UK defense company sold powerful surveillance tech to Mid East

The BBC reported today that the UK defense company BAE systems sold powerful surveillance technology to a number of countries in the Middle East. The report comes after a year-long investigation spearheaded by BBC Arabic and the Danish newspaper, Dagbladet Information.

The surveillance technology in question was sold through ETI, a Danish subsidiary of BAE systems. It had created a system called Evident that let governments conduct mass surveillance, which included pinpointing a person’s location via cell phone data, viewing the entirety of someone’s online activity and even decrypting messages. According to a BBC source, Evident could let you intercept an entire country’s internet traffic.

BAE sold the surveillance technology to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Morocco and Algeria. One source said Tunisian president Ben Ali used Evident against opponents during the Arab Spring uprisings.

According to some email exchanges between British and Danish export authorities obtained by the BBC, the UK made it clear that they didn’t want Evident to be exported to the UAE. The British authorities said they would deny such an export if it were up to them, but the Danish authorities approved the sale nonetheless.

The Evident sales were made completely legally. But with government surveillance of citizens taking place on a number of fronts, this kind of technology in anyone’s hands seems like a bad idea.

Via: The Guardian

Source: BBC

At last, you can get Microsoft Office from the Windows Store

The excellent Surface Laptop is now available in stores, and Microsoft Office is now in the Windows Store for the first time. This is a necessary step in Microsoft’s plan for laptop domination, as the Surface Laptop is the first computer that runs Windows 10S — a custom version of Windows that can only run and install apps from Microsoft’s official software storefront. Of course, Microsoft’s web versions of the Office apps are pretty robust at this point (and they’ll work with the Surface Laptop), but some users won’t be happy without a desktop app for offline access, among other features.

Technically speaking, Office in the Windows Store is in “preview” — a Microsoft support article states that “while Office itself is not in preview, Office is using new install and update processes that are in preview.” Because of that early release status, Microsoft is giving a free one-year subscription to Office 365 personal to with a Windows 10S device. If you’re not using a Windows 10S device, you won’t be able to install Office via the Windows Store until it’s out of preview (fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to get Office on those computers).

Microsoft notes a few other restrictions for Office on Windows 10S: it’s only a 32-bit version, the COM add-in tools won’t work and the OneNote 2016 desktop app isn’t ready yet. You’ll have to install the universal Windows Platform app instead. For most people, these won’t be deal-breakers, and the free year of access should more than make up for any pain here.

Source: Microsoft

Amazon has the tech to thwart comparison shoppers in its stores

Amazon’s low prices, exclusive discounts and quick delivery have lured customers away from traditional brick and mortar stores for years, but their reach has been mostly limited to the online sphere. Until now, that is. Amazon has just been granted a patent to control what you see (and what you don’t) on your phone when you’re inside one of their physical stores.

The patent, ominously titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” is for technology that examines what a person is searching for when connected to a retail WiFi network — that is, a WiFi network provided by and located within a store, such as an Amazon bricks-and-mortar location. The technology can actually determine whether you’re searching for a competitor’s item online and take subsequent action.

If the tech finds that you are, indeed, comparison shopping on your phone, it will take one or more “control actions,” including fully blocking access to the content, redirecting your phone or sending a sales representative to talk to you. It can also check whether Amazon’s product is more desirable — say, lower priced — at which point, it will allow you to see the information. We’ve reached out to Amazon for a comment and will update with any additional information we receive.

While this tech may seem disturbing (and it is) it’s also a bit funny. After all, Amazon has been using underhanded tactics to undermine traditional retail shopping left and right, releasing apps to price compare and purchase items at Amazon while you’re browsing in competitor’s stores. It’s amusing that they’ve gotten so good at it that, now, Amazon wants to prevent buyers from practicing the behavior at its own retail locations that it nurtured in the first place.

Via: Squawker

Source: Patent US 9,665,881 B1

‘OK K.O.’ is a brilliant cartoon with a game to match

With his small, boxy stature and pin-thin legs, K.O. doesn’t look like much of a superhero. But that’s the whole point of OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, an animated series from Cartoon Network. The titular character is a powerhouse-in-training, full of naive wonder and a hunger to pummel bad guys. He works in a convenience store run by Mr. Gar, one of the world’s greatest superheroes, alongside fellow rookies Radicles and Enid. Together they battle the mischievous robots sent from a factory called Boxmore across the road, learning about friendship and hard work along the way.

The show will premiere this fall with, if all goes to plan, a tie-in game called OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes alongside it. The release is unusual for two reasons: One, this type of game is usually developed after a show has been released and drawn a large, lucrative audience. Two, they’re typically low-quality or made by studios with a lacklustre pedigree. Capy Games, meanwhile, is an independent studio with bags of talent. It started its business with licensed games, but has since released a string of original hits, including Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and Super Time Force.

The show

The collaboration wouldn’t have been possible without Ian Jones-Quartey. The writer, storyboard artist, animator and voice actor has worked on a range of cartoons, including Adventure Time and Steven Universe. In 2011, he pitched a show to Cartoon Network that combined two of his favorite pastimes, video games and wrestling, as well as his experiences growing up and working in a strip mall. That became Lakewood Plaza Turbo, a pilot that Jones-Quartey wrapped up in 2012. Cartoon Network was intrigued by the idea and asked if he would develop the concept further using a mobile game.

Ian Jones-Quartey, creator of OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes.

Cartoon Network

OK K.O.! Lakewood Plaza Turbo was released on iOS and Android in February 2016, alongside three animated shorts. Additional “minisodes” were released on YouTube in December and January 2017, fleshing out the world and the colorful characters who inhabit it. Jones-Quartey and the show’s executive producer, Toby Jones, worked on the storyboards; however, each episode was animated by a different studio. They all have a unique style, but are clearly part of a collective whole. If you watch them all in one swoop you’ll have a thorough understanding of K.O., his friends, and what makes them such interesting characters.

The game, the shorts — it was all necessary to greenlight the full series. “All of that stuff was us figuring out more about the show itself,” Jones explains. “We took what we learned from all of those different game-centric things to help develop and get the show picked up. We repitched it and said, ‘This is what we’ve learned, this is where we’re at’ and it got [Cartoon Network] all the more excited about it and led to [OK K.O.] finally becoming a show.”

Cartoon Network’s gaming division knew the team at Capybara Games and told them about the project. Before long, Jones-Quartey and Jones were in a room with a couple of storyboards pitching the Toronto-based studio their vision for OK K.O. “We get asked a lot to make games for other people’s stuff, like other licenses, brands and IPs, and we always say no because it’s never really enough space for us to create the thing that we feel passionate about creating,” Nathan Vella, co-founder and president of Capy Games said. But this project was different. Cartoon Network was pitching a parallel production that would encourage experimentation and unique, creative treatments.

“It was a very strange thing for us to agree to collaborate and create based on something that only barely existed,” Vella said. “I mean, the trust that Ian and Toby put in us to do right by their creation, we were also putting trust in them to not screw it up.”

The game

Capy’s game is a bright, cheery blend of genres. It’s partly an adventure game, with meticulously drawn 2D environments portraying Lakewood Plaza, Gar’s Bodega and the robot Boxmore factory. You run around as K.O. and pick up quests from the show’s standout characters: One mission, for instance, has you hiding in the carpark to catch an elusive vandal who keeps spray painting Rad’s van. The culprit, unsurprisingly, is an android that wants nothing more than to make your life a misery. It’s here that the game then shifts into a 2D fighter, with simple but stylish combos and special summons.

“This is a game that I’ve really wanted to make,” Vella says. “I love fighting games, I love brawlers and I love marrying genres together. In the history of Capy, we’ve never really made something that fits in that fighting-game-brawling space, even though it’s my favorite genre. So this game is something that’s been percolating at the studio and at some point we probably would have wanted to make.” The game has plenty of throwbacks to the show and humor that can be enjoyed by all ages. It’s also surprisingly deep, with a combat system that doles out style, strength and other useful stat bonuses depending on your performance in battle.

“We were figuring things out in the show at the same time as they were figuring them out in the game,” Jones-Quartey said. “So week-to-week, any time we came up with something, be it a new design, a new storyboard, new animatics, things we working on for the show, Capy had access to all of it. So we were just sharing whatever we were making with them, and they were sharing their stuff with us. They were telling us about solutions they were coming up with, and then we would be like, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea, maybe we can work that into the show.’”

It’s a true collaboration that wouldn’t have been possible unless Jones-Quartey was willing to give up a degree of creative control. He describes OK K.O. as a “playground” for creativity, a property that embraces different interpretations. The show and the game, for instance, have completely different art styles, like the shorts that were released on YouTube. “One of the things I was a big proponent of very early on was, ‘Look, instead of having a stranglehold on what it is, we should just find people who we trust and whose taste we like and just set them free,’” Jones-Quartey said.

“We were given complete license to do our own art, our own music, our own writing, our own gameplay,” Vella says. “And that was the focus. We didn’t have to fight for that, that was the push.”

That freedom is fast becoming a model for the video-game industry. The best licensed titles, like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, have (almost) completely original stories. They’re based on properties that people love, but have unique, refreshing takes on the world, characters and lore.

“Batman and Shadow of Mordor are important because they’re showing other developers that you’re not stuck in this little, itty-bitty bubble,” Vella says. “We’ve made those games in the past. When we were starting out, we did all licensed work, and it was awful, it was an extremely taxing way to build because we were building with no room to move. It was: There’s six months, there’s a release that has to happen, there’s a design that was written by somebody else already. And it has to be on brand, all of your models have to look exactly right … the stuff that’s great in games is everything that pushes past it.”

Toby Jones, co-executive producer on OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, and Ian Jones-Quartey.

A different Cartoon Network

The project represents a shift in thinking at Cartoon Network. Video games are no longer an afterthought or secondary to animation. Shows are now conceived with the idea that they could be adapted and released in many different forms. It all started three years ago, when Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Network’s chief content officer, decided to move the game production and publishing group inside the core content team. “At that point, we were no longer on the tail-end of the development process, but at the very beginning,” Chris Waldron, vice president for games and digital products at Cartoon Network, said.

That setup allows Waldron and his team to approach show creators earlier in the development process. If there’s a game-like reference or theme, it can be discussed and possibly nurtured into something that would work as a side project. Waldron can then look at signing a game developer who has the same sort of outlook and sensibilities as the show’s creators.

OK K.O. is a unique case because of how long it spent in a conceptual development state. Nevertheless, it seems likely that this sort of collaboration will happen again, two teams with different backgrounds and areas of technical expertise working together to bring a charming world to life. It means that however you first experience OK K.O., whether that’s the game or the show, you’re getting something that’s high-quality and stands on its own merits.

“A dream for us is for someone to play the game having never even seen the show and just be like, ‘What a cool game!’ And get interested in the characters that way. If they watch the show, great. But we want each thing to be the best thing for its individual medium,” Jones said.

Google wants to speed up image recognition in mobile apps

Cloud-based AI is so last year, because now the major push from companies like chip-designer ARM, Facebook and Apple is to fit deep learning onto your smartphone. Google wants to spread the deep learning to more developers, so it has unveiled a mobile AI vision model called MobileNets. The idea is to enable low-powered image recognition that’s already trained, so that developers can add imaging features without using slow, data-hungry and potentially intrusive cloud computing.

Google has made the app open-source so any developer can adopt it. It can perform chores like object detection, face attribute recognition, fine-grained classification (recognizing a dog-breed, for instance) and landmark recognition. The tech is part of TensorFlow, Google’s deep learning model that recently shrunk down to mobile size in a new version called TensorFlow Lite.

MobileNets is not one-size-fits-all, as Google has actually built 16 pre-trained models “for use in mobile projects of all sizes.” The larger the model, the better it is at recognizing landmarks, faces or doggos, with the most CPU-intensive ones hitting scores of between 70.7 and 89.5 percent accuracy. Those aren’t far from Google’s cloud-based AI, which can recognize and caption objects with around 94 percent accuracy, last we checked.

With different pre-trained models at their disposal, developers can pick one that best suits the memory and processing requirements for an app. To integrate the new models, developers need to use TensorFlow Mobile, a system designed to ease deployment of AI apps on iOS and Android.

From a consumer standpoint, you’ll likely start to see apps that can do basic image identification and other useful functions, with more speed, less data use and better privacy. An example of that could be Google’s new Lens product, which can pick out landmarks, products and faces using a combination of smartphone and cloud processing. The tech probably won’t hit its stride, though, until we see new chips that support it — and both Google and Apple are already working on that.

Source: Google

Apple Watch Celebrates Your Birthday With a Special Message in watchOS 4

Among multiple software announcements that came out of WWDC last week, Apple unveiled details about watchOS 4, the newest operating system that will arrive on Apple Watch devices later this fall. As developers spend more time with the watchOS 4 beta, new surprises in the software become uncovered, and now MacRumors forum member mrToasty has come across a previously unseen birthday-related message that Apple has included in watchOS 4.

On your birthday, Apple will send a “Happy Birthday!” notification to your Apple Watch, and when you tap on it your watch face will be showered with celebratory balloons. The addition looks visually similar to the “Balloons” screen effect that launched in the iOS 10 Messages app last year. You can watch the full Happy Birthday animation in the video below, which was originally posted by David Boyle on YouTube.

Some of the big changes coming in watchOS 4 include a collection of Activity-focused updates with more personalized achievements for the Workout app, and communication features between Apple Watch and compatible gym equipment. There are also enhancements to the Music app, and a new Siri watch face that will dynamically update based on the time of day and your daily routines, and showcase important data from apps like Activity, Alarms, Breathe, Calendar, Maps, Reminders, Wallet, and more.

Check out the MacRumors watchOS 4 roundup for a complete list of everything we know that’s coming in the software update.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3, watchOS 4
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
Discuss this article in our forums

Spotify Continues to Grow Faster Than Apple Music Thanks to Free Tier

Spotify today announced it now has over 140 million subscribers worldwide, including users that only listen to the free ad-supported tier.

Spotify last said it had over 100 million subscribers in June 2016, so it has gained around 40 million listeners in one year to remain the world’s largest streaming music service. Spotify didn’t update its number of paying subscribers, which stood at over 50 million worldwide as of March 2017.

By comparison, Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week announced that Apple Music now has 27 million paying subscribers, just weeks before the streaming music service turns two years old. Apple Music doesn’t have a free tier, and Apple doesn’t regularly disclose how many users are using the free trial.

Last year, Spotify vice president Jonathan Forster said Apple Music has helped, not hurt, their business by raising the popularity of streaming music services overall. He added that, at the time, Spotify was growing more quickly and adding more users since Apple Music launched, a trend that appears to be continuing.

“It’s great that Apple is in the game,” Forster told Reuters. “They are definitely raising the profile of streaming. It is hard to build an industry on your own.”

While many artists remain critical about Spotify’s free ad-supported tier, longtime holdout Taylor Swift reversed course last week and made her catalog of music available on most streaming music services. Swift’s music was previously exclusive to Apple Music, only after Apple agreed to pay artists during its free trial period.

Spotify’s revenue grew more than 50 percent, to $3.3 billion last year, according to the company’s latest financial statement. The company has committed to spending more than $2 billion in payments to record labels over the next two years.

Tags: Spotify, Apple Music
Discuss this article in our forums

Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

Fitness 365

In just 7 minutes and with just 10 moves, you can impact your health and fitness today and look forward to positive results over the course of the year.

Available on:

iOS

Foresee

Foresee intelligently predicts the ideal times for your favorite activities so the weather doesn’t catch you off guard.

Available on:

iOS

Skiplayer

Skiplayer promises to be a powerful machine-learning algorithm to build an amazing app that helps you discover who you are by exploring your music habits in 31 different ways.

Available on:

iOS

Thunderspace 5k

During the day, Thunderspace won’t let you focus on all the noise around you. And at night, it will make you very sleepy. Do not use while operating a machine, vehicle, or star destroyer.

Available on:

iOS

50mm

This app lets you create charming 50mm photographs with real-time vintage effects. Try them on selfies, landscapes, cityscapes, or other photos.

Available on:

iOS

OneAvenue

Join your favorite celebs’ fan clubs and get all of their social, music, videos, live-streaming, and tickets in one place. With this app, you can follow artists on their various social feeds, discover artists playing nearby, and get festival lineup information.

Available on:

iOS

Microsoft Surface Pro (2017) review

Research Center:
Microsoft Surface Pro (2017)

Microsoft kicked off the detachable tablet segment of the modern 2-in-1 market with its original Surface device, which also heralded the company’s entry into the PC hardware business. Microsoft has continued to improve the lineup since then, while other PC makers jumped into the 2-in-1 market with a vengeance, offering their own variants of ever-increasing quality and performance. The PC market is starting to recover from its years-long slide in sales volume, and the 2-in-1 has been an important part of its resurgence.

Even with all the competition, the Surface Pro 4 remained our favorite Windows 10 detachable tablet and emerged as one of the best-selling Surface products. Now, after more than 18 months on the market, Microsoft has finally introduced the fifth generation in the Surface Pro family. But don’t call it the Surface Pro 5. The number is no more.

The new Surface Pro is in some ways an incremental update to the Surface Pro 4 and doesn’t bring the pizzazz of recent innovations like the Surface Book and Surface Studio. Incrementing on the best product in its class isn’t anything to sneeze at, however – and neither is the hardware in our review unit. It came with a Core i7-7660U CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid state drive, which brought the price tag to $2,200.

Does the Surface Pro maintain Microsoft’s place at the top? Or have the 2-in-1s it has inspired caught up?

World-class engineering

The Surface Pro enjoys the same outstanding attention to detail as every other modern Surface machine, and Microsoft’s ability to produce extremely well-built machines is as apparent as always. Simply put, the Surface Pro is solid as a rock, and exudes a sense of futuristic quality.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

It’s also well-designed, with a look and feel that, while minimally changed from the Surface Pro 4, is still an improvement. The corners are more rounded, and the exhaust vents along the edges are less pronounced. In fact, the vents are absent if you buy the Core m3 or Core i5 models, as they both ditch the cooling fan.

There aren’t many moving parts in the Surface Pro itself. The power and volume buttons along the top are easy to find by feel, and have a crisp action, while the kickstand is smooth and reliably holds the tablet at your chosen angle. It now opens up to 165 degrees, an increase from the Surface Pro 4, which opened 150 degrees. Fully flexed, the kickstand can turn Surface Pro into a nearly-flat slate.

A slightly improved typing experience

The Surface Pro is no longer marketed as “the tablet that can replace your notebook.” Microsoft is simply calling it a laptop, which makes it unfortunate that the $160 Signature Type Cover keyboard (received with our review unit) isn’t included. It’s frankly essential, and we can’t imagine why you’d buy a Surface Pro without it. You can save some money with the standard Type Cover, but it’s still $130, and isn’t covered in Alcantara.

Fortunately, this vital accessory shares the high-quality aspects of the Surface Pro, and adds a splash of color as well. Our review unit came with the Cobalt Blue version, but Burgundy, Platinum, and Black versions are also available. The Alcantara fabric feels great, and remains a unique feature not found on competing 2-in-1s.

The Signature Type Cover’s key travel is more than sufficient at 1.5mm, with just the right amount of pressure required to register key presses. The action is crisp with just a hint of bottoming out, and it’s quite a bit quieter than the previous Type Cover that shipped alongside the Surface Pro 4. It’s backlit with three levels of brightness, and suffers from minimal light bleed.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

If you decide to flip into tablet mode for a moment and fold back the Type Cover, the keyboard will turn off when the cover is tucked back. It can even switch Windows 10 into tablet mode, if desired. It attaches to the tablet with strong magnets and connects via a physical port, meaning there’s zero lag when typing. That’s a nice improvement over the Bluetooth keyboard covers used by the Samsung Galaxy Book and Apple iPad.

The touchpad is a little small, but it works extremely well. It’s a Microsoft Precision touchpad that supports all Windows 10 gestures, and it offers up a smooth surface with just enough resistance to provide feedback for accurate mouse control.

The pen is great, but it’ll cost you

Unlike the Surface Pro 4, the new Surface Pro doesn’t include the Surface Pen — an unfortunate decision on Microsoft’s part. The company cited a few reasons for making the pen an option, including the new multi-color scheme, customer feedback that shows that not everyone uses the pen, and the fact that many people who buy the Surface Pro will be upgrading from previous models. The pens – and the Type Covers, for that matter – are compatible across the Surface 3, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Pro.

Microsoft no longer refers to the Surface Pro as a tablet, and that makes sense given its laptop-like components.

Microsoft made up for the decision to make the pen optional by significantly improving its specifications, while pricing the new version at $100. Pressure sensitivity has been quadrupled, from 1,024 levels to 4,096, a new tilt feature has been added, and latency has been reduced dramatically to 21ms on the Surface Pro, with the help of the new Surface Pen design and a hardware accelerator.

The new Surface Pen features work on the previous models as well, although latency will only be marginally improved. You’ll want to make sure you pick the right color, given that it will be available in the same colors as the Signature Type Cover.

The improvements are noticeable, with no discernible delay between when the pen tip is placed on the screen to when Windows 10 Ink starts to flow. And the pen keeps up better with fast motions, never falling behind, as sometimes happens with the Surface Pro 4. The combination makes the Surface Pro one of the best inking experiences on the market, and a great tool for digital drawing and handwriting.

The Surface Dial works out of the box, as does Windows Hello

Of course, the Surface Pro also offers a capacitive touchscreen with 10-point multitouch capabilities. It’s as responsive as ever, offering yet another way to interact with the very touch-friendly Windows 10. And the Surface Pro supports the innovative Surface Dial input accessory directly on the screen.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Finally, Windows 10 Hello support is provided by an infrared camera that’s mounted next to the HD webcam. It offers password-less login via facial recognition, and we found it to be very fast in our testing.

A very minimal selection of ports

Microsoft is late to the party when it comes to adopting the increasingly ubiquitous USB Type-C connection. The company has its reasons — few accessories use the connection at this point, and customers can get confused when it comes to charging the machine – but we disagree with the decision.

This is the first Surface Pro model we’ve tested with battery life that’ll last an entire workday.

Instead, the Surface Pro comes equipped with a single USB 3.0 Type-A connection and a mini-DisplayPort. There’s also a microSD card reader located under the kickstand, and the same Surface Connect port that Microsoft has been using since the Surface Pro 3. That port provides power to the machine, or can connect to the optional Surface Dock.

Interestingly, Microsoft will be providing a Surface Connect to USB Type-C adapter at some point in the future. We’re not sure what USB Type-C features will be supported by the dongle, so we’re left disappointed with the Surface Pro’s connectivity overall.

The usual Surface display quality — which is to say, it’s excellent

The Surface Pro (2017) offers essentially the same display as the Surface Pro 4, meaning it’s a 12.3-inch PixelSense display with 2,736 × 1,824 resolution (267 PPI) panel in a 3:2 aspect ratio. More and more machines are adopting the 3:2 format, as it offers a display that’s a little taller, for fitting more of a document or web page on the screen at once. The aspect ratio does cause some letterboxing when watching video, however.

Microsoft uses excellent displays in its Surface line, and the Surface Pro is no exception. According to our colorimeter, our Surface Pro review unit’s display offered up some serious contrast at 1180:1, bested only by Microsoft’s own Surface Book. That promises excellent blacks for a non-OLED display. Color gamut support was average at 71-percent AdobeRGB but much stronger at 96-percent sRGB. Colors were also fairly accurate with a Delta-E of 1.88 (1.00 or lower is considered excellent).

In addition, the display was incredibly bright at 427 nits, promising to help overcome the display’s general glossiness in bright environments. The only real area of weakness was its gamma, which at 2.6 (the ideal is 2.2), likely means some scenes will be brighter than they should.

In use, the Surface Pro’s display is as excellent as it sounds, and getting better all the time as Microsoft improves Windows 10’s support for high resolutions. Text and images are razor sharp, colors are excellent, blacks are deep, and the display is generally a joy to use.

Strong speakers that point in the right direction

The Surface Pro sports two front-firing speakers on each side of the display. There are small cutouts in the glass to let the sound through, and the design provides impressive sound for a tablet. Music is great, with surprising range, and there’s even a hint of bass. The speakers also get surprisingly loud, and can fill a decent sized room without distorting.

Laptop-like performance

We can see why Microsoft is moving away from referring to the Surface Pro as a tablet, given that it’s packed with very laptop-like components. Our review model was equipped with a fast dual-core Intel i7-7660U CPU and 16GB of RAM, and it provided some impressive performance for a machine that’s punching in a lightweight class.

In fact, looking at our benchmark tests, the Surface Pro is competitive with larger 360-degree 2-in-1s that one might expect to be faster. Its GeekBench 4 single-core and multi-core results were solid, beating out many of our comparison machines. Only the similarly equipped HP EliteBook x360 G2 scored higher.

More impressively, the Surface Pro churned through our Handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video to H.265, in just 822 seconds. That’s significantly faster than each of our comparison systems, and in fact is the fastest result we’ve seen from a dual-core notebook processor.

Perhaps most impressive is that the Surface Pro managed to keep heat under control even while working so hard. Though the back of the tablet got a bit warm during the Handbrake test, the machine managed to maintain nearly full speed throughout with only minimal CPU throttling. And fan noise was significantly reduced from the Surface Pro 4, never rising to more than a loud whisper that wasn’t nearly as obtrusive in our quiet test environment.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Microsoft touted the improved thermals in the new Surface Pro during its introduction, and it’s obvious that the company made some real gains this time around. Note that the Core m3 and i5 models are fanless, and will run completely silently, although we can’t attest to how well they’ll maintain speed before needing to throttle things down.

Storage speeds are good but not great

Our review Surface Pro came equipped with a Samsung PM971 solid-state disk (SSD). Though it performed well, it’s not quite as fast as some other recent SSDs.

As you can see from the Surface Pro’s CrystalDiskMark results, the machine’s SSD falls behind the Lenovo Yoga 720 13, which was equipped with Samsung’s faster PM961 M.2 SSD. While the PM971 used in the Surface Pro is rated for read speeds up to 1,500 megabytes per second, our review units barely broke 1,000 MB/s. Write performance was a bit more competitive, at 971 MB/s.

While the Surface Pro’s synthetic benchmark scores were a bit less than our comparison systems, real-world performance was more than fast enough.

It’s still not a gaming machine (of course)

Microsoft added the option of somewhat faster integrated graphics to the Surface Pro, with the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 GPU that was included in our review unit. That choice promises improved performance in typical productivity work, but doesn’t turn the Surface Pro into a highly-portable gaming machine.

3DMark demonstrates that the Surface Pro with Intel’s Iris Plus graphics performs better than our comparison machines with Intel’s more pedestrian integrated graphics. Nevertheless, these aren’t impressive scores if you’re looking to run modern games at 1080p or above.

We ran Civilization VI at 1080p and medium settings just to double check the Surface Pro’s performance, and it scored around 16 frames per second (FPS). Even the Nvidia GeForce 940MX used in the HP Spectre x360 15, which is itself a low-end discrete chip, managed to score 34 FPS in Civilization VI at the same settings. Clearly, the Surface Pro isn’t fast enough to provide a legitimate gaming experience, and more demanding modern games are likely to perform even worse.

Microsoft Surface Pro (2017) Compared To

Amazon Fire HD 8 (2017)

Xiaomi Mi Pad 3

Microsoft Surface Pro 4

Apple iPad 9.7

Apple iPad Pro 12.7

Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

Samsung TabPro S

Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5

Microsoft Surface Pro 3

Dell Venue 11 Pro

Microsoft Surface 2

Samsung ATIV Smart PC 700T

Sony Vaio Duo 11

Microsoft Surface Pro

Acer Iconia Tab W700

The Surface Pro is therefore equipped with graphics that will churn through its intended productivity applications, and will help speed up tasks like video encoding and image editing. If you’re looking for a gaming system, you’ll need to step up to a bigger machine.

Enhanced portability via improved battery life

Microsoft is using a 45 watt-hour battery in the Surface Pro, which is an increase from the 38 watt-hour battery that was packed into the Surface Pro 4. The Surface Pro also uses more efficient seventh-generation Intel Core processors. Taken together, the new model should offer improved battery life over its predecessor.

And it did. In our tests, the Surface Pro scored a solid five hours and 21 minutes in our most processor-intensive Peacekeeper test, which isn’t the longest we’ve seen, but is quite solid for a detachable tablet with a fast Core i7-7660U processor. Results in our moderate browsing test, which cycles through a set of live web sites, was a little less competitive at 5 hours and 37 minutes. We’re accustomed to seeing machines last longer. Finally, the Surface Pro scored a surprisingly strong 10 hours and 16 minutes in our video looping test.

Microsoft promised improved battery life over the Surface Pro 4, and our tests bear out their assertions. We reran our battery tests on a Surface Pro 4, given earlier battery life issues that have since been resolved with firmware updates. Even with the latest drivers, the Surface Pro 4 suffers from disappointing battery life, and the Surface Pro is significantly better.

Of course, the Surface Pro is eminently portable, at 0.33 inches thick and 1.73 pounds as our review unit was configured. Even with the Signature Type Cover attached, the machine is easy to carry around and slip into a bag. It might not be quite as thin and light as the iPad Pro, but it’s also a much more powerful machine that can run real PC applications.

Software

The Surface Pro is refreshingly light on bloatware. While it’s stocked with the usual Microsoft Windows 10 apps and a handful of casual games, it’s otherwise unencumbered with junk software. The Surface utility is also a nice app that offers the ability to configure the Surface Pen and get some useful information about your machine.

Warranty information

The Surface Pro comes with a standard one-year hardware warranty, which is commonplace for consumer-level laptops. Microsoft does offer its Complete extended warranty, which extends the warranty to two years, and adds in two incidents of accident protection with a $50 deductible. Microsoft Complete was $150 for the Surface Pro 4, but we haven’t yet confirmed pricing for the Surface Pro.

Our Take

The Surface Pro (2017) is technically an incremental update over its predecessor, the Surface Pro 4. That’s not a bad thing, as the Surface Pro 4 was already our favorite detachable tablet. Microsoft simply took what was great about the previous model and made it better, with improved performance, a better thermal design, longer battery life, and an enhanced — albeit somewhat more costly — typing and inking experience.

The Surface Pro isn’t the least expensive option around, however, starting at $800 for a seventh-generation Intel Core m3, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB. Pricing runs all the way up to $2,700 for a machine with a seventh-generation Intel Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, and our high-end review unit with a 512GB SSD is priced at $2,200. And then you’ll want to add $160 for the Signature Type Cover and $100 for the Surface Pen.

The bottom line is that the Surface Pro retains Microsoft’s place at the top of the detachable tablet market, and the machine carries a price to match.

Is there a better alternative?

Microsoft still has the Surface Pro 4 available for sale at $649 with a sixth-generation Intel Core m3, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB SSD. That represents a savings over the new Surface Pro, and if your budget is tight the Surface Pro 4 remains a solid option — although you’ll give up some serious performance and battery life improvements in the bargain.

Other manufacturers offer detachable tablet Windows 10 2-in-1s, as well. The Asus Transformer Pro 3 is a near clone of the Surface Pro, but still awaits an update to seventh-generation Intel Core processors.

HP has its second-generation Spectre x2 coming soon, and starting at $1,000, it will inject some serious competition into the segment. Finally, we just reviewed the Samsung’s Galaxy Book 12 and found that it offers a stellar display, but poor battery life.

How long will it last?

The Surface Pro offers a cutting-edge CPU, solid RAM and SSD options, and full support for all of Microsoft’s most innovative Windows 10 technologies. All of that will keep the machine relevant for years to come. Its connectivity is very old-school, however, and if you anticipate needing full USB Type-C support going forward, then you’re going to find the Surface Pro a bit limited.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Surface Pro is simply the best 2-in-1 around. It’s expensive, but worth it for its excellent design, build quality, and components.

Set goals and limits for your kid’s Fire tablet with Amazon’s parental controls

Tablets can be great devices for kids. They can play games, watch movies, read books, and a whole lot more, but you need to be able to protect them from questionable content. The best kids’ tablet you can buy right now is the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition. One of the reasons that it’s our top pick is Amazon boasts one of the most comprehensive sets of parental controls available.

Amazon’s parental controls work on any Amazon Fire tablet, so whether you have one of the Kids Edition tablets, a Fire HD 10, or an older Fire tablet, you can still use these controls. In this guide, we’re going to run through how to set up parental controls on your Fire tablet and highlight some of the key features you’ll want to take advantage of.

How to set up parental controls on a Fire tablet

We’ll assume that you’ve created your own profile and signed into your Amazon account on the Fire tablet in question. If you haven’t then go to Settings > My Account and do so. Now, there are two ways to restrict access on your tablet. This first method is easier and quicker, but we recommend you skip ahead to the second, because it’s a lot more versatile.

Using simple parental controls

• You can go to Settings > Parental Controls and toggle it on.
• You’ll have to enter a password. Make sure it’s not something your child could guess.
• By default, this will block Alexa, the web browser, email, contact, calendars, and the camera.
• It will also password protect purchases and videos, and block social sharing.
• You can also toggle on Set Restricted Access and choose hours when the tablet should be inaccessible without your password.

Using Amazon’s FreeTime and multiple profiles

Instead of using the simple parental controls, we recommend creating Child Profiles. You can create multiple profiles to be used across devices and get some help from Amazon restricting content. If you didn’t choose a lock screen PIN or password when you first set your Fire tablet up, then you must start there. This will block your child from accessing your profile or the parental controls menu.

• Go to Settings > Security > Lock-Screen Passcode and toggle it on.
• Choose a password or PIN that you’ll remember, but make sure that it’s not something your child could easily guess.
• Now it’s time to set up a profile for your child. Go to Settings > Profiles & Family Library and tap Add a Child Profile.
• You’ll have to enter a name, gender, and birthdate.
• For children under nine, it’s best to select Use Amazon FreeTime (it’s called Fire for Kids in the U.K.) There is also a Teen Profiles option, recommended for kids aged nine and older.
• Once the profile has been created, you’ll get to choose the apps, games, books, and videos from your content library, that you want to allow them to access. As a shortcut, Amazon provides an option to Add all kids’ titles. These are chosen based on the age you entered during the profile creation.
• Repeat the process to add as many other child profiles as you need.

When you want to select a profile, you simply swipe down from the top of the screen and tap the profile icon at the top right. When you choose a child’s profile, you’ll see that the interface changes, and there’s a carousel containing the content you allowed on a blue background. If you choose an adult profile, you’ll be prompted to enter a PIN or password.

You have now restricted access to certain apps, and chosen the content you want your kids to be able to use. Amazon FreeTime blocks content purchases and in-app purchases by default. It also disables location-based services and social sharing, and it locks the tablet to landscape orientation. But there’s a lot more that you can do.

Managing your child’s profile

There are lots of options in each child profile to give you fine control over precisely what they can and can’t do. Let’s run through the main things quickly:

Go to Settings > Profiles & Family Library and choose the child profile you want to manage.

Tap Set Daily Goals & Time Limits and you’ll find that you can prevent your child from being able to use the tablet during the night, set Total Screen Time limits, or break down your restrictions by content type. For example, some parents might be happy to allow unlimited reading, but want to restrict apps and games to half an hour per day. When the time limit is reached, a message pops up onscreen to tell your child that they’ve reached the limit for the day. You can also set different schedules and limits for the weekend than for weekdays. You can even set Educational Goals, stipulating, for example, that your child must read a book for half an hour before they can access entertainment content.

If you want to add or remove access to any specific content, then you can do so under Manage Your Child’s Content. To download a new app or game for them, you’ll need to log into your profile, download and install the app, and then go to Settings > Profiles & Family Library, choose their profile, then tap Add Content > Add Books, Videos and Apps, tap the app or game you want to add, and then tap Done. You can override the age-appropriate suggestions and grant access to whatever content you want in here.

Under Web Settings in your child’s profile, you can choose whether to allow access to the web browser. You can also limit web content to Amazon Curated Content, which has been pre-approved based on your child’s age.

You also have the option to restrict camera and gallery access in your child’s profile. They won’t be able to send any photos they take via email, or upload them to social media, but you can choose to automatically back them up to Amazon Drive if you want to.

Now that you’ve set up your profiles and configured them, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that your kids can’t overdose on games or access anything you don’t want them to see. However, they will still have to come and pester you when they want a new game or book. If you want to grant them access to new content that has been filtered and is age-appropriate, then you need to consider Amazon FreeTime Unlimited.