NASA has shown off a prototype telescope that can detect gravitational waves to help better understand the building blocks of the universe. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is expected to launch in the mid-2030s, with three linked satellites orbiting Earth. The trio will keep track of each other’s precise location, monitoring when gravitational waves shift from their expected pattern. If successful, it could offer useful insights into black holes and the Big Bang, which are difficult to study using other means.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-our-verdict-on-the-ipad-mini-7-111546869.html?src=rss
To the surprise of few, the new iPad mini that Apple announced last week is a small update rather than a major reinvention. It may have been three years between iPad mini updates, but the 2021 model was the first to ditch the formerly ubiquitous home button in favor of smaller bezels. Apple certainly wouldn’t redesign the iPad mini only to do so again after a single generation, so this is another example of a new Apple product that looks the same on the outside but has some notable upgrades on the inside.
What’s new here can be summed up quickly: more storage, support for the Apple Pencil Pro and, most crucially, a more powerful chip. The A17 Pro allows the iPad mini to use Apple Intelligence features when they launch later this month, which is probably why this tablet exists at all. Apple clearly wants to get as many people as possible using these features, and now every iPad the company sells (except for the entry-level model) will work with Apple Intelligence. Of course, that makes fully evaluating the iPad mini tough, because Apple Intelligence isn’t here yet. But there’s still plenty to know if you’re thinking about Apple’s newest tiny tablet.
What’s the same?
As is often the case with new iPads, no one will know whether you’re using the 2021 iPad mini or this one unless they’re an astute study of Apple’s color schemes. This year, extremely mild shades of blue and purple replace the richer pink and purple options — my test iPad mini is purple, but looks like a pretty straight silver in a lot of light. I really wish Apple would provide more bold color options in more of its products, but here we are.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
There isn’t a lot to complain about when it comes to the iPad mini’s design. It feels perfectly in line with the other iPads Apple sells, with modest bezels (that are starting to feel a bit thick) surrounding its screen and stereo speakers when held in landscape orientation. Those speakers sound much better than you’d expect given the mini’s small size; Apple has been putting surprisingly great speakers in all its products for a few years now and I’m glad this trend continues here.
The camera is still portrait-oriented, unlike all the other iPads you can buy. That doesn’t really bother me, because you’re rarely, if ever, going to put this tiny iPad in a keyboard dock and take a video call. I imagine most people making FaceTime calls will just hold it like they would a phone.
As with the prior mini and non-Pro iPads, there’s no Face ID array here. You’ll have to make do with the Touch ID sensor on the power button, which is fast and convenient enough, but still not quite as smooth as Face ID. It also has the same front- and back-facing cameras as the last iPad mini. The 12-megapixel camera on the rear takes surprisingly decent shots in low light and should work fine for scanning documents or QR codes. But as usual, just use your phone to take images and videos — chances are it has a better camera than the iPad mini.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Same goes for the front-facing shooter. It’s fine for FaceTime calls, but photos are lacking in detail. That’s because it’s a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera that then crops them into a more standard field of view. Long story short: this camera is just good enough for a tablet camera, but not much else. And that honestly doesn’t bother me.
The 8.3-inch screen on the iPad mini is about on par with the one on the iPad Air. It supports the P3 wide color gamut, has an antireflective coating and is fully laminated to the front glass, unlike the screen on the entry-level iPad. All these specs, including its resolution and 326 pixel-per-inch density, are unchanged from the last model. It’s a very nice screen, but it’s still a standard LCD display with a now-pedestrian 60Hz refresh rate. I’m not at all surprised by this, as Apple has kept its best screen technology for the iPad Pro. But very soon it’s going to need to up the refresh rate on other iPads (and iPhones if we’re being honest) besides the Pro models.
One bit of good news about the screen is that it seems Apple has fixed the “jelly-scrolling” problem that plagued the prior iPad mini. Jelly-scrolling occurs when one side of a screen doesn’t refresh at exactly the same rate as the other, and this effect was noticeable in portrait mode with the old iPad mini. It’s not something that I ever noticed while using the new iPad mini. I am curious to see if the issue has been totally resolved or if my eyes just didn’t catch it, but I’ll continue using the iPad mini in the coming weeks to see if I spot any display issues.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
What’s new?
The headlining new feature here is the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says is 30 percent faster than the A15 in the prior iPad mini. The 5-core GPU is 25 percent faster and supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing. One odd programming note: the A17 Pro in the iPad mini is slightly different from the one in the iPhone 15 Pro series. The chip in the iPhone 15 Pro has six graphics cores, while the one in the iPad mini only has five. It’s a weird bit of minor nerfing, but I also cannot imagine that anyone buying this iPad will notice or care about this slight potential performance difference.
Benchmarks from Geekbench 6 back this up. The A17 Pro in the iPad mini is ever so slightly less performant than the one in the iPhone 15 Pro, but not enough so that it’ll make any real difference in how you use the tablet. It still trails M-series chips and the brand-new A18 series, but provides more than enough juice for an iPad mini.
Some might have hoped for an M2 processor here, or even this year’s A18, but I’m confident that the A17 Pro is more than capable for basically anything you might do with the iPad mini. Given its small size, I never once thought about using it as a laptop replacement like I do with the iPad Pro. Instead, it made a comfortable couch companion for browsing the internet, messaging friends, triaging email, playing games and occasionally editing some photos. The A17 Pro was more than capable of all those tasks, with no slowdowns or stutters to note. Perhaps more importantly, it has the overhead to be capable for years to come.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
The other big change for the iPad mini is support for the Apple Pencil Pro that was introduced earlier this year. I’m glad to see that Apple now supports the Apple Pencil Pro on every iPad it sells aside from the entry-level model. The Pencil lineup was a bit of a mess for a while, but now there are just two options to consider: the $79 USB-C Apple Pencil and the more capable $129 Pencil Pro. Apple still sells the first- and second-generation Pencils for older iPads, but the lineup has thankfully been streamlined going forward.
The Apple Pencil Pro is quite a bit more capable than the standard one. It has pressure sensitivity, haptic feedback, a gyroscope so you can roll the pencil in your hands to change your brush width, a double-tab control to change tools, a “squeeze” feature to bring up the whole tool palette, support for the Find My app and magnetic charging and pairing when you snap it to the side of the iPad mini.
That’s a lot of bonuses for the extra $50, and the combo of the Apple Pencil Pro and iPad mini makes for a tiny but extremely capable digital notebook and canvas. It’s also the same price as the reMarkable Paper Pro tablet and stylus, though the devices have completely different screen types and the iPad does a whole lot more. Depending on what you’re looking for, that might not be a good thing, as a big part of the reMarkable experience is a lack of distractions that can pull you out of focus as well as a better writing experience than you’ll get with a glass LCD screen.
Finally, the iPad mini has 128GB of storage at the $499 price, double what it had before. This is a long-overdue change and makes it possible to recommend someone just grab that base model. There’s also a 512GB option for the first time. And, as usual, you can add 5G connectivity for an extra $150. The model I tried was a top-of-the-line 512GB model with 5G, which retails for a somewhat crazy $949.
Oh, and the new iPad mini supports Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E. Not a game-changer, but good to have the latest wireless specs for future-proofing.
What’s an iPad mini for?
I haven’t used an iPad mini for an extended period of time in years, and as I settled in to testing it, Billie Eilish’s sultry voice drifted into my head, asking “what was I made for?” Yes, this is a highly ridiculous anecdote, but that was what I set out to find: what’s an iPad mini best-used for? It’s definitely not meant to be a laptop replacement, like the much larger and more capable 13-inch iPad Air and iPad Pro I reviewed earlier this year. Instead, it’s an enjoyable secondary device that I mostly used after the workday was done, in place of my MacBook Pro or iPhone.
The iPad mini, on top of an 11-inch iPad Pro, on top of a 13-inch iPad Pro.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Reading
It’s a perfectly sized device for reading, whether it’s articles on websites, posts from Substack or novels using the Kindle or Apple Books apps. I still prefer a paper book or a Kindle device, as they’re both much more comfortable than reading on an LCD screen, but the iPad mini is overall a far better reading device than any other iPad. However, this was also one place where I wished the iPad mini had a higher refresh rate. Vertically scrolling through long articles is noticeably jerkier than doing so on my iPhone 14 Pro or an iPad Pro, both of which have 120Hz refresh rates.
Messaging
Its size also makes it a great messaging device, with the portrait-oriented keyboard totally comfortable for two-handed typing. If you’re chatting away in a messaging app, having immediate access to your conversations makes jumping from one contact to another a lot easier. I wouldn’t want to write an article on this, but it was fine for firing off messages. And again, it’s far better suited to this use than bigger iPads.
Gaming
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
The iPad mini also became my go-to Balatro device. The game just hit iOS a few weeks ago and I’ve been completely sucked in, like many of my co-workers. It’s a little cramped on my phone, but feels great on the iPad mini. Other casual games like those you’ll find on Apple Arcade also feel great on the iPad mini, but I did have a tougher time with more fast-paced titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The on-screen controls felt a little too cramped, something that can of course be alleviated by pairing a Bluetooth controller.
Thanks to the A17 Pro chip, the iPad mini can also play a handful of AAA games that you’d typically expect to see on a console or PC like Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, both of which were announced for the iPhone 15 Pro in September 2023. Only the iPhone 15 Pro and 16 Pro can play these games, along with iPads that have at least an M1 processor. Now that the iPad mini has (essentially) the same chip as the iPhone 15 Pro, those games are available. I haven’t had a chance to test them yet, but I’ll update this review once I get a chance to see how they hold up on this hardware.
Apple Pencil Pro
I’m no visual artist, but I can imagine people who love to draw finding the iPad mini to be a great portable sketchbook. Sometimes, having the larger canvas you can get on an iPad Air or Pro is preferable, but when it comes to something you can throw in your bag and forget about, the iPad mini is unrivaled. I got in the habit of using it as a digital notebook — just pulling the Apple Pencil Pro off the side and tapping the screen opened up a blank note document I could jot my thoughts and to-do items onto.
Watching video
While the iPad mini makes for a fine portable video player, it’s one scenario where I missed a bigger screen. If I was flying cross-country or over the Atlantic, I’d definitely prefer something larger. The standard iPad or the 11-inch iPad Air and Pro are slightly heavier, but they’re well-balanced enough that they aren’t a burden to hold and watch a movie on. If that’s a primary use case for you, consider stepping up to an iPad with a bigger screen.
Battery life
As for battery life, I didn’t always hit the 10 hours Apple promises. Using a variety of the apps and workflows I’ve described, I’d get around eight hours before needing a charge. Of course, those routines typically included a fair bit of gaming, which definitely takes a hit on the battery (even if it’s just casual things like Balatro). I haven’t had time yet to do a video playback battery test, but my guess is that one will come out a lot closer to the standard 10 hours.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Wrap-up
This year’s iPad mini is one of those typical Apple updates that focuses on software and internal hardware rather than a flashy redesign. But that’s OK. If you bought the prior iPad mini, you can safely ignore this one unless you’re really all-in on Apple Intelligence. Anyone else who has a smaller iPad that still has a home button will get a ton of value out of this update. It has one of Apple’s best mobile chips and Apple Pencil Pro support makes it easy to recommend for anyone who wants a portable sketchbook.
I wouldn’t hate an improved display with smaller bezels and a higher refresh rate, and I wouldn’t have said no to an M2 or A18 Pro chip inside, but those are the only things I’d change here. And both would surely make the iPad mini more expensive. As it is, it’s a solid performer for $499. If you just want a little couch computing companion, or a tablet so small and light that you can take it everywhere with you, the iPad mini remains your best choice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/ipad-mini-7-review-safe-boring-and-everything-i-want-in-a-small-tablet-130039378.html?src=rss
Amazon finally did it: This week the company announced the Kindle Colorsoft, its first color E Ink e-reader. In this episode, Devindra and Cherlynn discuss where this device sits in a world of cheap tablets, and they dive into the updated Kindle Paperwhite and the writable Kindle Scribe. Also, we've got final thoughts on the Meta Quest 3S, the updated iPad Mini and tons of news.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Amazon announces new Kindle Colorsoft, updated Kindle Scribe and Paperwhite – 0:51
Devindra’s Meta Quest 3S review: impressive VR for a fair price – 38:14
Apple quietly drops new iPad Minis – 45:25
Tesla’s Robotaxi event: lots of big promises that will be hard to fulfill – 51:38
Amazon and Google go nuclear (power) – 54:44
Android 15 starts to hit Pixel devices – 55:51
Analogue 3D will give you 4K N64 games, just don’t call it an emulator – 57:14
Working on – 1:00:48
Pop culture picks – 1:04:38
Livestream
Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low Producer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/engadget-podcast-why-were-intrigued-by-the-kindle-colorsoft-113050334.html?src=rss
Apple Pay debuted almost 10 years ago to the day, and Apple is marking the occasion by rolling out some features it revealed at WWDC. If you have iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 installed on your iPhone or iPad, you'll now be able to use the payment service on third-party browsers on those devices, as well as desktop computers. In the latter case, you'll be asked to scan a QR code with your iPhone or iPad to complete the payment. However, Apple says the feature is only available in select markets.
It'll be easier than ever to add supported cards to Apple Wallet on your iPhone. Thanks to the Tap to Provision feature, you can simply tap an eligible NFC-enabled card to the back of your phone, though you may have to enter the security code manually. Again, though, Tap to Provision isn't available everywhere.
Apple is bringing more third-party buy now, pay later (BNPL) services to Apple Pay. This starts with the ability to check out with Klarna in the US and UK. The company will add more installment payment options in the future, including Citi, Synchrony and eligible Apple Pay issuers via Fiserv in the US. Klarna will also be available as an option in Canada at a later date. Apple discontinued its own Pay Later option earlier this year and it added Affirm as a BNPL option in the US last month.
Meanwhile, US Apple Pay users can redeem rewards on eligible Discover credit cards at checkout. Support for rewards from other issuers and in more countries is on the way.
Update October 18, 8:48AM ET: This story previously indicated that Apple was starting to add third-party BNPL services with the integration of Klarna, but Affirm support was added last month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/apple-pay-now-works-with-third-party-ios-and-desktop-browsers-163048055.html?src=rss
While iPads are cheaper and much handier to carry around than MacBooks, you often need an extra iPad accessory or two to make them as useful. While an attachable keyboard can be great for anyone with a writing job (hello!) an Apple pencil is critical for everything from studying to designing. Thankfully, it's cheaper than ever to get the budget option with the USB-C Apple Pencil on sale for $65, down from $79. The 18 percent discount brings the accessory to $5 less than its Prime Day price.
Apple released its USB-C Pencil in late 2023 as a cheaper option than its counterparts, the second generation Apple Pencil and Apple Pencil Pro. This Pencil is compatible with all iPads with a USB-C port and offers the hover feature when using an M2 iPad Air or the iPad Pro. It also has some great perks like low latency, tilt sensitivity and pixel-perfect accuracy. However, it doesn't have pressure sensitivity like its fellow Apple Pencils.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-usb-c-apple-pencil-drops-to-a-new-all-time-low-of-65-133046013.html?src=rss
Amazon is sunsetting the Kindle Oasis. This decision means there will be no models of the ereader remaining with physical buttons for turning pages. "Once current inventory of Kindle Oasis sells out online and in stores, we will not restock the device," Amazon rep Devon Corvasce told The Verge. "Today, all of our devices are touch-forward which is what our customers are comfortable with."
The Oasis model debuted in 2016. Its lightweight, asymmetrical design for one-handed use was a standout, but the high price tag may have kept most people from really considering the product. If you are not most comfortable with a touch interface for your reading, there are still options for flipping pages via buttons on the market. The Kobo Libra Color is one of our favorites.
Even with the Oasis becoming nothing but a mirage, the Kindle family isn't getting any smaller. Amazon announced several upgrades to the device line this week, including its first ever color ereader in the Kindle Colorsoft. We also got hands-on time with the latest Kindle Scribe and the Kindle Paperwhite has also received a refresh.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/the-kindle-oasis-will-be-discontinued-as-amazon-says-goodbye-to-page-turn-buttons-213538052.html?src=rss
Amazon's latest version of its popular Kindle Paperwhite has arrived, marking the sixth iteration if you're keeping score at home. The new model is the thinnest Paperwhite yet and has a refreshed 7-inch screen that's a touch larger than the previous model's 6.8-inch display. It also has the highest contrast of any Kindle thanks to the oxide thin-film transistor display tech.
Amazon boosted the speed as well, promising 25 percent faster page turns. It's waterproof as before but uses a new material with a premium soft touch grip. The Kindle Paperwhite comes with 16 GB of storage and is available in three colors, Raspberry, Jade and Black. It's now available at Amazon for $160.
As before, the company also released a premium version with more bells and whistles, the Paperwhite Signature Editing. Storage doubles on that model to 32 GB and it features an auto-adjusting front light along with optional wireless charging. The Paperwhite Signature Edition comes in Metallic Raspberry, Metallic Jade and Metallic Black for $200.
Amazon
If it's a budget reader you're after, Amazon has refreshed the entry-level Kindle, too. The new 12th-generation model comes with an updated 6-inch screen, offering a higher contrast ratio for more legible text, plus a front light that's 25 percent brighter at the maximum setting. It also gets a performance update that boosts page turning speeds. It comes in black or a new "Matcha" color and is now on sale for $110.
Along with those models, Amazon also unveiled its first color Kindle, the Colorsoft, that could be ideal for graphic novels and other digital color-oriented content. It promises "rich, paper-like color" using an oxide backplane display, plus high contrast on both color and black-and-white content. It's now on pre-order for $280 with shipping set for October 30th. Finally, Amazon is releasing its second Kindle Scribe reader that doubles as a note-taking device (not unlike the reMarkable tablets). It'll arrive on December 4, but you can pre-order it now for $400.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/amazons-new-kindle-paperwhite-reader-has-a-larger-screen-and-faster-page-turns-130050515.html?src=rss
Seventeen years is an odd anniversary to call out. But at an event launching four new Kindles, Amazon’s head of devices and services Panos Panay reminded a group of media that “Kindle is 17 years in the making, almost to the day.” Panay added that the device is currently seeing its highest sales numbers, and that 20.8 billion pages are read each month on a Kindle. But people aren’t just reading on Kindles. Since the introduction of the Kindle Scribe in 2022, there has been even more development in e-paper writing tablets, with a notable recent product in the reMarkable Paper Pro. While that $580 device supports a color writing experience, Amazon’s Kindle Scribe still only works in black and white. But it might offer enough by way of software updates to make up for its monochrome manner.
Plus, being able to write on what’s already a popular ereader makes that book-like experience even more realistic, and the Kindle Scribe represents what Panay called the “fastest growing category” of Kindles. You could almost call it a 2-in-1, since it’s an ereader and writing tablet at once. “I have a lot of passion around 2-in-1s,” Panay said at his presentation, and he used that term repeatedly to describe the Kindle Scribe. I haven’t thought about it that way, but I was less worried about semantics and more about how the Kindle Scribe and its new features felt at a hand-on session yesterday.
I’m the sort of person that needs to physically write out something while I plan a project. Whether it’s lofty goals to get my life together or draft up a strategy for covering certain software releases at work, my hands grasp at the air for an imaginary pen and paper. For that reason, the Kindle Scribe and other writing tablets call out to me. I reviewed the original Kindle Scribe almost two years ago and since then Amazon has slowly expanded the feature set and made the device more useful.
With the original Scribe, Amazon got a lot of the basics right. The latency and smoothness of the writing experience were close to feeling like pen and paper, and the device felt sturdy and slick. The new Scribe felt very similar in that sense, with little noticeable difference in the way the stylus interacted with the screen, and I didn’t encounter any jarring lag in the brief time I had with it.
Where the Scribe left me wanting more was software, and that’s also the area Amazon appears to have focused on this year. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not like the company didn’t tweak the hardware. There are some refinements like new white borders, a smaller grip, different color options and an updated stylus with a soft-tip top that feels more like a conventional eraser.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
But inside the device lie the more intriguing changes. Most significant in my opinion is the new Active Canvas. It directly addresses one of my biggest complaints in my review, which is that the writing experience within books and publications was a little wonky.
To quote myself, this was what I said in 2022: “You can also take down notes when you’re reading an e-book. But it’s not like you can scribble directly onto the words of your e-books. You can use the floating toolbox to create a sticky note, then draw within a designated rectangle. When you close the sticky note, a small symbol appears over the word it was attached to, but otherwise, your scribbles are hidden. No annotating in the margins here.”
All of that has changed with the new Kindle Scribe. When you’re in an e-book, you can now just start writing on the page, and a box will appear, containing your scribbles. You no longer need to first find the floating toolbox and select the sticky note tool. Just write. It’s so much simpler, and in the Kindle Scribe I played with it worked almost instantly. Not only is the box embedded within the text, with the book’s words rearranging and flowing to accommodate it, but you can also resize the rectangle to take up however much space you like. The rest of the page will reflow to make room as necessary. I was particularly impressed by how quickly this happened on the demo unit — it was more responsive than switching between notebooks on my existing Scribe.
Plus, the box containing your note will stay in place instead of being hidden and replaced by a small symbol. It’s clear that Amazon’s earlier implementation was a rudimentary workaround to allow people to write on fixed format media, whereas the new approach is more deeply integrated and thought out.
And unlike what I said two years ago, you can now annotate in a new collapsible margin. Tapping the top right corner brings up options to pull up the column, and you can choose from having it take up about a quarter of the width or spread out to about three quarters. Content in the margin will be scrollable, so you theoretically won’t run out of space.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
Now, this isn’t a perfect replica of annotating on a real textbook, but it might be better since you won’t have to scrawl all around the borders or write upside down just to squeeze in your thoughts. I’m not sure yet, as I really need to spend more time with it to know, but I like that Amazon clearly has taken in feedback and thought about how to add these requested features.
The company also added the ability to use the Pen and directly highlight or underline within those books, and pretty much any Kindle title will support most of these features. They’d have to be content that allows for font resizing, to start, so things like PDFs, which are fixed, won’t work with the Active Canvas. Word documents are compatible as well.
I spend more time writing in blank notebooks than in actual books, and for those scenarios, Amazon is using generative AI in two new tools: Summarization and Refined Writing. The former is pretty straightforward. If you’ve handwritten 10 pages worth of brainstorming meeting notes, the system can scan all of it and collate just the highlights. You can have this be added as a page to the existing notebook as a summary, or save it as a separate document on its own.
Refined Writing, meanwhile, is like Apple’s Handwriting Assist on iPadOS 18 but on a larger scale. While Apple’s software feels like it’s about nipping and tucking stray words that are out of alignment, Amazon’s takes your entire handwritten page and converts it into text in a script-like font. This works best if you tend to write in a single column with clear indentations and paragraphs. I tend to draw random boxes all over the place for breakout thoughts, and the system will not perfectly replicate that. For example, a two-column shopping list I quickly drafted on a demo Scribe was merged into one, and the checkboxes I drew were interpreted as capital letter Ds that were inserted at the start of every bullet.
Amazon
It might not seem immediately useful, but if you’re the sort of person that’s shy about their handwriting, this could save you some shame. More importantly, it can make you writing more legible in case you need to share, say, your screenplay treatment with a production partner. Or if your scrawled shopping list just isn’t making sense to your partner. I also like that even after you’ve converted your notes into text, you can still erase them using the top of the pen and make edits. You’ll have to run Refined Writing again to regenerate a neatly formatted page. Oh, and I appreciate the flexibility you get here. You’ll have a few fonts and sizes to choose from, and can select the pages you want to reformat or have the entire book done up altogether.
None of the notebook features are destructive, meaning you’ll usually be able to retain your original written content and save the generated material as addendums. The AI work is done in the cloud, with your data being encrypted throughout the process. The Kindle Scribe also displays an animated page showing it’s busy with the generative AI task, which in my experience so far took at least 10 seconds. It might be different on the original Kindle Scribe, which will also be getting these software features either later this year or, in the case of the expandable margins, in early 2025 when it arrives on the new Kindle Scribe.
In its 17 years, the Kindle has done a lot to disrupt physical books, and since the introduction of the Scribe, it’s been poised to do the same for notebooks. As someone who’s relished being able to carry around the equivalent of a thousand books in a super thin device, the idea of replacing a bunch of notebooks with a Scribe is immensely intriguing. Amazon does find itself up against some stiff competition from reMarkable and Boox, but it has its sheer size and the power of its Kindle library in its favor. The Kindle Scribe will be available in December for a starting price of $400, and I hope to have a review unit in soon enough to see if I love or hate the new annotation and AI features.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/kindle-scribe-hands-on-you-can-scribble-on-your-books-130043335.html?src=rss
Update 10/16/24 2:55pm ET: Amazon has raised the price by $5, so while the Pencil Pro isn't at a record-low anymore, it's still available at a good sale price. Also discounted now is the USB-C Apple Pencil, which has dropped to a new low of $65.
Apple doesn't offer many discounts for its product lineup, so seeing one of its tablet accessories on sale for a third off the usual cost is exciting. The Apple Pencil Pro is available on Amazon for just $90, the lowest price we've seen for it. This is the most recent stylus model from Apple, with a design overhaul that was just announced in May, and it quickly rose to prominence as one of our favorite accessories for an iPad.
The Pencil Pro has some useful features for optimal control and navigation, such as squeeze and roll gestures. The stylus boasts pressure sensitivity; in other words, it will make darker marks if you press harder and lighter marks if you use a light touch. It delivers haptic feedback to your fingers and if you have a habit of misplacing accessories, the Pencil Pro also can be tracked down with Find My. And as with other Apple Pencils, the Pro will attach magnetically to your iPad's chassis for charging when it's not in use.
There are a few downsides to the Pro model, most notably that it's still not universally supported across all iPads. We've got a rundown of all the different Apple Pencils' features and compatibilities, but the tl;dr is that this high-end version works with the M4 iPad Pro, the M2 iPad Airs and the latest model of the iPad Mini. So this may not be the right buy for every iPad owner, but it's a great tool for taking full advantage of everything those tablets can do.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-apple-pencil-pro-is-30-percent-off-taking-it-down-to-an-all-time-low-price-210311608.html?src=rss
Apple is reportedly going to add digital car key support in the Wallet app for some Volvo, Polestar and Audi vehicles. Currently, Apple’s digital car key support list includes vehicles from Kia, BMW, Lotus and several other manufacturers.
The digital car key function allows iPhone and Apple Watch owners to access, lock or start vehicles just by holding the device near the vehicle’s NFC reader. The Wallet app must also run in the background or in the foreground, but it’s not necessary to push any buttons.
MacRumors first discovered this possible future update in the Apple Wallet app’s backend. However, the publication hasn’t revealed any affected models or further details.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/apple-may-be-adding-digital-car-key-support-for-specific-volvo-polestar-and-audi-vehicles-163625563.html?src=rss