Categories
Entertainment

iPad Pro 2024 vs. 2022: What’s changed

[ad_1]

You may have heard Apple updated its top-of-the-line tablets at its Let Loose event on Tuesday. The 2024 model has some big improvements, including the new M4 chip, a “noticeably thinner and lighter” build, a superior OLED display and upgraded accessories. We broke down the key differences between the latest iPad Pro and its 2022 predecessor to help you figure out if it’s worth the (hefty) investment.

Graphic showing two iPad Pro models (2024 and 2022) side-by-side. The new model: 13Graphic showing two iPad Pro models (2024 and 2022) side-by-side. The new model: 13

iPad Pro: 13-inch (2024) vs. 12.9-inch (2022) (Apple / Will Shanklin for Engadget)

In Engadget’s hands-on at Apple’s “Let Loose” event, Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham said the new iPad Pro’s thinner and lighter build and its Tandem OLED display are the first big changes you’ll notice when you pick up the latest model.

“In Apple’s extremely bright demo area, the iPad Pro screen showed its quality — everything was extremely clear, blacks were pitch-black and colors really popped,” he said after using it at Apple’s event. “After looking at the iPad Air display, it was obvious how much better these screens are.”

Side-by-side display comparison of the 2024 and 2022 iPad Pro models in front of a colorful background.Side-by-side display comparison of the 2024 and 2022 iPad Pro models in front of a colorful background.

iPad Pro: 11-inch (2024 vs. 2022) (Apple / Will Shanklin for Engadget)

Another change you’ll notice when you compare the two iPad Pros side-by-side is camera positioning. The 2024 model moves its front-facing camera to the top-center when viewed in landscape orientation. The older model used Apple’s original iPad configuration, where the camera was centered above the screen when holding it upright in portrait mode.

The new iPad Pro is also noticeably lighter and thinner than its 2022 predecessor. The 13-inch model is a mere 5.11mm (0.2 inch) thick and weighs only 579g (1.28 lbs), making it 20 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the 12.9-incher from 2022. Meanwhile, the new 11-inch variant is 5.3mm (0.21 inch) thick and weighs 444g (0.98 lb), making it 10 percent thinner and five percent lighter than the older one.

Considering the 2022 model was already a svelte machine, it’s no wonder we found the new iPad Pro surprisingly thin and light relative to its processing power. Speaking of which…

Two iPads in front of a colorful gradient background. M4 and M2 chips below denote the different versions.Two iPads in front of a colorful gradient background. M4 and M2 chips below denote the different versions.

Apple / Will Shanklin for Engadget

The iPhone maker unveiled a new Apple Silicon version on an iPad instead of a Mac for the first time. The all-new M4 chip has up to a 10-core CPU configuration (four performance cores and six efficiency cores), which the company says translates to one and a half times faster performance than the M2 silicon in the 2022 model.

I say “up to” because, similar to MacBooks and some older iPad Pro models, Apple is shipping different chip variants depending on your pricing tier. The 1TB and 2TB versions of the 2024 model have that 10-core chip, while the 256GB and 512GB models drop down to a nine-core M4 with three performance and six efficiency cores.

The lower-tier and high-end M4 variants include a 10-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a 16-core neural engine, 120GB/s memory bandwidth and 16GB of RAM. So the different models don’t sound dramatically different — you just get an extra performance core in the more expensive tiers. We’ll have to wait until we get some extended time with them to see how that translates into real-world experience.

By comparison, the M2 in the 2022 iPad Pro has an eight-core CPU with four performance and four efficiency cores. It also has a 16-core Neural Engine (of course, an older version than the one in the M4), 100GB/s memory bandwidth and either 8GB or 16GB of RAM.

Graphic showing the different accessories available for the two most recent iPad Pro models. Includes keyboards and Apple Pencils.Graphic showing the different accessories available for the two most recent iPad Pro models. Includes keyboards and Apple Pencils.

Apple / Will Shanklin for Engadget

The new iPad Pro also has some new accessories you can’t use with the 2022 model. That includes a new Magic Keyboard that Apple claims makes “the entire experience feel just like using a MacBook.”

You can thank its bigger trackpad with haptic feedback (like on modern MacBooks) and an aluminum palm rest. The older model used a microfiber-esque material and physically clicking trackpad, so the new one should feel more solid underneath your hands and aligned with MacBooks’ look and feel.

The new Magic Keyboard also adds a new 14-key function row (also similar to a MacBook) with shortcuts for things like brightness, Spotlight search, Siri / dictation and media controls.

Meanwhile, the Apple Pencil Pro — exclusively compatible with the 2024 iPad Pro and iPad Air — looks much like its predecessor but adds some extra goodies. Those include a new sensor in its barrel that lets you squeeze it like the lovely little stylus it is.

The new squeeze gesture can bring up tool palettes or activate shortcuts. Third-party developers can even customize the actions for individual apps. For the first time, it also adds haptic feedback to let you know if your squeeze was accepted or if something you moved has landed in its intended spot.

The new Apple Pencil also works with Find My (another first), so you can check on its most recent location in Apple’s location app if you lose it.

Both models also work with the cheaper ($79) USB-C Apple Pencil from 2023.

Well, it can’t all be good news. With all those upgrades, Apple is once again asking you to consider paying more for a high-end tablet. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999, and the 13-inch model starts at a whopping $1,299. Those are each $200 higher than the starting prices in the 2022 model (when it was available).

But wait, it gets worse. Those prices don’t take into account the $299 (11-inch) or $349 (13-inch) you’ll pay if you want to add the new Magic Keyboard, nor does it factor in the $129 for the Apple Pencil Pro. You’ll have to pony up to make the new iPad Pro as much like a MacBook as possible: It will cost you almost what you’d pay for an entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 chip.

On the slightly brighter side, you get more storage this time around. The 2024 iPad Pro starts with 256GB, double the 128GB in the 2022 model. Moving up from there, the other storage tiers are identical to its predecessor (ranging up to 2TB for those with Scrooge McDuck bank accounts).

Here’s a table showing the full specs comparison between the 2024 and 2022 iPad Pro models, including separate charts for the 13 / 12.9-inch and 11-inch variants.

13-inch iPad Pro (2024) vs. 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2022)

12.9-inch iPad Pro (2024)

12.9-inch iPad Pro (2022)

Price

$1,299, $1,499, $1,899, $2,299

$1,099, $1,199, $1,399, $1,799, $2,199

Dimensions

281.16 x 215.5 x 5.1 mm

(11.09 x 8.48 x 0.20 inch)

280.6 x 214.9 x 6.4 mm

(11.04 x 8.46 x 0.25 inch)

Weight

1.28 pounds / 579 grams (Wi-Fi)

1.28 pounds / 582 grams (cellular)

1.5 pounds / 682 grams (Wi-Fi)

1.51 pounds / 685 grams (cellular)

Processor

M4

M2

Display

13-inch Ultra Retina XDR

2752 x 2064 (264 ppi)

12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR

2732 x 2048 (264 ppi)

Storage

256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB

128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB

Battery

38.99 Wh

10 hrs (Wi-Fi), 9 hrs (cellular)

40.88 Wh

10 hrs (Wi-Fi), 9 hrs (cellular)

Camera

Back: 12MP, ƒ/1.8

Front: 12MP, ƒ/2.4

Back: 12MP wide, ƒ/1.8 / 10MP ultrawide, ƒ/2.4

Front: 12MP, ƒ/2.4

Compatible Apple accessories

Magic Keyboard (2024)

Apple Pencil Pro

Magic Keyboard (2020)

Apple Pencil (2nd generation)

11-inch iPad Pro (2024) vs. 11-inch iPad Pro (2022)

11-inch iPad Pro (2024)

11-inch iPad Pro (2022)

Price

$999, $1,199, $1,599, $1,999

$799, $899, $1,099, $1,499, $1,899

Dimensions

249.7 x 177.5 x 5.9 mm

(9.83 x 6.99 x 0.21 inch)

247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9 mm

(9.74 x 7.02 x 0.23 inch)

Weight

0.98 pound / 444 grams (Wi-Fi)

0.98 pound / 446 grams (cellular)

1.03 pound / 466 grams (Wi-Fi)

1.04 pound / 470 grams (cellular)

Processor

M4

M2

Display

11-inch Ultra Retina XDR

Tandem OLED

2420 x 1668 (264 ppi)

11-inch Liquid Retina

LED

2388 x 1668 (264 ppi)

Storage

256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB

128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB

Battery

31.29 Wh

10 hrs (Wi-Fi), 9 hrs (cellular)

28.65 Wh

10 hrs (Wi-Fi), 9 hrs (cellular)

Camera

Back: 12MP, ƒ/1.8

Front: 12MP, ƒ/2.4

Back: 12MP wide, ƒ/1.8 / 10MP ultrawide, ƒ/2.4

Front: 12MP, ƒ/2.4

Compatible Apple accessories

Magic Keyboard (2024)

Apple Pencil Pro

Magic Keyboard (2020)

Apple Pencil (2nd generation)

Stay tuned for Engadget’s full review of the 2024 model. In the meantime, you can recap Nathan Ingraham’s initial impressions of the new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro, Devindra Hardawar’s recap of the new model’s features and Sam Rutherford’s run-through of the new M4 chip.

Follow all of the news live from Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event right here.

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Featured

I just saw what Half-Life 2 should look like in 2024, and I’ve changed my mind about Nvidia’s RTX Remix tool

[ad_1]

In a darkened room at Nvidia’s ‘Future of Gaming’ showcase at a fancy London hotel earlier this week, I was ushered before a bank of computer screens showing live gameplay from a very exciting game: Valve’s Half-Life 2.

Alright, HL2 isn’t a new game – in fact, it turns 20 this year! – but it’s still a timeless classic that has topped many a list of the best PC games. And while Valve will probably never release Half-Life 3, the mega-hit second game still has plenty of life left in it, thanks to Nvidia’s incredibly clever RTX Remix tool.

Announced way back in September 2022 at Nvidia’s GTC showcase, RTX Remix is an AI-powered tool for remastering old 3D games with updated graphics and fancy modern features like ray tracing. Remix entered open beta earlier this year, and is primarily targeted at modders looking to visually upgrade their favorite games; it’s built on Nvidia’s AI-focused ‘Omniverse’ platform, offering a comprehensive box of tricks for making the remaster process faster and easier than ever before.

Screenshot of Portal with RTX on. A blue portal with an orb of light emerging from it can be seen in a corridor with a Weighted Test Cube in front of it.

Portal with RTX looks fine, but Portal already looked good – Half-Life 2 is a much better showcase for RTX Remix. (Image credit: Valve, Nvidia)

Nvidia worked with official developers to create a showcase for Remix in Portal with RTX, a shiny new remaster of the legendary 2007 puzzle game, but Half-Life 2 RTX is a passion project being produced by modders with Nvidia providing some background support. And can I be honest? It looks f*cking awesome.

Giving new life to Half-Life

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Featured

Intel’s first blockbuster chip was the 8088 – and it changed everything 45 years ago

[ad_1]

Intel is a name that’s almost synonymous with the CPUs that power some of the best PCs and best laptops around today. Alongside AMD, Intel dominates a market that many argue it first cornered 45 years ago with the launch of its 8088 Micro-processor. 

Released in 1979, this was the first major CPU that Intel produced that propelled the x86 architecture to the fore – and was ironically a successor to the first x86 CPU, called the 8086 Micro-processor, that had been made some years before. 

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Featured

Looking back at the chip that changed how we accessed the World Wide Web, 30 years on

[ad_1]

Readers of a certain age will for the rest of their lives be haunted by a specific string of bleeps, boops, fuzzes, and machine noises. It’s a far cry from the buttery smooth connections we have grown used to today – but indeed our our first interfacing with the World Wide Web was through a dial-up connection that boasted blistering speeds of 56.6 kilobits per second if you used a specific modem. 

Eventually, thanks to a rather special chip – known as the Amati Communications Overture ADSL Chip Set – we transcended. Gone was the age of torrid speeds and images that took an age to load up, and we ushered in a new age in which maximum speeds were almost 2,000 times faster to up to 100 megabits per second. This paved the way for a new kind of internet full of multimedia.

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Entertainment

How Uber and the gig economy changed the way we live and work

[ad_1]

Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.

Maybe it was a confluence of technological advancement and broad financial anxiety from the 2008 recession, but prospects were bad, people needed money and many had no freedom to be picky about how. This was the same era in which the phrase “the sharing economy” proliferated — at once sold as an antidote to overconsumption, but that freedom from ownership belied the more worrying commoditization of any skill or asset. Of all the companies to take advantage of this climate, none went further or have held on harder than Uber.

Uber became infamous for railroading its way into new markets without getting approval from regulators. It cemented its reputation as a corporate ne’er-do-well through a byzantine scandal to avoid regulatory scrutiny, several smaller ones over user privacy and minimally-beneficial surcharges as well as, in its infancy, an internal reputation for sexual harassment and discrimination. Early on, the company used its deep reserves of venture capital to subsidize its own rides, eating away at the traditional cab industry in a given market, only to eventually increase prices and try to minimize driver pay once it reached a dominant position. Those same reserves were spent aggressively recruiting drivers with signup bonuses and convincing them they could be their own boss.

Self-employment has a whiff of something liberatory, but Uber effectively turned a traditionally employee-based industry into one that was contractor-based. This meant that one of the first casualties of the ride-sharing boom were taxi medallions. For decades, cab drivers in many locales effectively saw these licenses as retirement plans, as they’d be able to sell them on to newcomers when it was time to hang up their flat cap. But in large part due to the influx of ride-sharing services, the value of medallions has plummeted over the last decade or so — in New York, for instance, the value of a medallion dropped from around $1 million in 2014 to $100,000 in 2021. That’s in tandem with a drop in earnings, leaving many struggling to pay off enormous loans they took out to buy a medallion.

Some jurisdictions have sought to offset that collapse in medallion value. Quebec pledged $250 million CAD in 2018 to compensate cab drivers. Other regulators, particularly in Australia, applied a per-ride fee to ride-sharing services as part of efforts to replace taxi licenses and compensate medallion holders. In each of those cases, taxpayers and riders, not rideshare companies, bore the brunt of the impact on medallion holders.

At first it was just cab drivers that were hurting, but over the years, compensation for this new class of non-employee app drivers dried up too. In 2017, Uber paid $20 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it used false promises about potential earnings to entice drivers to join its platform. Late last year, Uber and Lyft agreed to pay $328 million to New York drivers after the state conducted a wage theft investigation. The settlement also guaranteed a minimum hourly rate for drivers outside of New York City, where drivers were already subject to minimum rates under Taxi & Limousine Commission rules.

Many rideshare drivers have also sought recognition as employees rather than contractors, so they can have a consistent hourly wage, overtime pay and benefits — efforts that the likes of Uber and rival Lyft have been fighting against. In January, the Department of Labor issued a final rule that aims to make it more difficult for gig economy companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The EU is also weighing a provisional deal to reclassify millions of app workers as employees.

Of course, the partial erosion of an entire industry’s labor market wasn’t always the end goal. At one point, Uber wanted to zero out labor costs by getting rid of drivers entirely. It planned to do so by rolling out a fleet of self-driving vehicles and flying taxis.

“The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” former CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2014, a day after Uber suggested drivers could make $90,000 per year on the platform. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”

Uber’s grand automation plans didn’t work out as intended, however. The company, under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, sold its self-driving car and flying taxi units in late 2020.

Uber’s success had second-order effects too: despite a business model best described as “set money on fire until (fingers crossed!) a monopoly is established” a whole slew of startups were born, taking their cues from Uber or explicitly pitching themselves as “Uber for X.” Sure, you might find a place to stay on Airbnb or Vrbo that’s nicer and less expensive than a hotel room. But studies have shown that such companies have harmed the affordability and availability of housing in some markets, as many landlords and real-estate developers opt for more profitable short-term rentals instead of offering units for long-term rentals or sale. Airbnb has faced plenty of other issues over the years, from a string of lawsuits to a mass shooting at a rental home.

Increasingly, this is becoming the blueprint. Goods and services are exchanged by third parties, facilitated by a semi-automated platform rather than a human being. The platform’s algorithm creates the thinnest veneer between choice and control for the workers who perform identical labor to the industry that platform came to replace, but that veneer allows the platform to avoid traditionally pesky things like legal liability and labor laws. Meanwhile, customers with fewer alternative options find themselves held captive by these once-cheap platforms that are now coming to collect their dues. Dazzled by the promise of innovation, regulators rolled over or signed a deal with the devil. It’s everyone else who’s paying the cost.


Engadget 20th anniversary bannerEngadget 20th anniversary banner

To celebrate Engadget’s 20th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Entertainment

The iPhone changed tech overnight. Almost 20 years later, nothing else has come close

[ad_1]

I vividly remember Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone on January 9, 2007, a device he dubbed a touchscreen iPod, mobile phone and “internet communicator” all in one product. I immediately looked at my Motorola Razr with a burning sense of hatred. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty easy to say the iPhone launch was the most transformative event in the last 20 years of consumer technology. Even though the original model was lacking in a lot of important ways, its impact was so immediate and monumental that the history of consumer technology was instantly split into two eras: PreiPhone and Post iPhone.

Take the personal computer revolution, for example. Moving room-sized computers from research institutes into something a regular person could buy and use in their home was undoubtedly a huge advance, but there were multiple inflection points in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s that helped usher in modern computing. The trinity of the Apple II, Tandy TRS-80 and Commodore PET 2001 in the ’70s represented the first wave, followed by the rise of the IBM PC and Macintosh in the ’80s. Things really took hold in the ’90s with the dominance of Microsoft Windows; the arrival of Windows 95 was a particularly transformative moment. In more recent history, the laptop became a viable and then dominant in the late ’90s and 2000s, which changed how most people think about computing. These were all events that moved the personal computing marketplace forward, but it’s hard to say one was more important than the others. It was more of a gradual rise and fall of various technologies that brought us to the modern era.

But the mobile phone market was completely reshaped by the iPhone, even if it took a few years for the effects to play out. Companies like BlackBerry, Palm and Nokia clung to the pre-iPhone conception of a smartphone for too long, focusing on business users and physical keyboards and not materially improving the software experience. Those companies are gone or irrelevant to mainstream consumers now. Palm’s introduction of its own webOS and Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia to push Windows Phone forward were reasonable efforts to challenge the iPhone, but they were far too little, too late. Hardware and software quality was hit or miss in both cases, but the main issue was that developers never embraced either platform, largely because consumers adopted iPhone and Android so quickly. The best iPhone apps usually never hit those devices, leading to inevitable doom.

On the other hand, Google and Samsung went all-in on Android almost immediately and quickly reaped the rewards of having an alternative to the iPhone. Android had enough similarities to iOS while also offering enough differentiation to capture a new part of the market. That’s particularly true internationally, where the massive variety of price points and devices was a huge advantage in markets where most people were priced out of Apple’s products. And given that Android arrived just a few months after Apple launched the iPhone App Store meant developers quickly started writing apps for both platforms, giving Android the support it needed. Essentially, everyone either followed in Apple’s footsteps or quickly went extinct.

It goes without saying that the iPhone reshaped a number of other businesses as well. The late aughts were awash with single-function gadgets, from obvious things like digital cameras, portable gaming devices and the iPod. (Also consider what phones have done to watches, paper calendars, lists and address books.) In the Post iPhone Era, consumer-grade digital cameras and portable music players are extremely niche — the iPhone’s camera is more than good enough for most people, and the iPhone itself quickly cannibalized the iPod.

Portable gaming systems are enjoying a bit of a resurgence, but the popularity of games on a phone that anyone can pick up and play is unmatched. If Nintendo’s Wii made its mark by offering casual gaming, the iPhone and the App Store quickly took that concept on the go. Both Call of Duty Mobile and Candy Crush Saga have peaked at about 500 million players, while Minecraft is the top-selling game of all time, with 300 million copies sold. Most AAA blockbuster titles don’t crack 50 million copies sold.

Moving from that Razr to an iPhone was a breath of fresh air. Watching YouTube and movies I had purchased via iTunes transformed my plane rides or commutes. Being able to browse real web pages and use a solid enough email client on the go made me more productive (and began my crippling information addiction). The “touchscreen iPod” felt like a futuristic and intuitive way to navigate my music library. It took until the iPhone 4 in 2010 for Apple to really focus on camera and image quality, but that didn’t stop people from shooting tons of photos and uploading them to Facebook. Even 2009’s iPhone 3GS took respectable enough snapshots and videos that my photo library started growing exponentially, and I’m glad to have a lot of those old, grainy shots from my late 20s.

And about a year after the first iPhone, the App Store blew open the doors on what was possible. Games, productivity tools, better messaging apps, social media, streaming music and everything else we associate with a modern smartphone quickly burst forth. Some people didn’t really consider the first iPhone a “smartphone” since you couldn’t install third-party apps, and Apple wisely saw the writing on the wall and fixed that glaring omission.

Whether all of the changes that followed the iPhone’s rise are a good thing is debatable. Having near-unlimited access to the internet at all times often feels like more than we can handle, and smartphones have enabled all kinds of digital abuse. Our privacy has gone out the window as these devices log vast amounts of data about our movements and desires and spending habits and search histories on behalf of the biggest companies in the world, who monetize it and try to keep us addicted. Steve Jobs almost certainly did not have all of this in mind when he pulled the iPhone out of his pocket in 2007, and the technology advanced so quickly we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.

The ramifications of all this will take decades to fully play out, and to some degree, many of us are already pulling back from the “always connected, sharing everything” mindset the iPhone enabled. The specter of government regulation, at least from the EU, coming for companies like Apple and Google is impossible to ignore, though it’s hard to imagine much happening to loosen their dominance in the near term. Regardless of what changes, there’s no doubt we live in a world where, thanks to the iPhone, the most important computer in people’s lives is the one in their pocket.


Engadget 20th anniversary bannerEngadget 20th anniversary banner

To celebrate Engadget’s 20th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

[ad_2]

Source Article Link

Categories
Featured

Midjourney just changed the generative image game and showed me how comics, film, and TV might never be the same

[ad_1]

Midjourney, the Generative AI platform that you can currently use on Discord just introduced the concept of reusable characters and I am blown away.

It’s a simple idea: Instead of using prompts to create countless generative image variations, you create and reuse a central character to illustrate all your themes, live out your wildest fantasies, and maybe tell a story.

[ad_2]

Source Article Link