Thicker or thinner: 2017 HP Spectre x360 15 vs. 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro

The introduction of the 2016 MacBook Pro was met with a fair amount of criticism, not to mention excitement over the introduction of the Apple’s OLED Touch Bar. The new MacBook Pros are thinner than ever, and, in turn, give up legacy ports, opt for a second-gen keyboard, and house smaller batteries.

More: Apple’s MacBook Pro is too thin, and HP can prove it

HP went in the opposite direction with its refresh of the Spectre x360 15, however, outfitting the Windows 2-in-1 with a thicker chassis designed to accommodate a larger battery, thus allowing it to power the machine’s 4K UHD display. Adding thickness also lets HP outfit the machine with an excellent full-travel keyboard and a few legacy ports to go along with the device’s USB Type-C connections.

Which approach — thicker or thinner — results in the best machine, though? Read on to find out whether it’s the HP Spectre x360 15 or the 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro that benefits the most from the recent design changes.

Specs

MacBook Pro 15-inch

HP Spectre x360 15

Dimensions
 13.75 x 9.48 x .61 (in)
14.00 x 9.88 x .70 (in)
Weight
 4.02 pounds
4.42 pounds
Processor
 6th Generation Intel Core i7 quad-core
7th Generation Intel Core i7 dual-core
RAM
 16GB LPDDR3
8 or 16GB DDR4
Display
15.6-inch IPS display
15.6-inch IPS touchscreen
Resolution
2,880 x 1,800
3,840 x 2,160
Storage
256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB PCIe SSD
256GB, 512GB, 1TB PCIe SSD
Networking
802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2
802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2
Ports
4 x Thunderbolt 3, 3.5mm
1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB Type-C, 1 x USB Type-c with Thunderbolt 3, 1 x HDMI, Headset, SD Card reader
Webcam
720p FaceTime HD
1080p webcam with IR camera and Windows Hello support
Operating System
MacOS Sierra
Windows 10
Battery
76 watt-hours
79.2 watt-hours
Price
$2,399+
$1,280+
Availability
Available now
Available late-February
Review
Hands-on
4 out of 5 stars

How to record calls on your iPhone

In a time when our smartphones can help order pizzas, hail cabs, and detect heartbeats, you’d think it’d be easy to record a simple phone call. Sadly, it’s not. Despite what you may think, recording a call isn’t as easy as merely pressing a button on your iPhone, so in order to get it done you’ll need to install an app. There are tons of these littered across the Apple App Store and the web, and while many of them promise crystal-clear quality at a nonexistent price tag, very few live up to the claims. To help you pinpoint the right app for your needs, we’ve scoured the internet in search of the best call recorders and offered up a quick overview of our favorites in the paragraphs below. Just try not to forget about the whole legality thing.

More: Store your Skype calls for later reference with these free and paid tools

Editor’s Note: There are federal and state laws pertaining to the recording of phone calls. As a general rule of thumb, though, you shouldn’t run into any legal trouble if you capture both parties verbally consenting to the recording. Some states require that only one party consent, however, feel free to check your state or local laws if you need further clarification.

Record an incoming call using Google Voice

Surprisingly, Google Voice will record incoming calls for the stellar price of zero dollars. The only setbacks are that Google doesn’t allow you to record outgoing calls — only incoming ones — and you have to port your phone number over to Google to get access to the recording feature. This makes it rather inconvenient if you’re hoping to record any conversations that you yourself need to initiate, or if you like your current carrier.

Pro tip: The website GetHuman is a great workaround for recording customer service calls. The site allows you to notify a specific company that you’d like a rep to contact you.

To start recording incoming calls with Google Voice, you first need to set up an account. This is extremely easy — just head to voice.google.com and follow instructions. Once your account is up and running, the next step is to enable call recording so you can actually record and automatically save your conversation as an MP3 file.

Step 1: Navigate to the main Google Voice homepage.

Step 2: Click the gear icon in the upper-right and select Settings from the resulting drop-down menu.

Step 3: Select the Calls tab and check the box directly beside Enable Recording, near the bottom of the page.

Once you do this, you can record incoming calls by pressing the number “4” on your phone’s keypad during the call. Doing so will trigger an automated voice notifying both parties that the call is being recorded. To stop recording, simply press “4” again or end the call as you would normally. After you stop recording, Google will automatically save the conversation to your Inbox, which is where all your recordings can be found, listened to, or downloaded.

If you want to listen to your recorded phone calls on your iPhone, you’ll need to download the Google Voice app.

Launch the Google Voice app as you would normally.
At the top left of the app, Tap Menu in the top-left corner of the app.
Select Recorded.

Find the call you want to listen to, and touch the recording to open it.
Tap the play icon in the bottom-left corner.

Airbnb sued by major US apartment landlord

Here’s a huge one for the ever-growing pile of lawsuits filed by and against Airbnb. Apartment Investment & Management Co. (AIMCO) has sued the rental service for “helping tenants breach their leases,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Denver-based AIMCO, one of the biggest landlords in the US, owns and manages over 50,000 apartments across the country. Real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors told the WSJ that this is the first time Airbnb has been sued by a major landlord. Other apartment owners might now feel emboldened to follow suit if the service refuses to cooperate with them.

The plaintiff says short-term rentals are against their leases, and Airbnb is helping its tenants break that rule. It also says the practice of renting to transients creates unsafe conditions for other tenants and that it has suffered loss of income, property damage, nuisance and disturbance.

AIMCO Chief Executive Terry Considine said in a written statement:

“It is not acceptable to us that Airbnb actively promotes and profits from deliberate breaches of our leases, and does so in utter disregard of the disrespectful and unsafe situations created for our full-time residents and their families.”

Last year, the company tried to make the service more palatable to landlords by giving them a cut of the revenue, but that was apparently poorly received. We’re guessing AIMCO was one of those who weren’t particularly moved by the attempt at building a relationship. The apartment owner now seeks an unspecified amount of damages and wants the court to forbid Airbnb from listing any of its properties on the website.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The Morning After: Weekend Edition

Letter from the Editor

We live in a time when what previously would have been surreal is now reality. And I’m not even referring to the fact that our president fails to see the need to secure his smartphone, nor that the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency is probably less concerned with the environmental than with serving the oil industry — though these and other governmental actions would have been appropriately Kafkaesque fever dreams in an earlier decade.

What I’m talking about is Mat Smith’s exploration of the dining delights set forth in the latest installment of one of the biggest game franchises of all time. You see, acquiring ingredients and learning recipes is a significant part of Final Fantasy XV’s gameplay, and the digital food looked so good, Mat had to make some for himself in real life. It won’t be long before children dream of slaying wayward cactuar — not for the thrill of victory and resulting EXP, but to find out what it tastes like poached in extra virgin olive oil with lemon and thyme.

On the opposite end of the bizarre culinary spectrum, Andrew Tarantola ventured to McDonald’s to test out the most over-engineered straw the world has ever seen. That’s right, y’all, Mickey D’s tapped some engineers (the same ones who designed Google’s Project Ara modular smartphone) to create a straw that could simultaneously pull from the chocolate and mint layers of its Shamrock Shake in equal amounts, to deliver a perfectly balanced mouthful with every sip. Why go to all that trouble? To get suckers like me publishing paragraphs like this.

While that straw is an ultimately useless marketing ploy, Verizon rolled out a new unlimited data plan of great utility to its customers. The question Nathan Ingraham tried to answer this week is: Why now? Big Red is clearly feeling the heat from its competitors, and it was time to give the people back their all-you-can-eat mobile buffet. Time will tell whether getting back into the unlimited game reverses the trend of customers migrating to T-Mobile.

This is not a drillDrone flying cars are coming to Dubai

This week Dubai’s Roads and Transportation Agency announced the Chinese EHang 184 passenger drone would begin “regular operations” in July. That’s right, soon real human beings will be zipping through the skies aboard one of these Personal Flying Vehicles. Oh, and EHang is seeking FAA approval to operate in the US too.

Nature‘Planet Earth II’ starts airing tonight

Ten years after the original documentary series seared our HDTVs, the BBC is bringing Planet Earth II to the US for our viewing pleasure. Set your DVR for 9PM, and make sure to check out the 4K / HDR version if you have a compatible TV and Dish Network or DirecTV. Or, you can watch the NBA Slam Dunk contest and 3-point shootout. Life is about choices.

Game streaming is for PS4 and PC onlySony pares down PlayStation Now support

Hopefully, you weren’t relying on Sony’s cloud gaming service to play on your Vita, PS3 or PlayStation TV, because as of August 15th, they will no longer have access. That should give you plenty of time to wrap up any games you’ve been working on since access will be limited to just PlayStation 4 and PC platforms going forward. The real bad news is for Bravia TV owners (are any of you using the feature? Let us know.), since those devices are getting cut off April 1st.

Pre-life chemistryNASA’s Dawn probe spots organic materials on Ceres

Using the Dawn spacecraft’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) scientists say they’ve spotted organic compounds on the dwarf planet’s surface. That doesn’t mean we’re going to find any little green men there but could open up the possibility of microbial life, or at least a life-friendly environment.

New recordIndia launched 104 satellites on a single rocket

The Indian Space Research Organisation had a busy Valentine’s Day, launching “the biggest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites — and of satellites in general — in human history.”

But wait, there’s more…

• Henrietta Lacks will be immortalized in an HBO special
• The Engadget Podcast Ep 28: Disconnection Notice
• But you can’t even get a text back
• The NBA’s ‘House of Legends’ VR app is now live on Google Daydream
• NASA wants to send a life-detecting lander to Europa
• Apple’s WWDC starts on June 5th in San Jose
• Watch SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch live at 10:01AM ET

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.

SpaceX reschedules its unmanned Red Dragon mission to Mars

SpaceX is still relentlessly gunning for Mars, but the company has admitted that the current plans for its first unmanned flight might be a tad too ambitious. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has revealed that its robotic Martian lander called Red Dragon won’t be ready in 2018 like the company wanted. She made the revelation at a press conference announcing the first time the space corporation is launching a rocket from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX originally hoped to send a Red Dragon to our neighboring planet by 2022 until it bumped up its target date to 2018. Shotwell said that she and her team were focused on achieving that goal but ultimately felt that they “needed to put more resources and focus more heavily on our crew program and our Falcon Heavy program.” They’re now “looking more in the 2020 timeframe.”

The company is developing the Red Dragon capsule for low-cost Mars lander missions flown atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. It’ll test all the techniques and technologies we’ve developed thus far and will ferry equipment future spacefarers would need when they visit the red planet.

Source: SpaceNews, NASA (YouTube)

Apple was just granted a patent for a touchscreen that reads fingerprints

Why it matters to you

The future iPhone’s design could affect not only iPhone users, but could also inspire hundreds of Android phones along the way.

The iPhone’s home button could soon disappear — and could be replaced by a fingerprint scanner implemented into the device’s touchscreen. Apple has just been granted a patent for a virtual home button that would be placed within a touchscreen.

The patent itself was first spotted by AppleInsider, and was made public on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of such a move from Apple. In fact, rumors of a Home button replacement have been swirling around for some time, with the latest rumors even suggesting that we’ll see a MacBook Pro-style TouchBar replace the home button.

More: What Spotify and Apple Music should learn from Tidal

The Home button has long been a staple of the iPhone. Ever since the ground-breaking smartphone was first launched in 2007, that user-interface element has remained in the same spot — although its functionality has evolved over time to include a fingerprint sensor.

It’s important to note that just because Apple has been awarded a patent doesn’t mean we’ll see the Home button disappearing anytime soon; it just means Apple has been thinking about it. It would line up with rumors suggesting that the next iPhone’s screen will cover a much larger percentage of the front of the phone, however, leaving the Home button with nowhere to go except in the display itself.

That’s only one of the big hardware changes expected from the 10th-anniversary iPhone, which is to be launched later this year. Other anticipated features include a glass and steel body, a curved edge display, and even the long-awaited wireless charging.

Implementing the fingerprint scanner would likely use tech from LuxVue, a company that Apple acquired back in 2014. That tech comes in the form of micro-LEDs, which can be used as a replacement for capacitive touch arrays through the use of infrared diodes.

Australian court rules that Uber is a taxi service, drivers must pay service tax

Why it matters to you

Now that Uber drivers must pay the goods and services tax, your Uber rides in Australia might become a bit more expensive.

Uber is not your traditional employer, since the firm does not regard its drivers as employees. For that reason, in most jurisdictions, Uber is not considered a taxi service for tax purposes. That latter point was struck down in an Australian court, however, with Uber reclassified as a taxi service in the region, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

The matter stretches back to 2015, when Uber appealed a decision by the Australian Taxation Office that required Uber drivers to pay Australia’s goods and services tax (GST). The decision effectively classified Uber drivers as taxi drivers and, in turn, classified the ridesharing service as a taxi service. Uber appealed that decision and argued that, since its drivers do not use cab stands, do not wear uniforms, and do not pick up passengers from the streets, they should not be classified as taxi drivers.

More: Uber finally lets Android Wear owners hail rides with their smartwatches

Unfortunately for the ridesharing service, the Australian Federal Court did not agree and deemed that Brian Colin Fine, the driver who was named in the initial proceedings, offered taxi travel through Uber.

“I contend that, on 11 September 2015, Mr. Fine was supplying taxi travel as defined in … the GST Act when he was operating as an UberX partner,” said the judge who presided over the case. “That is because I consider that, at the time, he was supplying travel that involved transporting passengers by taxi for fares.”

As a result of the decision, drivers must register for the GST and pay the 10-percent tax, on top of the commission they pay Uber. Because Uber drivers are considered contractors, they were already responsible for their own tax arrangements.

An Uber spokesperson did not say whether or not the company will challenge the decision, though it was confirmed that it will provide information to drivers “as soon as we can.”

“We are reviewing the decision and will provide our driver-partners with more information as soon as we can,” said the spokesperson.

South Korea’s antitrust watchdog concerned Google meddled with Samsung’s Tizen

Why it matters to you

More competition is always a good thing for consumers, but did Google stifle it by interfering with Samsung and Tizen?

Samsung might be all in on Android, but the South Korean firm also toys around with its in-house Tizen operating system for phones, smartwatches, televisions, and everything in between. However, South Korea’s antitrust watchdog is concerned that Samsung business with the former might have negatively affected its business with the latter, with Google to blame, reports The Korea Times.

The matter goes back to 2011, when Samsung signed the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA) and anti-fragmentation agreement (AFA). MADA required Android smartphones to use Google as the default search engine and pre-install specific Google-developed apps, such as YouTube and Gmail, to the home screen. AFA, meanwhile, forbade Samsung from using Google’s algorithms to develop its own operating system.

More: Samsung hopes to entice developers to build apps for Tizen TVs with update

At the time, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) looked into MADA and whether it violated the country’s Antitrust Law. Google’s Korean arm was cleared of all alleged wrongdoing in 2013. Furthermore, the federal agency launched an investigation into AFA in 2016 and found some issues that might have led to Google’s possible interference of Samsung’s Tizen development.

“We are currently checking if Google thwarted competition in the OS market,” said an FTC official. That official also confirmed the FTC will review whether to reinvestigate the 2013 antitrust case.

“As lawmakers have demanded a reinvestigation of the case, the FTC is checking whether it is possible to do so.”

A spokesperson for Google Korea said the company has done nothing wrong, but did not say what its next step is.

“Android is an open-source platform. Our partner agreements are entirely voluntary — anyone can use Android without Google,” said the spokesperson. “The Android OS can be downloaded for free. It can be modified and used to build a phone. Many companies have used Android’s source code as the starting point for their own operating systems.”

Apple Loses Fourth Place to Xiaomi in Booming China Smartphone Market

Apple has fallen to fifth place in China’s booming smartphone market, where combined sales reached 131.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide shipments. The Q4 figure confirmed the highest ever annual amount of smartphones sold in China, according to market research firm Canalys, with shipments for the year reaching 476.5 million units, rising 11.4 percent from 2015 levels.

Huawei shipments of 76.2 million units took the top spot in China’s smartphone market in 2016, followed by Oppo with 73.2 million units and Vivo with 63.2 million. Apple meanwhile shipped 43.8 million units, down 18.2 percent year on year, influencing the company’s 7 percent decline in global shipments compared to 2015. Apple also lost fourth place to Xiaomi, despite the Chinese maker also experiencing declines in the country.

Xiaomi became number four in the China smartphone market, while Apple fell to fifth place. Xiaomi shipped a total of 51.4 million units of smartphones with a 21 percent year-on-year decline, while its market share decreased from 15.2 percent in 2015 to 10.7 percent in 2016, the lowest since 2013. Apple shipped 43.8 million units of iPhones throughout the year, a year-on-year decrease of 18.2 percent.

Huawei’s success in China continued apace on the strength of its flagship products, said Canalys research analyst Jessie Ding. “While Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi are all in the process of adjusting their strategies in China, Huawei took the opportunity to consolidate its position in the tier-1 and -2 cities.” The lull also allowed Huawei to attack Oppo and Vivo’s backyard, “in tier-three and tier-four cities,” Ding noted.

Last year Apple experienced its first ever year-over-year decline in the Chinese smartphone market, with the company’s phones continuing to be outpaced by cheaper alternatives and the iPhone 7 failing to kick up a frenzy among consumers compared to previous launches, according to analysts.

Apple faced a similar story at the beginning of the current year. Despite recording record results, Apple’s Q1 2017 earnings call revealed revenue was down 8 percent in China, but CEO Tim Cook claimed half of that decline was down to currency devaluation. Cook said that while China was “not without challenges”, he remained “encouraged by improvements” going into the second quarter.

Analysts have previously suggested that Apple’s decline in China has been compounded by loyal users taking a year off upgrading in 2016 in anticipation of 2017’s “iPhone 8”. If so, Apple’s success there depends on whether the upcoming phone can live up to the hype.

“China and Hong Kong are still the hardest-hit areas in Apple’s global top ten market,” according to Ding. “The outlook remains bleak for Apple to get its China performance back to its heyday of 2015. As with consumers in other developed markets, China’s consumers are awaiting the 10th anniversary of the iPhone with very high expectations.”

Tag: China
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Now Amazon Echo can access your Outlook.com calendar

As a part of Amazon’s ongoing quest to make Alexa and its Echo devices deeply embedded within our lives, this week it added support for Microsoft Calendar accounts. If your account ends in Outlock.com, Live.com or Hotmail.com, then it should be accessible with no problem, however, according to the FAQ, corporate Exchange accounts are probably a no-go. Alexa already supports Google Calendar, but that’s it. There’s no iCloud access either, however, Geekwire points out a Redditor’s project on Github that might help.

Source: Amazon