Technology - Google News

How to Set Up Your iPad to Be the Best Laptop Replacement It Can Be - Gizmodo
The best fast wireless charger for iPhones and Galaxy phones is down to $19.99 - BGR
Tech that died in 2018 - PCWorld

How to Set Up Your iPad to Be the Best Laptop Replacement It Can Be - Gizmodo

Posted: 31 Dec 2018 06:13 AM PST

Apple wants you to use your iPad or your iPad Pro like a proper computer: But how do you go about doing that? And does it actually work? Here are the apps, software tweaks, and accessories you need to turn your Apple tablet into a makeshift laptop—and some of the annoyances you’re still going to come across.

The iPad-only tweaks in iOS

If you’ve not used an iPad lately, then there are a few iOS features made exclusively for Apple’s tablet that you should know about. In terms of using your iPad like a laptop, the most important ones are Slide Over and Split View.

Split View works well for keeping two apps in view.

They’re both ways of getting more than one app up on screen at once, either via a hovering window (Slide Over) or a docked window (Split View). With one app open, just drag another into play from the dock (a quick slide up from the bottom), then fix the app to the side of the display or leave it floating, by dragging the gray bar at the top.

With Slide Over, you can dismiss a floating app by quickly swiping the gray bar at the top to the right or left, and bring it back by swiping in from the edge of the screen. With Split View, drag the divider bar in the center to the left or right to change how much screen space each app is given.

When you’ve got apps in Slide Over or Split View mode, you can drag text, pictures, and files between them: Touch and hold an item on one side, then drag it across into the other app. Quite how well this works varies between apps—Twitter will copy the tweet URL rather than its text, for instance—but it often comes in handy.

Slide Over is slightly different, with a hovering overlay.

There’s the dock at the bottom, which we’ve already mentioned, and which makes flicking between different apps just that little bit easier. The iPad has now adopted the gesture controls ushered in with the iPhone X too—this was a necessary move with the removal of Touch ID from the iPad Pros, but the gestures also work with older iPads too.

The best apps for serious work

Starting with word processing, the likes of Apple’s Pages (which comes built into iOS), Docs from Google, and Word from Microsoft are seriously helpful in getting through a substantial amount of text (note that to edit as well as view files in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iOS on an iPad, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription). For spreadsheets and presentations, it’s the same suspects from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, which have all matured impressively well on iOS (and mobile platforms in general).

Some, but not all, of this article was written in Google Docs on an iPad.

Image editing is well covered: From Snapseed to VSCO to Adobe Lightroom CC to Pixelmator, there’s plenty of choice, and add in the default Photos app from Apple and Google Photos and you should be able to replicate a lot of what you do on a laptop, especially if you’ve got an Apple Pencil. Though the most exciting new image editor, a full version of Adobe Photoshop, won’t be available until later in 2019.

Speaking of the Apple Pencil, the iPad is great for digital artwork and sketching: The likes of Procreate and Autodesk SketchBook make this a much better device than a laptop in many ways. What it still lacks is a way to do those kind of detailed, pixel-by-pixel edits that are often needed at the professional level—it’ll be interesting to see how the “full” version of Photoshop tackles this.

As for other serious work apps you might want to install to use an iPad as a laptop, we can recommend Slack, video editing powerhouse LumaFusion, Evernote, TeamViewer, Ulysses (for a more minimal, intuitive word processor), and Notability for converting handwritten notes into files and text you can actually use. Bundled Apple apps like iMovie and GarageBand are no slouches either.

Procreate is another pro-level tool available on iPad.

An impressive roster of apps then, but they’re not quite up to desktop level yet. With Word, for example, you can’t change paragraph settings, or modify and apply stylesheets, or edit any imported charts. You can drop in pictures and shapes, but you can’t do quite as much with them, or modify them quite as easily. Almost all these apps still feel exactly like what they are: Cut-down versions of the full apps.

The iPad is closer than ever to a laptop’s functionality, but its definitely not there yet.

Kitting out your iPad with accessories

To help turn your iPad tablet into a laptop you need some accessories. Primarily, that means a clip-on keyboard that gives you a proper typing experience and saves you having to jab at the touchscreen with your fingers.

Attaching a keyboard makes a big difference to productivity.

The obvious place to start is with the Smart Keyboard Folio that Apple itself sells, yours from $160 and up depending on the size and age of your iPad Pro. It attaches with a snap, requires no pairing or charging, and is actually reasonably comfortable to type on too.

Alternatives are available, like the Brydge Pro models due to launch at the start of 2019 ($150 and up). They give a more solid, more laptop-like feel to your typing, or so they promise, and unlike the Smart Keyboard Folios that Apple produces itself, you can have the tablet set at any angle you like for easier viewing.

Apple doesn’t make its own keyboards for the standard iPad, but again you’ve got several options from third-party manufacturers: There’s the Logitech Slim Combo ($120) for example, with backlit keys, a choice of viewing angles, and durable protection for when it’s doubling up as a case for your Apple tablet.

The Brydge Pro models work with the iPad Pros.

Away from keyboards, the first or second-generation Apple Pencil ($100 and up) is ideal for digital artists and dedicated note-takers. Most standard USB-C adapters will work with your iPad Pro—including docks and video cords. If you want to go with more expensive officially licensed products the USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter ($70) and USB-C to SD Card Reader ($40) are both worth a look, though they’re both rather limited compared with the laptop equivalents: You can only mirror the iPad Pro screen rather than extend it, and images can only be imported via Apple’s own Photos app in iOS. Now RAW images quite yet.

Is an iPad a laptop replacement?

So get everything set up as we’ve described above, and does an iPad actually work as a laptop? Stick a keyboard on an iPad or iPad Pro and it certainly looks a lot like a laptop replacement—you can actually type properly on it, albeit with a more cramped and less comfortable keyboard than your laptop has (probably—we haven’t seen your laptop).

No pointing device means the iPad is still limited.

Putting some notes into Google Docs or firing off an email in Mail works perfectly fine, though you will feel the omission of a trackpad (your fingers might naturally start to drift down below the keyboard to find one). When it comes to selecting items from menus, or scrolling through a document, you need to go back to using the touchscreen.

We often feel the absence of all those keyboard+trackpad (or mouse) combinations that come in so useful when editing text, or working on images, or getting around the web (Cmd+click to open a link in a new tab, for example). There’s just not the granular control without a proper pointing device, and it’s going to be interesting to see how Photoshop tackles this when it arrives on the iPad next year.

For text editing alone, the keyboard makes a big difference, from being able to accurately select text with shortcuts, to hitting Enter to submit searches and so on without having to reach for a button on screen. It works so much better than a touchscreen keyboard, and apps like Word and Google Docs are now mature enough on iOS to let you do most of what you would do on a laptop.

The keyboard helps, but it’s not quite enough.

But for presentations, or spreadsheets, or image editing, the bottom line is that a finger and a clip-on keyboard isn’t as intuitive as a mouse (or trackpad) and keyboard. Added to that, the majority of apps—from Word to Chrome—are cut-down, mobile-optimized versions of their desktop/web equivalents: For getting complicated work done, an iPad can’t replace your laptop yet, even if the gap is closing.

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The best fast wireless charger for iPhones and Galaxy phones is down to $19.99 - BGR

Posted: 31 Dec 2018 05:42 AM PST

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Tech that died in 2018 - PCWorld

Posted: 31 Dec 2018 03:30 AM PST

As 2018 draws to a close, we bid adieu to many products and services in our beloved world of consumer technology. Some were old stalwarts that finally gave way to the passage of time. Others were short-lived trends, or ideas quickly abandoned. Here’s our look at this year’s greats and "not-so-greats"—those that passed into the history books or were sent straight to null.

Social Media Fizzlers

Social media is always a wasteland of detritus, as Facebook and Twitter ( mostly Facebook) continue to drag us slowly toward a surveillance state. Klout gave up trying on May 25, 2018, when owner Lithium Technologies shut down the site. Klout tried to add value to social media by ranking users with a numerical “Klout Score,” purportedly representing each person’s influence online.

Path, the once-trendy social media site that started as a place to share photos with close friends, shut down in October. The yawn-inspiring personal assistant Facebook M stopped working in January after a general launch in April 2017. Lastly, Yahoo Messenger, one of the last remaining classic instant messengers, went away in July. Messenger outlasted its more notable rivals, AOL’s AIM (1997-2017) and MSN/Windows Live Messenger (1999-2012).

Google’s annual housecleaning

There’s nothing Google relishes more than cleaning house, and in 2018 it got rid of a ton of things that deserved it. The Google Goggles app that let you search items using images snapped on your smartphone gave way to the more advanced Google Lens.

Inbox, Google’s attempt to streamline your email, was put on life support until March 2019, as was Allo. One of the numerous Google-branded messaging apps, Allo was an early experiment for integrating Google Assistant smarts into messaging.

Google’s “doomed-from-the-start” social network Google+ is going away in August 2019. Google delivered the prognosis in October after announcing the site had been leaking private data, potentially affecting as many as 500,000 accounts. The good news is that not many people noticed or cared, because 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.

Beyond its own products, the Lytro light-field imaging camera started winding down in March after Google reportedly acquired the company.

Steam shutdowns

While gamers continue to wait for the long-promised Steam desktop app overhaul, a lot of things came to an end for the Valve-owned service. Steam Link got the axe in November, a brilliant piece of streaming hardware that brought your PC games into the living room. The writing was on the wall for Link after seeing the hardware repeatedly on sale for $5. The good news is that Link streaming will live on as software, just not for iOS. While Steam Link for Android is alive and well, Valve canceled Link for iOS in May after it was rejected from the App Store, according to Variety.

Steam announced in June that it would no longer support Windows XP and Vista as of January 1, 2019 forcing gamers to upgrade and step into this decade’s catalog of games.

Lastly, Steam’s own dominance as the place to get PC games took a hit. Epic Games came out with its own store, and Bethesda released the highly-anticipated Fallout 76 on its own storefront. EA has had its own offering for years, of course, and Activision is “not really, but yes really” toying with Blizzard’s Battle.net as its future storefront. On top of all that, in August the popular gamer chat app Discord launched its own store to take on Steam. And oh yeah, Twitch and Microsoft sell games, too.

Amazon Music Storage

Amazon’s MP3 music storage locker shut its metaphorical doors on April 30. As of that date, Amazon stopped accepting renewals for paid plans, and free users could no longer upload music. Paid users can still use their account until their current plan expires. While uploaded music is no longer available, users will still be able to access music purchased on Amazon via the cloud.

Pebble Smartwatch Online Services

Pebble smartwatches enjoyed a surprisingly successful early start, thanks to a hot Kickstarter campaign. But they were discontinued in 2016 after the company was acquired by Fitbit. The online services kept running until June, including the app store, forum, voice recognition, SMS and email replies. Some features continued to work past the shutdown date, such as apps that maintained Pebble compatibility. While Pebble is now gone for good, its legacy lives on in Fitbit OS.

Swype Keyboard

Few people want to give up screen real estate on their phone for a physical keyboard, but there’s no doubt that typing on software keyboards can be a pain. When Swype first appeared on select Android devices in 2010, it was a revelation. Instead of typing the exact keys, you just dragged your finger across the screen, hitting the letters (more or less) for the word you wanted to spell. It wasn’t long before every Android smartphone keyboard was rocking the feature. Meanwhile Swype was snapped up by Nuance, the maker of Dragon voice dictation software, in 2011.

Nuance decided to shut down the Swype keyboard apps in February, pulling them from both the Android and iOS app stores.

Opera VPN for Android and iOS

In 2016, Opera experimented with adding a free virtual private network service to its PC browser in 2016. The VPN service was provided by SurfEasy, a Canadian company that Opera acquired in 2015. Dedicated free VPN apps for iOS then Android followed a few months later with built-in ad blocking. These apps allowed people to secure their web browsing on open Wi-Fi for free on mobile. The trade-off, however, was that Opera collected user data for “market insights” to support the freebie.

The party was over within two years, however, as Opera shut down the Android and iOS apps in April.

Newton email service

Newton

Longtime techies may think of Apple’s once upon a time PDA when they hear the name Newton, but the name was more recently used for a desktop email app for Windows. While desktop email has been a boring and stodgy experience for years, we really liked Newton for its clean design and awesome features like scheduling, email reminders, and useful third-party integration.

Unfortunately, the dream of a $50-per-year email app for the desktop just wasn’t tenable, and the email service shut down in September.

Windows 8.1 exits mainstream support

While Windows 8.1 was a notable improvement over the original Windows 8 concept, it was still confusing and eventually gave way to the far better Windows 10. Microsoft ceased mainstream feature support for Windows 8.1 on January 9, 2018. The truth, however, is that Microsoft was done with Windows 8.1 as soon as Windows 10 was out the door, with no significant improvements in years.

While Windows 8.1’s mainstream support is over, it will continue to live on with security updates until January 10, 2023.

Nvidia kills GPP

Nvidia ended its GeForce Partner Program in May. The short-lived concept was, for consumers, a sort of promise of authenticity for GeForce-branded GPUs. Manufacturers in the program, meanwhile, got early access to Nvidia tech and promotional support on Nvidia’s social media channels.

Outsiders offered a different take, painting it as a program that demanded manufacturers dedicate a specific brand name exclusively to GeForce hardware, as HardOCP reported. AMD-based cards reportedly couldn’t carry the same brand name, even if they had before. After waves of negative feedback, however, the jig was up and the GPP was canceled.

Kaby Lake-X

Alongside its mass-market CPUs, Intel has a long history of supplying chips for PC enthusiasts who want some serious power, at a serious price. Sometimes, however, those enthusiast releases can be a little confusing, which was the case with Kaby Lake-X. Launched in 2017 at the same time as the Skylake-X processors, the quad-core Kaby Lake-X CPUs weren’t any more powerful than other Kaby Lake processors, though there was a small increase in clock speed.

The one thing Kaby Lake-X did need was an expensive X299 motherboard, with starting prices around $200. It just wasn't worth the trouble, and by May 2018, Kaby Lake-X quietly left the stage as Intel’s new Coffee Lake CPUs were gearing up.

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