Tag: magical

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Computers

Yale Approach Smart Lock Review: Magical Door-Unlocking Powers

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The smart home doesn’t always feel smart. I test a lot of devices for a living, and they take a lot of babysitting and steps to do everything you want. Whether you’re setting up skills on an Alexa speaker or getting your smart lights on the right schedule–shout-out to Daylight Savings for ruining my existing one—it takes work.

While the Yale Approach Lock still has plenty of hassle (Physical install! Accessory calibration! App setup!), its ability to unlock all by itself when it senses you’ve arrived home feels actually smart. It’s all done within the Yale app, with the help of your phone’s location. As someone whose arms are often full of toddler things (Why are his shoes never on his feet?), it’s been a relief to just walk up and not worry about what pocket my keys ended up in after leaving the parking lot.

Slick Setup

Left Hand holding white packaging of electrical components. Right Hand holding a keypad and batteries

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Installing the Yale Approach was easy, thanks to the short video clips and steps inside the app to guide you through installation. Since you’ll remove part of your existing lock, I recommend having a sandwich bag handy in case you want to use it again in the future (or need to put it back when you move out, like I will). It took me about 10 minutes, including video-watching time.

You’ll also be prompted to set up the included Yale Connect Wi-Fi Bridge and Door Status at this time. The Wi-Fi Bridge will look familiar if you’ve ever used an August Lock (8/10, WIRED Recommends). (Yale bought August in 2017 and now uses the same Wi-Fi connectors.) The little white square sits in a nearby outlet and connects via Bluetooth to the lock, and then connects the lock to Wi-Fi. The Yale Approach didn’t like my outlet location, which was around a corner about 3 feet away, and told me so during setup, but it’s worked perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, the Door Status lets the Yale app tell you whether the door is shut, along with whether it’s locked. It works great and is easy to pop onto your door frame, since it’s just a little sensor you’ll line up with the lock. Especially since I have a door that resists shutting, I love that I can use the Yale to check if it’s open.

Digital Keys

Black ovalshaped keypad with numbers 0 through 9

Photograph: Nena Farrell

You can choose to buy the lock with or without the keypad. The default pricing includes it, and it does pack some features I really liked, but it’s not a perfect fit to install outside every home, the way the lock is.

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Categories
Bisnis Industri

First iPad makes ‘magical’ debut in stores: Today in Apple history

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April 3, 2010: Today in Apple history: ‘Magical’ first iPad debuts in stores April 3, 2010: The first iPad hits store shelves after months of anticipation. The tablet Apple CEO Steve Jobs called “magical and revolutionary” at its unveiling earlier in the year quickly becomes a major success.

Jobs initially showed off Apple’s first tablet on January 27, 2010. And there had been rumors long before then. But the wait for the iPad is finally over … at least for people in the United States. (The iPad’s international debut won’t happen until May.)

First iPad release date: April 3, 2010

Arriving nearly three years after the original iPhone launch, the iPad boasted a supersized touchscreen that made it perfect for consuming content. It seemed purpose-built for watching movies, reading long-form content like books and magazines, and listening to music. Plus, iPad owners could handle email and browse the web, just like on iPhone, only with a much larger canvas.

That very first iPad boasted a 9.7-inch multitouch display and a 1GHz Apple A4 processor. Storage options ranged from 16GB to 64GB of flash memory. It didn’t come with a camera. The first iPad with 3G cellular connectivity came out a few weeks later.

Apple’s first tablet benefited from a lot of prerelease excitement, but it faced a certain amount of skepticism, too. After Jobs announced the device, Dan Lyons at Newsweek wrote, “Jobs and his team kept using words like ‘breakthrough’ and ‘magical,’ but the iPad is neither, at least not right now.”

Jeremy A. Kaplan at Fox News unleashed an even more scathing evaluation. “Call it the iPad or the iPlod, but the message seems clear: Apple may have lost its mojo,” he wrote. And John C. Dvorak at MarketWatch dismissed the original iPad as “a giant iPod Touch.”

To use it is to love it: Apple tablet becomes an instant success

But those comments came from people who had never actually used the device. After Apple sent out review units, Walt Mossberg at All Things D called the iPad a “pleasure to use,” and said it made him less interested in using his laptop. And David Pogue at The New York Times said anybody interested in a tablet would “love the machine.”

Cult of Mac’s in-depth review by publisher Leander Kahney called the first Apple tablet “perfect for relaxing at home or on a plane.”

Consumers knew what they wanted. Apple sold 300,000 iPads on launch day and a million units in less than a month. By the end of the breakthrough tablet’s first year, Apple sold around 25 million of them. That made the iPad the most successful new product category launch in Apple history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fk1V5NqoD4



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