Computing

iPad Pro: The Thrill Is Gone

Apple this week began selling its iPad Pro, but the newly introduced device is failing to evoke the enthusiasm the company's line of tablets traditionally has seen. Reviewers gave the device high marks for its battery life, screen, speakers, light weight and Pen, but panned the keyboard, the lack of...

BlackBerry on Friday released its Priv smartphone, its first Android-based device. The Android 5.1.1 Lollipop slider is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor and an Adreno 418 GPU. It's stocked with 3 GB of low-power RAM and 32 GB of storage. There's an 18-MP shooter on its backsid...

OPINION

Why Tablets Are Tanking

Boy, we really have gone full circle on tablets -- and not just once. Back when the Windows tablets first came to market, a whole bunch of us predicted it wouldn't be long before they replaced all of the notebooks. I don't think they even made it to 10 percent before the tablet market collapsed, and...

Microsoft this week launched a survey for Windows Insiders, seeking candidates for a limited beta of Cortana for iOS. "We're testing the Cortana for iOS app with a limited number of users in the U.S. and China before releasing [it] publicly," said Microsoft spokesperson Jennifer Reynolds. The full a...

GADGET DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

Gadget Ogling: Titanic Tablets, Eminent Earphones, and Wee Win 10 PCs

Samsung certainly is testing the boundaries of what a tablet can be with its latest device, the Galaxy View. The Galaxy View houses an octa-core, 1.6-GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and either 32 GB or 64 GB of storage, which is expandable through a microSD slot. Owners may expand the functionality with...

Google reportedly is two years into a plan to consolidate the Chrome operating system and Android and plans to roll out a combined OS in 2017. Chromebooks running the Chrome OS have gained adoption as entry-level computers for students and as a low-cost option for a growing number of corporate cust...

Qualcomm on Tuesday announced a muscle video camera for surveillance systems. It's part of the company's Snapdragon 618 IP camera platform. The unit combines a six-core, 64-bit processor; next-generation graphics crunching; and embedded digital signal processing. It can perform advanced video analyt...

Why do some big mergers succeed while others fail? This seems to be a common question, and some of the research I've read about the Dell-EMC merger tries to connect it to the HP-Compaq merger, which apparently cost Carly Fiorina her job. I covered the HP-Compaq merger at length, and I was not a fan....

Beddi is an alarm clock smartphone dock that has a few tricks to elevate it above others of its ilk. The system, from Witti, works with both iOS and Android devices, which you place on top and recharge with your own cable. Two things are really interesting: the price and the programmable buttons. In...

Many reviewers have responded to the preproduction version of Microsoft's Surface Book the way an average Joe would view a top-of-the-line luxury car: The features are great, but the price is daunting. "Overall, we recommend it, especially to people who value performance, design and battery life abo...

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week announced they had developed an algorithmic system to analyze big data that eventually might replace humans. The system, called the "Data Science Machine," designs the feature set and searches for patterns in big data. The DSM's firs...

Nintendo reportedly has started to distribute software development kits for its next game console. The company hasn't laid out in detail the ecosystem of third-party software that it plans to build around its upcoming console, code-named "NX," but it plans to integrate it with a digital platform for...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

EU Court Decision Threatens US Cloud Dominance

Edward Snowden's legacy gained another chapter last week when the European Court of Justice rejected an agreement that created a Safe Harbor for U.S. companies handling personal data of overseas citizens. In essence, the agreement provided that a U.S. company's word that it had adequate safeguards i...

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