Quick Takes: Apple Watch Apps Called ‘Frustrating’ to Develop, iOS 11 Jailbreak With Cydia, and More

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Wednesday, February 28

iOS 11 jailbreak released with Cydia, which turns 10 today: Cydia was released by Jay Freeman, better known as saurik, on February 28, 2008. The unofficial App Store is the gateway to installing apps, tweaks, themes, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices, outside of Apple’s control.

Just yesterday, a new jailbreak called Electra was released for iOS 11 through iOS 11.1.2. It is the first iOS 11 jailbreak to include Cydia, although it is a modified version that may cause issues, so proceed at your own risk.

Commentary: While jailbreaking has faded in popularity over the years, Cydia remains a centerpiece of the community after a decade. Freeman is still in the process of updating Cydia and its frameworks to be fully compatible with iOS 11, so it might be a good idea to hold off on using the Electra jailbreak to avoid problems.

Waymo’s self-driving cars have now covered five million miles on public roads: Waymo says the first million miles took six years to complete, while the fifth million took just under three months, as its testing rapidly speeds up.

To celebrate the milestone, Waymo shared a 360-degree video today that reveals how its self-driving vehicles view their surroundings, recognize objects like cars and pedestrians, and predict what those things will do. The video combines footage and real-time data from a trip around Phoenix, Arizona.

Commentary: A recent report claimed Apple is accelerating development of its own self-driving software to compete with the likes of Waymo, but it sounds like the iPhone maker may have significant ground to make up still.

Flutter enters beta, Sketch 49 released with iOS 11 design templates: Bohemian Coding’s popular app design tool Sketch has been updated with Apple’s official iOS 11 design templates, including tab bars, status bars, buttons, and other user interface elements for developers to incorporate into their apps.

In related news, Google’s new mobile UI framework Flutter entered beta yesterday. Flutter aims to help developers more quickly craft high-quality native interfaces for both iOS and Android, with support for both iOS 11 and the iPhone X on the Apple side. Beginners can read Flutter’s Getting Started guide.

Commentary: Sketch and Flutter can help developers to more quickly design iPhone and iPad apps that are consistent with iOS 11’s design language.

Marco Arment says developing Apple Watch apps is “extremely frustrating and limited”: Apple doesn’t give developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that it uses for its own Apple Watch apps. Instead, it offers WatchKit, which Arment argues can only be used to create “baby” apps.

Image Credit: MacStories
Commentary: There has certainly been a trend of some developers discontinuing their Apple Watch apps in recent months, including notable brands like Amazon, eBay, Google Maps, and Slack. Apple providing developers with expanded watchOS resources could encourage those companies to reconsider.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.

Tag: Quick Takes
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Apple Shares Tips on Avoiding App Store and iTunes Phishing Emails

Apple last week shared a new support document that’s designed to help App Store and iTunes users avoid phishing emails that mimic legitimate emails from Apple.

In the document, Apple outlines techniques to identify an actual App Store or iTunes email, which the company says will always include a current billing address, something scammers are unlikely to have access to.

An example of a well-crafted phishing email
Apple also says that emails from the App Store, iBooks Store, iTunes Store, or Apple Music will never ask customers to provide details like a Social Security Number, mother’s maiden name, a credit card number, or a credit card CCV code.

Apple recommends that customers who receive emails asking them to update their account or payment information do so directly in the Settings app on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, in iTunes or the App Store on a Mac, or in iTunes on a PC rather than through any kind of web interface.

Customers who receive a suspicious email can forward it to reportphishing@apple.com, and any customer who may have entered personal information on a scam website should update their Apple ID password immediately.

Scam and phishing emails like those Apple describes in this support document are not new, but at the current time, there’s a new wave of legitimate-looking emails going around that look much like Apple emails that can easily fool customers who don’t know what to look for.

Tags: App Store, iTunes
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Huawei’s Matebook X Pro is everything right with modern laptop design

At MWC (Mobile World Congress), Chinese manufacturer Huawei showed off its new laptop, the MateBook X Pro. The design is stunning, but it’s not a revolutionary. Instead, it’s the fulfillment of a lot of the promises that laptop makers have been building toward for years. In particular, we noticed two trends from other manufacturers that the MateBook X Pro has borrowed, and taken a step further.

Trend #1: The Dell XPS 13’s bezels

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

The most striking feature of the MateBook X Pro is the bezel — or lack thereof. When the Dell XPS 13 first came out in 2015, we couldn’t have known how big an influence it would have on the future of laptop design. Its shrunken bezels made just about every other laptop on the market feel outdated — in the same way that the Galaxy S8 did with smartphones years later.

The MateBook X Pro has taken that trend and played it out to its final form, giving us a laptop display that feels nearly edge-to-edge. The bezels around the edges are only 4.4mm on each side, the same as the new Dell XPS 13’s bezels. The difference is that Huawei has also cut the bottom bezels, moving the webcam off the lid entirely and giving the display a 91 percent screen-to-footprint ratio. The size of the bezels are almost Apple-like in their stubborn symmetry — and this time, not even a notch was necessary.

Not only do those severed bezels make for an awesome viewing experience, they also make room for more pixels. Huawei smartly went with a 3:2 aspect ratio, providing a 3000 x 2000 resolution display that feels right on a laptop. Rather than fitting the same-sized screen into a smaller footprint, Huawei went for a larger display into the same overall dimensions. It’s exactly what we wished Dell would have done on the newest XPS 13.

Trend #2: Functional minimalism

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

No one’s going to deny that the MateBook X Pro looks eerily similar to the MacBook Pro. It has a metal unibody chassis, a very familiar paint job, and even the exact same placement of its speaker grills. But copying Apple is not anything new. What Huawei has done differently is borrow the best parts of the MacBook Pro — and diverge in their own interesting way.

While the MateBook X Pro looks like no more than a logo-swap on the back of the lid, inside there’s more going on. Unlike the MacBook Pro, it has a wedge shape, and the edges are slightly are more rounded and smooth. That makes it feel smaller and more svelte than the blocky Pro.

The laptop also takes the MacBook Pro’s massive touchpad and plants it on a Windows 10 laptop. There’s more to it than just looks obviously, but clearly it’s something Huawei borrowed from Apple’s playbook. This makes a lot of sense. Microsoft has improved Windows touch gesture support greatly with Windows 10, and it’s now just as useful as MacOS — when paired with a good touchpad.

While the MateBook X Pro takes inspiration from Apple, it’s smart enough to reject what hasn’t work. Huawei offers a full USB-A port, along with USB-C, and doesn’t waste time or money on a Touch Bar.

Trend #3: Graphics

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Support for discrete graphics doesn’t really play into laptop design — or does it? After all, laptops with discrete graphics cards have come in two variants in the past – large 15-inch laptops, or chunky gaming machines. Neither are conducive for taking your work or play on the go.

This year, though, we’ve seen laptops like the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN, which sports the Nvidia MX150 in a super-thin package that you’d never guess could play games at decent framerates. It takes a tremendous amount of design and engineering to fit those kind of components in a laptop this thin, especially when it comes to keeping it cool. The trend has continued with the MateBook X Pro, which includes the MX150.

Although it doesn’t come in the base model like it does with the ZenBook, Huawei has taken gaming on its laptop a step further by offering support for external GPUs. The inclusion of a Thunderbolt 3 port makes it possible, though many manufacturers block the ability to power up something like an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080.

Taking the best from Dell and Apple, the MateBook X Pro has taken the promise of thin bezels, unibody design, and powerful graphics to its fullest potential. We don’t know yet know the price, but Huawei claims it will be “disruptive.” That’s just what the computing world needs to force some more innovation — and it’s at least enough to have made me excited about the future design of laptops as whole.

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• Here’s everything you need to know about the Huawei P20

LG Gram 15 review

Research Center:
LG Gram 15Z980

When you think of LG, you probably don’t think of laptops. The company has kept its efforts in the space relatively conservative, limited to just a single line of computers: Gram. LG has now updated the entire line to 8th-gen Intel processors, as well as more prominently featuring ‘Gram’ in its branding.

With configurations ranging from the $1,100 13-inch Core i5 model up to the $1,550 Core i7 15-inch model, there’s a Gram for a wide variety of budgets. Our review unit was stuffed with two 500GB SSDs and 16GB of RAM, coming to a total of $2,000. Throughout all the models, you’re getting a surprisingly lightweight design, complete with the latest generation of Intel processors. Yet due to some choices LG made with the Gram, these aren’t the most versatile laptops out there.

The lightest 15-inch laptop you’ll ever use

LG wants you to see its laptops and think of the Gram brand, not LG. The look of these new Grams isn’t all that different to previous Grams, but LG has swapped out its corporate logo on the lid for a Gram badge.

It was a good decision to brand it differently — we just wish LG went a step further with making the Gram feel distinctive. It has a conventional look, simple lines and edges, a dark shade of silver like the MacBook Pro’s “space gray” color scheme, and a slightly textured “nano-carbon magnesium full metal alloy body.” To translate, the chassis has a unibody metal look and feel, but flexes like plastic with a little pressure.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

LG claims that the 15-inch Gram meets U.S. Military Standard 810G certification, but this much bend in the lid makes us a little nervous, especially when it’s housing a $2,000 computer. We don’t get the impression that it was shoddily constructed, just that LG cut corners with the materials being used here. Compared to a MacBook Pro, Surface Book 2, or Dell XPS 15, the Gram feels far less luxurious.

It’s not all bad. We like the hinge on the Gram 15, which is loose enough to be able to open it with just one finger. The bezels around the display are small, making them some of the narrowest we’ve seen on a laptop outside of the Dell XPS 13. That gives the Gram an updated, modern style that compensates for some of the more modest design choices. The bezels shrink down the footprint of the laptop, making the 15.6-inch display feel rather compact. This is a very portable PC, which is another point in LG’s favor.

It might not be as light as a gram, but it’s the lightest 15-inch laptop we’ve ever used.

At just 2.4 pounds, it might not be as light as a gram, but it’s the lightest 15-inch laptop we’ve ever used. For reference, the 15-inch MacBook Pro weighs just over 4 pounds, and the 15-inch Surface Book 2 is 4.2 pounds. The only 15-inch laptop that comes even close is the 15-inch Samsung Notebook 9, which comes in at 2.76 pounds. That’s an impressive achievement, and one that makes carrying around a 15-inch laptop much more manageable.

The LG Gram comes with a healthy platter of port options. What you get is three USB-A ports, a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, one HDMI, a microSD slot, and a Kensington lock. You’ve got something for everyone.

We might have preferred one more USB-C port in exchange for one of the USB-A ports, but most people will be happy with what they have here. We also wished that LG offered Thunderbolt 3 in the cheaper configurations, rather than leaving it as a premium feature of the $2,000 model.

A useful but cramped keyboard

Keyboards and touchpads are vital parts of the laptop form factor, and fortunately, LG didn’t leave them as an afterthought. Both are better than your average Windows laptop, although maybe not for something this expensive. The keyboard is softer than we prefer, without enough clickiness for our taste. Fortunately, it’s rather quiet, which some people will really like. Yet compared to machines like the XPS 15 and Surface Book 15, the LG Gram feels imprecise. In addition, LG has decided to squeeze in a numpad. While that’ll be a feature for some, it makes the keys feel a bit too cramped. The backlighting is even, though we wish there were more than just two brightness settings.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

We’re always searching for a touchpads that don’t suck — and LG has done a decent job this time around. The glass surface is smooth and the tracking feels accurate. The click isn’t as loud and stiff as the Samsung Notebook 9 Pen, but it’s also not as comfortable as something like the Dell XPS 15, Surface Book 2, or MacBook Pro 15. It has Windows Precision drivers to support gestures and didn’t have problems registering motions like two-finger clicks or swipes. You’ll get used to it eventually, but it’s certainly not one of the best out there.

One thing to note is that the touchpad feels a bit too small for this laptop. It’s almost as if LG carried over the same exact touchpad from the 13-inch version, rather than utilizing the extra space more efficiently.

LG Gram 15Z980 Compared To

Dell XPS 13 (2018)

Asus Zenbook 3 Deluxe…

HP Spectre 13 (2017)

Asus ZenBook Flip S

Huawei Matebook X WT-W09

Toshiba Portege Z30-C1310

Razer Blade Stealth

Toshiba Portege Z20t

LG Ultra PC 14Z950

HP Spectre 13t

Acer Aspire M5 Touch

HP Envy 4

Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M5

Acer Aspire S5

HP Folio 13

As a bit of a surprise, the LG Gram has a 1080p webcam on the front of the laptop, which is better than the 720p camera on the Dell XPS 15 or MacBook Pro 15. It’ll be sure to please businesspeople who often find themselves on conference calls while on the road.

The Gram’s display isn’t anything special

LG only offers a 1080p screen for the Gram 15, which is disappointing given its $2,000 price tag. The XPS 15 delivers 4K at $1,750, while both Apple’s MacBook Pro and Microsoft’s Surface Book offer higher-resolution displays in every configuration. HP even offers the Envy 15t with a 4K option for an extra $110.

The display looks fine in normal use, but most of the Gram 15’s competitors look incredible.

Image quality wasn’t superior, either. Contrast was good, but not great — as was brightness, which maxed out at 289 nits. The screen showed 76 percent of the Adobe RGB color space, taking a backseat to laptops like the XPS 15 and MacBook Pro. It looks fine in normal use, but most of the Gram 15’s competitors look incredible.

The speakers fare better. They’re plenty loud at full volume and don’t distort, even though they’re down-firing. You still don’t hear much bass out of them, but for laptop speakers, they get the job done.

So much speed, so much space

The LG Gram offers several different 8th-gen processor options, but our review unit came with the Intel Core i7-8550U, which is a high-end CPU for thin laptops. This kind of a processor means you’ll be able to handle a heavy workload, especially for tasks that require multi-core processing. It’s about equal with the Dell XPS 15’s Core i7-7700HQ, and leaps beyond 2017 laptops with 7th-gen Intel Core chips. The laptop’s 16GB of memory doesn’t hurt, either.

The Gram handles its thermal cooling well. Even during the most intense testing, it was never uncomfortably hot, and its fans remained surprisingly quiet throughout.

Storage is where LG has doubled down. Rather than offering 4K displays or discrete graphics options, LG offers a configuration with two large solid-state drives. Ours included over 1TB of speedy SSD space. You can pick up less expensive models starting at $1,550 for 256GB paired with 8GB of RAM, or $1750 for the 512GB model with 16GB of RAM.

As for the speed of the storage, it’s average. LG went with a SATA connection instead of PCIe, so speeds don’t come close to the Surface Book 2 or Dell XPS 15. Reading and writing files wasn’t noticeably slow, but LG clearly went with quantity over quality here. That’s going to be ideal for some people, and frustrating for others.

No dGPU? Really?

This where we really started to question LG’s decisions for the Gram. Rather than putting a discrete GPU in the Gram, they opted to leave the graphics to just Intel’s integrated capabilities. Every other 15-inch laptop that compares to this one has at least an option for discrete graphics, but LG hasn’t even made one available. Obviously, this isn’t meant to be a gaming laptop, but it’s nice to have the option.

As you can see from the 3DMark score, the Gram can’t compare to other 15-inch laptops that feature entry-level GPUs. We also tried booting up Rocket League to see if the Gram could do some lighter gaming. As expected, the results weren’t great. It could handle “Performance” level graphics settings at a decent framerate in 1080p, but bumping up detail settings saw framerates drop down below 20 frames per second, which is unplayable.

The 72Wh battery is a whole lot of juice

LG claims that the Gram gets 16.5 hours of battery life. We’ve tested enough laptops to know that you can’t take manufacturers at their word, but LG’s claim doesn’t do too bad actually. In our testing, we found that the Gram gets close to that, at least in certain benchmarks that we perform.

In our video loop test we saw around 14 hours and 40 minutes of life, while it ran for 4 hours in our intensive Basemark web browsing test. While it’s not the best we’ve tested, it does do better than laptops like the XPS 15 and Acer Aspire 5. Of course, none of these are anywhere close to the battery champion that is the Surface Book 2, which lasted over 20 hours our video tests.

When you consider the battery life and the light weight, it adds up to a very portable laptop, especially for its large size.

Warranty

As has become standard for laptops, LG extends a warranty of one year coverage for parts and labor.

Our Take

The LG Gram would be a great laptop for business people looking to take their work on the road. It’s the lightest 15-inch laptop we’ve ever seen — and that’s quite an accomplishment. However, without a higher resolution display and a discrete GPU, it falls short of offering enough value for us to recommend it to the average person looking for a laptop.

Any alternatives?

The most important alternative to consider is the Dell XPS 15. Even though it’s nearly a year old at this point, the Core i7-7700HQ processor holds up great, even compared to 8th-gen CPUs like the LG Gram. More importantly, it offers a 4K display, a discrete GPU (the GTX 1050), a better keyboard and touchpad, and faster PCIe storage. It does this all for $50 cheaper than the Gram when configured with the same amount of RAM and storage. In other words, outside of the issue of weight, there’s very little reason to get the Gram instead of the XPS 15.

If you expand your search to 15-inch 2-in-1s, you’ll run across some even stiffer competition. A good example is the excellent Lenovo Yoga 720, which delivers a TB of faster, PCIe storage, a higher resolution display, and even a dedicated GPU, for just $1,450.

Other strong alternatives are the 15-inch Surface Book 2 and MacBook Pro. Both are more expensive with similar hardware but perform better across the board.

How long will it last?

The LG Gram should last you a solid few years, especially if its durability certification holds true. The CPU is still fresh, and the Thunderbolt 3 port will ensure that future accessories are supported.

Should I buy it?

No. If you’re looking specifically for a super-portable 15-inch work laptop that you can take on the road, it could be worth a look. But for the most part, other 15-inch laptops offer more — and at a better price.

Tecla Shield gives disabled people new choices for interacting with touchscreens

Tim Cook began Apple’s latest product unveiling with a video narrated by a disabled woman using a Mac with the help of an assistive device — a switch that she could bump with the side of her head. Her name is Sady Paulson, and the message couldn’t have been clearer: With the right technology, even people with almost no control over their bodies can interact with the world and harness their own creativity in ways that were previously impossible.

Wireless freedom for disabled people

The video was upbeat and inspirational, meant to affirm Apple’s commitment to accessibility. But what it didn’t show was the struggle those like Paulson have when it comes to controlling a multitude of devices. That head-triggered switch might be her only means of controlling her wheelchair, computer, or phone or tablet. If it’s hardwired into one of these devices, how can it control the others?

Simon Cohen/Digital Trends

Simon Cohen/Digital Trends

Simon Cohen/Digital Trends

This is the problem that Mauricio Meza, co-founder of Toronto’s Komodo OpenLab, is tackling with the $350 Tecla Shield, a Bluetooth gateway that conveys switch commands to any compatible computer, phone, or tablet. With the help of a caregiver, the user simply plugs the assistive device into the Tecla Shield — it has two ports for switch devices and one for wheelchair control — and then pairs the Tecla Shield with the target computer or tablet. Depending on a user’s disability, they might want to use a single-click button with their hand, a head-triggered button as in the Apple video, a joystick, or any number of other devices purpose-built for these interactions.

“Driving a wheelchair [using these inputs] is like second-nature,” Meza told Digital Trends, “so there’s almost no learning curve.” The Tecla Shield supports up to six switches at once, and each can trigger two types of actions: short and long presses. If a joystick is used, each of the four directions represents a switch, leaving room for two additional actions. For some, this is a good option, and navigating iOS is straightforward if not quite as convenient as using finger taps and gestures. But many do not possess this freedom of movement, or prefer to use a simpler input.

Wheelchair integration

The Tecla Shield isn’t the first device that connects assistive switches to computers via Bluetooth; the $185 Blue2 Bluetooth Switch combines a physical switch with inputs for two more switches and Bluetooth, for example. But so far it’s the only one that gives wheelchair users the option of using their existing wheelchair control device, whether it’s a joystick, sip-and-puff controller, or any other kind of control.

Neil Mercer, for example, is a disabled wheelchair user with very limited movement in his hands. Mercer has a joystick for wheelchair control but opts to control his Tecla Shield-enabled iPhone using a small, button-style switch. Apple has designed iOS with an ingenious system for switch-based navigation that involves targeting desired icons with a set of horizontally and vertically sliding bars: You click the button once each time a bar lines up with the row and column of the icon you want. It works, but the process is tedious and at times inefficient due to missed clicks. Mercer told us he is willing to put up with the process because clicking a button with his left hand is much less taxing physically than navigating with his wheelchair’s joystick.

Unequal accessibility

With iOS (and all Apple products in fact), accessibility functions are built-in and highly consistent from one device to another, Meza points out. “Apple users now can transfer [their Tecla Shield-connected switches] independently from their phone to their iPad, computer, or AppleTV,” he said, “as long as all devices are under the same iCloud account and Wi-Fi network.”

“I like the idea of control — that you plug in the switches once and you’re good to go”

The same cannot be said of the Android ecosystem, thanks to fragmentation and the tendency of some manufacturers to put customized layers on top of stock Android — Meza calls out LG as an example. “It’s the launcher,” he said, referring to the top-most layer of the operating system. “Most manufacturers don’t care to make them accessible.”

Sharon Rosenblatt is director of communications at Silver Spring, MD-based Accessibility Partners, a consultancy that helps its clients meet federal accessibility standards in their products and services. She agreed with Meza that Android lags behind iOS when it comes to accessibility.

“The industry has been dominated by iOS,” she told us. “Apple has really made a commitment to accessibility.” Though Rosenblatt had not previously heard of the Tecla Shield, she’s bullish on its capabilities. “I like the idea of control — that you plug in the switches once and you’re good to go,” she told Digital Trends.

She also points out that people who need accessibility products often end up playing a waiting game in terms of compatibility: When new products enter the market, such as tablets or smartwatches, they don’t immediately possess the ability to connect to switch controls. “We have to wait until the next big product comes out and then figure out how to accommodate it,” Rosenblatt noted, “but [the Tecla Shield] seems very forward-thinking. I know of a number of disabled people who could definitely take advantage of it.”

That waiting period might be substantially reduced now that the popular automation service, IFTTT, has thrown its weight behind Tecla. With the Tecla IFTTT applet, people can trigger their smart home devices, like lights, power outlets, door locks, and more, via the Tecla’s switches.

Simon Cohen/Digital Trends

If there’s a drawback to the Tecla Shield, it’s the need to switch modes when moving between non-Apple devices or from a non-Apple device to an Apple device. This is done through the use of a recessed button on the side of the Tecla, and would require the help of a caregiver for someone with severe mobility problems. It’s mostly a problem for people with PCs and Android devices, whereas users who stay within the Apple ecosystem will have an easier time.

Financial help

The Tecla Shield has been under development since 2010, and Meza says about 3,000 people are using it around the world. In Canada, mobile carrier Bell Canada will subsidize a portion of the Tecla’s price, bringing the cost down to $200 CDN for customers on an existing mobile plan. In the U.S., Meza tells us that the sum might be covered in whole or in part by medical insurance under the mobility device category.

It can be easy to forget that the advances in technology we find so convenient and magical don’t improve all lives equally. High prices remain a barrier for many, and thankfully these are coming down all the time. Devices like the Tecla Shield ensure that physical barriers come down too.

Updated on February 28, 2018: Added information on IFTTT support for Tecla.

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Rebuild the world’s most influential personal computer with this Arduino kit

You can forget about the IBM Personal Computer and drop all the pretense about the 1984 Apple Macintosh. When it comes to which personal computer is the most influential of all time, there can only be one correct choice: The MITS Altair 8800. Why was this decades-old mail-order computer so important? Because its appearance on the front cover of the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics magazine pretty much inspired everyone who helped to launch the personal computer as a mass-market product category.

More than 40 years later, the actual tech which powered the Altair is, unsurprisingly, massively outdated — but that has not stopped Altair disciple Chris Davis from creating a working, Arduino-powered replica kit that you can order for $149. Even without taking inflation into account, that is a whole lot cheaper than the $439 that a kit form Altair would have set you back in the mid-1970s. Or the thousands that a real original model would cost you today.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the Altair 8800 and early computer history in general,” Davis told Digital Trends. “I was much too young to build — much less afford — an Altair in 1975, since I was only nine years old. But the desire to build and play with an Altair never left me.”

Davis said he was inspired when he saw a post on Hackster.io by David Hansel about an Altair emulator Hansel had written for the Arduino Due. “His instructions were good, but still made for a challenging project,” Davis continued. “Once I had built two Altair emulators, I wanted to make a kit that my two sons, ages 12 and 14, could build, so I set out to simplify the process. I also had some interest from other guys in my spare circuit boards. That’s when I had the idea to market a kit. I wrote to David and asked his permission, which he gave.”

Unlike the original Altair 8800, the kit not only emulates its operation but also contains a good amount of built-in software. That is useful because, as Davis points out, it means you can show it off to your geeky buddies without having to first toggle in a program byte by painstaking byte.

For today’s generation, the idea of controlling a computer by flipping switches instead of clicking a mouse or swiping a screen may seem strange. But if you want to be transported back to a simpler time in computing, this is a great project that should keep you busy for a few weekends.

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Rebuild the world’s most influential personal computer with this Arduino kit

You can forget about the IBM Personal Computer and drop all the pretense about the 1984 Apple Macintosh. When it comes to which personal computer is the most influential of all time, there can only be one correct choice: The MITS Altair 8800. Why was this decades-old mail-order computer so important? Because its appearance on the front cover of the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics magazine pretty much inspired everyone who helped to launch the personal computer as a mass-market product category.

More than 40 years later, the actual tech which powered the Altair is, unsurprisingly, massively outdated — but that has not stopped Altair disciple Chris Davis from creating a working, Arduino-powered replica kit that you can order for $149. Even without taking inflation into account, that is a whole lot cheaper than the $439 that a kit form Altair would have set you back in the mid-1970s. Or the thousands that a real original model would cost you today.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the Altair 8800 and early computer history in general,” Davis told Digital Trends. “I was much too young to build — much less afford — an Altair in 1975, since I was only nine years old. But the desire to build and play with an Altair never left me.”

Davis said he was inspired when he saw a post on Hackster.io by David Hansel about an Altair emulator Hansel had written for the Arduino Due. “His instructions were good, but still made for a challenging project,” Davis continued. “Once I had built two Altair emulators, I wanted to make a kit that my two sons, ages 12 and 14, could build, so I set out to simplify the process. I also had some interest from other guys in my spare circuit boards. That’s when I had the idea to market a kit. I wrote to David and asked his permission, which he gave.”

Unlike the original Altair 8800, the kit not only emulates its operation but also contains a good amount of built-in software. That is useful because, as Davis points out, it means you can show it off to your geeky buddies without having to first toggle in a program byte by painstaking byte.

For today’s generation, the idea of controlling a computer by flipping switches instead of clicking a mouse or swiping a screen may seem strange. But if you want to be transported back to a simpler time in computing, this is a great project that should keep you busy for a few weekends.

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Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack competitor, is now available for all G Suite users

Slack is one of the best-known and most widely used collaborative services around, and as such it’s been inviting increased competition. Some of the bigger players have been making moves recently to compete more directly with Slack; Microsoft Teams for example, looks like it will soon offer a similar subscription-free tool. Google hasn’t ignored Slack either, creating Hangouts Chat as a competitor, and now that tool is generally available.

Hangouts Chat shouldn’t be confused with the older version of Hangouts, which was Google’s chat service until it was deprecated in favor of Google Allo for messaging and Google Duo for video calling. Unlike Hangouts, Hangouts Chat focuses on providing a variety of collaborative tools to help groups work together, such as creating dedicate group workspaces, scheduling meetings, and managing tasks. Of course, it also provides the basic messaging functions that Hangouts provided for individuals.

The tool has been in public preview mode since March 2017, and now it’s rolling out to all users as a core G Suite service. Hangouts Chat is integrated closely with other G Suite apps, including Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and users can use Google’s search function to find any and all information located within the system. Google has also integrated artificial intelligence into the system to make it easier to book conference rooms, search for files, and more.

In addition, there’s also a Hangouts Chat application programming interface (API) that lets developers create add-ins and connections to other services. Chat comes with 25 built-in bots that provide a variety of functionality, including @Drive to alert you to files that are shared with you or accessed by colleagues, and @Meet that helps schedule meetings. Third-party Chat integrations include Xero for accounting, Dialpad, RingCentral, Uberconference, and Vonage for communications, and Lucidchart and Zoom.ai for productivity.

If you’re still using the old Hangouts, then Google assures you that your chats and contacts aren’t being left behind. Hangouts Chat is compatible with the classic version and can access your Hangouts contacts. Hangouts Chat also works with Hangouts Meet, the video collaboration tool that Google introduced directly to the public in early 2017.

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Researchers may have detected signals from the universe’s first stars

The early development of our universe is still quite a mystery, but in a new study published today in Nature, researchers describe what may be evidence of when the first stars began to form. After the Big Bang, which took place some 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was dark, hot and full of high-energy particles. Photons couldn’t survive, but after around 380,000 years, the universe cooled enough to allow light to actually stick around. That’s when the cosmic microwave background (CMB) came to be. It’s our universe’s first surviving radiation and researchers have looked to it in order to learn more about the earliest years of our universe.

Researchers have theorized that we might be able to see when stars began to form by looking for a dip in the intensity of the CMB. The reasoning is that once stars started forming, they would have heated up the hydrogen gas permeating the universe. When that gas heated up, it would have absorbed radiation from the CMB, causing its intensity to drop. That’s not something we can see with our telescopes, but it’s something we can detect in radio signals. The problem is, those signals would be incredibly faint and easily drowned out by the radio signals we produce here on Earth as well as the many being flung at us from the Milky Way. “Sources of noise can be 10,000 times brighter than the signal — it’s like being in the middle of a hurricane and trying to hear the flap of a hummingbird’s wing,” said the National Science Foundation’s Peter Kurczynski, who oversaw funding for the research reported today in Nature.

But scientists at Arizona State University and MIT set out to find the faint signals that mark the earliest star formation and they did so with a rather small radio antenna (pictured above) placed in an Australian desert. The remote location helped minimize interference from human-made radio signals and let the team hone in on the faint signals they were looking for. And in 2016, they spotted them — a dip in CMB radiation marking when stars first began to light up around 180 million years after the Big Bang. “This is exciting because it is the first look into a particularly important period in the universe, when the first stars and galaxies were beginning to form,” Colin Lonsdale, director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, said in a statement. “This is the first time anybody’s had any direct observational data from that epoch.”

The team spent over a year confirming their findings — changing the position of their radio antenna, using a different one and changing the instruments’ calibrations. The signal was observed each time. But not only did they detect the signal, they found that it was around twice as intense as they expected, suggesting the early universe’s hydrogen gas was much colder than previously thought. In another paper also published today in Nature, Tel Aviv University researcher Rennan Barkana argues that dark matter could explain a colder universe. “If that idea is confirmed,” Judd Bowman, lead author of the first study, told the NSF, “then we’ve learned something new and fundamental about the mysterious dark matter that makes up 85 percent of the matter in the universe. This would provide the first glimpse of physics beyond the standard model.”

These findings still need to be confirmed through separate experiments, but if other researchers come up with similar findings, we’re in for some pretty exciting science. “Basically, it’s worth two Nobel Prizes if the detection is correct,” Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “One for the first detection of hydrogen from when the universe was 100 million years old, and the second for detecting new physics.”

Image: N.R.Fuller, National Science Foundation

Via: The Guardian

Source: Nature (1), (2)

Doomsday seed vault to get $13 million upgrade in face of climate change

Humanity’s last hope to feed our future may lie dormant in a once-abandoned Arctic coal mine on a remote island in Norway. The “doomsday seed vault,” as it’s colloquially known, was built a decade ago to outlast nuclear war, global warming, and whatever other manmade disasters might beset our species.

But climate change has proven to be predictably problematic and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault may be less fortified than once thought.

Now, the Norwegian government has proposed a plan to invest 100 million Norwegian Crowns (about $12.7 million) to upgrade the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The proposed plan includes construction of a new concrete access tunnel and a service building to protect emergency power and refrigeration units.

“The upgrades, which we hope to begin presently, will ensure that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can continue to offer the world’s gene banks a secure storage space in the future. It is a great and important task to safeguard all the genetic material that is crucial to global food security,” Jon Georg Dale, Norway’s Minister of Agriculture and Food, said in a statement.

Millions of seed samples from more than 930,000 crops take refuge within the seed vault’s steel and concrete walls, some 800 miles south of the North Pole. If (or when) environmental catastrophe strikes a given region, governments can attempt to reboot their agricultural industries by requesting seed samples from the three organizations managing the seed vault: the Norwegian government, Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center.

The hope is that the wide variety of seeds represented within the vault can be used to establish crops with the genetic flexibility and resiliency to grow in various environmental conditions. And it didn’t take long for the vault to answer that call. The first seeds request came from the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) in 2015, to establish new collections compromised by the Syrian war. Last year, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault received seeds back from this withdrawal.

“In 2017 the important role of the seed vault was made evident,” Dale said. “For the first time seeds were redeposited at the seed vault on Svalbard. The ICARDA International Research Center, previously operating out of Aleppo in Syria, returned seeds harvested after they had retrieved their seeds from Svalbard in 2015. This demonstrates that the seed vault is a worldwide insurance for food supply for future generations.”

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