Apple – AMP

Google Fit update brings Android users real-time exercise tracking

In a statement on the official Google Chrome Blog, the browser’s developers have announced the availability of a new version in the stable channel. It brings some performance improvements and a handful of new features.

Google’s development efforts on Chrome have been moving forward at an impressive pace. The company is iterating very quickly on new features and stabilizing them as they trickle down through the various release channels. The most noteworthy new features introduced in the stable release of Chrome 9 are support for WebGL and Chrome Instant.

WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.

Another major feature in Chrome 9 is support for Chrome Instant, the browser equivalent of Google’s instant search innovation. As the user types a URL, the autocompletion mechanism will automatically load pages. This feature is integrated into the browser, but is not enabled by default. Users who want automatic loading will have to opt-in by toggling a preference in Chrome’s settings panel.

Users can download the latest version of Chrome from Google’s website. For more details about some of the bug fixes, you can refer to the release notes.

Apple TV review: the super-shiny new media streamer is here

The Apple TV is so Apple. The app-enabled set-top box from Cupertino is tiny and beautiful, fast and slick, a big step towards the future… and sometimes annoying and occasionally limiting. What else did we expect?

While the previous Apple TV models (which are still available much cheaper) were just streaming units, limited to whatever ‘apps’ they came with and whatever you streamed over AirPlay, the new Apple TV is smarter.

It’s basically an iPad mini 4 without a screen or battery – its core is an A8 processor, meaning that it’s capable of running complex apps, and it comes with an App Store anyone can develop and submit apps for. It runs tvOS, which is pretty much iOS redesigned and reworked for the big screen, and with a few features specific for making it easier to find things to watch. Like iOS, you grab apps from the App Store and put them into a Home screen grid, and you can make your most-used ones more prominent – if you’ve used an iPhone or iPad, it’s all pretty intuitive.

The one area that Apple has badly got wrong, though, is the keyboard. When you need to type (such as a search term or password), the keyboard appears in a long line of the alphabet, which you have to scroll all the way through for every. Single. Letter. It’s maddening, and it makes you want to select the option to turn off the need to enter a password when you buy something (when you set up the Apple TV, you can place an iPhone near it to share your Apple ID details, but you still need to enter passwords in many places) – but if this is going in a family home, you probably won’t want to do that…

iPad mini 4 review: why has Apple hidden this great tablet away?

What do you do when you’ve made a massive tablet that’s got tongues wagging? You slip out a well-made teeny one and don’t really tell anyone about it, apparently.

That’s what Apple’s done with the iPad mini 4. The iPad Pro is getting the bulk of the interest in the tablet world at the moment, but that’s a shame – there’s something really awesome here with this smaller model.

For £319 you’re getting a really decent tablet (the iPad Air 2) squished down into a smaller size – while that’s a year old, that doesn’t mean it’s less impressive. The iPad range struggles to find an equal from the competition, and at this lower cost the mini 4 is definitely worth thinking as a ‘big present’ to someone.

The design is as you’d expect with a tablet from Apple: it’s got a metal case, curved at the edged, but it’s done in such a way that it feels almost ceramic in the hand. The buttons – a little small, it has to be said – are now limited to just power and volume, with the silencing rocker switch now placed on screen in the Control Center.

Apple plans to launch Apple Pay in China by February

Well, here’s a surprise: Mountain View now accepts PayPal payments for apps, games, books and other digital goods on Google Play. If you’re not exactly fond of paying through credit cards cards or carriers, you can activate the option by clicking Add Paypal and typing in your log-in details. The option has a huge limitation, though: you can’t exactly use it to buy devices and accessories. So, if you want to buy a new Android phone or a Nest thermostat, you need to bust out that plastic. That said, Play has also expanded carrier billing and gift card availability to more countries, and anyone waiting for either may want to check Google Support for the full lists.

Apple and Google settle Motorola patent disagreement and agree to cooperate on patent reform

(Reuters) – Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola Mobility unit have agreed to settle all patent litigation between them over smartphone technology, ending one of the highest profile lawsuits in technology.

In a joint statement on Friday, the companies said the settlement does not include a cross license to their respective patents.

“Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform,” the statement said.

Apple and companies that make phones using Google’s Android software have filed dozens of such lawsuits against each other around the world to protect their technology. Apple argued that Android phones that use Google software copy its iPhones.

The two companies informed a federal appeals court in Washington that the cases should be dismissed, according to filings on Friday. However, the deal does not appear to apply to Apple’s litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, as no dismissal notices were filed in those cases.

The most high-profile case between Apple and Motorola began in 2010. Motorola accused Apple of infringing several patents, including one essential to how cell phones operate on a 3G network, while Apple said Motorola violated its patents to certain smartphone features.