The man who revolutionized the digital design industry, the computer industry, the music industry, and again the computer industry is dead.
Iphone 5S
The iPhone 5S: a phone that looks like the iPhone 5, but goes so much further under the hood. Is that going to be enough to impress the baying hordes.
Ipad Air
Apple's new iPad shows all you need to know about its changed approach to tablets - with a 43% thinner bezel and a 28% lighter device, the iPad Air is championing the 'easier to live with' ideal.
Microsoft Windows 8
Windows 8 is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablets, and home theater PCs..
ipod Touch 5th Genaration
The answer is that the iPod touch is not just an iPod anymore. While Apple still sells the old fashioned iPod Classic and has just rebooted with the iPod .
iPhone 5 Series
The iPhone 5 rumors continue, and this time they're backing up something we've suspected for a while--Apple's next phone may be all metal. It also looks to be simply a better phone all around.
Watch Dogs
it’s a great game that combines some smart ideas with an innovative setting, but it’s also one that arrives exhausted from its cross-generational birth..
The good:Strong design and Microsoft don't always go together, but they do in Windows 7. Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they're a pleasure to use.
The bad:Performance is still hit-or-miss in Windows 7. At the ripe age of seven, Windows XP still performs better in some categories.
The bottom line:
Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it's where Microsoft needed to go. How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.
Review:
Deserved or not, Microsoft had dug itself a cool, deep, dark hole with Windows Vista. Users demanding that Redmond extend the life of Windows XP wasn't exactly something they could be proud of, either. Bombarded by complaints and negative press even after the first service pack was released, the bar had been set high for Vista's successor: Windows 7.
The original PlayStation Portable (PSP) was released in December 2004 and has since seen two hardware refreshes (the PSP Slim & Lite and the PSP 3000) with combined sales of more than 55 million units. The PSP Go is the latest and most radical hardware update for the PSP, shedding the UMD drive of old in preference of 16GB of internal storage, with games and other content provided via download from the PlayStation Network. Read on for our full review.
The hardware
Make no mistake - the PSP Go is a gorgeous device. It's smaller and lighter than previous PSPs, making it by far the most "pocket friendly" model yet. The 3.8-inch LCD, while half an inch smaller than previous PSPs, retains the 480 x 272 resolution of old, meaning a crisper looking screen thanks to the increased pixel density.
The only addition in terms of hardware is the inclusion of Bluetooth 3.0. This allows you to pair up with Bluetooth stereo headphones, tether to a laptop or cell phone for Internet access, and even pair with a PlayStation 3 controller (Sixaxis or DualShock 3) and play your PSP games with a "real" controller. Combined with a TV-out cable, this is as close as you're getting to a portable games console without consulting someone like legendary modder Ben Heckendorn.
The mechanism that slides the screen up to reveal the controls feels sturdy enough to go the distance, and even survive a drop or two while open. The controls themselves have been changed significantly from prior models, with the directional pad and face buttons sporting a much clickier feel, which I think is a big improvement.
Unfortunately, the face buttons are much smaller and closer together than before, which isn't too much of an issue until you try to hold your thumb over two buttons at once (think: driving games) which I found hard to get used to.
The analog "nub" is smaller than ever, but didn't require any getting used to - I actually find it far easier to operate than the awkward placement of the old PSPs.
One area that sadly hasn't seen any change in all three revisions of the PSP is the Wi-Fi. The brand-new PSP Go is stuck using the nine-year-old 802.11b standard, and it's incapable of dealing with WPA2 encryption, which is the only totally secure Wi-Fi protocol around. For a device released in the second half of 2009, that uses digital distribution instead of physical media, this strikes me as utterly crazy.
And then we get to the omissions. Gone is the mini-USB port, meaning not only will you need a proprietary cable to charge your PSP Go, but none of the existing PSP accessories like the camera or GPS will work without the purchase of a ridiculous-looking adapter. Also gone is the replaceable battery, meaning that with a maximum of six hours battery life, the PSP Go won't go the distance on a long-haul flight - until the third-party accessory-makers bring something to the table. The battery decision was no doubt to make the "Pandora's Battery" hack much harder (perhaps impossible?) to perform (hackers discovered that a modified battery can be used to install custom firmware onto the PSP, enabling easy piracy).
The software
There's still a dated web browser, a sub-par media player with just-average format support, and an inability to download in the background or resume downloads should they fail for whatever reason. The one addition I can find is the ability to pause a game, hit the XMB (that's "menu" in Sony-speak, for the uninformed) to listen to music or watch a movie (or whatever), and then resume your game without actually having to use the in-game save functionality - which is a reasonably useful addition, as some developers haven't quite grasped the concept that people playing their games on the move might not always be able to play for another ten minutes to reach the next save point.
The games
The maximum UMD can hold is 1.8GB, so you'll fit at least eight games on the internal storage of the PSP Go - but you're likely to fit a few more on there than that, with the content-heavy Gran Turismo weighing in at just over 1GB.
There's more than 300 games available on the PlayStation Network (versus the 600+ available on UMD), and while all first-party titles will be released simultaneously on UMD and the PlayStation Network (PSN), Sony is not requiring third-parties to release games onto the PSN - and there's already instances of publishers saying "no thanks" to PSN versions of their UMD releases.
Unfortunately, it's not just the number of games to choose from that will be impacted by choosing a PSP Go - it's the cost of them. Of course, you're not going to be able to pick up second-hand UMDs on the cheap, but you already knew that. What you might not know is that Sony has announced plans to keep PSN pricing at parity with the MSRP on UMDs. So while the retailers aggressively promote discount prices on new releases and older titles, you're stuck paying a premium on a product that costsfar less to provide than the boxed physical media with printed manual.
The price, and the lowdown
The PSP Go costs a staggering US$250 (versus US$170 for the PSP 3000). That's just $50 shy of the 120GB PlayStation 3 Slim. When you consider the fact that a PSP 3000 with a 16GB Memory Stick Pro Duo costs $20 less than the bare PSP Go, and can still play games downloaded from the PSN, I'm not entirely sure that the suits at Sony hasn't taken on board Dan Ariely's conclusion that, to paraphrase,offering people a bad option makes most of those people choose the good option.
Nevertheless, it's frustrating to see how close Sony is to having a game-changing device. Put in a decent wireless chipset, a capacitive touch-screen, an accelerometer, a camera with autofocus, and a second analog nub and you would have a killer device worth paying the premium for. Address the software issues with a WebKit-based browser, decent codec support and a quality media player, and you have something that could be a serious contender in the PMP market.
So, who's going to want a PSP Go? If you're a newcomer to the PSP platform, don't mind not being able to extend the battery life (yet), like the idea of a very portable device that plays the best quality games you're likely to find on a portable device for some time, and don't mind paying a premium for a smaller selection of those games, then the PSP Go is for you. Everyone else is more likely to find joy in one of the previous PSP models - I'll keep loving my PSP Slim (it's always the first thing I pack for a trip) until the PSP2 arrives.
This second version of Apple TV (also commonly known as Apple TV 2) dumped its forebear's 40GB of local storage, chopped its footprint by three-quarters and halved its UK price down to £99.
But its real advance only became apparent when iOS 5 was released in October 2011, which is why we're updating this review, first published when Apple TV 2 was released in 2010.
iOS 5 has opened up Apple TV to a whole new level of functionality, which means that if you're an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch owner its well worth reconsidering Apple's little black box if you don't already own one, because it just developed a reason to exist.
Perhaps we're being a bit harsh though – Apple TV has always been a darn good media streamer to use with your Mac/PC. You simply plug it into your HD TV via a HDMI cable and connect it to your Wi-Fi network using the on-screen menus and you're good to go.
But while Apple's 2010 refresh saw a welcome reduction in its price, it still wasn't clear what the point of Apple TV was.
The biggest confusion is that it still doesn't let you do what its name would suggest - i.e. watch TV channels over the Internet.
Instead its a device for streaming your media from iTunes on your Mac or PC for playback on your TV over Wi-Fi using a system called AirPlay, or for renting or buying movies directly from the iTunes Store, cutting your computer out of the equation altogether. That's all well and good, but it's only with the most recent update to iOS that Apple TV has really found its feet.
The first exciting feature that hooks up Apple TV and iOS 5 is mirroring, in which everything that appears on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch's screen also appears on your TV as you use it.
This has many obvious applications - from a quick way to display photos from your iPhone to a teacher giving a presentation in a classroom, but gaming is the most exciting one.
Some iOS games, like Real Racing 2 HD or Modern Combat 3take simple mirroring to the next level, enabling you to use your iPhone as the controller for the game, which is displayed on your TV, effectively moving you into proper games console territory: There's you on the sofa, your iPhone in your hand as a controller and the game on your big screen TV with no wires getting in the way.
Anyone who has ever had any experience of doing anything complicated over Wi-Fi might be forgiven for thinking this is a venture doomed to be a laggy mess of bad connections and random error messages, but amazingly it's not - in true Apple style it just works.
Just watch this video of Modern Combat 3 playing on an iPhone 4Sconnected to an Apple TV 2 to see what a simple and elegant solution it is.
It's almost perfect, and games like Real Racing where you use the accelerometer to 'steer' your car work really well. The only problem is the lack of physical buttons on the iPhone mean you often have to look down at the iPhone's screen to make sure you've got your thumb in the right place to fire, which spoils the experience somewhat.
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The good: Strong design and Microsoft don't always go together, but they do in Windows 7. Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they're a pleasure to use.
