people out of their digital bubbles. The town square concept also extends to naming. The accessory-laden “avenues” represent avenues bordering a town square, while the giant screens are called “forums” because they act as a hub for many activities.
Finally, Ahrendts said she considers the retail store the biggest product Apple has. Employee retention is also strong, with Ahrendts saying they have an 87 percent retention rate, better than the average retail retention rate of 20 percent. The company plans to have 95 next-generation Apple stores open by the end of the year.
Ahrendts has been the head of Apple’s retail efforts since 2014, when she left her job as CEO of Burberry to join the Cupertino company. Earlier this month, Ahrendts had her title shortened from Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores to just Senior Vice President of Retail, reflecting Apple’s new vision of tightly integrating its online and retail efforts. Similarly, Apple dropped the “Stores” from Apple store branding in August, reflecting a more singular experience as well as Apple’s efforts to turn the store into more than retail outfit.
Related Roundup: Apple Stores
Tag: Angela Ahrendts
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Here’s how to customize your Pokemon Go Plus notifications – CNET
Go into the Settings to change your Pokemon Go Plus options.
Screenshot by Alina Bradford / CNET
Sometimes you want your Pokemon Go Plus to notify you when a Pokemon pops up or when there’s a PokeStop nearby. Sometimes you want it silent, just recording the distance you walk. Now you have control over all of that. Pokemon Go Plus finally lets you customize the finer details.
Go into Settings and tap on the Pokemon Go Plus option. Next, go down to Notifications and tick the boxes beside the options you want to be notified about.
You can combat the buzzing the same way. Untick Nearby Pokemon and Nearby Pokemon, stopping notifications, leaving you to happily hatch eggs or find Buddy candy.
Pokemon Go Plus keeps you catching them all…
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