Tag Archives: 2018

Steve Jobs would be proud of the 2018 Apple iPad Pro

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The iPad for the longest time has been a glorified media machine, being used to watch content on and occasionally work with. In fact, sales even dwindled post the launch of the iPad Mini, and tablets soon became less and less appealing. The iPad Pro, and its focus on creators helped rekindle the world’s interests in the iPad, so much so that the number of iPads sold just last year beats the number of notebooks sold by any company worldwide! The point Apple is trying to make is that the iPad Pro is capable of dethroning the laptop. It did so with an incredibly strong GPU, CPU, and a battery that promised to last all day. It also came with Apple’s pencil, a powerful tool that allowed you to use this magical slab of glass as a canvas to create some absolutely mesmeric artpieces (all of Apple’s custom logos for their October event were made on the iPad).

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The iPad Pro, however, came with a few flaws that wouldn’t slide with Jobs. It didn’t look different from the regular iPad. It just had higher specs, cost a whole lot more, and came with an Apple Pencil that could only be charged by sticking its end into the iPad… something that’s still considered to be one of the biggest design crimes ever. The camera lacked pizzazz, and there wasn’t a place to store the pencil when not in use. Today, everything changed dramatically for the better. The new iPad Pro is refreshing, beautiful, and shows that Apple is still capable of making some really well-designed hardware.

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Tim referred to the iPad as a magical piece of glass and the redesign truly feels like it. At just 5.9mm, it’s gloriously thin, and comes with a screen that stretches all the way to the ends. No home button, no bezel, just a bunch of really bright pixels that make it feel like you’re carrying light. The new screen is a Liquid Retina screen (just like in the iPhone XR) and sits at 11 inches. The home button is sent bags-a-packin and the new uniformly thick bezel integrates Apple’s FaceID camera right into it. The iPad comes with four speakers on all four corners, instead of two at its base, allowing it to give you an expansive audio experience, and also allowing you to use the iPad in any orientation without worrying about its audio being muffled. Another massive update is the fact that the iPad Pro, recognizing that it needs to dethrone notebooks, ditches the lightning charger for a USB-C port (more on that further below!)

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A new iPad means a new Apple Pencil too. The revamped pencil comes with a unibody cylindrical design and a flat edge. The flat edge serves two purposes. It allows the pencil to magnetically dock to the side of the iPad Pro, giving you the ability to carry the pencil and tablet together rather than separately. That magnetic snap also allows the Pencil to instantly pair with the iPad and even establish a wireless charging connection, which means you don’t need to shove the Pencil up the iPad’s rear every time it dies out, and also means your Pencil is always ambiently charging while snapped to the side of your iPad. The new solution is neat, elegant, and would have been the norm had Jobs been around when the iPad Pro dropped two years ago. Nevertheless, it’s good to know Apple still has it in them to craft elegant solutions. On the flip side, there’s no headphone jack. :(

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Now to the USB-C. Apple’s decision to change the port on the iPad Pro means you can now connect your iPad to anything from a DSLR, to a MIDI controller, to even an external screen. Apple went a step further and even built a feature into the iPad that lets you connect it to your iPhone and charge it! Yes. You can charge your iPhone with your iPad! This heavy-lifting makes the iPad a strong competitor in not just the tablet market, but the notebook market too. Apple says that the new iPad Pro is faster and better than 92% of all existing notebooks.

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The new iPad comes with Apple’s A12X bionic chip, giving it the ability to run augmented reality as well as match the performance of an Xbox One S in the graphics department. With an 8 core CPU and a 7 core GPU, the iPad Pro is quite literally a beast, and is even capable of viewing extremely detailed and heavy AutoCAD files as well as handling desktop-style Photoshop, resplendent with every single feature, working with PSD files without breaking a sweat… and it does all this while retaining the iPad’s promise of a full day’s worth of battery.

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In every which way, the iPad Pro 2018 would make Jobs proud. It looks spectacular, feels spectacular, comes with conscientious design details like the magnetic-snap Pencil, the four speakers, and the ability to connect your iPad to a variety of devices (and even charge your iPhone)… and lastly, does all this while quite possibly showing a very Jobsian middle finger to its competitors by boasting of a performance that can quite literally blow the competition out of the water. Oh, did I mention, it’s completely environment-friendly too?

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This PSP has its own version of the “notch”

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With ever-expanding screens on phones and disappearing earpieces and home buttons, it only makes sense that you’d see that trend everywhere else. TVs are all screen and no bezel too, and Huawei’s laptop is exploring a similar path too. So it makes sense that the PSP (should Sony choose to release a new version) would do something on the same lines. Yonghwan Kim’s vision for the PSP may, in that regard, be a little too drastic, but it sure looks interesting. Here’s a couple of reasons why it would work, and why it wouldn’t.

First of all, look at that shape. It’s beautiful, with its rounded corners, much like most smartphones today. Even the screen does a bend, curving gently at the top, and with flair at the bottom. There’s no doubt that this PSP would be great to hold for long intervals. Besides being curved at the corners, this PSP is literally all screen. Barring the controls that pop up through the middle, the PSP actually explores a more than 16:10 aspect ratio, so a game feels more cinematic. Look to the bottom and you’ll see two sets of pretty big speakers, allowing you to immerse yourself completely in the game with a large screen and big sound. Nice, ain’t it?

The most obvious con (and mind you, this is just a perception problem) are the way the controls appear through the screen, essentially cutting through the display, causing massive blind spots in the gameplay. From the standpoint of a hardcore gamer (who doesn’t like too much change), this may infuriate you. It makes less sense, and to be fair, is a literal hindrance. However, like any feature, I believe this also just needs getting used to. While the tactile controls pretty much cut into the screen, it would make little to no difference in the gameplay, because your eye tends to operate within the same 16:9 area, so the extra screen to the sides is just to increase one’s periphery and make the game feel immersive. It also isn’t a problem for Sony to execute too, since the PSP eco-system is completely within Sony’s control. They can modify a game’s experience to accommodate the controls sitting within the screen. Aside from this detail, nothing much changes with the PSP as a concept. The controls and their placement remain the same, making sure gamers don’t have to follow a new learning curve, the only update is the fact that the gaming device, like every display-based device you own, is more screen, and less of that bezel we hate so much!

Designer: Yonghwan Kim

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Rolls-Royce Phantom 2018 – Luxury Redefined

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Ninety two years since it was first announced, the Rolls-Royce Phantom is the world’s longest-lived model name in automotive history. Fourteen years since its last edition back in 2003, we finally now get a look at the Phantom VIII that launches in 2018.

“The need to modernize the Phantom was absolutely clear for us,” Rolls-Royce design director Giles Taylor said at the official reveal event. “We wanted to give this car a little more energy.” and energize they have! The grill on the front has been vertically elongated a slight bit, with chrome lines at the ends running upwards and around the hood of the car. The Spirit of Ecstasy even sits half an inch higher than usual. The new headlights exude raw power with the discerning, glaring illuminating outline around the conventional headlights.

The car rests on a new aluminum space-frame that will now become a standard for all Rolls-Royce cars moving forward. Dubbed the Architecture of Luxury (the RR guys never run out of fancy names), the new frame is 30 percent more rigid than the Phantom’s old platform, and helps keep weight down and improve ride comfort.

Usually designed to be more luxurious on the inside than out, the Phantom like every RR car features carriage style doors. The car also features the Starlight Headliner (the longest one yet) which makes you feel at one with the cosmos as the roof lights up like a starry sky. Once your eyes move downwards, you notice the center console which comes complete with whisky glasses and decanter, champagne flutes, and a Coolbox. The designers even created a display on the front above the dashboard, code-named The Gallery, which displays artworks that the owners can commission from famed artists, because anyone who can afford a Rolls-Royce probably has a highly refined taste for art.

There’s no official price tag on the Phantom VIII yet, but considering how it pretty much is the most luxurious car in the world as of its announcement, I’m sure selling a kidney (or even both) won’t even cover the car’s paint-job… which probably contains diamond dust, if it is anything like this 2017 Ghost.

Designer: Rolls-Royce

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