The Morning After: Tuesday, January 3rd, 2017

Welcome to 2017!

Congratulations, you made it.

It’s 2017 and time for CESHere’s what to expect at CES 2017

The Engadget team spent their New Year’s Day venturing to Las Vegas. That means it’s CES season, and a buttload of TVs, wearables, self-driving cars and countless stupid “smart” things.” Here’s what we reckon you’ll see this week.

Tech-heavy luxury for the richDriving in Tesla’s superfast P100D

That thrill of incredibly quick acceleration (while exciting) is only a small portion of the Tesla P100D’s charm. In a dense urban environment like San Francisco, where Roberto Baldwin drove it for a week, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to live out your Top Gear dreams. Instead, he spent most of his time with the car commuting, trips with his family (holidays!) and heading to Costco. The glamour!

This real-life Gundam can moveWatch Korea’s mech take its first steps with a pilot on board

That real, life-sized mech that Korean company Hankook Mirae debuted recently isn’t just for show. Its designer, Hollywood SFX veteran Vitaly Bulgarov, posted a video on Facebook showing the robot taking its first steps. And, yes, it had a pilot on board.

Nano cells? Nano cells.LG’s incoming 4K TV series deliver better color through ‘nano cells’

If your TVs already have 4K, HDR and all the other buzzwords that promise top-tier image quality, what do you do next? For LG, it’s decided that it’s all about the colors. With its Super UHD TV line for 2017, and all three models (the SJ8000, SJ8500 and SJ9500) revolve around Nano Cell LCDs whose uniformly-sized particles promise more accurate and consistent colors.

Still looking for an ultraportable two-in-oneDell’s convertible XPS 13 laptop starts at $1,000

Until now, if you wanted a Dell ultraportable that folds into a tablet, you’ve had to look beyond the company’s XPS series. Not anymore. With the launch of the XPS 13 2-in-1. It’s looking pretty darn nice.

We’ll understand if you need a momentLenovo’s CES haul includes thinner laptops, VR and an Echo clone

What does Lenovo have in store for CES 2017? A $400 VR headset with embedded cameras for room-scale tracking, the “Legion” gaming laptop you’ll need to power it, some thinner Thinkpads and a Bluetooth speaker that hooks into Amazon’s Alexa service. Yeah, we don’t understand that last one either.

Grizzly tracksVermont power company (not) hacked by the Russians

On New Year’s Eve newspaper headlines broadcast a rumor that Russian hackers may have penetrated the US power grid via a Vermont utility. Later, the Burlington Electric reported that it had found malware matching a signature released by the DHS and FBI on a single laptop that was not connected to the grid. Now, the company says there’s no indication the grid or its customer data has been compromised, and that the result came from internet traffic that is “not unique.”

But wait, there’s more…

• Dell’s Ultrathin 27-inch monitor really lives up to its name
• Steam’s 2016 top sellers include ‘No Man’s Sky’ and ‘Rocket League’
• France gives you legal permission to avoid work email
• SpaceX will resume rocket launches on January 8th
• Samsung goes overboard to make you care about laundry

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Linksys is the latest company to unveil a WiFi mesh system

Mesh networking has become trendy for folks looking to fill every nook and cranny of their homes with WiFi. So it should be no surprise that the makers of the most iconic router ever is unveiling its own system. The Linksys tri-band Velop setup is a modular system that the company says is made to expand as your needs do.

Each Velop Tri-Band 2×2 802.11ac Wave 2 MU-MIMO node pulls quadruple duty as a router, range extender, access point and bridge. According to Linksys, each Velop is capable of a combined speed of 2,200 Mbps. It’s like having a bunch of little routers in your home all working together to make sure you can stream The OA regardless of which room you’re in.

The Velop can be set up and maintained via the Linksys iOS and Android companion app and it supports Amazon’s Alexa platform out of the box. For example, it has a skill to turn guest access guest WiFi on and off with your voice. The smarts continue under the hood as well: Linksys says that the network will also dynamically adjust itself to deliver the best WiFi speeds.

And so it looks good in your home but will ultimately be mistaken for a speaker, the power and Ethernet ports are on the bottom of the Velop so it maintains a clean profile from all angles.

Since the device is modular, Linksys is selling it individually for $200 or in packs of two and three for $350 and $500, respectively. That makes it pricier than Google’s offering. Of course, though, it’s Linksys, which means it has a strong track record in networking products that Google hasn’t yet earned. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait long to see how they stack up against each other, as the Velops are available today.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Source: Linksys

Roccat’s new wireless gaming mouse promises zero lag

Wireless gaming mice are arguably more convenient and less hassle than wired mice, but they can come with a significant downside: lag. Roccat’s latest wireless gaming mouse aims to address this issue with the Owl-Eye optical sensor, which promises to translate motions to the screen with 1:1 accuracy. It’s one of three new mice and a swanky new keyboard Roccat revealed this week at CES 2017.

The Leadr is Roccat’s latest wireless gaming mouse, and the company promises it has “virtually zero latency.” It comes with a charging dock and a detachable charging cable (which technically makes it wire-capable, as well).

The two remaining mice are wired updates on the Roccat Kone line, each with the new Owl-Eye sensor. The Kone EMP is designed for players with medium to large hands, while the Kone Pure 2017 is made for slimmer hands, coming in at just 88 grams. Previous iterations of the Kone Pure have performed exceptionally well, especially for a slimmed-down mouse.

And then there’s the latest Roccat keyboard, the Isku+ Force FX, an updated model in the Isku series. The Force features a rubberdome keyboard that includes pressure-sensitive keys on the QWEASD zone, lending players greater control and customization options. Plus, each of those keys can be programmed with three different functions.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

New Apple Watch to Launch in Fall 2017 With Improved Battery Life But no Major Design Changes

Apple’s third-generation Apple Watch is expected to be unveiled in the third quarter of 2017 and will focus on improving battery life and overall performance, according to a new report out of China.

On Tuesday, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) claimed the next iteration of the wearable device will be manufactured by Taiwan-based Quanta, which was also responsible for the production of Apple’s first and second-generation smartwatch.

Citing market watchers with knowledge of Quanta’s plans, the paper said improving battery life is the manufacturer’s “main task”, but beside general performance improvements, the device’s other hardware would not see much change. Quanta declined to comment on the report, calling it “market speculation”.

The claims represent the first tentative indication of Apple’s launch timeline for its third-generation Apple Watch, pointing to a possible fall unveiling of the new wearable alongside this year’s iPhone 8.

The report also narrows down Apple’s rumored ambitions for the third-generation device, with previous reports suggesting it could introduce the first significant design changes for the timepiece, such as more advanced sensors that Apple was not able to include in the first and second-generation models.

Other previous rumors have claimed Apple plans to add cellular connectivity to the next Apple Watch, after battery life concerns prevented the feature from being included in the Series 2 device. Also suggested is a potential switch to micro-LED displays, which are thinner and lighter than current screens and offer improved color gamut and brightness.

Filed patents by Apple show other possibilities for future versions of Apple Watch, including the ability to determine a user’s identity through their heart rate and unique cardio rhythms. Future models could also potentially integrate haptic feedback into Apple Watch bands, freeing up internal space for other components and allowing for a thinner body design.

(Via DigiTimes.)

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Tags: Quanta, Apple Watch 3
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)
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CES 2017: Lenovo Announces Amazon Alexa-Powered Connected Smart Speaker

PC maker Lenovo today announced its first smart speaker with Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant built in.

Called the Lenovo Smart Assistant, the connected speaker integrates Amazon’s Alexa Voice Services and offers the same speech-activated features as the Echo family of devices, but housed in a slightly redesigned unit.

The speaker keeps the same cylindrical profile as Amazon’s Echo, but with the microphone portion of the device in a slightly raised position, which Lenovo says offers better ventilation to cool the internal components. Lenovo’s unit also has eight far-field microphones versus Echo’s seven, with noise suppression and acoustic echo cancellation included for picking up voice commands from up to 16 feet away.

The Lenovo Smart Assistant comes in a range of color schemes including green, gray, and orange fabric. The speakers will ship in May for a price of $130 (less than Amazon’s Echo at $180). Lenovo is also offering a Harman Kardon edition of the Smart Assistant featuring better sound quality for $180.

Amazon’s Alexa Voice Services API is expected to crop up in a number of new third-party products at this year’s CES. Microsoft has previously teased third-party devices using its own Cortana virtual assistant technology.

Tags: Lenovo, Amazon Echo, CES 2017
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macOS 10.12.2 Users Urged to Avoid Using ‘Work-in-Progress’ Preview App to Edit PDFs

Mac users running macOS Sierra 10.12.2 are being urged to avoid using Preview to edit PDFs until Apple fixes several bugs in the app that can cause corruption issues in the document format.

The recommendation comes from TidBITS publisher Adam Engst. Writing on the online Apple newsletter website, Engst backs up fellow developer Craig Landrup’s claim that Apple’s decision to rewrite the PDFKit framework for macOS 10.12 has broken basic functionality that PDF-related developers rely on, such as compatibility with ScanSnap and Doxie scanners.

It pains me to say this, speaking as the co-author of “Take Control of Preview,” but I have to recommend that Sierra users avoid using Preview to edit PDF documents until Apple fixes these bugs. If editing a PDF in Preview in unavoidable, be sure to work only on a copy of the file and retain the original in case editing introduces corruption of any sort.

As to why issues have arisen in Apple’s native Preview application, Engst quotes approvingly the DEVONthink developer Christian Grunenberg, who characterizes the rewritten version of PDFKit in Sierra as a “work in progress”:

Apple wants to use a common foundation for both iOS and macOS. However, it was released way too early, and for the first time (at least in my experience) Apple deprecated several features without caring about compatibility. And to make things worse, lots of former features are now broken or not implemented at all, meaning that we had to add lots of workarounds or implement stuff on our own. And there’s still work left to be done.

10.12.2 introduces new issues (it seems that Apple wants to fix at least the broken compatibility now) and of course fixed almost none of the other issues. It’s not only DEVONthink — a lot of other applications (such as EndNote, Skim, Bookends, and EagleFiler) are also affected.

Apple previously removed functionality in its iWork suite for Mac to conform with iOS, but eventually re-introduced the missing features in a later version. Whether Apple plans to do the same with an update to Preview is still unclear. Meanwhile, until Apple fixes the issues with the native Mac app, Engst recommends Smile’s PDFpen as an alternative for PDF manipulation of all sorts, with Adobe’s Acrobat DC being a more expensive option.

Related Roundup: macOS Sierra
Tag: Preview
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Lenovo 500 multimedia controller Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

You may not have a computer hooked up to your main living room home theater setup, but perhaps you should should. It’s a great way to get high-end PC gaming on a big screen, makes it easy to stream tons of content not easily accessible through common TV-based apps, and it’s the best way to set up virtual reality in a big living room space.

But the problem of how to actually drive that computer, be it a mini-desktop or a big gaming tower, is a tough one. I’ve tried everything from a standard wireless keyboard on my lap to a gyroscopic mouse I’d wave in the air, but nothing really works seamlessly.

Lenovo

Lenovo aims to solve this problem with the Lenovo 500, launched at CES today in Las Vegas. It’s a multimedia controller that looks like a hybrid of a tiny PC keyboard and an oversized Blackberry. The big difference between this and other wireless keyboards is that there’s still a standard (if small) QWERTY keyboard, but no separate touch pad or pointer. In this case, the entire keyboard surface doubles as a touch pad.

How does it work? Click the keys to type, or swipe your finger lightly over them to use the touch pad. It’s small enough that while holding it in two hands, both thumbs should be able to hit every key and swipe over the entire surface. There are still distinct left and right mouse buttons, as well as a few multimedia shortcut buttons.

Lenovo 500 Multimedia Controller
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There’s a small curve on the back of the Lenovo 500, making it easier to pick up from flat surfaces such as coffee tables, and the estimated range is around 65 feet (20m).

It’s certainly a clever idea, and it addresses a problem that to date has had no definitive solution, but touchpadding by swiping over a keyboard could be tough to get used to. We’ll have to get some serious hands-on time with it to see if it’s accurate enough for navigation, especially if it’s used on high-res 4K television screen.

The Lenovo 500 is expected in March, for $54, £44 or AU$75.

Lenovo Legion Y720 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Lenovo has always been a bit of a stealth force in PC gaming. For years, the company has turned out some very good gaming laptops and desktops, with just a bit of gamer-y flair, excellent performance, and prices that are as good or better than the competition.

At CES 2017, Lenovo is rebranding its gaming line, hoping to make it more of a player in a category dominated by Dell’s Alienware and HP’s
Omen
on the mainstream side, and boutique players like Origin PC and Falcon Northwest on the custom side.

Lenovo

The new name is Legion, and it’s launching with two new laptops, the Y720 and Y520 (keeping the Y-series designation from Lenovo’s previous gaming laptops). Why that name? Lenovo says: “Just as the Roman army shared a common purpose that bound them together as a force to be reckoned with, Lenovo Legion is all about our growing community of gamers and their passion for gaming.” So, there’s that.

The new models look like slightly slimmer versions of Lenovo’s previous Y-series laptops, with red accents and keyboard backlighting (red-only on the 15-inch, multicolored on the 17-inch), and a wide central hinge connected to an angular body. Inside both of these, you’ll find new seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processors and Nvidia graphics, up to the current GeForce 1060 (in the 17-inch model). The 17-inch Y720 also includes a Thunderbolt 3 port for fast connections to accessories and external displays, and an optional 4K display with an anti-glare coating.

Lenovo Legion Y720
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The 17-inch Y720 is also the first Windows laptop with built-in Dolby Atmos, which is a surround-sound-like ecosystem of hardware and supported content for excellent positional audio, which is certainly important for games.

My favorite new feature in the Y720 is the integrated Xbox One wireless receiver. The standard dongle you need to plug into a PC to use an Xbox gamepad is huge (and frequently buggy). Having that built in is one of those small touches that means a lot.

The 15-inch Y520 version.

Lenovo

As of right now, it seems that the 15-inch Y520 model is missing most of these high-end extra features, and only supports the Nvidia 1050 graphics chip, which means it won’t work with the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Considering other PC makers put Nvidia 1060 or better GPUs into even 13-inch laptops, it seems like something we’d like to have in a future revision. Even the 17-inch tops out at the Nvidia 1060, not the faster 1070 or 1080, but in my hands-on testing in other laptops, the 1060 is perfectly fine for virtual reality and full-resolution, high-detail-level gaming.

The Legion Y720 starts at $1,399 (£1,144 or AU$1,947) and is coming in April, while the Legion Y520 will be available in February, starting at $899 (£735 or AU$1,251).

Lenovo Smart Assistant with Amazon Alexa Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Amazon’s Echo is the current standard for smart home assistants — with some new competition from Google Home, of course — thanks to its ease of use and surprisingly good voice-controlled personality, named Alexa.

But while the Echo (and the Echo Dot and Tap) are Amazon-made products, Alexa herself is slipping the bonds of corporate exclusivity and turning up in a handful of other products. We’ve already seen the Triby smart radio: Now Lenovo has the Smart Assistant.

Lenovo

It’s not a very catchy name, but one look will tell you this is clearly modeled on the Echo. It’s a tall cylindrical device, but with a warmer design than Amazon’s severe speaker. The top half is white, with a silver 360-degree microphone-speaker combo on top. The bottom half feels more like the Google Home device, with a gray, green or orange woven overlay for a splash of color. Inside is an Intel Celeron N3060 processor, and one 5-watt tweeter and one 10-watt woofer for audio.

Lenovo Smart Assistant
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It looks like an Echo, it uses Alexa, it uses the official Alexa phone app, and works with the same wide range of third-party smart home devices. So, design aside, what exactly is the difference between the Lenovo Smart Assistant and an Echo? Lenovo says it’s the one area the Echo is often criticized for coming up short — sound. There’s a standard model Smart Assistant, and for $50 more, there’s a special Harman Kardon edition with premium audio.

We’ll have to wait for a serious ears-on test to find out if it makes a real difference, but matching Alexa with a good quality built-in speaker could be a killer combo.

Also new in Lenovo’s smart home line is the Smart Storage box, a networked hard drive with 6TB of storage, dual-band wireless and built-in facial recognition software to help identify your photos.

The Lenovo Smart Storage unit.

Lenovo

The Lenovo Smart Assistant starts at $129 in the US (£105 or AU$179 converted) for the standard edition, which is less than the standard Echo. The Harmon Kardon edition will be $179 (£145 or AU$195), and both will be available in May. The Smart Storage box starts at $139 in the US (£115 or AU$250), and is also coming in May. UK and Australian availability are yet to be announced; Lenovo usually sells its products in both countries but of the two, Alexa products are currently only available in the UK.

Belkin WeMo Dimmer Switch Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Coming in 2017, the WeMo Dimmer is Belkin’s second-gen smart switch.

Belkin

Belkin’s app-enabled WeMo Light Switches have long been a relatively affordable way to smarten up the switches in your home, and the fact that they don’t need a hub makes them a pretty simple smart home starting point. Still, they suffer from a glaring flaw: They can’t dim your lights.

Now, at CES 2017, Belkin is finally fixing the problem. The answer is a brand new, dimmable version of the WeMo Light Switch that’ll hit retail later this year. Pricing is still yet to be determined, but right now, the WeMo Dimmer looks like a pretty promising step forward to me.

Here’s what I like best about it:

• You can calibrate it for the specific bulbs that you’re using. Dimming performance can vary greatly across different kinds of bulbs, and in some cases, you won’t be able to dim the lights without at least a little bit of flicker. Belkin hopes to solve that problem by letting you calibrate the dimmable range of the WeMo Dimmer for the specific kind of bulbs you’re using. Belkin claims that the switch will work with LEDs, CFLs, incandescents, you name it.
• You can set time-specific brightness levels. Imagine walking into your bathroom and flipping on the light in the middle of the day. Now imagine waking up in the middle of the night and flipping the same light on. Full brightness is fine for the first instance, but not so much for the second. With the WeMo Dimmer, you’ll be able to program how bright the light should be when you switch it on at different times of the day. Helpful, simple and smart.
• You can use it to make it look like you’re at home when you aren’t. More and more smart lighting products are offering features that will automatically cycle your lights on and off when you’re away to help make it look like you’re home. Belkin’s following suit with a new “Away Mode” feature that does exactly that.

If you like, you’ll be able to trigger that Away Mode feature by long-pressing on the switch for a couple of seconds. You can customize those long presses to do other things, too — turning all of the other WeMo-enabled lights in your home on or off, for instance.

The new switch uses capacitive touch controls, and features a multicolor contextual indicator light.

Belkin

The WeMo Dimmer borrows that long press trick from the first-gen WeMo Light Switch, and it shares the same Android and iOS app, the same basic automation features, and the same third-party integrations, too. Most notable among them: the free online automation service IFTTT, the Nest Learning Thermostat, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Home smart speaker. You’ll be able to sync the WeMo Dimmer up with all of them.

Of course, something else it shares with the original model is a lack of compatibility with Apple HomeKit, the set of connected home protocols in the software that powers iPhones and iPads. The release of new hardware would have seemed to be a great time for Belkin to add in the necessary HomeKit chipset, but a WeMo spokesperson tells me that the company was concerned about selling HomeKit-compatible WeMo gear alongside older, non-HomeKit-compatible WeMo products. So, for now at least, HomeKit is a no-go.

The new switch does look a little different than the previous model, though. For starters, the dimming controls are capacitive, which is a break from the physical switch of gen one. There’s also a new multi-color indicator light at the bottom of the switch — it’ll offer contextual cues to help you keep track of your switch’s automated behavior. A green light indicates that it’s running one of your WeMo rules, for instance, while an aqua-colored light tells you that the light is responding to a third-party integration, like an Amazon Echo voice command. I’ll be curious to see if that’s more helpful or annoying in practice.

Here’s what works with the Amazon Echo
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The WeMo Dimmer is expected to arrive at retail this spring. Like Belkin’s other new gadget, the pint-sized WeMo Mini Smart Plug, the new dimmer switch will launch in the US and Canada only, but Belkin sells its existing WeMo products internationally, so I wouldn’t rule out global availability at some point down the line.

The real question is how much will this thing cost. Current-gen WeMo Light Switches sell for about fifty bucks each, but more fully-featured competitors from names like Lutron and iDevices can sell for as much as twice that. I’m guessing the new WeMo Dimmer lands somewhere in the middle, but we’ll know for sure when it arrives later this year. Expect an in-depth review from the CNET Smart Home at that time.