MacRumors Giveaway: Win a HyperAir 7.5W Wireless Charging Stand From RAVPower

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with RAVPower to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a HyperAir 7.5W Qi Wireless Charging Stand from RAVPower.

Designed for the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, and future iPhones with Qi wireless charging capabilities, the HyperAir Wireless Charging Stand, priced at $46, is an upright charger that’s able to charge the iPhone while it’s standing up rather than lying flat.

There are two coils built into the wireless charger so the iPhone can be charged in either landscape or portrait mode. That makes this an ideal stand for use when you still need to see your iPhone while it charges, perhaps for watching videos or keeping an eye on a social network.

RAVPower’s HyperAir line of chargers support the faster 7.5W charging specification in the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus, so this Wireless Charging Stand will charge your iPhone faster than a standard 5W charger.

We reviewed the HyperAir Stand back in March and found that it was able to charge an iPhone X faster than several other competing chargers on the market. For those of you who have an iPhone and another device like a Samsung Galaxy, this will also charge those devices. It works with any Qi device.

According to RAVPower, the HyperAir Stand uses triple temperature controls to disperse heat 15 percent faster and protect against overcharging and overvoltage. Temperature control is important because wireless charging causes the temperature of the iPhone to rise, and at higher temperatures, charging slows.

We have 10 of the HyperAir Wireless Charging Stands from RAVPower to give away, and for those who want to make a purchase now, we have an exclusive discount that drops the price of the charger from $45.99 to $33.99. Just use the code MACRAV069 when checking out on Amazon. The code will work until June 15.

To enter to win our giveaway, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (June 1) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on June 8. The winners will be chosen randomly on June 8 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

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Review: CalDigit’s T4 RAID Offers Lots of Fast Storage, Thunderbolt 3, and 85W Charging

Popular storage and dock company CalDigit recently launched a Thunderbolt 3 version of its T4 RAID storage hub, offering demanding Mac users a four-bay setup with capacities up to 32 TB of traditional hard drive or 8 TB of SSD storage.

Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 Macs including the MacBook Pro, iMac, and iMac Pro, the T4 connects over a single cable and not only offers a storage array but can also deliver up to 85 watts of power to the host computer and supports downstream displays via Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, and DisplayPort, as well as other standards using adapters.

Installation and Setup

Setting up the T4 is straightforward, but requires that you first download CalDigit’s Thunderbolt RAID Utility Installer from the company’s site and get the utility installed on your system. As of macOS High Sierra, this requires an extra authorization step in the Security & Privacy section of System Preferences, but the installer walks you through the process.

With the utility installed and your computer restarted, it’s just a matter of using the included 2-meter active Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect the T4 to your computer, plugging in the power cord, optionally connecting a downstream display, and starting up the T4.

Once the T4 is up and running and the drive showing on your desktop, you’re ready to go. The T4 comes pre-formatted in RAID 5 to offer a combination of redundancy and performance. If you prefer a different RAID mode (0, 1, or JBOD/SPAN), you can use the CalDigit Drive Utility menu bar app to reconfigure things.

Design

The T4 has a rectangular aluminum enclosure that measures 9.5 inches deep, 5.8 inches high, and 5.3 inches wide. The sides are ribbed to aid in heat dissipation, while the top is smooth with a CalDigit logo. The front of the T4 is dominated by the four drive modules, and underneath you’ll see a power button, a blue LED that lights up when the T4 is fully powered up, and then four additional blue LED status for the four drives. These illuminate when data is being written to or read from the specific drive. At the far right of the bottom front is an air intake.

On the rear of the T4. You’ll find a fairly large exhaust fan opening covered by a grille, as well as a Kensington security lock slot, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a DisplayPort port, and the connection for the power adapter. The power adapter is quite bulky, but that’s unsurprising given the hardware it needs to power in the T4 itself and the extra 85 watts it needs to be able to deliver to the host computer. Overall, it’s capable of putting out 230 watts.

With the enclosure, electronics, and all the drive modules, this is a heavy beast checking in at 13 pounds, so once you set this up, it’s going to stay there.

Drive Speed

Thunderbolt 3 offers terrific data throughput possibilities, but the speeds you see will depend on other limiting factors. The biggest one is obviously SSD versus traditional hard drive. An SSD setup will obviously be much faster, but it’s still expensive and maxes out at only 8 TB of total storage. If you need more storage and can put up with somewhat slower speeds, the traditional hard drives are the way to go.

My 32 GB review unit came with 7200 rpm Toshiba N300 drives, which are well-regarded storage drives optimized for NAS storage setups. Configured in RAID 5 out of the box, I saw read and write speeds of around 500 MB/s, which is pretty solid performance that takes advantage of that RAID configuration’s ability to write to multiple drives simultaneously.

RAID 5 speed test
Switching to a RAID 1 setup where all of the data is mirrored across each drive for maximum redundancy, I saw write speeds around 175 MB/s and read speeds of roughly 270 MB/s.

RAID 1 speed test
CalDigit uses proprietary drive modules that make it easy to swap in and out while preventing accidental removal. A pin hole on the front of the module pops out lever that allows you to slide the module out of its bay in the T4. For additional security, a drive lock can also be turned to prevent the pin release from operating. CalDigit’s drives are compatible across products, so if you have a RAID 1 or JBOD module in your T4, you can pull it out and transfer it straight to either an AV Pro 2 or the company’s previous Thunderbolt 2 T4 model.

Display Connectivity

I connected an UltraFine 5K display to the extra Thunderbolt port on the T4, and experienced no lag or other issues on the display. The Thunderbolt 3 port allows for displays up to 5K running at 60 Hz, but lower resolutions are of course also supported, as are USB-C displays. Other types of displays can be connected to the Thunderbolt port by using a USB-C video adapter.

Alternatively, the DisplayPort port supports up to 4K displays running at 60 Hz, and active adapters can be used to connect other display types such as HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, VGA, or DVI. Dual displays running at up to 4K and 60 Hz each are supported using the DisplayPort and Thunderbolt ports simultaneously, along with any required adapters.

Unfortunately, the T4 must be at least in standby mode in order for connected displays to function, and that means an internal fan runs either continually or cycling on and off every few minutes. It’s not nearly as loud as when it’s in full feature mode with the drives mounted, but it’s definitely noticeable in a quiet office or bedroom. The SSD model of the T4 should run significantly quieter in general, given the lack of moving parts and significantly less heat generated.

CalDigit Drive Utility

The Drive Utility app is a persistent menu bar application, which offers convenient access to drive management functions. You can use it to check on the status and health of each drive in the T4, manage RAID modes, set S.M.A.R.T. check frequencies, and configure notifications for various types of disk events like drive connect/disconnect, temperature warnings, or health issues. It even includes a built-in disk speed test function.

The app does a lot, but it doesn’t look terribly pretty doing it. The app window has a jarring black outline that doesn’t match the design aesthetic of macOS or most other third-party apps, while other user interface elements just a feel a bit off like the shadowing used to highlight the active tab. I’d prefer a more standard macOS look for the app, but ideally this isn’t something you’re going to need to use all that often, so it’s a fairly minor quibble.

Capacities and Pricing

CalDigit offers several capacity options in its online store, starting at $899 for an 8 TB traditional hard drive model. Higher-capacity models are available at 12 TB ($1099), 16 TB ($1399), 24 TB ($1999), and 32 TB ($2299). If you’re looking for the ultimate in speed, there’s a single 8 TB SSD option available that will set you back $3499. CalDigit is also offering the T4 through Amazon, although pricing is currently higher on all models except the base 8 TB traditional hard drive model, which comes in at $799.

The T4 is a custom “hybrid RAID” solution from CalDigit combining hardware and software aspects, and it’s only compatible with Macs, so be aware of that if you have any Windows PCs in your workflow.

In addition to the complete T4 packages, CalDigit offers separate drive modules in the various capacities if you want to have extras to swap in and out or if one fails. The T4 comes with a five-year warranty on the enclosure and electronics, while the drives themselves have a three-year warranty.

Keep in mind that if you plan to use RAID for redundancy, the actual capacity of your volume will be less than the total capacity of the drives. For example, in a four-disk volume like the T4 configured as RAID5, the volume size will only be 75 percent of the total capacity, as the remaining 25 percent is dedicated to parity to enable you to recover data if one of the drives fails.

Overall, the T4 Thunderbolt 3 RAID performs well and offers a nice balance of storage, redundancy, and speed from a company with a strong reputation for quality and customer support. It doesn’t necessarily come cheaply and with four disks it’s likely overkill for consumers just looking for backup security, but if you have a significant amount of high-value data that you want to ensure isn’t lost, this definitely a RAID storage option worth considering.

Note: CalDigit provided the T4 RAID to MacRumors free of charge for the purposes of this review. No other compensation was received. MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon and may earn commissions on purchases made through links in this article.

Tags: Thunderbolt 3, CalDigit
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Apple to Expand Digital Advertising Network to Third-Party Apps

Apple is aiming to expand its digital advertising network by offering ad deals to companies that include Snap and Pinterest, reports The Wall Street Journal. Apple is hoping to build an Apple ad network that would distribute ads across apps, providing a share of revenue to the apps that display the ads.

With these Apple ads, searching for something like “Drapes” in Pinterest could show up an ad from Apple for an interior design app, as an example.

Apple’s App Store search ads
Apple’s App Store ads brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue last year, and its ad network ambitions would allow the company to grow its ad business significantly. Companies like Google and Facebook offer similar ad programs, which Apple would need to compete with.

Targeting ads could be more difficult for Apple because it does not use the extensive data collection techniques of Google and Facebook. Apple limits its App Store advertising data collection to age, location, gender, device, and music, app, book, and video downloads.

According to The Wall Street Journal, it is not known where Apple’s planning for the ad network stands nor when it could launch. Apple previously had an ad program called iAd, which it shuttered in 2016.

Tags: Apple ads, App Store
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ARKit 2.0 Will Let Two iPhones See the Same Virtual Object

iOS 12, set to be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, will include ARKit 2.0, an upgrade to the existing ARKit 1.5 SDK that’s available to developers to allow them to build augmented reality experiences in their apps.

ARKit 2.0, according to a new report from Reuters, will include a feature that’s designed to let two iPhone users share an augmented reality experience, with the same objects displayed on multiple screens.

This is in line with previous rumors from Bloomberg that have said Apple is working on both multiplayer augmented reality gameplay and object permanence, which would allow a virtual object to remain in place across multiple app sessions.

Apple is aiming to allow two people to share data so they can see the same virtual object in the same space via each individual device, with Apple designing the feature in a privacy-friendly way.

Apple’s multiplayer system, unlike similar offerings from Google, does not require users to share scans of their homes and personal spaces, working via a phone-to-phone system.

Apple designed its two-player system to work phone-to-phone in part because of those privacy concerns, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The approach, which has not been previously reported, differs from Google’s, which requires scans of a player’s environment to be sent to, and stored in, the cloud.

Full details on how Apple’s multiplayer augmented reality system will work are unknown, and it’s not yet clear if it works with three or more players. Apple will share more information on the feature on Monday.

Augmented reality has been a major focus for Apple over the course of the last two years, with Apple CEO Tim Cook calling AR “big and profound.” “We’re high on AR in the long run,” Cook said in 2016.

Apple unveiled its first augmented reality product, ARKit, with iOS 11 at WWDC, and has since made improvements to the feature with the launch of ARKit 1.5 in March as part of iOS 11.3. ARKit brought mapping for irregularly shaped surfaces, vertical surface placement, and object and image recognition. With the additional changes coming in iOS 12, developers should be able to do a whole lot more with augmented reality.

Related Roundup: iOS 12Tag: ARKit
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Telegram Gets First Update After Six Week App Store Lockout

Telegram today received its first update in two months after an App Store update lockout caused by a dispute with the Russian government and Apple.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov yesterday explained that Apple had been blocking updates to the Telegram app on a worldwide scale since April, when the Telegram app was banned in Russia.

As back story, Russia in April banned Telegram because Telegram refused to allow government officials in the country to have backdoor access to the content of user messages. Russia’s ban attempt was not entirely successful, leading Russia to demand that Apple remove Telegram from the Russian App Store.

Amid this dispute, Apple was apparently refusing all Telegram app updates dating back to mid-April. This situation caused certain Telegram features, like stickers, to break with the launch of iOS 11.4, and it prevented Telegram from complying with new GDPR rules in the European Union. From Durov’s statement yesterday:

While Russia makes up only 7% of Telegram’s userbase, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April. As a result, we’ve also been unable to fully comply with GDPR for our EU-users by the deadline of May 25, 2018. We are continuing our efforts to resolve the situation and will keep you updated.

Apple appears to have reversed its position on Telegram updates, and Telegram 4.8.2 is now available in the iOS App Store. The update includes a new registration process for the EU and UK along with some other small changes to the app.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Telegram
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Gotta catch ’em all fairly: ‘Pokémon Go’ cheaters’ precious monsters being deleted

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The best part of Pokémon Go is exploring the real world, making new friends, and discovering cool landmarks as you attempt to catch virtual monsters. Unfortunately, some players have sidestepped the exercise by using programs and third-party tools to trick the game into believing they’re walking around the world. Now, those who have cheated will now find their roster of Pokémon severely depleted.

“In order to prepare an environment where you can play Pokémon Go fun and fairly, we continue to take measures against actions that affect normal gameplay, including using [third-party] services violating the terms of service,” said a translated post on the Japanese Pokémon Go Twitter account. “A pink diagonal line is displayed in Pokémon caught using such a service, and it becomes useless in normal play.”

That’s right — if you caught a Pokémon using a program to spoof your location, it will now be completely useless. The name and level is still visible for any monsters caught this way, but there will not be an image of the Pokémon.

This is hardly the first time developer Niantic has punished players for using programs that violate the game’s terms of service. Earlier this year, Pokémon Go sent warning messages to accounts that it detected were using third-party software, and in some cases it also “shadowbanned” them. This kept them from seeing any valuable Pokémon in their area, though it appeared to be a temporary punishment.

Niantic has plenty of Pokémon Go content planned for the summer, including a Community Day on June 16. The game recently added Alolan Pokémon, which are alternate forms of previously available monsters, and you’ll now find Alolan Exeggutor if you explore.

If you’re in Chicago, you can also attend the second Pokémon Go Fest this July in Lincoln Park. Trainers will follow a 1.8-mile walking course as they catch new Pokémon and complete challenges. There will even be special lounges.

Pokémon Go will feature connectivity with the Nintendo Switch games Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! when they arrive November 16. In addition to transferring Kanto Pokémon between the Switch and mobile games, you’ll be able to send gifts and discover an all-new secret Pokémon.

Editors’ Recommendations

• ‘Pokémon Go’ adds legendary monsters Latias and Latios
• ‘Rampage’ review
• ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ review
• ‘Monster Hunter: World’ review
• Nintendo applies for patent on digital card format, but is it for Pokémon?

Nvidia could reboot its game bundle with ‘The Crew 2’ and GTX 1080s

Nvidia may start giving away free games with its graphics cards again, suggesting that the average buyer may now be a more typical gamer than some of the alternative audiences that became all too common over the past year. The first bundle to break the free-game drought of the past few months is reported to be The Crew 2, which will be given out free when gamers buy a qualifying 10-series graphics card or pre-built system with one of those respective GPUs inside.

Blame cryptocurrency miners if you want, but for whatever reason, Nvidia hasn’t been very keen to give out free games with its graphics cards for quite a while now. It even began a new effort in early 2017 to block the resale of free bundled games which had clearly become a problem.

The leaked promotional giveaway links Ubisoft-published racer, The Crew 2, with Nvidia’s GTX 1080, 1080 Ti, and laptops and desktops fitted with those particular chips. That does put this promotion at the high-end of the 10-series generation, so you may wonder how impactful one free game would be to those spending $600-plus on a new graphics card. However, considering the mid-range has traditionally been the most popular for cryptocurrency miners, it may be that Nvidia wants to limit free games to those who are more likely to be buying cards for gaming.

It’s not clear yet whether this promotion is one that will stretch across the globe either, as VideoCardz’s discovered advertisement is in Dutch. Nvidia has not made the official announcement yet, but if this leaked ad proves to be real, we’ll likely see the GPU giant make some sort of announcement in the near future.

If it does, The Crew 2 is likely to be a good showcase title for anyone buying a new qualifying system or graphics card. The expansive, open-world racer is set to debut on June 29 and on top of introducing new vehicles like planes and boats to the already deep and broad roster of cars and bikes, has a story mode, too.

Alongside the wide variety of races and activities to take part in, we found The Crew 2 to be fantastic to look at it in our hands-on preview, which could make it a great first-game for anyone looking to push the limits of their new, high-end graphics card.

Editors’ Recommendations

• ‘State of Decay 2’ spreads its infection to Xbox One and PC this May
• Amazon is selling Star Wars and Marvel DVDs — but only to Prime members
• Recent data suggests that GPU supply might be stabilizing and prices falling
• Grab the new Pikachu 2DS XL and score a free game and Poké Ball power bank
• How to make a watermark: A quick and easy way to protect your photos

Freakishly accurate A.I. security system identifies you based on your footsteps

From our voice to our faces to more unorthodox methods like our “heartprint,” there are a growing number of ways for computers to recognize their users. One we have yet to come across, however, is based on our footsteps. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Manchester and Spain’s Universidad Autonoma de Madrid are working to change that. A new A.I. biometric verification method can successfully identify individuals by the way they walk across a pressure pad on the floor. The technology could one day be used as an alternative, or augmentation, to existing biometric identification system in places like airports.

“We have realized that sensing human gait has biometric potential from the early days when we demonstrated the Manchester ‘Magic Carpet’ to user groups back in 2010,” Krikor Ozanyan, Professor of Photonic Sensors & Systems at Manchester, told Digital Trends. “However, decisive progress has been made recently by using artificial intelligence to process the floor senor data in a new way. As the latest development, we teamed up with Universidad Autonoma de Madrid to apply our existing models, and to develop new ones, for experimenting on an existing unique footstep database SFootDB — containing a single stride from a large number of individuals.”

In test conditions, the footstep-recognizing A.I. was able to correctly identify individuals with close to perfect accuracy, with an error rate of just 0.7 percent.

According to Ozanyan, the methodology could be particularly useful for identifying individuals in crowded locations, such as on an airport concourse. Despite a recent story from China claiming that a known criminal was identified using facial recognition in a crowd of thousands, such approaches may not necessarily prove effective. On the other hand, the ability to single out known individuals from a large group of unknowns by getting them to cross a pressure-sensing threshold could be extremely helpful. It could also potentially be used in smart home environments to recognize individual members of the family or household.

“The use of artificial intelligence on footstep data is efficient from the point of view of cost of deployment, resources, upgrades, connectivity and privacy concerns,” Ozanyan continued. “Beyond biometrics, the home scenario is the entry point for the huge area of healthcare, where the occupants’ gait can be monitored over a very long period of time so that subtle changes in their gait patterns can be attributed to normal ageing or to cognitive decline — possibly linked to the early onset of mental illness.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

Become an Excel whiz with this bundle of training courses!

Microsoft’s Excel, the spreadsheet tool in its Office suite, has an incredible amount of depth that most people never touch. Figures and graphs are what Excel is usually used for, but there’s so much more potential if you have the correct knowledge.

Master Microsoft Excel for just $49! Learn more

Whether it’s PivotTables, Pivot Charts, macros, or powerful formulas, in-depth Excel training to automate spreadsheets and solve complex problems can be quite expensive. There’s a lot of content to cover, and there are many questions to answer.

If you’re interested in extensive spreadsheet training, Android Central right now has a Microsoft Excel course that includes over 70 hours of content spread over four courses. Instead of paying the regular price of $1,380, you’ll instead pay just $49. That’s 96 percent off the regular price!

Get in-depth Excel training that lets you learn at your own pace! Learn more

Access to this course remains open forever, so even if you don’t have the time at this moment, you can jump in whenever you’d like. At just $49 for extensive Excel training, how can you go wrong?

LG G7: Review, Specs, Availability, Problems and more!

Interested in the LG G7 ThinQ? We’ve got the basics covered here!

LG re-invented itself a bit in 2017 with the G6: a back-to-basics design that focused on being a great phone rather than relying on mods and other superfluous hardware features. That trend continues in 2018 with the LG G7 ThinQ: a great smartphone with interesting branding — and some tricks up its sleeve.

This is everything you need to know about the LG G7 ThinQ!

Check out the coverage so far

We’ve had some time with the LG G7, and we have some early impressions ready for you to read. Additionally, Mr. Mobile has a full review. So far, we like the G7, and we’ll have a full review up shortly.

More: LG G7 ThinQ hands-on preview: All about that bass

The specs

The G7 doesn’t have too many surprises when it comes to internal hardware, featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, plenty of internal storage (with the option to use a microSD card for expansion), and Android 8.0 Oreo for software. LG not only keeps the headphone jack, but continues offering a high-end DAC for excellent audio. Check out the full specs below!

Yes, it has a notch

The topic of notches on Android phones is… divisive. You can go either way on your opinion of a display notch, and with the LG G7, you can go either way on having a notch. It’s enabled by default, but if you disable it in the settings, you just have a plain black status bar.

Dual cameras are back

LG has had dual cameras for a few years, with one standard lens and one wide-angle lens. That continues on the G7, and it’s just as great as it has ever been. LG seems to be the one manufacturer interested in great wide-angle photography, and it’s become a legitimate reason to choose LG phones over the competition.

The main lense is optically stabilized for better low-light photos and videos, but unfortunately the wide-angle lens is not. There’s also a Super Bright Mode to lighten up dark scenes, and it works well enough without the photo getting grainy.

Where to buy it

Interested in the G7? Fortunately, you can pick one up starting now. Every major U.S. carrier (minus AT&T) has started stocking the G7, between $750 and $792. Canadian carriers will also have the G7 available to purchase.

More: Where to buy the LG G7 ThinQ

Grab some accessories

If you’re going to get the G7, make sure to get some accessories for it as well. Screen protectors and cases are already available, and it’s never a bad idea to get a microSD card for more storage.

More: Best LG G7 Cases

More: Best Screens Protectors for LG G7

More: Best microSD cards for LG G7

More: Best accessories for the LG G7

Check out our forums!

Want to chat about G7, or ask the community a question. Be sure to stop into to the Android Central forums!

More: LG G7 ThinQ forums

LG G7

• LG G7 hands-on preview: All about that bass
• LG G7 Specifications: Everything you need to know
• Join the LG G7 forums