Touch typing in Windows 10 — Windows Phone keyboard is coming to PCs

Why it matters to you

Better text input options for Windows 10 tablet users should make typing on touchscreens much easier.

Microsoft’s lauded Windows Phone WordFlow keyboard is reportedly coming to all Windows 10 PCs, including tablets. While that latter group will no doubt appreciate it more, as Microsoft continues to unify its software platforms, it is now bringing its on-screen keyboard to Windows 10.

No official announcement has been made for this move but Microsoft accidentally released build 16212 for Windows 10 and phones and it includes a number of the features that are necessary for on-screen inputs. As MS Poweruser explains, one of those features was Composable Shell and one of its components is TextInput, which is the basis for the Windows keyboard.

The purpose of Composable Shell, or CShell, is that it can scale Windows 10 to the device and display type you are using. Using technology developed by Microsoft acquisition, Swiftkey, the on-screen keyboard should be able to work with any device of any configuration, as long as it is running Windows 10. It will also support swipe inputs, much like the Windows Phone keyboard.

While none of this will be of huge interest to desktop users, those using tablets or 2-in-1 systems will likely see some benefit from it. The Windows Phone WordFlow keyboard is well liked by Windows Phone users, so could find a much larger receptive audience on Windows 10 tablets.

Unfortunately, though, nobody knows when we can expect to see this feature added to a new Windows 10 build for consumers to enjoy. As of now, it is believed the internal build was rolled out sooner than planned to Windows Insiders on the Fast ring, so it may be some time before it is leaked out further to the Slow ring.

However, Microsoft has not even acknowledged that the text input feature exists yet, so we will likely need to wait for that to happen before making any major speculation about when we can expect to enjoy it. Until that happens, know that it will need to proliferate through the Insider rings before seeing the light of day.

Pick up a Chromecast Ultra for $10 off at select retailers right now

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with a $10 discount on the Chromecast Ultra from various retailers!

If you’ve had your eyes on the Chromecast Ultra but have been waiting for it to drop in price a bit, you won’t want to miss out on this. Right now select retailers are offering $10 off the streaming media player, dropping the price down to just $59. With the Chromecast Ultra you can stream Netflix, YouTube and other media in 4K on a compatible TV set, something that previous generations were not able to do. If your wireless connection isn’t the greatest and may not be able to handle 4K video properly, you can also use the built-in Ethernet port to get a more stable connection.

You can pick one up from Walmart, Best Buy, the Google Store, B&H Photo, and Target for the discounted prices right now. You’ll need a 4K TV to take advantage of all the benefits, and if you don’t already have one you can pick up a great set for around $350 these days.

Everything you need to know about streaming 4K on the Chromecast Ultra

For more great deals on tech, gadgets, home goods and more be sure to visit our friends at Thrifter now!

HTC is learning a tough lesson in mobilizing a fan community to fight U11 reviews

This may not be as bad as first thought, but HTC should know better than this.

HTC is at the center of a disappointing kerfuffle today surrounding its use of the private “Elevate” enthusiast community to dispel misconceptions about the just-launched HTC U11. But as is so often the case, there’s far more to the story than a single slice of a screenshot and lots of jumping to conclusions.

For a company like HTC, its dedicated community of fans are its eyes and ears in the extremely competitive smartphone world. By knowing what these generally knowledgeable fans want in a smartphone, HTC gets seriously valuable feedback on this enthusiast market craves and can make genuine product decisions based on that discussion. Members of HTC Elevate tend to be more knowledgeable about the products and enthusiastic about what they offer, too, and want to advocate for the brand by default. They’ll go out of their way to tell people — both friends and complete strangers alike — about the merits of the HTC phones they genuinely enjoy using.

HTC Elevate has been around for a long time, and though it’s technically a private group it’s not secretive nor shady — far from it. The premise of today’s worries is a screenshot showing that HTC is aiming to “mobilize and combat” negative things written or said about the U11, “particularly from those that have never seen the device in person.” This is pretty typical stuff for a community to want to accomplish — the only truly questionable part is the call to action that requires proof of your engagement sent back to HTC in order to be in the running for “swag and goodies.”

That’s … not a great look. But the context of seeing the full Elevate post (embedded here) gives you a better feeling for what HTC was actually attempting to accomplish. Its goal, in plain writing, was to fight against negative comments from “those that haven’t spent time with the phone” — but that “constructive criticism is welcome” (hey, they even bolded that part).

While HTC’s intentions may be pure, the outcome of such a stern directive for the community can only go sour eventually. There’s no doubt that tasking your community to fight against blatantly false or irresponsible reporting about a device is a good goal. The issue is that by providing the incentive of “goodies” in return and requiring documentation of the volume of outreach you do, you create a situation in which generally respected and well-researched opinions and constructive criticism of the U11 are also subjected to the same sort of amazing flood of negative comments.

While its intentions may be pure, the outcome of such a stern directive can only go sour eventually.

Our own coverage of the HTC U11, though generally and genuinely quite positive, has been met with what seem to be this crowd of dedicated followers intent on nitpicking at every single point that could be construed as negative. Despite my review ending with, “The U11 has everything it needs to be a challenger to the top crop of phones in the market today.” I still faced an amazing volume of comments intent on discrediting my opinion. And Android Central is hardly an exception — speaking with my media colleagues, this seems to be the case across various websites and platforms that have written about the phone.

Though it really shouldn’t be overstated how much this type of community engagement actually hurts the launch of the U11, it’s hard to say it had a net positive effect. Having a loyal and dedicated base of fans who are happy to promote your products genuinely is worth so much more than an expensive TV commercial running in prime time — but when you push things too far, you can hit a situation in which your “combat” mentality garners the wrong kind of response.

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• HTC U11 review
• HTC U11 specs
• Manufacturing the U11: Behind the scenes
• Join our U11 forums
• HTC U11 vs Galaxy S8
• HTC U11 vs LG G6

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HTC Vive coming to Apple Mac, VR-friendly at last

HTC has confirmed that its virtual reality headset, the HTC Vive, will soon be compatible with Mac.

Apple revealed that it is adding Steam VR support to High Sierra, its new version of MacOS to be released this coming “Fall”, and that means it will be possible to use a Mac to control virtual reality experiences. It has been a PC exclusive so far.

Demos of HTC Vive support were shown during WWDC in San Jose, along with claims that the new 2017 iMacs will be best suited for the platform, thanks to their enhanced specifications. However, it is thought that current iMacs and MacBook Pro notebooks should also be capable of decent VR performance.

HTC executive Shen Ye also confirmed the Vive’s Mac compatibility on his Twitter account.

Hey Mac owners! Soon you’ll be able to run Vive on macOS! pic.twitter.com/Slr9vWMxr5

— Shen Ye (@shen) June 5, 2017

Now that the HTC Vive is compatible with Mac, we wonder if Oculus will follow suit. There will surely be a much larger market for the Oculus Rift if the Facebook-owned company joins the fray.

We can see HTC running away with the market otherwise. Certainly, the developers at WWDC were impressed and seem happy to support the venture.

Apple iMac gets serious spec boost for 2017

Generally, spec boosts are nothing to shout home about, but in the case of the Apple iMac, they’ve just received an almighty boost indeed.

• Apple announces major MacOS Sierra update called…High Sierra

Being a heavily display-focussed desktop computer, you want the display to be the best it can possibly be. Apple has now improved the brightness by 500 nits, making them 43 per cent brighter than previous generation. They also now use 10-bit dithering to deliver up to 1 billion colours, making them more accurate than ever before. 

The processor have had a bit of a boost too. The iMacs will now be fitted with Intel’s 7th-gen Kaby Lake processors and can be specced with more memory than ever before: up to 32GB on the 21.5-inch display models and up to 64GB of memory on the 27-inch models. Double the amount available on the previous generation.

Apple’s Fusion Drive storage system is now standard on all 27-inch iMacs and can be specced on the 21.5-inch models. The solid state storage drives (SSD) also now work up to 50% faster and can be specced up to 2TB.

Graphics is an area that Apple has really stepped things up, though. The entry-level 21.5-inch iMac now has Intel Iris Plus graphics, which work 80 per cent faster than the previous generation. The 21.5-inch iMac with 4K display meanwhile will use discreet Radeon Pro 555 and 560 GPU processors, which are 3 times faster than the previous generation.

The 27-inch iMac gets a serious boost indeed, and can now be specced with up to 8GB of VRAM, providing 5.5 teraflops of processing power, ideal for VR content creation.

Connections-wise, the latest generation of iMacs will be gifted with two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3, ideal if you have any dongles and adapters from your new MacBook Pro.

The latest generation iMacs will be available to order from today. The 21.5-inch entry-level iMac will cost $1,099, 21.5-inch iMac with 4K display takes a drop in price to $1,299, and the 27-inch iMac with 4K display will start at $1,799.

macOS High Sierra includes changes to Safari, Photos and the file system

Another WWDC, another update to macOS, the software powering Apple’s traditional desktop and laptop computers. As usual, senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi is on stage detailing the latest features that Apple will bring to macOS High Sierra when it launches. (I swear that’s the real name.)

The first update is for Safari, with Federighi claiming that Safari tops all desktop browsers in speed — he even went so far to say it’s the world’s fastest desktop browser. A Modern Javascript test claims the new Safari is 80 percent faster than Chrome. The browser also features autoplay blocking — it detects sites that shouldn’t be playing video and pauses them.

Safari also will deal with the various trackers that follow us around the internet with a feature called Intelligent Tracking Prevention. It uses machine learning to look for cross-site trackers and “segregates” them so that they can’t keep tracking you. Anyone who is concerned with their privacy will likely want to check this out.

Photos got a big update last year, but Apple’s dropping more improvements in High Sierra. There’s now a persistent sidebar (like iPhoto had for years before Apple took it away), and when you set up “faces” to group various people you photograph, it’ll sync from your desktop to other devices. Perhaps the biggest deal is that you can pop a photo out from the Photos app into a more robust editor like Photoshop and then sync the changes right back to your Photos library.

Naturally, Mail got a few updates as well. Spotlight search results have been improved, with some “top hits” showing up. There’s also a split-view compose window that keeps the message you’re replying to on one side and your new mail on the other. Lastly, Mail is more efficient, with your mail library size set to shrink about 35 percent.

There are a bunch of under-the-hood improvements in macOS Sierra, as well. Most notably is that Apple is now using its own Apple File System, a move that should do a lot to speed things up in the file system. It’s not the kind of feature that Federighi can really demo on stage, but he did show how much a few common actions would speed up. He also announced that Apple was moving to the H.265 video standard, from H.264.

Apple’s also pushing out a new update to its Metal graphics suite that provides developer access to the GPU. There’s a lot to unpack here, but Metal 2 will is well suited to machine learning and external graphics — Apple is even offering a Thunderbolt 3 external graphics kit. Apple even started talking about VR — Metal for VR will enable developers to start building VR experiences and use the HTC Vive with the Mac for the first time.

Federighi absolutely slammed through the macOS updates today, but it feels to some extent like an update that is all about refinement rather than major new consumer-facing features. But this isn’t the only update for Mac fans today — Apple has also already announced a major update to the iMac line, and it feels like more hardware may be coming soon.

Apple said that High Sierra would run on every Mac that is able to run macOS Sierra, and it’ll be out this fall, as always.

Last year’s update, macOS Sierra, continued the trend of Apple bringing a number of tools from iOS over to the Mac. Most notable was Siri appearing on your desktop, but other useful features included a universal copy and paste between iOS and the Mac, storage optimization using iCloud, Apple Pay in Safari and big redesigns to Photos, Apple Music and Messages.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Apple brings more pro-level power to its iMac lineup

A refreshed line of iMacs — and the possible introduction of an “iMac Pro” — were some of the most-teased announcements prior to WWDC. Earlier this year, Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing, promised that the company would produce iMacs specifically for the professional customer.

The new iMacs are faster, with better displays, in the same enclosure. At WWDC, Apple’s VP of Engineering introduced displays that are 500 nits, with 1 billion colors. That’s 43 percent brighter than the previous generation. Discrete graphics are now standard on the 4K 21.5-inch. The line is also going to use Intel’s Kaby Lake processors and are bumping up to 32GB of RAM on the 21.5-inch and up to 64GB on the 27-inch.

The iMacs also have Thunderbolt 3, like last year’s MacBook Pro. Fusion drives will be standard on the 27-inch and high-end 21.5 inch models. They also get the following: Iris Plus 640 on the 21.5-inch and Radeon Pro 555 and 560 on the 4K 21.5-inch. The 27-inch iMac gets Radeon Pro 570, 575 and 580 GPUs. There’s also an emphasis on VR creation. These new iMac specs will definitely work for pros, but Apple also announced the iMac Pro, so we’ll have to see how they’re different from one another.

The standard iMac now starts at $1,099. The 4K 21-inch drops to $1299, and the line tops out at $1,799.

The iMac line was last updated in October of 2015, which included 4K and 5K displays and a redesigned mouse, keyboard and trackpad. Given the lack of an update to iMacs in 2016, some speculated that Apple was neglecting its desktops, but today’s announcements should help put that grumbling to rest.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

The new Mac filesystem is all about speed and security

At its WWDC 2017 developer conference, Apple has revealed that its latest (not-very-creatively-named) MacOS system, High Sierra, will run the Apple File System (APFS) as its standard filesystem. The standard offers much better performance and security that before, and was first unveiled at WWDC last year. Since Apple said it would arrive to all its products, from Apple TV to Watch OS to iOS, many folks were expecting it to come to MacOS today at WWDC 2017.

Along with the speed, APFS supports way more files than ever, letting you put 9 quintillion of them on a single volume. Security-wise, it includes multikey encryption, making it tough for users to crack even if they have physical access to your drive. That encryption will also work in a unified way across all of Apple’s devices.

It’s arguably a more important update on MacOS, because a lot of creative folks lean on their Macs for disk-heavy tasks like video and photo editing. As Apple VP Craig Federighi showed on the stage, copying files now runs multiple times faster on Apple File than the previous HFS filesystem.

Apple says that the new advanced filesystem, set to arrive later this year in High Sierra, is “optimized for modern storage,” including fast SSDs, flash, Lightning and USB drives. It’ll also easily adapt to future types of storage, the company says.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Apple Announces Siri, Kaleidoscope, and Disney Watch Faces in WatchOS 4

Apple announced three new types of Apple Watch faces as part of WatchOS 4 during its keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday in San Jose, California.

A new Siri watch face powered by machine learning and “Siri intelligence” comes with a top left complication that allows the wearer to receive dynamically updating notifications from a range of Apple apps and services, like Apple Home, Calendar, and Weather. The watch face offers “proactive assistance” depending on your schedule and the time of day, according to Apple, and users can rotate the Crown for more details.

The second new watch face in WatchOS 4 is a “trippy” animating kaleidoscopic face that plays on photos in a user’s photo album to generate visuals when the user rotates the crown.

The last new watch face is actually a set of three Disney inspired ones to supplement the existing characters. Woody, Jessy, and Buzz from Toy Story are included, and all have animating vignettes when interacted with.

Related Roundup: WWDC 2017
Tag: WatchOS 4
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Apple Reveals ‘macOS High Sierra’ With APFS, Metal 2, and Refinements to Safari and Other Apps

Apple has announced the newest software update for its Mac computers, which it’s calling “macOS High Sierra.” Craig Federighi said that High Sierra brings along improvements and refinements across the system and builds off what the company created in macOS Sierra.

In Safari, the company has introduced auto-play video blocking and intelligent tracking prevention, which Federighi said helps to create the fastest internet browser in the world. Other refinements are coming to Mail and editing features in Photos.

Apple File System is also coming to macOS as the new default file system on Mac computers, and the system update will see the launch of Metal 2 for developers to create applications with improved graphics. macOS High Sierra will launch for everyone sometime this fall.

Related Roundup: WWDC 2017
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