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      What to expect amid the bevy of conflicting iPad rumors

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 October - 22:37

    The 2022 iPad Air.

    Enlarge / The 2022 iPad Air. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    Over the past few days, there have been many conflicting rumors and reports, some from usually reliable sources, about Apple's plans for the next wave of iPad updates. But on close examination, the rumors may not be as contradictory as it seems.

    First up was an email blast from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman on Sunday. Noting that he had written in July that we would see iPad refreshes before the end of the year, he appeared to walk that back, writing, "a new entry-level iPad, iPad Air and iPad mini are all in development with faster chips, but I don’t believe updates of any significance are imminent."

    He pointed to his prior reporting that Apple plans a major iPad Pro update with an OLED screen next year, but not before 2023's end.

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      Apple plans biggest iPad Pro update since 2018

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 28 August, 2023 - 19:48

    iPad Pro 2022 attached to a Magic Keyboard

    Enlarge / The 2022 iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

    Apple's iPad Pro is set to get its biggest redesign since 2018, according to a new report. Slated for a launch next year, it will seek to turn around recent years' slow tablet sales.

    The information comes from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman —as you probably could have guessed by now. Gurman claims to have knowledge of Apple's plans, stating that the new iPad Pro will have everything from a new chip to a new screen technology, a different design, and a revamped keyboard accessory.

    The new chip is obvious—that has been the standard minimum for any new iPad Pro refresh. The current iPad Pro has the M2 chip, and the new one will predictably have the M3 chip. Expect some notable performance gains—not that the M2 was too slow for most people using the iPad Pro already.

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      Guidemaster: Picking the right tablet for each use case

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 15 July, 2023 - 11:23

    Microsoft's Surface Pro 9.

    Enlarge / Microsoft's Surface Pro 9. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Tablets looked to take the computing world by storm during the iPad's meteoric rise, but they have now stabilized into their role as a secondary device oriented around convenient content consumption and portability—at least as far as at-home use goes. Still, tablets are hugely popular, especially with families where kids and adults each want their own computing solution, but not everyone has room for a desk.

    And given that younger generations are touch-first, keyboard-and-mouse second, and there are plenty of reasons to spring for one or more tablets these days. While Google has struggled to translate its Android smartphone operating system into a viable tablet platform, Apple's iPad dominates the market, with Amazon's Fire lineup covering a lot of other users.

    There's also the sort-of-tablet Surface line of products from Microsoft, which are aimed more at productivity and power users. Today we'll go through our best tablet picks for different types of users and use cases based on our time reviewing these devices. Let's dig in!

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      LG’s 28-lb StanbyME Go combines a 27-inch tablet with a rugged briefcase

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 6 June, 2023 - 17:49

    The most stressful part of carrying a computing screen around—whether that display's part of a tablet, laptop, monitor, or even a more wieldy portable monitor—is making sure the device doesn't crack, snap, or otherwise break going from point A to point B. LG's new StanbyME Go ( 27LX5QKNA ) tends to such concerns with a 4.69-inch-thick (119 mm), supposedly military-grade briefcase to which a massive 27-inch tablet is permanently attached.

    LG’s not selling it in the US (yet)

    The wacky design, spotted recently by sites like GSMArena , is listed on LG's South Korean website as being available starting June 7, as per a Google translation of the page.

    Ars Technica asked LG if there is a US price or release date, and a spokesperson said the company didn't "have anything to share in regard to US plans at this time." However, the device does seem to be available at South Korea's YooTopia website to US shoppers for $1,050.

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      PineTab 2 is a RockChip-based, Linux-focused, repairable tablet

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 16 December, 2022 - 18:52 · 1 minute

    PCB for the PineTab 2 prototype

    Enlarge / PCB for the prototype PineTab 2, a successor to a tablet that hit production at the worst possible point in 2020. (credit: Pine64)

    Pine64, makers of ARM-based, tinker-friendly gadgets, is making the PineTab 2 , a sequel to its Linux-powered tablet that mostly got swallowed up by the pandemic and its dire global manufacturing shortages.

    The PineTab 2, as described in Pine64's "December Update," is based around the RK3566, made by RockChip. Pine64 based its Quartz64 single-board system on the system-on-a-chip (SoC), and has all but gushed about it across several blog posts. It's "a dream-of-a-SoC," writes Community Director Lukasz Erecinski, a "modern mid-range quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that integrates a Mali-G52 MP2 GPU. And it should be ideal for space-constrained devices: it runs cool, has a variety of I/O options, solid price-to-performance ratio, and "is genuinely future-proof." While Linux support was scarce early on, development for RK3566 is "booming," and it's now a prime candidate for mobile operating systems, Erecinski writes.

    The PineTab 2 is a complete redesign, Erecinski claims. It has a metal chassis that "is very sturdy while also being easy to disassemble for upgrades, maintenance, and repair." The tablet comes apart with snap-in tabs, and Pine64 will offer replacement parts. The insides are modular, too, with the eMMC storage, camera, daughter-board, battery, and keyboard connector all removable "in under 5 minutes." The 10.1-inch IPS display, with "modern and reasonably thin bezels," should also be replaceable, albeit with more work.

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      2022 iPad Pro review: Impressively, awkwardly fast and capable

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 26 October, 2022 - 12:00 · 1 minute

    If you’re an Apple Pencil devotee, someone who shoots or encodes a lot of photos and video on an iPad, or someone upgrading from a much-older, slower iPad, the new 2022 iPad Pro has a lot going for you. It presents a solid CPU/GPU upgrade to what is already the fastest, most capable tablet around. But if there was ever a year to hold out for the next Pro model, this would be it.

    The iPad Pro sports the same Apple-designed system-on-a-chip as the latest Macs, the M2. Compared to M1-based iPads or even older A12X and A12Z models, the M2 isn't a revolutionary upgrade. There’s more speed here, especially for those working in editing, rendering, and compiling, but most people won't feel it—it was already a fluid, fast slab.

    There are some big new ideas for managing windows and workflows in iPadOS 16, including Stage Manager, which is exclusive to mid-to-higher-end iPads that are mostly on Apple chips. It's a nice feature, but it's not honed enough yet to be completely useful. And there are some frustrations carried over from previous models, including the fact that the front-facing camera is on the wrong side for landscape-mode video calls.

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      2022 iPad review: The best one—except for all the others

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 26 October, 2022 - 12:00

    There was a time when Apple’s focus was on simplicity in its product lineups—on making a one-size-fits-all design for just about every consumer. In other words, it wasn’t too long ago that there was only one iPad.

    Today, nothing could be further from reality. The iPad lineup includes six different models, not counting different finish colors or storage configurations, of course. Apple’s new tablet brings some welcome changes to the aging base iPad design, but it doesn’t quite carve out a strong position for itself in a robust iPad lineup.

    Nonetheless, it modernizes an aging design and doesn’t shed anything that was great about its predecessor in the process—well, except for one thing, but we’ll get to that.

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      Facing quality and pacing issues, Apple reportedly delays iPadOS 16

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 3 August, 2022 - 20:33

    Widgets on iPadOS 15's home screen.

    Enlarge / Widgets on iPadOS 15's home screen. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    Apple will delay the release of the iPadOS 16 software update for iPads well into October, about a month after the September release of the iPhone's iOS 16. The news comes from a report in Bloomberg citing people with knowledge of the matter.

    Typically, Apple releases iPadOS—which is closely related to iOS—very close to or shortly after the iOS launch, which comes in September alongside new flagship iPhone models. It's arrived slightly later in the past, but this would be an unusually large gap in releases.

    According to the report's sources, the delay can be blamed at least partly on the upcoming overhaul of the iPad's multitasking features, including the new Stage Manager feature that is also coming to Macs in macOS. Those features were announced at Apple's developer conference in June.

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