With the Galaxy Note 20 launch just a week away, all eyes will be on what upgrades Samsung brings to the table. While the chipset might remain unchanged, there might be a silver lining. While Samsung flagship like the Note series and the S series are powered by Snapdragon chipsets in the US and European markets, they come with Exynos chipset in Asian markets such as India. It often tends to lose out on the performance front against Qualcomm Snapdragon counterparts. However, a new leak suggests some good news in this regard. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date, price, news and leaks Upcoming smartphones in India: Specs, launch date, price (Image credit: Samsung/WinFuture) According to a tweet by Anthony, a Youtuber, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will continue to be powered by the Exynos 990 chipset, but with major improvements in terms of the performance and efficiency. These optimizations should bring it closer to the Snapdragon 865 series. He even suggested that it is almost li
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Lightroom CC vs Lightroom Classic: 10 key differences
Lightroom is Adobe’s professional-level all-in-one photo cataloguing, editing and sharing application, and it’s the ideal complement to Photoshop. But as of October 2017, the Lightroom lineup has changed.
Lightroom 6, which you could buy as a ‘perpetual licence’ rather than via a subscription fee, was effectively discontinued at the end of 2017.
At the same time, the ‘old’ subscription-based Lightroom CC splits in two. The name is now used for an all-new Lightroom CC application designed around Adobe’s new online storage scheme. The ‘old’ desktop-based Lightroom CC gets a name change and carries on as Lightroom Classic.
So which should you choose? To help you decide, here’s a list of 10 key differences…
1. Lightroom workflow (interface and modules)
Straight away, there’s a big visual difference. Lightroom Classic is split into a series of different ‘modules’ for different stages of the workflow, from the Library module (for organizing) and the Develop module (for editing), right through to Map, Book, Slideshow, Print and Web modules.
In Lightroom CC, this is all gone. All your organizing and editing is done in a single window, and all the other modules are missing. This is great news for those who found Lightroom too clunky and fussy before (which is us), but bad news for photographers who rely on these extra modules.
2. 'Cloud-first’ vs ‘desktop-first’
The differences are way more than skin deep. In Lightroom Classic, all your images are stored on your computer or connected hard drives, and while you can synchronize them with Lightroom on the web and on mobile devices, you’re only sharing lower-resolution Smart Previews, and only specific Collections within your photo catalog.
But in Lightroom CC, all your photos are stored online by Adobe. You can choose to store them locally too, but Lightroom CC is based around online storage. The good news is that all your photos are available everywhere at their full resolution and in their original format. The bad news is that this storage costs money – see our breakdown of the new Adobe subscription plans at the end.
3. Synchronization and editing
Lightroom Classic can synchronize images with Lightroom mobile and Lightroom web, but there are the restrictions mentioned above which we should spell out. First, it shares a lower-resolution DNG Smart Preview rather than the full-resolution image. Most of the time this will be absolutely fine – the resolution is easily good enough for on-screen viewing, and editing too – the point of Lightroom’s Smart Previews is that your adjustments are synchronized back to the desktop version.
However, if you’re working on your mobile device or on another computer via Lightroom web, you can’t download the original, full-resolution image, and only the lower-resolution Smart Preview is available. And while synchronizing Collections is fine as far as it goes, not being able to synchronize smart collections or have remote access to your full image catalog is actually rather a nuisance.
4. Image organization
Lightroom Classic actually offers two parallel organizational systems. It has a Folders panel for showing where your images are actually stored on your hard disk, and a Collections panel for organizing them ‘virtually’ into Collections, Smart Collections and Collection Sets. In some ways it’s good to be able to organize your images in real-world Folders as well as Collections, but it also feels somehow complex and redundant.
Lightroom CC dispenses with all of that. There are no ‘Folders’ at all, and your sole organizational tool is Albums (these can be organized into folders, but these are just virtual containers, not actual folders on a computer). It’s actually quite a relief to have such a simple system to work with… except that you can’t create Smart Albums, which are actually quite useful. Maybe these will arrive in a future update.
5. Filtering your photos
Storing lots of photos is only part of the problem – you also need to be able to find the ones you want when you need them. One way of doing this is with a search, where you just type what you’re looking for into a search box and see what comes back.
But Lightroom Classic also has a very effective Filter Bar, where you can choose what you’re looking for from drop-down menus. Filter items can include ratings, color labels, flags, whether a photo is an original or a virtual copy, and all kinds of metadata and shooting information, such as the camera used, lens, exposure settings and a whole lot more. You can even save your filter presets for re-use another time.
Lightroom CC strips these options right back. You can still filter by rating, flag and file type (photo or video), but the metadata options are very basic and limited to Keywords, Cameras and Locations. If you use a lot of detailed filtering in Lightroom Classic you’ll be disappointed by the limited options here, but if you only use relatively simple filter options, like ratings or flags, you’ll probably appreciate the simplicity.
6. Using keywords
Both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC let you add keywords to your photos, but they take a very different approach. In Lightroom CC, keywords are a very structured, disciplined thing. You can just tap in keywords as you need them, but really it’s built around a more formal, planned keywording strategy.
Lightroom CC is very different. You can add keywords just as easily, but in a very much more informal, freeform way. Besides, you may not need to add keywords at all, because Lightroom CC debuts Adobe’s new intelligent ‘Sensei’ machine-learning technology. The idea is that you type in what you’re looking for and Sensei will find images that contain those objects. It’s not foolproof by any means, but it is fast, and it’s great for reminding you about photos you’d forgotten you had.
7. Editing tools comparedLightroom CC is a brand-new application, so you’d expect it to have all the tools of the old one, wouldn’t you? Sadly not. Adobe says it’s working on full feature parity between Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic, but for now the Classic version has things that CC doesn’t.
Initially, for example, Lightroom CC didn’t have the Tone Curve or Split Tone panels found in Lightroom Classic. These have arrived via a December 2017 Lightroom CC update, but CC still doesn’t have the Classic version’s Camera Calibration panel, nor the Auto Mask and Color/Luminance range masking tools that make Lightroom Classic’s local adjustment tools so powerful. Lightroom CC is great for 90% of your editing tasks, but for that other 10% the Classic version still has the edge.
8. Photomerge for panoramas and HDR
We should give a special mention to the Photomerge options recently added to Lightroom Classic. These enable you to both stitch panoramas from overlapping frames quickly, simple and seamlessly, and blend separate exposures to create an editable HDR composite with perhaps the most natural and malleable HDR rendition we’ve seen. Unfortunately, Lightroom CC offers neither at the moment.
9. Can you use plug-ins?
This will perhaps be the biggest deal-breaker for many. Lightroom Classic supports all manner of plug-ins. Indeed, plug-in makers these days almost invariably include Lightroom in their installers, alongside Photoshop. This means you can easily ‘round-trip’ photos to plug-ins like the Nik Collection, Alien Skin Exposure X3, Macphun (Skylum) Luminar, ON1 Photo RAW and more.
So far, however, there’s no sign of plug-in support in Lightroom CC. You can send images to Photoshop (depending on which subscription plan you go for – see below) and launch your favorite plug-ins from there, but that sounds like hard work compared to the direct support offered by Lightroom Classic.
10. Plans and pricing
Now that there are two versions of Lightroom, Adobe’s Photography Plan choices have become a little more complicated – there are now three, not one.
Lightroom CC Plan
This is new, and offers Lightroom CC with 1TB storage for £9.98 / $9.99 / AU$14.29 per month. There are two key points here. First, this costs no more than the regular Photography Plan (below) BUT you don’t get Photoshop; effectively, you swap Photoshop for your 1TB storage.
Photography Plan
This is the continuation of the regular Photography Plan, which includes both versions of Lightroom, and Photoshop, but only 20GB storage, for the same £9.98 / $9.99 / AU$14.29 per month price as the Lightroom CC Plan. So it’s perfect if you want to carry on using Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, and it also lets you try out Lightroom CC and its online storage. If you like Lightroom CC, however, you’ll need to upgrade your storage pretty sharpish.
Photography Plan with 1TB
So this is where you might need the third option, which delivers Photoshop, both versions of Lightroom and 1TB storage – but at a price. This will cost £19.97 / $19.99 / AU$28.59 per month, so effectively you’re paying £9.98 / $9.98 / AU$14.30 per month, or thereabouts, for 1TB storage. If you need more, Adobe has told us this will cost an additional £9.98 / $9.98 / around AU$14 per terabyte, so if you have a big image library, this could get costly pretty fast.
There’s a lot to like about Lightroom CC. Its stripped down interface does lose many of the more in-depth options of Lightroom Classic, but it’s a much nicer and more efficient place to work. If only Lightroom Classic looked like this!
And there’s the rub. To get the slick, streamlined experience of Lightroom CC you have to commit to Adobe’s web-based storage system. If that’s no good to you, then you’re stuck with Lightroom Classic. It is the more powerful program of the two, but it’s not our favorite.
Best photo-editing software in 2017
Looxid is a VR headset that will track your eyes and your brain
It’s pretty safe to say that virtual reality technology is now here. It’s arrived, found its parking space and doesn’t look at all likely to just disappear anymore. Now that it’s established, however, we’re all asking where it will go from here.
Different manufacturers will naturally have different ideas – some might want to improve what they’ve already got with improvements to design, comfort, resolution and software support. Some, however, might want to bring some entirely new features in the mix.
Created by LuxidLabs, The LooxidVR headset revealed at CES 2018 falls into the latter category. So, what makes it different? Well, this is a mobile-powered VR headset (so far so standard) but interestingly it comes with eye-tracking cameras and EEG sensors built in.
Emotional recognitionAccording to Looxid this makes it the first headset of its kind.
With this kind of tech, VR headsets could become far more reactive to user movements. For example, with eye-tracking you could perhaps glance around your environment rather than twist your neck like a screw top to see something only slightly to your left.
There’s also some interesting data to be gathered using these new features. EEG sensors for tracking brain activity don’t immediately strike us as useful for the standard consumer, for example. But then for medical institutions that use VR headsets in therapeutic treatments, this kind of information could be invaluable.
Indeed, on the headset's official site the capacity for emotional recognition of users is being pushed as a strength for researchers.
That said, it's worth considering how access to this kind of information could actually change the kinds of games we play on VR; with access to our eye movements and brain activity could developers create the kinds of games that would react to our feelings?
What is certain is that this is a jump for mobile-powered VR headsets and what we expect from them. High-powered consumer VR headsets such as HTC Vive may be at the stage where incremental improvements are the way forward. But for researchers and big consumer-minded leaps in virtual reality technology, we're going to need to see these kind of technological advancements continue.
Looxid VR is currently on show at CES but pre-orders will open on February 1 for an unspecified price and shipping date.
New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2018 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
The best cheap PS4 deals and bundles in the January sales 2018
There are some decent PS4 deals this week, with GT Sport, Star Wars: Battlefront II and FIFA 18 bundles proving to be cheaper than buying a PS4 on its own! These brand new PS4 bundles are selling fast though, so don't dawdle if you see a PS4 price you like.
On this page we've listed the best cheap PS4 deals in the UK (here's our US page and here's our Australian page) so you can find all of the cheapest PS4 prices. Below you'll find all of the absolute cheapest standalone PS4 deals from UK retailers, followed by our pick of what we think are the bundle deals that offer the best value.
The PS4 is currently available in a number of different forms. Directly below, you'll find the best deals for the new PS4 Slim which has come in to replace the original model with a slimmer design. You can still get the original PS4 and you'll find prices for those below the PS4 Slim deals. And at the bottom you'll see deals for the new PS4 Pro - the new fancy 4K model (here's the lowdown on the differences). If you're still torn, maybe you'd prefer one of our Xbox One deals?
The PS4 Slim is... slimmer, quieter and smaller
The new PS4 Slim launched in September 2016 for around £259 (500GB) or £310 (1TB). This new model has effectively replaced the original PS4 now. The console itself is smaller, lighter and more power efficient and the 500GB model is priced cheaper than the older PS4 nowadays, so you're not paying more for the refined tech. We'd seriously advise you scroll down to the bundles further down this page as many of them are cheaper than buying the console on its own! The PS4 Slim is available in black or white.
The original PS4 with optical out audio options
These are the regular, older, full-sized PS4 deals. Expect to see a few tasty bargains as retailers clear space for the new PS4 Slim. Prices have been dropping naturally in recent months, so if you're not bothered about 4K visuals (get a PS4 Pro if you are) and are yet to pick up a PS4, you could find a fantastically cheap deal here. We're generally seeing this model get phased out with better deals to be found on the PS4 Slim above though.
The best PS4 bundle deals this weekYou'll often find that the most attractive way to get a cheap PS4 is with a bundle with extra hardware or extra games. These are the best PS4 bundle deals currently available in the UK – we update these deals on a regular basis.
PS4 deal of the week Extra PS4 retailer links:Want to look through some extra PS4 deals? It's ok, you're only hurting our feelings a little. The links below will take you straight to the PS4 console deals section of the following websites, just in-case you fancy digging out a bargain of your own.
Amazon dealsVery dealsJohn Lewis dealsCurrys dealsTesco dealsArgos dealsGame deals
The PS4 that offers 4K gaming and Netflix
Essentially, the PS4 Pro is a 4K upgrade of the current PS4, rather than a 'next-gen' console. The keywords to take in from the PS4 Pro are 4K and HDR. The new machine allows game developers to include 4K resolution and High Dynamic Range options in their games, so expect the like of Uncharted 4, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Days Gone, Horizon: Zero Dawn and more to look even better on a HDR-enabled 4K TV. You'll also be able to stream 4K content from Netflix and Amazon. Want to get the right TV? Then check out our cheap 4K TV deals page. We've seen big discounts as Sony fights off the latest Xbox One X deals too.
If you're buying a PS4, you'll probably need a cheap PlayStation Plus deal too. PlayStation Plus (aka PS Plus or PS+) allows you to play PS4 games online, along with access to the Instant Game Collection, a bunch of free games for PS4, PS3 and Vita each month. The default price for a year is £50. We can do better than that though, so check out our selection of the best PlayStation Plus deals.
Need an extra cheap PS4 controller? Don't forget to check our Best DualShock 4 deals. Or maybe a cheap PlayStation VR deal?
Samsung, why isn’t Bixby controlling the smart home from my Gear watch?
Samsung used CES 2018 to finally bring both its smart home and wearable ecosystems one step closer together, but I still don't think it's far enough.
Samsung is bringing SmartThings – the platform the brand bought to control smart home devices, which is already available on Android and iOS devices – to both the Gear S3 and Gear Sport watch.
It means you should be able to turn your lighting or heating on from your wrist with relatively little effort, and while that's a good upgrade it's still not the perfect solution.
Samsung keeps going on about how great its virtual assistant Bixby is, and I want it to be the thing I can control my home from my wrist. But, for some reason, it's still not how you interact with SmartThings.
Samsung has spent the last nine months since it introduced Bixby on the Galaxy S8 telling us how the platform will be improved and what it can do for you compared to Siri or Google Assistant, but it's still not available on some of the top Samsung products.
Samsung announced at CES this year that it wouldn't be adopting either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa for its TV range - like a lot of big name brands have done - but instead will introduce Bixby to its upcoming products.
So why isn’t Bixby ready to control my smart home from my wrist? In fact, why isn't Bixby on my wrist anyway?
The moment Samsung announced Bixby for TV at CES 2018.
The thing is, controlling the smart home is inherently complicated. You'll have lots of products, from a variety of different brands and all of them need to work together.
The basic SmartThings platform is suitable for that, but only from your phone.
On a device with a 5-inch or larger screen you can control a broad range of devices quickly and easily. I haven't tried SmartThings on Gear watches yet, but it's hard to see it working as well on such a small display as the Gear Sport only has a 1.2-inch screen.
So why not control it with your voice? Siri can do so within the Apple HomeKit app on the Apple Watch, and that's been a key selling point. All you need to do there is press down on the crown on the Apple Watch to activate Siri and then say your command.
"Turn on my kitchen lights" and it's ready to go. There's no need to enter a SmartThings app and scroll down to the room and then the device you want to interact with.
It’s the same reason voice integration on Samsung TVs makes sense - by using your voice you don't have to navigate through multiple menus via the cumbersome controls when you can instead just use your voice to do it quickly.
If Bixby was the way to interact with SmartThings on the Gear watches, you’d be able to tap the screen (or say a command) and ask for it to turn on the lights in the living room and it’d be done as quickly as pressing a light switch on the wall. Instead it looks like Samsung will want me to control it via just taps on the smartwatch screen.
Samsung Bixby on the Galaxy S8
Samsung has announced Bixby 2.0, which it plans to bring to more smart home products to expand its the SmartThings platform. Bixby 2.0 is designed to help internet of things devices communicate better, but Samsung hasn't confirmed whether this will come to Gear watches.
Considering the company saw fit to announce the SmartThings platform for Gear watches without mentioning Bixby - let alone its future update - it doesn't seem to be a major focus for the company.
Bixby is a big enough deal for Samsung to place a major bet on using it within its vastly popular TV range as well as including a dedicated hardware button on the side of its most recent range of phones.
It even looks like the company will include the Bixby button again on the Galaxy S9 when it launches later this year, so why isn't it ready for the Gear range yet?
There's still no sign of it on the watches and this SmartThings announcement - as interesting as it may first seem - shows the company doesn't intend to release a wrist-based Bixby anytime soon.
If I was a dedicated Samsung user, I'd want to fully embrace Bixby, especially when voice assistants on smartwatches makes so much sense. So Samsung, if you want people to embrace your voice assistant and leave Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa behind you need you to include it on your smartwatches soon.
New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2018 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
Chinese investment drives IoT boom
The cellular IoT market is set to hit one billion installed devices this year, new research has claimed.
Findings from market research company Berg Insight has said that the number of worldwide cellular IoT subscribers increased by 56% in the past year, hitting 647.5 million.
The report highlights the potential for the technology; it estimates that the global market for IoT devices will be 2.7 billion devices by 2022.
Much of the growth is being driven by China. The report points out that the Chinese government has set a goal to connect 600 million devices to NB-IoT networks by 2020.
According to report author, and Berg Insight senior analyst, Tobias Ryberg, “NB-IoT will essentially replace 2G technology, which accounted for the bulk of the 150 million new cellular IoT connections added in the country in 2017. In the process, the cost of 4G-based cellular IoT chipsets and modules will fall dramatically, paving the way for a similar transition worldwide”.
Connected productsThe next wave of IoT technology will also be driven by China, Berg predicts, noting that the growth of smart cities, smart industrial supply chains and connected consumer products will be kickstarted by Chinese investment, both public and private.
Ryberg said that a key part of this growth will be in the way that IoT capability is being added to existing products. He pointed out how the Chinese bike sharing industry has grown. In less than a year, tens of millions of connected bikes were launched into the streets of major cities, he noted, adding, “he aftermath of the bike sharing frenzy does however underline an equally important point: IoT technology adds no value without a proper business case. The long-term winners in IoT will be those who combine scale and economic benefit.”
Best January phone deals
Coding king Kano launches a build-it-yourself digital camera
Where us long-in-the-tooth oldies had to make do with Bunsen burners, test tubes and gruesome frog dissections during science classes, the kids of today are building their own fantasy computers and learning to code applications via simple coding kits.
Kano, which raised $28 million in Series B funding last year, has rapidly become one of the biggest names in creative coding, selling a range of kits in 4,500 retail stores including Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Toys R Us.
The company claims over 200,00 budding computer builders worldwide have already coded and shared more than 380,000 applications, artworks, songs and games, but it strives for more in the coming years.
A new camera kit, which was announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, will arrive in 2019 and allows imaginative types to create and build a five-megapixel camera via a step-by-step storybook.
Once constructed, the powerful little stills and video snapper can run a number of bespoke photo filters, colorful flashes and harness clever rules that have been created using Kano's simple suite of online software.
Better still, every kit comes with a Tripwire sensor that remotely activates the camera, opening up a world of security and remote shutter possibilities.
Building a better futureUnlike many of today's toys, which manage to hold an attention span of a few seconds, the Kano Camera Kit requires young minds to first plug in the parts, connect the circuits to a single-board computer brain, add a flash, trigger, battery and choose between a wide-angle, fisheye or macro lens.
Before they know it, budding Steve Jobs types have just built their first piece of technology, which then receives instruction using simple and colourful block-dragging software.
Users can create whacky filters, turn their little snapper into an action cam thanks to burst photography and even use the camera's built-in microphone to trigger the shutter with a clap or whistle.
Kano also attempts to 'game-ify' the experience with playful challenges, which set tasks for users, such as learning to make a weather station or using code to make street art, and then rewarding them with badges and special unlocks.
A successful Kickstarter campaign means the Camera Kit - along with two others (Pixel and Speaker) will arrive in 2019, retailing at $129.99 (around £100).
New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2018 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
A smartwatch that's powered by your body heat will be on sale later this month
One of the most annoying parts of owning a high-end smartwatch is having to charge it, so what if your watch was actually powered just by sitting on your wrist? That's the question Matrix has tried to answer with the new PowerWatch X.
The new watch - announced at CES 2018 - uses a proprietary thermometric energy converter to change your body heat into smartwatch battery.
It may sound futuristic, but it's not the first device to have the feature - Matrix released the PowerWatch back in 2016 that used the technology but had limited functionality.
Now the company has announced the PowerWatch X that uses this technology to power a fully fledged smartwatch that can show you notifications from your phone on your wrist.
No need to chargeIt has a reasonably rugged design and the circle around the inside the bezel shows you how much battery is left on the watch, so it's always easy to spot if it's running out of charge.
When you take the watch off, it'll also go into a deep sleep mode that means you don't have to wear it every day. You can pick it up again a month later and it'll still have some leftover charge and it'll start working again
Exactly what software is running on the PowerWatch X is a little unclear at the moment, but it doesn't seem to be Android Wear from the marketing materials we've seen so far.
It'll be able to work with both Android and iOS devices and in the US it'll cost $249.99 (about $185, AU$320). Pre-orders are open now and Matrix claims the watch will begin shipping later this month too.
New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2018 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
Xbox One users are getting a ‘do not disturb’ feature
We’ve all had it happen – you’re playing an intense single-player game or watching a movie and all of a sudden every single one of your friends decides now is the time to invite you into a match.
The notifications come down your screen so fast and hard you believe in a moment of befuddlement that you’ve turned on some kind of hardcore Tetris.
You just wish you could hang a virtual sock on the door or something. Well, pretty soon that won’t be a problem with the new ‘do not disturb’ feature that’s coming to Xbox One.
Quiet, pleaseTurning this feature on will allow people to use their Xbox and stay signed in online without having to worry about being annoyed by messages, party invites and other notifications that they just don’t care about. At that moment, anyway.
The feature is coming to Xbox Insider members as of now and will be coming to all other users in the near future. It's worth noting that PS4 owners already have an "appear offline" option, offering similar results.
There are a few other changes expected to roll out to Xbox One users alongside this, including some new additions to the Guide menu relating to your achievements and the games you’re playing.
It’ll also soon be possible to set up an automatic shut down time range, which is pretty great if you tend to leave your console running when you leave the home and walk around for a whole day with fire risk fears hanging over your head.
Looking for some Xbox One games to enjoy in silence? These are the best
Games with Gold January 2018: these are the free games you can get this month
One of the main benefits of being an Xbox Live Gold subscriber is definitely the fact that each month you get access to a range of free games across the Xbox One and Xbox 360 platforms. If you’re an Xbox One owner, backwards compatibility means you get to take advantage of the Xbox 360 titles too.
This is a great way to try games you might not otherwise have played, whether because they're indie titles that slip under your radar or simply because you don’t have the funds to buy several games a month.
Even if you don’t have the console memory or the time to spare right now, we’d say it’s always worth claiming them every month anyway as you’ll then have free access to them for as long as you have an active Xbox Live account.
Since this is a monthly event, we’ve decided to create a one-stop shop where you’ll be able to find the newest free games, as well as scroll back and see which games were featured in previous months. That way you’ll know whether it’s worth holding out for a game to appear in an upcoming Games with Gold month or if it's already been offered.
So without further ado, here are the free Xbox Live games in North America, Europe, and Australia for January 20178.
Don't forget some of the December titles are still available too!
January 2018 Xbox OneThe Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III – January 1 to January 31 (usually £11.99 / $14.99/ AU $19.95)
The third and final chapter in a series, this is an Xbox One X Enhanced title that will take players to a ruined Borgovia. Taking on a cult predicting the end of the world and some terrifying beasts players will find more weapons and an improved leveling system.
Zombi – January 16 to February 15 (usually £14.99/ $19.99/ AU $29.95)
Zombies are kind of old hat now, aren't they. But what if they were wearing one of those tall hats from the traditional British guard uniform? No? Well, this is a zombie adventure set in London and it's up to you to try and make it out alive with all your possessions.
Tomb Raider Underworld – January 1 to January 15 (usually £14.99/ $19.99/ AU $29.95)
Come on, you know Lara. In this adventure you'll be diving, fighting, leaping and forward rolling on an adventure to locate Thor's Hammer and save the world. It's a good 'un.
Army of Two – January 16 to January 31 (usually £14.99/ $14.99/ AU $19.95)
A co-op third-person shooter that allows you to shoot out with your best friend or with that handy AI. Earn money on missions around the world and spend it on improving your weapons and kit.
December 2017 Xbox OneBack to the Future: The Game - December 16 to January 15 (usually £19.99/$19.99/ AU $33.45)
Telltale Games have been popular choices for Games with Gold in recent months and Back to the Future is the latest addition. This is the 30th anniversary edition of the game which means that alongside all story and choice driven narrative you'll have access to behind the scenes videos and interviews.
Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide - December 1 to December 31 (usually £31.99/$39.99/ AU $69.95)
Looking for an addictive first-person co-op shooter set in a fantasy universe? Look no further than this surprisingly addictive title. The story revolves around the impending end of the world and you and three friends must team up to push an invading army from your city. It's worth noting this game runs in native 4K on the Xbox One X so this is a great opportunity if you've purchased the new console.
Child of Eden - December 1 to December 15 (usually £11.99/$29.99/AU $19.95)
From the mind behind Rez, Child of Eden is a rhythm action game. It actually acts as a prequel to Rez, focusing scientists efforts to turn the memories of the first person to be born in space into a living entity in the Earth's locus of knowledge - Eden. Like Rez, players must shoot at various objects which come on screen and create a musical sound when they're destroyed.
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death - December 16 to December 31 (usually £9.99/$14.99/ AU $14.95)
Quite different from Child of Eden, this is a hack and slash action adventure starring smokejumper Marlow Briggs, who comes back from the brink of death to save his codex-deciphering girlfriend Eva from the clutches of an evil archaeologist Heng Long.
Tales from the Borderlands – November 16 to December 15 (usually $14.99/ £11.99/ AU $19.95)
Trackmania Turbo – November 1 to November 30 (usually $39.99/ £29.99/ AU $59.95)
NiGHTS into Dreams – November 1 to November 15 (usually $9.99/ £6.75/ AU $9.95)
Deadfall Adventures – November 16 to November 30 (usually $39.99/ £34.99/ AU $69.95)
October 2017 Xbox OneGone Home – October 1 to 31 (usually $19.99 / £15.99/ AU $26.95)
The Turing Test – October 16 to November 15 (usually $19.99 / £14.99 / AU $29.95)
Rayman 3 HD – October 1 to 15 (usually $9.99/ £6.75/ AU $9.95)
Medal of Honor: Airborne – October 16 to 31 (usually $19.99/ £14.99/ AU$19.95)
September 2017 Xbox OneForza Motorsport 5: Racing Game of the Year Edition – September 1 to 30 (usually $39.99 / £23.99/ AU $69.95)
Oxenfree – September 16 to October 15 (usually $19.99 / £15.99 / AU $26.95)
Hydro Thunder Hurricane – September 1 to 15 (usually $9.99/ £7.69/ AU $12.29)
Battlefield 3 – September 16 to 30 (usually $19.99/ £14.99/ AU $29.95)
August 2017 Xbox OneSlime Rancher – August 1 to August 31(usually £15.99/ $19.99/ AU $26.95)
Trials Fusion – August 16 to September 15 (usually £15.99/ $19.99/ AU $29.95)
Bayonetta – August 1 to August 15 (usually £14.99/ $19.99/ AU $29.95)
Red Faction: Armageddon – August 16 to August 31 (usually £24.99/ $29.99/ AU $49.95)
July 2017 Xbox OneGrow Up – Available July 1 to July 30 (usually $9.99/ £7.99/ AU $14.95)
Runbow – Available July 16 to August 15
Xbox 360Kane & Lynch 2 – Available July 1 to July 15 (usually $14.99/ £11.99/ AU $19.95)
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game – Available July 16 to July 31(usually $19.99/ £8.99/ AU $29.95)
SpeedRunners - Available June 1 to June 30
Watch Dogs - Available June 26 to July 15 (usually $29.99/ £23.99/ AU$39.95)
Xbox 360Assassin's Creed III - Available June 1 to June 15 (usually $19.99/ £8.99/ AU$14.95)
Dragon Age: Origins - Available June 16 to June 30 (usually $14.99/ £14.99/ AU$19.95)
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris – Available May 16 to June 15 (usually $19.99/ £14.99/ AU $26.95)
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director's Cut – Available May 1 to May 31 (usually $14.99/ £11.99 / listed as Coming Soon on Australian store)
Xbox 360
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II – Available May 1 to May 15 (usually $19.99 / £11.99/ AU $29.95)
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga – Available May 16 to May 31 (usually $19.99/ £11.99/ AU $29.95)
April 2017 Xbox OneRyse: Son of Rome – Available April 1 to April 30 (currently only available as part of a bundle in US and AU for ($29.99/ AU $69.95)
The Walking Dead: Season Two – Available April 16 to May 15 (usually £19.99/ $24.99/ AU $33.45)
Darksiders – Available April 1 to April 15 (usually £14.99/ $19.99/ AU$29.95)
Assassin's Creed: Revelations – Available April 16 to April 30 (usually £8.99/ $19.99/ AU $9.95)
March 2017 Xbox OneLayers of Fear – Available 01/03 to 31/03 (usually £15.99/ $19.99/ AU $26.95
Evolve: Ultimate Edition – Available 16/03 to 15/04 (usually £34.99/ $49.99/ AU $54.95)
Xbox 360Borderlands 2 – Available 01/03 to 15/03 (Usually £19.99/ $19.99/ AU $49.95)
Heavy Weapon – Available 16/03 to 31/03 (usually £7.99/ $9.99/ AU $14.95)
February 2017 Xbox OneLovers in a Dangerous Spacetime – Available 01/02 to 28/02 (usually £11.99/ $14.99/ AU$19.95)
Project Cars Digital Edition – Available 16/02 to 15/03 (usually £23.99/ $29.99/ AU$39.95)
Xbox 360Monkey Island 2: Special Edition – Available 01/02 to 15/02 (usually £6.75/ $9.99/ AU$9.95)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – Available 16/02 to 28/02 (usually £11.99/ $19.99/ AU$19.95)
Best iPad apps 2018: download these now
It's the apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are higher quality apps available on the App Store for the iPad than any other tablet. So which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?
Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to. So read on for our selection of the best iPad apps - the definitive list of what applications you need to download for your iPad now.
Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.If you are looking for games, then head over to Best iPad games - where we showcase the greatest games around for your iOS device. Or if you're using an iPhone X or iPhone 8 head over to our best iPhone apps list. And if you're a professional, you may want to head straight to our top business apps.
New: MindNode 5 (free + $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99 IAP)
MindNode 5 is a mind-mapping app. That might sound dull, given that such tools are associated with boring business meetings that involve massive whiteboards... and the hope the ground will swallow you up.
But MindNode 5 is different. It’s sleek and fun to use as you smash out ideas. You can start with a Quick Entry list, which the app then turns into a mind map; or you can manually create and position nodes. For more context, it’s possible to add photos, stickers, and notes to your maps. And for when you do have to get properly businesslike, there’s a vertical layout for organizational charts.
Whatever you’re working on, MindNode 5 is far better than paper equivalents – it’s flexible, sharable, and always comprehensible.
Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!
Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.
You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.
But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, most recently dropping as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.
Zipped largely fixes a major shortcoming of the iOS Files app for iPad – its inability to deal with ZIP archives. The default Files app merely lets you peek inside a ZIP and extract items one at a time, but Zipped is far more capable.
If you need to unpack an archive, that can be done with a couple of taps. The files within are then saved to a user-defined location – either as they are, or within a named folder.
Creating archives is simple, too, and works via drag and drop in Split View or – an often better option – Slide Over. The one snag is Zipped only recognizes specific file formats, although the most common are covered.
Still, the low price makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it to quickly get at files within ZIPs, rather than laboriously extracting them one by one.
Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.
In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.
The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.
Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.
In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.
It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.
Percolator is a photo filter app for ‘brewing’ circular mosaics using a custom recipe. The coffee theme is fanciful, but it is admittedly lovely to see your photo explode into a bunch of bubbles that disappear and then reform when major changes are made to the ‘grind’ (circle size and effect) settings.
Mostly, though, we were impressed by Percolator because its effects range from the bizarre to the beautiful. Some have a kind of classical feel, a few look like high-end art posters, and with careful tweaking of ‘brew’ (pattern and blend) and ‘serve’ (effect and texture) settings, you can even approximate painterly effects.
It’s a pity you can’t save your own custom presets, although the app does at least offer some examples to get you started. For the most part, though, Percolator’s a tasty treat.
Dropped is an app designed to take advantage of the drag and drop feature that made its debut in iOS 11. It’s designed as a temporary resting point – commonly referred to in computing terminology as a ‘shelf’ – for various kinds of data, including URLs, photos, videos, text, emails, notes, and PDFs.
The idea is you can dump a bunch of things on Dropped, and figure out what you want to do with them later. Helpfully, the app automatically organizes items into categories (media; text; URLs; files), although you can also scroll through your entire list in the Recents tab.
Search and rename functionality would be helpful, but otherwise Dropped is a very useful app to have if you’re often moving content around on your iPad. It’s usable, straightforward, and works especially well as a Slide Over app.
Prompts is a writing tool designed for anyone having a hard time getting started. Create a new document and the app draws from over 300,000 unique starting lines and prompts. If you’re not keen on what it provides, tap refresh until you get something suitably inspirational.
As you’re typing away, the app then leaves you alone, but you can at any point tap the prompts icon to get a further helping hand. Often, the suggestions are rather obvious, but that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful.
The app also includes a tracking and statistics system, to try and get you writing regularly. On that basis, it’s a useful training aid to keep your writing ‘muscles’ fit and healthy, even if you naturally gravitate towards Scrivener and iA Writer when it’s time to get down to serious writing.
Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.
The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.
Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.
But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.
Kaleidoscope is a resolutely production-focused app, designed to take advantage of new functionality found in iOS 11 on modern iPads.
The app’s used to quickly compare the contents of files, images, and folders. It makes great use of drag and drop from Apple’s Files app, and uses colored overlays to clearly outline the differences between two text documents or whatever’s lurking inside a pair of folders.
When comparing images, there are various views (such as a basic A/B switch), but Kaleidoscope’s interpretation of a wipe slider is awkward, having two handles that must be separately positioned. And even with text, there’s one shortcoming, in the iOS app lacking the ‘text merge’ capabilities of its macOS cousin.
Still, if you routinely find yourself juggling folders or text documents, Kaleidoscope may prove an essential part of your iOS toolkit.
SoundForest is a creative sound toy that mashes up minimalist animal stickers and song-making.
Across four environments, you drag stickers from a strip at the bottom of the screen onto your canvas. Each one – be it animal, plant, or landmark – makes a sound that rarely recalls reality. A mandrill, for example, blasts forth a raucous slap bass. It’s colorful, entertaining, and encourages discovery and experimentation.
Once you’ve dotted your stickers about, you can fire up your composition. The sun or moon acts as a playback head, and your stickers animate as your oddball musical masterpiece blasts forth.
Pros may be frustrated by the app’s lack of export functionality, but really SoundForest is more for the masses than them – an approachable, fun way to make a noisy music loop, using a vibrant, unique interface.
Toca Life: Farm is an ambitious and rich exploratory title for kids, inviting them to manage a farm and fashion their own stories.
There are four locations: barn, house, field, and store. Each of them is packed full of elements to interact with. For youngsters, there’s plenty of fun to be had just poking around, making noises, and dragging colorful characters about.
Toca Life: Farm encourages older kids to think a little more. They can grow their own ingredients, which can subsequently be made into food. Animals can be fed and cared for, whereupon it’s possible to reap the rewards of eggs from chickens and milk from cows.
There’s no stress - this title is all about moving at your own pace. Importantly, it also eschews advertising and IAP, ensuring your little farmer can’t accidentally spend real-world cash on virtual hay bales.
Procreate is a powerful, feature-rich digital painting and sketching tool. You immediately get a taste for what’s possible by exploring the example art; and the more you poke around, the more you realize the potential on offer.
Procreate isn’t aimed solely at pros, though. Sure, they’ll love its advanced features – a perspective grid; custom brushes; layer masking; curves. The interface, though, is approachable enough for anyone. The thin strip across the top enables fast access to tool and brush menus; at the side is a bar for quickly adjusting your brush’s size and opacity.
The brush selection is immense, whether you’re into abstract doodling with strange textures, digital takes on traditional media, or something fantastical by way of brushes that paint with ‘light’ atop your creation.
In short: just buy this app, because it’s terrific.
Chambers Thesaurus is a thesaurus for your iPad. You might argue that doesn’t sound like the most exciting app in the world – and you’d be right. But if you do any writing on your iPad, it’s pretty much essential.
On macOS, Apple bundles a thesaurus with its Dictionary app, but this is absent on iOS, which merely attempts to correct spellings. Chambers’ offering therefore fills a void – and it does so in a straightforward, unassuming, highly usable manner.
Entries are clearly laid out, and you get a handy search sidebar in landscape. Pages can be bookmarked, and shared, or sent to equally impressive sister app Chambers Dictionary. If you fancy both, grab the bundle to save a few bucks.
Tayasui Memopad is a drawing tool for iPad that places an emphasis on speed. Its no-nonsense approach gives you a blank canvas on which to scribble, and a small but pleasingly diverse set of tools.
You get the usual brushes and pencils, but also more imaginative fare: blocky ‘pixel’ fingerprinting, and a slightly splodgy India ink pen – the latter being part of the one-off IAP pack. There are no layers or objects – everything you add is burned into the page (although you of course get an undo).
But it’s with image management that Tayasui Memopad really shows its stuff: your images are automatically sent to Photos, and your current canvas is copied to the clipboard when you exit the app, ready for pasting elsewhere.
As a drawing app, you might argue Tayasui Memopad is ultimately quite ordinary – if usable; but as a drawing app designed for efficiency, it excels where it counts.
MaxCurve is a professional-quality photo editor, designed for people who want plenty of control over the images they’re working on. Much of the app is based around curves you typically find in high-end editors such as Photoshop.
Adjusting curves is pleasingly tactile, enabling you to make dramatic or subtle adjustments to colors and exposure settings with ease. It makes many of MaxCurve’s iPad contemporaries seem comparatively crude. Smartly, edits are stored as virtual layers, which can be toggled, and there are also tools for cropping and vignettes.
The app feels at home on iPad, which provides enough space to see your photo and tools, without the latter obscuring the former. MaxCurve could probably do with some quick-fix solutions for things like exposure, but then perhaps that’s missing the point of an app more about careful, considered edits rather than speed.
The Brainstormer is designed to spark ideas when you’re working on a story. In its default state, it’s something of a visual oddity, with three wheels that you spin for a random set-up of plot/conflict, theme/setting, and subject/location. Individual wheels can be locked, and you can swap the wheels for a ‘slot machine’ interface if you prefer.
Although that might seem a bit gimmicky, The Brainstormer can be genuinely useful if you need a little nudge to get going. Also, the app is extensible, vastly broadening its scope. You can buy additional wheels via IAP, such as creature and world builders.
You can also directly edit existing wheels, or create your own from scratch. When you’re fresh out of ideas, a couple of bucks for endless new ones could be a bargain buy that sends you on your way to a best-seller.
Textastic is a text editor geared towards markup and coding. It’s an app that takes a no-nonsense approach – very evident the second you sit before its tasteful, minimal interface.
But that doesn’t mean the app’s heavily stripped back. As you work with Textastic, you realize it’s been cleverly optimized to speed your work along. The custom keyboard row is superb, providing fast access to a slew of handy characters.
Not keen on the way code is presented? Quickly flip to the settings, and tweak the fonts or choose an entirely new theme.
As ever, there are limitations to an iPad editor of this kind, most notably local previews when coding web pages. On that basis, you’re probably not going to create a site from scratch with Textastic.
But with its smart editor, useful settings, Split View support, and a built-in file-transfer system, it’s ideal for making quick changes or typing up Markdown notes when on the move – or on the sofa.
Thinkrolls Kings & Queens is a set of logic and physics tests for children disguised as a game.
Like other Thinkrolls titles, it involves rotund protagonists working their way to the bottom of a series of blocky towers. Their way is regularly barred by various elements that must be successfully manipulated to fashion a way onward.
For example, gears and racks might need combining to create a conveyor belt, or a mirror shifted to reflect light and remove a ghost.
It’s all clever stuff, and also broadly stress-free. There are no time limits at all, and multiple profiles can be set up to cater for several kids on a single device.
And although Kings & Queens is intended for kids between five and eight years old, the interface and design is such that younger children should be able to delve into the adventure, too – albeit perhaps with supervision to initially help them understand the trickier challenges.
Plotagraph+ is a photo editor designed to make snaps more animated. The results are essentially cinemagraphs – stills with subtle looping animations, such as a flowing river within a landscape, or waving hair in an otherwise stationary portrait. With Plotagraph+, though, you add movement to any existing single image, rather than working from a series of stills or a video.
After you load a photo, you drag ‘animation’ arrows across areas you’d like to move, and use masks or anchor points to define sections that should remain stationary. Speed and crop tools add a modicum of further control. It’s all very straightforward.
The effect is specialized, mind, and only works well with certain images. You won’t, for example, find Plotagraph+ successfully animate a human face. But it works wonders on flowing elements (smoke; clouds; water; hair), and can with care be used to craft visually arresting madness based around shots of architecture.
CARROT Weather is a weather app helmed by a HAL-like artificial intelligence that hates humans. As you check whether it’ll be sunny at the weekend, or if you’ll be caught in a deluge should you venture outside, CARROT will helpfully call you a ‘meatbag’ and pepper its forecasts with snark.
That probably sounds like a throwaway gimmick, but it’s actually a lot of fun – adding color and personality to a kind of app usually devoid of both. Most importantly, though, CARROT Weather is a really good weather app.
The forecasts are clearly displayed, the interface is superb, and the Today view widget is one of the best around. There’s even an amusing mini-game for finding ‘collectable’ hidden locations.
There are some downsides: the rainfall/cloud maps are weak, and there are no notifications. But if you’re bored of the straight-laced, dull competition, and fancy a weather app that’s informative and entertaining, CARROT Weather’s well worth the outlay.
Waterlogue is all about transforming photos – or any other picture you care to load – into luminous watercolors. You shoot a photo or open one already on your iPad, and then choose from one of 14 pre-set styles. Waterlogue will then rapidly ‘paint’ your photo in a manner that looks pleasingly authentic.
Although the app doesn’t offer the level of control (nor the endless playback) of Oilist, you do get a few settings. Brush size, lightness, and borders can be amended, each change providing a thumbnail preview you can tap to have Waterlogue repaint your image.
Export size is reasonable (at 250dpi, you’d get roughly an 8 x 6-inch/21 x 16cm print), and the app as a whole is approachable enough for everyone, while being just about authentic enough to appeal even to those who dabble in real paint.
Axel Scheffler’s Flip Flap Safari is an entertaining digital take on those children’s games where you create weird and wonderful (and occasionally terrifying) creatures by combining different body parts. Here, you get tops and bottoms to swipe between, in order to construct the likes of a ‘zeboceros’ or ‘crocingo’.
Each animal is nicely illustrated and comes with two verses of text, which the app can optionally read aloud. Also, note you don’t have to create strange new animals – you can instead match halves to make normal ones.
Perfect for when your resident tiny person is getting a bit perplexed at seeing a grinning elephant propped up by a spindly pair of flamingo legs.
With Hyp, you’re essentially in digital lava lamp territory. Drag about your iPad’s display, and you’re treated to an ethereal – if somewhat neon – light show that mutates and evolves as you experiment. Ramp up the volume and a soothing responsive soundtrack plays, sucking you further into the chill-out zone.
For the outlay, that alone would do the job, but double-tap and Hyp offers more. You can snap a shot of the current pattern, adjust the speed and complexity of the animation, or prod a randomizer to shake up what you’re seeing and hearing.
We’d love to see an autoplay option too, so Hyp could be played indefinitely with the iPad in a stand; otherwise, this is a simple, smart, engaging slice of digital ambience.
Affinity Photo is the kind of app that should extinguish any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability as a platform for creative professionals. In essence, the app brings the entirety of Serif’s desktop Photoshop rival (also called Affinity Photo) to Apple’s tablet, and carefully reimagines the interface for touch.
You’ll need at least an iPad Air 2 to run the app, but an iPad Pro for best performance. Then also armed with a digit and/or Apple Pencil, you can delve into a huge range of features for pro-level image editing, creation and retouching.
The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding in real-time as you work on adjustments, and make for a surprisingly tactile editing experience. But really pretty much everything’s great here for anyone who wants properly high-end photo editing on their iPad.
Although Addy doesn’t really offer anything new, this is an app that does an awful lot right. It manages to make adding text to images fun, along with providing a no-nonsense interface that marries usability and power.
Load a photo and you can add art, text, and effects, before sharing it. ‘Art’ comprises slogans, shapes, and clip art. This can be recolored and resized, and you can add shadows and adjust opacity. Text is similarly easily added, and there are straightforward spacing and alignment options for tidying typography.
Finally, the effects comprise filters and overlays, the latter being eye-catching but limited in terms of application (you can adjust opacity but not, say, rotation). Still, as a package, Addy’s easy to love, given the speed at which you can work and the quality of the end result.
If you’re only occasionally adding text to an image you might be fine with a free app, but the ease of use and quality results make Addy worth a fiver for everyone else.
There are full-on screenwriting tools for iPad, such as Final Draft, but Untitled is more like a smart notepad – an app for a first draft until you feel ready for, um, Final Draft.
You jot down ideas, and don’t worry about formatting – because the app deals with that. In some cases, it does so automatically – write “Inside TechRadar HQ at midday” and Untitled will convert it to “INT: TECHRADAR HQ – MIDDAY” in the full preview (which can be exported to PDF or HTML).
For dialogue, place the character’s name above whatever they’re saying and Untitled correctly lays everything out.
Some other formatting needs you to remember the odd character - ‘>’ before a transition and ‘.’ before a shot. But that’s not too heavy on the brain, leaving you plenty of headspace to craft your Hollywood breakthrough.
On the Mac, PDF Expert 6 is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.
You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.
As a reader, PDF Expert 6 fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.
Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.
With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it’s amusing to see retro-style pixel art stubbornly clinging on.
But chunky pixels are a pleasing aesthetic, evoking nostalgia, and you know thought’s gone into the placement of every dot. Pixaki is an iPad pixel art ‘studio’, ideal for illustrators, games designers, and animators.
At its most minimal, the interface shows your canvas and some tool icons: pencil; eraser; fill; shapes; select; color picker. But there are also slide-in panels for layers/palettes, and the frame-based animation system.
Bar a slightly awkward selection/move process, workflow is sleek and efficient (not least with the superb fill tool, which optionally works non-contiguously across multiple layers), and the app has robust, flexible import and export options.
Perhaps most importantly, Pixaki’s just really nice to use – more so than crafting similar art on a PC or Mac, and although pricey it’s worth the money for anyone serious about pixel art.
The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.
The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.
Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.
There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.
The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.
The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.
First impressions of Oilist might lead you to think it’s yet another filter app. And to some extent it is, given that Oilist enables you to feed it a photo and end up with something resembling an oil painting.
However, Oilist also has much in common with generative creativity apps, since it keeps painting over and over, to mesmerizing effect. Additionally, it’s not an app where you select a preset and then sit back and wait – instead, while Oilist is painting, you can adjust settings, and even splatter the virtual canvas with ‘chaos’ paint if the mood takes you.
This is all entertaining in and of itself, but Oilist also has practical benefits – at any point, you can snap the in-progress painting, and the resulting high-res image can be exported for sharing online or even printing on a canvas.
There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3, you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.
Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.
Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.
With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.
Young children love wooden puzzles, where you plug a load of letters into letter-shaped holes (with a little luck, ones that actually fit). The thing is, those puzzles never change, whereas Endless Alphabet has over a hundred words to play with.
On selecting a word, a horde of colorful monsters sprints across the screen, scattering the letters, which must then be dragged back into place. As you do so, the letters entertainingly grumble and animate. Once the entire word’s complete, a short cut-scene plays to explain what it means.
From start to finish, Endless Alphabet is an excellent and joyful production. The interface is intuitive enough for young toddlers to grasp, and the app’s tactile nature works wonderfully on the iPad’s large display.
The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.
Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.
And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift, for half the outlay.
Generally speaking, music apps echo real-world instruments, as evidenced by the piano keyboards found in the likes of GarageBand. KRFT is different – along with creating loops and riffs (either by bashing out a tune on a grid of pads, or tapping out notes on a piano roll), you also create the play surface itself.
Designing your instrument in KRFT is all based around shapes and icons – diamonds trigger loops, dials adjust sound properties, and squares can be set to trigger several loops at once.
Admittedly, staring at a blank canvas can intimidate, because you must consider composition and instrument construction as one. But KRFT bundles several inspirational demos to show what it can do – and they’re so much fun they might be worth the entry fee on their own.
Billing itself as a kind of 3D sketchbook, isolad is designed for people who want to quickly draw isometric artwork. Its toolset is simple – you get a line tool for connecting magnetic dots, a shape fill tool, undo, panning and zooming.
That might sound reductive, but isolad’s straightforward nature means anyone can have a crack at doodling the next Monument Valley, and you end up focusing more on what you’re creating rather than being deluged by a load of tools you’ll never use.
Future updates promise the addition of selections and layers, but for now isolad’s elegant simplicity is enough to make it a winning app.
The idea behind Printed is to transform your photos into vintage printed art. You load a photo (or choose from one of the demo images), press a filter, and are suddenly faced with something that could have fallen out of a 50-year-old book, or been posted on a wall many decades ago.
But Printed is more than a tap-and-forget filter app: beyond the filter selection are tools for adjusting dot pitch, brightness, borders, and color saturation.
There are some shortcomings: changes to settings are initially displayed as a thumbnail you tap to approve, which only then gets rendered at full-size (whereupon it may look different from how you thought it would); and landscape orientation appears to have been an afterthought.
But on a large iPad display, the actual filters – which are excellent – are shown off to their fullest, in all their retro dotty glory.
If you’re the kind of person who likes spinning virtual decks, you’ll tell right away with djay Pro that you have in your hands something special. On the iPad – and especially on an iPad Pro – the app has room to breathe, lining up all kinds of features for being creative when playing other people’s music.
You get four-deck mixing, a sampler, varied waveform layouts, and useful DJ tools like cue points and beat-matching. There are also 70 keyboard shortcuts for quickly getting at important features, such as matching keys and adjusting levels.
For a newcomer, it’s perhaps overkill, and the similarly impressive djay 2 is cheaper. But if you’ve got the cash, djay Pro is a best-in-class app suitable for everyone – right up to jobbing DJs.
Even iPads with the largest amount of storage can’t cope with a great deal of on-board video. Infuse Pro is designed to access your collection, without any of it needing to be on your device.
The app connects to local drives and cloud services, and plays a wide range of file types, including MOV, MKV and VIDEO_TS. If the files are named sensibly, Infuse downloads cover art and can optionally grab soft subtitles. The interface throughout is superb.
On iPad, you also get full support for Split View and picture-in-picture, so you can pretend to work while watching your favorite shows. And if you continue on another device – this universal app is compatible with iPhone and Apple TV – cloud sync lets you pick up where you left off.
Reasoning that sketchbooks aren’t complicated, and so nor should your iPad be, Linea offers a friendly approach to digital sketching. The main interface puts all of the app’s tools within easy reach – colors on the left, and layers and brushes on the right. Scribble nearby and they get out of the way, or you can invoke full-screen with a tap.
There’s Pencil support, but no pressure sensing by other means. Also, although some of the pens offer blend modes, the end result still looks quite digital rather than realistic. Even so, Linea’s straightforwardness and smart design tends to make it a joy to use, even if the app lacks the range of some of its contemporaries.
If you find iMovie isn’t quite doing it for you from a video editing standpoint, take a look at LumaFusion. This multitrack editor is designed with the more demanding user in mind, and is packed full of features to keep you editing at your iPad rather than nipping to a Mac or PC.
The main timeline provides you with three tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics, and you get another three audio tracks for complex audio mixes involving narration and sound effects. Should you wish to take things further, LumaFusion includes a slew of effects and clip manipulation tools seemingly brought over from the developer’s own – and similarly impressive – LumaFX.
Occasionally, the app perhaps lacks some of the elegance iMovie enjoys, and LumaFusion is certainly a more involved product than Apple’s. But if you want fully-fledged video editing on your iPad, it’s hard to think of a better option.
On iPhone, Hipstamatic lets you switch between a virtual retro camera and a sleek modern camera app. On iPad, it all goes a bit weird, with the former option giving you a camera floating in space, and the latter making you wonder why you’d use a tablet for taking snaps.
But Hipstamatic nonetheless gets a recommendation on the basis of other things it does. Load an image from your Camera Roll, and you can delve into Hipstamatic’s editor. If you’re in a hurry, select a predefined style – Vintage; Cinematic; Blogger – and export.
Should you fancy a bit more fine-tuning, you can experiment with lenses, film, and flashes. And plenty of other adjustments are available, too, such as cropping, vignettes, curves, and a really nice depth of field effect.
Wikipedia is, in reality, a massive web of articles, but when browsing, it looks more like a sea of links. WikiLinks rethinks exploring Wikipedia through the use of spider diagrams, providing a clever visual overview of the relationship between subjects.
On iPhone, you switch between views, but the app makes use of the iPad’s larger display by splitting it in two. On the left is your mind map, which grows as you tap on new articles. On the right is your current selection to peruse.
As a reader, WikiLinks is less remarkable – article sections irritatingly begin life collapsed, and it all feels a bit cluttered. But when using Wikipedia for research, no other app is so helpful in enabling you to see the links between the site’s many pages.
If your iPad’s sitting around doing nothing while you work on a Mac or PC, Duet Display can turn it into a handy second screen for your desktop or notebook.
You fire up the app on your iPad and a companion app on your computer, and connect the two devices using a cable – like it’s 2005 or something. Minimalist fetishists might grumble, but a wired connection means there’s almost no lag – even when using Duet Display’s highest detail settings and frame rates.
With macOS Sierra, you also get one extra goodie: a virtual Touch Bar. So you needn’t splash out on a brand-new MacBook Pro to check out Apple’s latest interface innovation – you can use Duet Display instead.
Carl Burton’s Islands: Non-Places is listed in the App Store as a game, but don’t believe a word of it. Really, this ten-scene artistic endeavor is a surreal, mesmerizing semi-interactive animated film.
Each ‘non-place’ is somewhere you’d usually ignore or stay only on a very temporary basis, but here, the mundane is subverted through unusual and unexpected juxtapositions.
You’ll find yourself staring at a luggage carousel, before the bags begin a lazy Mexican wave. Elsewhere, palm trees ride mall escalators, while a run-of-the-mill seating area is suddenly flooded, a warning siren slicing its way through inane background chatter.
The result is frequently disorientating, but Islands also has the capacity to surprise, and is often oddly beautiful.
There are plenty of apps out there that attempt to transform images into something that might once have appeared on the screen of an ancient piece of computer hardware, but none match Retrospecs.
You either take a photo or load an image from your iPad and then select a preset. You get everything from the chunky character-oriented Commodore PET, through to relatively powerful fare such as the detailed 16-bit graphics of the SNES and Atari ST.
From an authenticity standpoint, Retrospecs wins out, but the app also affords plenty of tweaking potential. You can switch modes for those machines that offered multiple resolutions, choose alternate dither patterns, and adjust contrast, vibrancy, and other settings. Best of all, you can use any of the existing presets as the basis for your own unique slice of retro-filter joy.
It’s concert time for the motley crew of Toca Band, in this toy designed to help kids explore music creatively. (And, um, adults who might get sucked in a bit.)
It’s all very simple: drag weird cartoon characters (each of which plays their own instrument) to spots on the stage, and they automatically jam along with the only song that Toca Band appears to know. Lob a musician at the star and they start a unique solo improv with a modicum of user control.
Toca Band is a very sweet app, which even toddlers should be able to grasp. A word of warning, though: that Toca Band riff will quickly become an earworm you’ll be hard pressed to remove.
iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.
The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.
Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.
Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.
1972’s ARP Odyssey was a classic of the era, and reborn in 2015 with a smart new design and modern connectors. Now, the duophonic synth is on iPad and, if anything, the digital incarnation beats the hardware original.
With ARP ODYSSEi, you still get the many synthesis controls of the real-world kit, allowing for a huge diversity of sound. The sliders are a mite fiddly, but any frustration is mitigated by the wealth of presets and ability to save your own.
The best bit, though, is the programmable arpeggiator, which transforms sounds into rich, exciting loops. Sadly, the feature is omitted from ODYSSEi’s Korg Gadget incarnation, but as a standalone synth for iPad, this one’s hard to beat.
We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.
Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.
Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".
Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.
Music-creation apps can overwhelm, even when trying to be friendly. Lily neatly takes a rather more playful – if slightly twee – stab at having you make tunes.
You start by selecting a color and shape. The former dictates an instrument and the latter the number of leaves on your lily. Tap + to open the flower, and then the flower itself to access a pulsating playback head.
You then tap spaces to lay down notes, which can be shifted entire octaves by prodding adjacent vertical lines. Repeat the process with more lilies and you'll soon have an oddly delicate cacophony serenading your ears.
Lily's a very sweet app. It's perhaps a touch too abstract to be as immediate as it wants to be, but all becomes clear with a little play. We do wish songs could be saved (although you can export a recording) – the lives of these lilies are all too fleeting.
So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.
The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.
And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.
There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.
For free, Ferrite Recording Studio provides the means to record the odd bit of audio, bookmark important bits, and mash together a few such recordings into something resembling a podcast. But pay the $19.99/£14.99 IAP and this app gives desktop podcast-creation products a run for their money.
Using the smartly designed interface, you can import clips and sounds from various sources, craft multi-track edits that make full use of slicing, fading, ducking, and silence stripping, and add professional effects to give vocals that bit of extra punch.
On an iPhone, this is an impressive app, but on iPad, the extra screen space you get makes for significantly faster editing of your audio and a far superior user experience compared to the cramped screen.
Rather than be all things to all people, Zen Brush 2 is a painting app with a sense of focus, emulating the feel of an East Asian ink brush. It's therefore suited to flowing, semi-abstract artistic effort with your finger to offer a digital take on calligraphy.
On iPhone’s teeny screen this app feels a little redundant, but it comes alive on the iPad's larger display, especially if you have a stylus. The selection of tools is intentionally limited to keep you focused, but you can still swap between a red and black brush, experiment with alternate brush sizes or dryness values and swap out the underlying canvas.
There is a sense of give and take about Zen Brush 2's level of realism: strokes are applied wonderfully, but inks don't interact with each other nor the paper beneath. Still, the strong sense of character gives artwork created in Zen Brush 2 a unique feel and it's a relaxing, almost meditative, app to spend time with.
There are loads of great painting apps for illustrators and artists, but Amaziograph tries something a bit different, introducing you to a world of tessellation and symmetries. This makes for an app that has plenty of potential for professional use, but also one that anyone can enjoy.
To begin, you select a style. The simplest is a split-screen mirror, but there are also kaleidoscope-like options, and those that create tiled, repeating patterns. It's then a question of scribbling on the canvas, and watching a pattern form before your eyes.
The toolset is quite basic (with a bafflingly overthought color palette selector), but Amaziograph chalks up a big win when it comes to flexibility.
At any point, you can adjust the settings of the current grid, or choose a different symmetry/tessellation type. This propels the app far beyond 'toy' territory, opening up avenues for creativity regardless of your level of artistic prowess.
As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.
As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.
But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.
Whether you need a few minutes of peace or help to fall asleep after hours of stress, Flowing offers meditative splashy reflection. Choose from six scenes, plonk headphones on and then just sit and listen to gorgeous 3D audio recordings of streams, waterfalls and rivers.
Should you feel the need, noodle about with the parallax photo - although that’s frankly the least interesting bit of the app.
There is room for screen interaction though - the slider button gives you access to a mixer, to trigger ambient soundtracks by composer David Bawiec, and add birdsong and rain; while the Flowing icon houses guided meditations by Lua Lisa.
There’s also a timer, so you can fall asleep to a gently meandering brook without it then burbling away all night. In all, even if you don’t make use of every feature, Flowing is an effective, polished relaxation aid.
Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.
It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.
There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.
Scanners for iPad have come a long way from their roots as souped-up camera apps, and Scanbot 6 is making a play to be the only one on your iPad - by doing way more than just scanning.
The basics are ably dealt with - the app automatically locates documents in front of your iPad’s camera (assuming there’s contrast with the desk underneath), and you can crop, rotate, color-adjust, and save the result.
Buy the Pro IAP, though, and Scanbot becomes far more capable. It’ll run OCR text recognition on any document, and attempt (with a reasonable degree of success) to extract details for single-tap ’actions’, such as triggering a phone call or visiting a website, based on what it finds.
There are annotation and PDF signing tools, and the means to reorder pages in multi-page documents. So rather than being a tap-and-done scanner, this app keeps helping once the scans are done, making it an essential purchase for the office-oriented. (We do miss the smiling robot icon, though – the new one is so dull.)
For the majority of iPad users, Apple’s iMovie is the go-to app for cutting footage and spitting out a movie. However, Pinnacle Studio Pro is a great option for anyone who wants a more desktop-like video editing experience.
The interface is efficient, enabling you to pre-trim clips, and quickly navigate your in-progress film by way of a standard timeline, or quickly jumping to scenes by tapping clip thumbnails. Additionally, there are tools for complex audio edits across three separate tracks, and adjusting a clip’s rotation.
The only downside is an initial feeling of complexity and an ongoing sense of clutter - this isn’t an especially pretty app. However, it is a usable, powerful and effective one, and that more than makes up for any niggles.
Another example of a book designed for kids that adults will sneak a peek at when no-one's watching, Namoo teaches about the wonders of plant life. Eschewing the kind of realistic photography or illustration you typically see in such virtual tomes, Namoo is wildly stylized, using an arresting low-poly art style for its interactive 3D simulations.
Each of these is married with succinct text, giving your brain something to chew on as you ping the components of a plant's cells (which emit pleasingly playful - if obviously not terribly realistic - sounds and musical notes) or explore the life cycle of an apple.
On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.
On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.
There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.
At the last count, there were something like eleven billion sketching apps for iPad, and so you need something pretty special to stand out. Concepts shoots for a more professional audience - architects, designers, illustrators, and the like - but in doing so presents a far more flexible product than most.
When scribbling on the infinite canvas, you're drawing vector strokes, which can be individually selected and adjusted. The tools area is customizable and colors are selected using a Copic color wheel.
Pay the pro IAP and you unlock all kinds of features, including precision tools and shape guides, endless layers, and the means to export your work as high-res imagery, SVG, DXF or PSD. In use, whether using a finger or stylus, Concepts is elegant and usable but powerful.
So for free, this is an excellent tool for wannabe scribblers, and for the price of a couple of coffees, a high-end digital sketchbook suitable for professionals. Sounds like a bargain either way to us.
Your eyes might pop at the price tag of this iPad synth, but the hardware reissue of this amazing Moog was priced at a wallet-smashing $10,000. By contrast, the Model 15 iPad app seems quite the bargain. To our ears, it's also the best standalone iOS synth on mobile, and gives anything on the desktop a run for its money.
For people used to messing around with modular synths and plugging in patch leads, they'll be in heaven. But this isn't retro-central: you can switch the piano keyboard for Animoog's gestural equivalent; newcomers can work through straightforward tutorials about how to build new sounds from scratch; and those who want to dive right in can select from and experiment with loads of diverse, superb-sounding presets.
There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.
Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.
Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.
It's been a long time coming, but finally Tweetbot gets a full-fledged modern-day update for iPad. And it's a good one, too. While the official Twitter app's turned into a 'blown-up iPhone app' monstrosity on Apple's tablet, Tweetbot makes use of the extra space by way of a handy extra column in which you can stash mentions, lists, and various other bits and bobs.
Elsewhere, this latest release might lack a few toys Twitter selfishly keeps for itself, but it wins out in terms of multitasking support, granular mute settings, superb usability, and an interesting Activity view if you're the kind of Twitter user desperate to know who's retweeting all your tiny missives.
This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.
For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.
(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)
There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.
Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.
Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.
You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.
The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.
Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.
Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.
Illustration tools are typically complex. Sit someone in front of Adobe Photoshop and they'll figure out enough of it in fairly short order. Adobe Illustrator? No chance. Assembly attempts to get around such roadblocks by turning graphic design into the modern-day touchscreen equivalent of working with felt shapes — albeit very powerful felt shapes that can shift beneath your fingers.
At the foot of the screen are loads of design elements, and you drag them to the canvas. Using menus and gestures, shapes can be resized, coloured, duplicated and transformed. Given enough time and imagination, you can create abstract masterpieces, cartoonish geometric robots, and beautiful flowing landscapes.
It's intuitive enough for anyone, but we suspect pro designers will enjoy Assembly too, perhaps even using it for sketching out ideas. And when you're done, you can output your creations to PNG or SVG.
The lofty boast with RealBeat is that you can use the app to make music with everything. The remarkable thing is, you really can. The app has eight slots for samples, waiting for input from your iPad's mic.
You can record snippets of any audio you fancy: your voice; a spoon smacking a saucepan; a pet, confused at you holding your iPad right in front of its face. These samples can then be arranged into loops and songs using a familiar drum-machine-style sequencer and pattern editor.
Completed masterpieces can be exported using Audio Copy and iTunes File Sharing, and the app also integrates with Audiobus.
On the desktop, Panic's Transmit is a perfectly decent FTP client. But when it was first released for iPad, Transmit felt rather more like the future. It was smart and elegant, utilising all of the then-new iOS features, such as Share sheets.
Even today, its interface seems a step beyond its contemporaries — the vibrant icons and dark lists look gorgeous and modern. Most importantly, the app remains very usable, with an excellent drag-and-drop model, smart previews, and support for a huge range of services, including local shared Mac folders.
Calling Editorial a text editor does it a disservice. That's not to say Editorial isn't any good as a text editor, because it very much is. You get top-notch Markdown editing, with an inline preview, and also a TaskPaper mode for plain text to-do lists.
But what really sets Editorial apart is the sheer wealth of customisation options. You get themes and custom snippets, but also workflows, which can automate hugely complex tasks. You get the sense some of these arrived from the frustrations at how slow it is to perform certain actions on an iPad; but a few hours with Editorial and you'll wish the app was available for your Mac or PC too.
Previously known as iDraw, Graphic is now part of the Autodesk stable. Visually, it looks an awful lot like Adobe Illustrator, and it brings some suitably high-end vector-drawing smarts to Apple's tablet.
All the tools and features you'd expect are present and correct; and while it's admittedly a bit slower and fiddlier to construct complex imagery on an iPad than a PC, Graphic is great to have handy when you're on the move. Smartly, the app boasts plentiful export functions, to continue your work elsewhere, and will sync with its iPhone and Mac cousins across iCloud.
One of the curious things about the iPad is the absence of major Adobe apps from the App Store. The creative giant instead seems content with smaller, simpler 'satellite' apps, assuming users will continue to rely on the desktop for in-depth work. Pixelmator thumbs its nose to such thinking, reworking the majority of its desktop cousin (itself a kind of streamlined Photoshop) for the iPad.
Given the low price tag, this is an astonishingly powerful app, offering brushes, layers, gorgeous filters, levels editing, and more. You need to invest some time to get the most out of Pixelmator, but do so and the app will forever weld itself to your Home screen.
There are plenty of apps that provide the means to turn photos into messages and poster-style artwork. Elsewhere in this list we mention the excellent Retype, for example. But if you hanker after more control, Fontmania is a good bet.
This isn't the most complex or feature-rich app of its kind, but it is extremely pleasing to use. On selecting your photo, you can add a filter. Then it's down to business with typography. The 'Art' section houses frames, dividers, shapes and pre-made 'artworks'. The 'Text' section is for typing out whatever you like, and you can choose from a range of fonts.
Really, it's the interface that makes Fontmania. The simple sidebar is clear and non-intrusive, providing quick access to tools like Color and Shadow. All items added to the canvas can be manipulated using standard iOS gestures, avoiding the awkwardness sometimes seen within this sort of app.
Perhaps best of all, though, Fontmania is a pay-once product. Download and you get access to everything, rather than suddenly discovering a drop shadow or extra font will require digging into your wallet again.
iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.
Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.
Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.
All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.
Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.
A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.
There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).
Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.
Every now and again, you get an app that ticks all the boxes: it's beautiful, audacious, productive, and nudges the platform forwards. This perfectly sums up Coda, a full-fledged website editor for iPad.
The app's graphic design borrows from the similarly impressive Transmit for iOS, all muted greys and vibrant icons. It's a style we wish Apple would steal. When it comes to editing, you can work remotely or pull down files locally; in either case, you end up working in a coding view with the clout you'd expect from a desktop product, rather than something on mobile.
Naturally, Coda is a fairly niche tool, but it's essential for anyone who regularly edits websites and wants the ability to do so when away from the office.
When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.
Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.
For most guitarists, sound is the most important thing of all. It's all very well having a massive rig of pedals and amps, but only if what you get out of it blows away anyone who's listening. For our money, BIAS FX is definitely the best-sounding guitar amp and effects processor on the iPad, with a rich and engaging collection of gear.
Fortunately, given the price-tag, BIAS FX doesn't skimp on set-up opportunities either. A splitter enables complex dual-signal paths; and sharing functionality enables you to upload your creations and check out what others have done with the app.
You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.
Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.
Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.
You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.
On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.
The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.
Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.
We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.
The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.
Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.
On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.
Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.
Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.
The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.
The fairly large screen of the iPad means you can access desktop-style websites, rather than ones hacked down for iPhone. That sounds great until you realise most of them want to fire adverts into your face until you beg for mercy.
Old people will wisely suggest 'RSS', and then they'll explain that means you can subscribe to sites and get their content piped into an app.
Reeder 3 is a great RSS reader for iPad. It's fast, efficient, caches content for offline use and — importantly — bundles a Readability view. This downloads entire articles for RSS feeds that otherwise would only show synopses.
Like on the iPhone, Reeder's perhaps a bit gesture-happy, but it somehow feels more usable on the iPad's larger display. And we're happy to see the app continue to improve its feature set, including Split View and iPad Pro support, font options for the article viewer, and the means to sync across Instapaper content.
Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain in iOS 7, designed to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app licence details. It's also cross-platform, meaning it will work with Windows and Android.
And since 1Password is a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and efficient. The core app is free – the company primarily makes its money on the desktop. However, you’ll need a monthly subscription or to pay a one-off $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 IAP to access advanced features (multiple vaults, Apple Watch support, tagging, and custom fields).
The vast majority of iPads in Apple's line-up don't have a massive amount of storage, and that becomes a problem when you want to keep videos on the device. Air Video HD gets around the problem by streaming video files from any Mac or PC running the free server software. All content is live-encoded as necessary, ensuring it will play on your iPad, and there's full support for offline viewing, soft subtitles, and AirPlay to an Apple TV.
Perhaps the best bit about the software is how usable it is. The app's simple to set up and has a streamlined, modern interface - for example, a single tap downloads a file for local storage. You don't even need to be on the same network as your server either - Air Video HD lets you access your content over the web. Just watch your data downloads if you're on 3G!
Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for macOS.
The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural-language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations. On iPad, we do question the layout a little - a large amount of space is given over to a month calendar view. Still, in portrait or, better, Split View, Fantastical 2 is transformative.
You're not going to make the next Hollywood hit on your iPad, but iMovie's more than capable of dealing with home movies. The interface resembles its desktop cousin and is easy to get to grips with.
Clips can be browsed, arranged and cut, and you can then add titles, transitions and music. For the added professional touch, there are 'trailer templates' to base your movie on, rather than starting from scratch.
And should your iPad be powerful enough, this app will happily work with and export footage all the way up to 4K, which will likely make anyone who used to sit in front of huge video workstations a decade or two ago wide-eyed with astonishment.
Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.
Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.
What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.
It's not like Microsoft Word really needs introduction. Unless you've been living under a rock that itself is under a pretty sizeable rock, you'll have heard of Microsoft's hugely popular word processor. What you might not realize, though, is how good it is on iPad.
Fire up the app and you're greeted with a selection of handy templates, although you can of course instead use a blank canvas. You then work with something approximating the desktop version of Word, but that's been carefully optimized for tablets. Your brain keeps arguing it shouldn't exist, but it does — although things are a bit fiddly on an iPad mini.
Wisely, saved documents can be stored locally rather than you being forced to use Microsoft's cloud, and they can be shared via email. (A PDF option exists for recipients without Office, although it's oddly hidden behind the share button in the document toolbar, under 'Send Attachment', which may as well have been called 'beware of the leopard'.)
Something else that's also missing: full iPad Pro 12.9 support in the free version. On a smaller iPad, you merely need a Microsoft account to gain access to most features. Some advanced stuff — section breaks; columns; tracking changes; insertion of WordArt — requires an Office 365 account, but that won't limit most users.
Presumably, Microsoft thinks iPad Pro owners have money to burn, though, because for free they just get a viewer. Bah.
There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. Using the app's various tools, you can scribble on a virtual canvas, using your finger or a stylus. Should you want precision copy, you can drag out text boxes to type into. It's also possible to import documents.
One of the smartest features, though, is audio recording. This enables you to record a lecture or meeting, and the app will later play back your notes live alongside the audio, helping you see everything in context. Naturally, the app has plenty of back-up and export options, too, so you can send whatever you create to other apps and devices.
Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image.
You get all the basics - cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.
There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.
Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.
Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.
Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.
We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.
But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.
When someone talks about bringing back the sounds of the 1980s, your head might fill with Human League and Depeche Mode, but if you played games, you'll instead think of Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway, chip-tune pioneers whose music graced the C64, leveraging the power of the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device) chip.
SidTracker64 is a niche but wonderfully designed iPad app that's a complete production package for creating SID tunes. It's unashamedly retro in terms of sound, but boasts a modern design, with powerful editing and export functionality. If you're only into raw chip-tune noises, Audiobus and Inter-App Audio are supported; but if you're an old-hand, you'll be delighted at the bundled copy of Hubbard's Commando, ready for you to remix.
Top Tech Conferences: The Ultimate B2B tech events and show guide for 2018
For information about adding your event to this list and featured listing opportunities please contact mike.moore@futurenet.com.
Love it or loathe it, events and conferences are often where wheelers and dealers in the world of technology meet to decide on the future of the industry.
Ironically, technology itself has accelerate the demise of some massive tech events (like Comdex) but the remaining ones are more focused, alive and bustling than ever before.
Techradar Pro and ITProPortal have joined forces with the tech B2B PR industry to curate a list of national and international technology events, conferences and happenings, focusing on B2B.
January 8-10 2018, Anaheim, USA
Citrix Summit is the essential business development conference for partners. Partners who attend gain firsthand insight into Citrix strategy for digital business transformation through intensive technical, sales and business training that delivers the tools to strengthen relationships, take advantage of market opportunities and pave the way for new deals.
Why attend? Microsoft' Cloud supremo, Scott Guthrie, will be speaking there.
January 9th- 12th 2018, Las Vegas, USA
For 50 years, CES has been the launch pad for new innovation and technology that has changed the world. Held in Las Vegas every year, it is the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies and where next-generation innovations are introduced to the marketplace.
Why attend? More than 3800 of the biggest tech firms exhibiting.
January 15th - 16th, San Francisco
WCEF 2018 brings together many of the world's leading minds to discuss the pressing issues surrounding the cryptocurrency market.
Why attend? 60+ speakers and over a thousand attendees looking to drill down into the most important cryptocurrency issues today.
January 24th-27th, London
Bett is the first industry show of the year in the education technology landscape, bringing together the global education community to celebrate, find inspiration and discuss the future of education, as well as the role technology and innovation plays in enabling all educators and learners to thrive.
Why attend? Over 850 leading companies, 103 exciting new edtech start ups and over 34,700 attendees (131 countries represented) will all be present.
January 31st, Business Design Centre, London
The conference for business leaders, innovators and governments developing a brighter digital future in our rapidly changing world - this event aims to provide deep insights into today’s cutting edge tech trends (particularly AI, IoT and cyber security) impacting business and society over the next few years through a series of expert keynotes and interactive panel discussions.
Why attend? Hear from experts on how tech such as AI, IoT, TVWS and much more will transform lives sooner than you think.
February 3rd-7th, San Francisco
DeveloperWeek, the world’s largest DevTech innovation festival, will be returning to the San Francisco Bay area February 3-8, 2018 for its 7th annual gathering of 8,000+ developers and dev execs from around the world.
Why attend? Conference and workshops invite you to get intro lessons (or advanced tips and tricks) on technologies like HTML 5, Python, Javascript, Robotics Dev, Data Science and Machine Learning.
February 26th - March 1st, Barcelona
The world's biggest mobile trade show marks another year in Barcelona with a stellar line-up of speakers and exhibitors.
Why attend? Over 2,300 exhibitors will gather in Barcelona to showcase the newest technologies and most innovative products available. Take your place among the companies that are shaping the connected future.
February 27th-28th, London QE2 Conference Centre
CyberThreat 2018 is a new event hosted by SANS Institute and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), designed to bring together the UK and Europe's technical cyber security community. Focused on practitioners and spanning the full breadth of cyber defence and incident response disciplines, the event encourages sharing of bleeding edge techniques, case studies from the field and new tools.
Why attend? In addition to talks from world-renowned cyber security practitioners, and rising industry stars, CyberThreat 2018 also features plenty of hands-on opportunities for delegates in the form of capture the flag events, team problem solving and hackathons against some of the latest devices and products.
March 6th-8th, Sonoma Valley, California
Open Source Leadership Summit is coming to Sonoma Valley, March 6-8, 2018. Where open source leaders convene to drive digital transformation and learn how to collaboratively manage the largest shared technology investment of our time.
Why attend? The Linux Foundation Open Source Leadership Summit is the premier forum where these leaders convene to drive digital transformation with open source technologies and learn how to collaboratively manage the largest shared technology investment of our time.
March 12th-14th, Portland
The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) is the premier vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using Linux in embedded products. For the past 13 years, ELC has had the largest collection of sessions dedicated exclusively to embedded Linux and embedded Linux developers.
Why attend? OpenIoT Summit delivers the technical knowledge you need to deliver smart connected products and solutions that take advantage of the rapid evolution of IoT technologies. It is the only IoT event focused on the development of open IoT solutions.
March 18th-20th, London Guildhall
FinTech is taking over London in 2018 as the Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) convenes for two days on Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th of March, at the Guildhall and across the City’s Square Mile.
Why attend? Taking inspiration from the expansion of FinTech globally, the summit will welcome the world's leading lights, from innovators, institutions and investors to policy makers, regulators and international trade bodies.
March 20th-24th, Sweden
This conference will bring the latest developments in crowdsourcing to centre stage, focusing around trending topics such as Finance, ICO’s & Green Bonds, Energy & Sustainability, Innovation & CrowdGaming, and Agriculture & Farming in the Sharing Economy.
Why attend? European and other international business leaders and changemakers will gather in Luleå & Vuollerim during the 5-day conference to share how crowdsourcing is shaping their industries and is transforming organisations today
March 21st-22nd, San Francisco
Join 800+ tech leaders and professionals from the biggest names and hottest startups to learn from industry pioneers and boost your skills! Speakers include Arianna Huffington, Estée Lauder, Amazon, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Google, Sony Playstation, Facebook & many more!
Why attend? Be inspired by industry leaders, join a vibrant and talented community, grow your professional and personal skills.
March 20th-24th, Hannover, Germany
CeBIT is THE platform for experts and top decision-makers from all areas of digital business along the B2B value chain. The global market is present here – make sure you are, too! CeBIT is one of the world’s most important investment platforms for digital business processes. No other place can boast as many IT decision-makers and managers at the same time – or with such a strong focus on SMEs.
Why attend? The largest event for IT Decision Makers
March 26th-29th, Los Angeles
ONS brings together business and technical leaders across enterprise, cloud and service providers to share learnings, highlight innovation and discuss the future of open networking and orchestration.
Why attend? ONS is the best forum for companies to strengthen their brand, establish thought leadership, connect with both end customers and partners, showcase innovative products and drive the transformation in the emerging open source networking industry.
May 22nd-23rd, Gdansk, Poland
infoShare is where you can share your story and make your ideas happen. Here you will find knowledge and inspiration, form meaningful relations and create a truly innovative technological society.
Why attend? The biggest technology conference in central eastern Europe brings together thought leaders in the IT industry with a packed programme of speakers and sessions.
May 24th, London
Join the UK’s very first conference to have a holistic discussion about how we can increase diversity and equal opportunity in the fastest growing sector of our economy. Take a deep dive into the fundamentals of attracting, hiring, developing and retaining diverse talent.
Why attend? Be part of the global movement committed to changing the diversity landscape in tech and make sure that you are reaping the rewards of advancing inclusion and driving workforce evolution.
June 20th-22nd, Tokyo
Automotive Linux Summit connects the developer community driving the innovation in automotive Linux together with the vendors and users providing and using the code in order to drive the future of embedded devices in the automotive arena.
Why attend? The leading conference for technologists and open source industry leaders to collaborate and share information, learn about the latest in open source technologies and find out how to gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions.
June 26th-27th, London
Join 3000 tech leaders and professionals at the UK’s vibrant centrepiece for women in tech. Speakers include Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho CBE, Baroness Joanna Shields, Microsoft, Monzo Bank, Facebook, GoCompare.com, eBay & many more!
Why attend? Hear from the best speakers in the industry, enhance your entire skills portfolio and celebrate gender diversity in the world’s fastest growing industry.
June 26th-28th, Beijing
At LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen, attendees will collaborate, share information and learn about the newest and most interesting open source technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud technologies, networking, microservices and more; in addition to gaining insight into how to navigate and lead in the open source community.
Why attend? Three conferences in one, this event is a technical conference for developers, operations experts (architects, sys admins, devops), business, compliance and legal leadership and other professionals to come together in an informal setting to learn from open source experts, have fascinating discussions, collaborate with peers, and gain a competitive advantage with innovative open solutions.
August 29th-31st, Vancouver
Open Source Summit is the premier open source technical conference in North America, gathering 2,000+ developers, operators and community leadership professionals to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.
Why attend? Four events in one, Open Source Summit is a technical conference where 2,000+ developers, operators, and community leadership professionals convene to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.
September 25-27th, Amsterdam
ONS Europe brings together business and technical leaders across enterprise, cloud and service providers to share learnings, highlight innovation and discuss the future of open networking and orchestration.
Why attend? ONS is the largest and most inclusive Open Networking & Orchestration event in the world, bigger and better than ever before.
October 22nd-24th, Edinburgh
Open Source Summit is the premier open source technical conference in Europe, gathering 2,000+ developers, operators and community leadership professionals to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.
Why attend? Four events in one, Open Source Summit is a technical conference where 2,000+ developers, operators, and community leadership professionals convene to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Linux, containers, cloud computing and more.
Huawei P11 release date, news and rumors
Update: Leaked renders give us a close look at the possible design of the Huawei P11, or perhaps we should say the Huawei P20, as it's looking ever more likely that this is what the phone will be called. We've also heard that you might have to wait until late March to see it officially.
The Huawei P11 is a promising flagship smartphone, as the Chinese firm finished off 2017 strongly with the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro.
Huawei has improved its smartphones every year, and it's now at the point where it's seriously challenging the established names in the mobile game.
It's the Huawei P11 which is the next big hitter to step up to the plate, and it builds on the well rounded, if a little unspectacular Huawei P10 from early 2017.
The Huawei P11 launch could be just a couple of months away now, and we're collating everything you need to know from the latest leaks and rumors to what we want to see from the handset, right here.
Read our full Huawei P10 review Cut to the chase What is it? Huawei's next flagship phoneWhen is it out? Tipped to land in February or MarchWhat will it cost? Over $600 or £500, if it's like the Huawei P10 Huawei P11 release dateThe Huawei P11 is expected to launch early in 2018. Huawei's VP of Handsets Product Line, Bruce Lee, told Android Central the company will "probably launch devices at Mobile World Congress" in future.
That links nicely to reports that came out of Huawei's Christmas event in Germany, where WinFuture says it was told by representatives that we'll see the new P11 flagship during the first quarter of 2018.
MWC 2018 is confirmed for the last week in February and we'd expect Huawei to be there with a new flagship phone, which will be a year after the launch of the Huawei P10.
The company just revealed the new Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro phablets too, which suggests the company is set to stick with its normal schedule and makes us think the P11 will be ready for February 2018.
Recent comments by Huawei executives make a MWC launch seem more likely than ever.
All that said, we've now heard a rumor that Huawei will skip an MWC launch and instead unveil the P10 slightly later, possibly at the end of March, so MWC is far from set in stone.
Huawei P11 priceIn terms of price, it's not currently clear what Huawei will do - but we hope to see the price drop for the next version. The Huawei P10 costs around £570 (roughly $710/AU$945), but wasn't released in the US.
Watch the video below to see what has changed on the Huawei P10
Huawei P11 nameAs Huawei's next flagship follows on from the Huawei P10 it's logical to assume that it would be called the Huawei P11, but there's growing evidence that it will actually be called the Huawei P20.
A number of recent rumors refer to it as such, including some sketches (which you'll find below) and a source who's apparently "very reliable" and " close to the situation."
For now, we don't know for sure which if either of these names is accurate.
Huawei P11 design and displayHottest leaks:
iPhone X-style screen 'notch' Almost bezel-less premium designOur clearest look yet at the possible Huawei P11 design is a series of renders, showing the phone with what's likely a glass back and a metal frame.
You can see that there are tiny bezels above and below the edge-to-edge display, with a home button in the bottom bezel, while around the back there's a camera with three lenses.
The images look a lot like - and may well be based on - an earlier sketch of the phone, which also shows tiny bezels, a fingerprint scanner below the screen and three cameras on the back.
The same Weibo source also shared images apparently showing the Huawei P20 Plus, which sports a similar design but vertical rather than horizontal cameras, and of the Huawei P20 Pro, which has a notch above the screen, moves the fingerprint scanner to the back and moves the cameras to the middle.
However, these images could easily have been faked, so we wouldn't count on their accuracy - or the phone being called the Huawei P20.
We have heard a variety of other rumors about the device though, some of which line up with information in these images.
For example, XDA Developers were provided with firmware files that suggest the P11 will have an almost bezel-less design with a notch at the top of the screen that will look similar to the iPhone X.
The cutout at the top of the Huawei P11 screen is referenced as a 'notch' within the system build and an example of how it's set to look suggests it may just house the front-facing camera.
This is an example of what the notch may look like, provided by XDA Developers
There's also word from that source which suggests the Huawei P11 will ship with a 4K display. That's unlikely considering Huawei has continued to use Full HD panels in its phones up until now, but it would be interesting to see the company make a device to keep pace with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium.
Huawei P11 Face IDHottest leaks:
Face unlock that's better than Apple's Face IDThe iPhone X made a splash in 2017 for a number of reasons, and one of those was the introduction of Face ID. Apple ditched the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in favor of a facing-scanning system - and Huawei is tipped to follow suit.
A report from Notebook Italia suggests the upcoming device may have its own Face ID-style unlocking technology that takes inspiration from Apple's TrueDepth sensors and possibly improves on them.
Huawei P11 cameraHottest leaks:
Rear camera could be as high as 40MPLikely to made in partnership with Lecia againCould have three rear lensesWe've not heard many leaks about the Huawei P11 camera, but one suggests the Lecia partnership is set to continue and there will be some big changes to both the front and rear snappers.
Images from a digital artist that works with Huawei - and spotted by Evleaks - suggest the phone is set to come with 3 lenses on the rear camera for the first time and one of those may be as high as 40MP. That also looks like it will be capable of 5x hybrid zoom.
The leak also suggests the front camera will be a 24MP sensor, which would be a big upgrade over the 8MP one on the Huawei P10.
We've since seen leaked sketches (above) which also point to a trio of camera lenses on the phone.
Huawei P11 powerHottest leaks:
Latest Kirin 970 chipset8GB of RAMOne report from China previously suggested the P11 will ship with the latest Kirin 970 chipset, which features inside both the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro.
Usually Huawei debuts the new chipset tech on the Mate line and brings it to the P device later, so we expect that to happen again for the Huawei P11.
The same source also suggests the phone will ship with 8GB of RAM onboard, in a similar move to this year's OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T. We are constantly updating this piece on the latest Huawei P11 rumors, so be sure to check back for more soon.
Huawei P11: what we want to seeAlthough rumors and leaks are thin on the ground at the moment, we've put together a list of the things we'd like to see Huawei improved for the P11. Here's everything we have our fingers crossed to see on the Huawei P11.
1. A voice assistant
The Huawei P10 didn't come with an easy to use voice assistant. Amazon Alexa is available on the Huawei Mate 9 in the US, but not on the P10, and currently Google Assistant isn't available for the Huawei P10 either.
The lack of Google Assistant is a shame, but Huawei is aiming to get Google's helper onto the phone at a later date. We hope Huawei settles on what voice assistant should be used on the Huawei P11, and that it launches with one on day one.
2. Better battery lifeOne of our main criticisms of the Huawei P10 was the poor battery life.
We found it to be a touch worse than the Huawei P9 that went before it, so we hope that Huawei puts a lot of effort in to increase the battery life on the Huawei P11.
3. A better USPPerhaps the biggest problem with the Huawei P10 was the lack of a big selling point. There's no particular reason to buy this phone - it's just all round a good handset, and we'd like to see an improved USP ready for the P11.
What exactly that should be, we're not entirely certain. Hopefully Huawei has something up its sleeve to help tackle the big selling features that other companies such as Samsung and Apple offer.
4. Lower price
Huawei has been steadily increasing its prices for the past few years and the P10 is one of the most expensive phones the company has made.
We hope that for the Huawei P11 the company decides to drop the price down a little, to make it a more appetizing buy compared to the other flagship devices on the market.
5. Google Daydream supportThe Huawei P10 doesn't work with a virtual reality headset, so we hope the next phone from Huawei will be a part of Google's Daydream program and connect with the Google Daydream View headset.
Huawei has previously confirmed it's working on a virtual reality headset too, but there's been no official announcement so far on where the headset is in production.
6. A US releaseThat's a pretty simple one, but it's a big shame the Huawei P10 never officially launched in the US and we'd like to see that be a priority for the P11. We know there are many people in the US looking forward to using a Huawei phone, so why not supply the flagship to them?
Check out our hands on Huawei Mate 10 Pro review
The best VPN for your Amazon Fire TV Stick in 2018
Introduced back in 2014, the Fire TV Stick is Amazon’s rival to Chromecast and Roku. The device plugs into an HDMI port to allow any TV to stream content over a Wi-Fi network, effectively turning the set into a very well-featured smart TV.
However, much of that content is geo-locked, meaning it’s only available from a certain country or region due to the likes of content licensing agreements and broadcast rights. Of course, one way you can get round such content blocking is by using one of the best VPNs.
How to choose the best VPN service for Amazon’s Fire TV StickObviously, performance is always important for streaming, so you want a VPN provider that offers fast and reliable connections. A plentiful server count is helpful for finding a swift server – the more options you have, the better – and it’s also good to have a lightweight app which won’t affect performance levels, too.
You won’t always find a dedicated app for the Fire TV Stick, though, and it’s obviously a bonus when you do, because it means you can avoid having to set things up manually. Support for Kodi add-ons is also a boon.
Here are our top five picks for the best VPN service for Amazon’s Fire TV Stick.
Check out the best VPN services of 2018
[57% Off] IPVanish (Official Promotion) - Get up to 57% Off TechRadar's #1 Rated VPN Service with IPVanish's top-tier network delivering some of the fastest speeds in our tests. Zero logs gives you total privacy.
IPVanish certainly delivers on the performance front, over both short hops and long-distance connections, with the former being up to five times quicker than some rivals, and the latter showing a commendable average increase of 15% in download speeds. There are plenty of servers to choose from, with impressive global coverage.
There’s also a dedicated Fire TV app that is easy to setup and use. It has some handy options like automatic IP switching and fastest server optimisation, although note that it doesn’t support the first-generation Fire Stick. IPVanish doesn’t log any traffic or connection data when you use the service.
One downside worth mentioning is that when we tested out the firm’s customer support, we found it sluggish to respond, which obviously isn’t ideal if you do run into a problem.
There is no free trial, but the three plans on offer do come with a 7-day money-back guarantee. Your best bet is the yearly subscription which is the most affordable option. The packages available are:
[$7.50 a month] 1-month[$6.74 a month] 3 months - $20.24[$4.87 a month] 1-year - $58.49
This VPN is blazingly fast and delivered more than twice our normal download rates, which will be pure streaming heaven for users watching 4K content (or HD, for that matter). The server count is very impressive as well, with more than 700 servers in 70+ locations around the globe.
VyprVPN has its own Fire TV app, available in the APK format or directly through the Amazon Store. The app offers lots of speed optimisation options and will automatically connect to the fastest server available, also providing you with upload and download speed graphs, a ping test and so on.
OpenVPN and Chameleon protocols are used here, with the latter being VyprVPN’s proprietary solution that’s designed to avoid deep packet inspection, and your VPN connection being detected and throttled or blocked (note that this is only available on the Premium plan).
The provider also has its own DNS solution, and maintains a ‘no logs’ policy, although that said, some session logging does take place, such as connection times and IPs – which might not be ideal for everyone.
You can test the service with a free 3-day trial – and it’s a good idea to exercise that right, as VyprVPN doesn’t allow refunds after you’ve signed up. When it comes to subscription plans, the best all-round choice is the Premium plan billed annually, because this comes with all the advanced features on offer – and monthly billing is expensive (for either plan). The packages available are:
Basic: $9.95 monthly or $5.00 per month billed annuallyPremium: $12.95 monthly or $6.67 per month billed annually
In our testing, NordVPN delivered very good performance, with impressive speeds on short connections, and some very serviceable results with longer distances. There are plenty of servers to choose from, too. The provider offers tutorials on how to set up your router with a VPN or share the VPN connection from your PC in order to use the service with the Fire Stick.
NordVPN excels on the security front, offering double data encryption (where your connection gets passed through two separate VPN servers), along with support for all the major security protocols.
On top of that, the firm has a ‘no logging’ policy, but the niggle here is that said policy isn’t clear on whether any session logging takes place, which might not be ideal for those who put a premium on privacy.
There’s a free trial but you’d never know about it unless you dig around the website – find it here. Out of the four available price plans (all of which have a 30-day money-back guarantee), the monthly plan is very expensive, but the two-year subscription is a fantastic deal. The packages available are:
[$11.95 a month] 1-month[$5.75 a month] 1-year - $69.00[$3.29 a month] 2-years - $79.00
With over a thousand servers in close to 100 countries, this British Virgin Islands-based provider offers a lot of connection choices. In our testing, we found speeds were fractionally lower than our normal rates on shorter hops, with little change in long-distance connections.
While known for its quality apps, ExpressVPN doesn’t have a dedicated app for Amazon’s stick. Instead, there is a tutorial to set up the ExpressVPN app on the Fire Stick by ‘sideloading’ (the process of downloading an application in APK format and manually installing it) the Android app. The app immediately recommends the location that gives you the best connection speed once you fire it up.
ExpressVPN offers an excellent level of technical support, including lots of troubleshooting guides and 24/7 live chat support, plus you can also get in touch via email if that’s more convenient.
The Android app uses the OpenVPN protocol, encrypting all traffic with 256-bit encryption. The privacy policy clearly explains that the company doesn't collect or log traffic data or browsing activity from individual users.
Price plans start off a little more expensive than most. That’s somewhat mitigated by ExpressVPN's ‘no hassle’ money-back guarantee which allows you to try the full service for up to 30 days, with no sneaky small print restrictions on bandwidth or similar. That certainly comes in handy as there’s no free plan or trial. As ever, the yearly plan offers the best bang for your buck (with three months thrown in for free). The packages available are:
[$12.95 a month] 1-month[$9.99 a month] 6-months - $59.95[$6.66 a month] 15-months [3 free months] - $99.95
This Hungarian-based provider offers impressive performance levels, with five simultaneous connections supported. In our review, we encountered an issue where a website wouldn’t load due to the VPN – and this might well be a one-off, but it’s still something to note. Buffered has 46 server locations and while that number isn’t as big as some other VPNs, they are all major locations so it shouldn’t make a huge difference.
The network has a detailed tutorial on how to set up Amazon’s Fire Stick so there shouldn’t be any problems on that front. If any occur, there is an extensive FAQ and live chat support to help you troubleshoot. This VPN makes it clear that it doesn’t log any online activity, so your privacy will be well protected.
One of this provider’s strong points is a generous 30-day refund policy that’s valid for up to 10 hours of usage time, 100 sessions or 10GB of bandwidth – whichever comes first.
The refund policy is especially useful considering that Buffered VPN is far from cheap. Even the yearly subscription is pricier than many, but it’s the most affordable option here (as ever). The packages available are:
[$12.99 a month] 1-month[$9.99 a month] 6-months - $59.94[$8.25 a month] 12-months - $99.00 We’ve rounded up the best free VPN services of 2018
The best free office software of 2018
Everyone needs reliable office software, and some of the very best suites are completely free – whatever operating system you use.
New Windows 10 PCs come with a trial of Microsoft Office installed, but this will soon expire, leaving you in need of a replacement. Macs come with Apple's own office suite, but if most of your colleagues are PC users, you might be better off trying a cross-platform suite instead.
Here, we've put the very best free office software suites through their paces – both downloadable desktop software and browser-based applications – so you can pick the one that's best for you.
LibreOffice is so good, you'll wonder why you ever paid for office software. It's compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and has almost every feature you'll find in the latest versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
The suite contains six programs to cover every common office task: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. The last three are tools you won't find in many other free office suites, and are designed for vector diagrams, mathematical functions and databases, respectively. The latter is particularly useful; free alternatives to Microsoft Access are hard to find.
LibreOffice is an open source project maintained by a huge and enthusiastic community of volunteers constantly working to improve stability and add new features. There's a great selection of extensions and templates to make it even more flexible, and it's free for businesses as well as home users.
LibreOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, and the two are extremely similar, but we’d opt for LibreOffice thanks to its more frequent update schedule and more modern interface.
LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but there are no official mobile versions available except for a document viewer for Android.
LibreOffice reviewDownload LibreOffice
If you work collaboratively, or switch between a PC and a Mac, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides should be your first port of call.
For anyone who's already deep into the Android/Google ecosystem, this suite will be a natural choice. The three key tools run happily in any web browser, and are available as mobile apps for Apple and Android devices.
Google's free office suite doesn't offer the advanced tools you'll find in desktop software like LibreOffice (there are no pivot tables, for example, and there's no database tool) but everything is laid out in a clear, logical way and all your files will be saved and synced automatically so you don't have to worry about transfers and backups.
The chief disadvantage of Docs, Sheets and Slides is that opening files created using other office software is a cumbersome process and files aren't always converted perfectly.
This is partly because Google's office tools use web fonts rather than ones stored locally on your device, and partly because Microsoft documents sometimes contain features not supported by Google. If that's a dealbreaker for you, read on...
Try Google Docs, Sheets and SlidesThe business version costs £3.30 per month/per user
Like the look of Google's suite, but need native support for Microsoft documents? Office Online is for you
Microsoft's desktop software carries a subscription fee, but the company has noticed the threat posed by G Suite and created its own set of free online apps.
Microsoft Office Online looks and works just like its desktop equivalent, and although advanced tools like pivot tables are out of reach, but aren’t offered by Google either.
If you generally use Microsoft document formats, Office Online is a brilliant choice. Unlike Google's free office suite, it doesn't need to convert your files before you can work on them, and you can share them easily through your Microsoft OneDrive account. Just log in using your Microsoft account (the same one you use to log into Windows 10) and you're ready to go.
There's a version of Office Online for Chrome, plus mobile editions of Office for iOS and Android.
Try Microsoft Office OnlineYou can get Office 2016 Pro Plus 2016 for £9.95 if you're eligible
WPS Office Free is a slimmed down version of a premium office suite, but you'd hardly know it. Each of its three programs looks just as slick as the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and is packed with just as many features.
File format support is excellent, and you can save your work in native Microsoft formats for easy sharing with Office users. There's no database software, but WPS Office comes with an excellent free PDF reader that's a great replacement for Windows' built-in app.
There's the occasional ad, but these are few and far between. They certainly won't get in the way of your work, and you'll easily forget that everything in this suite is completely free.
There are versions of WPS Office Free for Windows and Linux systems, as well as apps for Android devices, but Apple device users will need to look elsewhere.
WPS Office Free reviewDownload WPS Office freeThe business paid for version has no ads and adds a lot of extras
Like WPS Office Free, SoftMaker FreeOffice provides analogs for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations respectively).
As with all the free office suites in this roundup, there's support for Microsoft file formats from 1997 onwards. It also offers effortless conversion to both PDF and Epub formats, which is a welcome addition.
Unfortunately, some key features are exclusive to the premium version of the software. Some of these (like tabbed browsing) are nice to have but non-essential, but the lack of a thesaurus is a real drawback for anyone who writes on a regular basis.
FreeOffice doesn't look quite as smart as WPS Office, but if you dislike the Microsoft ribbon and find it unintuitive then you'll prefer the slightly more old fashioned approach to navigation.
SoftMaker FreeOffice reviewDownload SoftMaker FreeOfficeThe paid for version adds thesaurus, administration features and caters for up to five PCs
Open365 is more than just an office suite – it's a full cloud desktop which drags in a selection of great open source (usually desktop-based) software and puts it right in your browser. It includes the key components of the LibreOffice suite (Writer, Calc and Impress) along with Photoshop-esque image editor Gimp, Linux email package Kontact, and cloud storage by Seafile. Everything the desktop versions of those packages do can be done here, and every format they support is supported.
There's a desktop client to handle file transfers and mirroring your cloud storage to your hard drive, although you'll still need to run the software itself in-browser. Being full-on desktop software it's reasonably heavy both in terms of load times and the stress it puts on your system.
But get your whole team on board and its collaborative tools could make this an essential component of your workflow, particularly if you're hotdesking or using a variety of hardware.
Download Open365
While Google Docs is, thanks to the strength of its brand, probably more widely used, Zoho's online office solution is very good in its own right. It's certainly closer to a desktop office package, and it's strong enough to have attracted businesses like the BBC and Nike as regular users.
Zoho's new-look word processor (which ditches the classic Word-style interface in favour of a formatting sidebar) is very well-presented and capable of producing professional-looking docs, and it has a sterling spreadsheet and reasonable presentation package alongside it.
They're just the tip of the iceberg, however – Zoho Workplace includes a powerful site creation tool, a file management solution and many collaborative tools. Some are on the simplistic side, so they'll likely not replace anything you might already have in place, but if you're starting out as a small business Zoho is probably a good jumping-off point.
Try Zoho Workplace for free for up to 25 usersPaid versions of Zoho cost as little as £18 per year per user Choose the best free photo editor to complete your software toolkit
You and AI: will we ever become friends with robots?
From Fry and Bender in Futurama, to Data and the crew of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, to deceptive Ava in Ex Machina, robot friends are a regular trope in science fiction. After all, is the idea of being pals with a mechanoid any weirder than Captain Kirk’s intergalactic romantic life?
But… could this ever happen? Could we one day be going for a drink with our robotic pals? Or are the machines destined to remain our slaves?
Talking the talkThe first challenge when it comes to forming friendships is talking and exhibiting intelligent behaviour. This question goes back to one of the earliest challenges in computer science. In 1950, computing pioneer Alan Turing famously laid down the benchmark for this with what became known as the Turing Test. The test is essentially quite simple: Can a machine successfully trick someone into thinking that they are talking to a human?
Alan Turing, British computing pioneer.
Since then, there is still yet to be a definitive example of an AI passing the test - though there have been numerous claims. For example, in 2014 it was claimed that a piece of AI software called Eugene Goostman had achieved the milestone. But this has also been disputed because, for example, the creators of Eugene said that their AI was simulating a 13 year old Ukrainian boy, which critics argue is an attempt to explain poor English and comprehension. In their view it was essentially a bit of a cheat.
So when can we expect an AI to pass the test? Futurist Ray Kurzweil, who is currently working for Google on a number of technologies linked to AI, such as natural language programming, reckons computers might finally match up to humans in 2029.
Walking the walkPerhaps though, simply talking to a machine isn’t really friendship, is it? When we think of friendship we think of people hanging out together, going for drinks and long walks on the beach. So can robots ever manage that?
The company that has probably come closest is Hanson Robotics, which is on a quest not just to build intelligent robots - but lifelike ones too. Founder David Hanson started career as one of Disney’s “imagineers”, but founded the company because he wanted to “create genius machines that are smarter than humans and can learn creativity, empathy and compassion”.
Sophia from Hanson Robotics.
His most advanced robot so far is called Sophia, and is designed to look like Audrey Hepburn. “She” has a fully expressive face, can process language and “see” stuff too. It’s easy to imagine that as technology continues to improve, her ability to mimic real human expressions will only get more realistic.
There’s just one big problem: the uncanny valley. This is the idea that was first spotted by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. This is the idea that as robots become more life-like in appearance, the creepier they appear. So while a stylised, animated character may seem appealing - but a more realistic character might freak us out.
This is inevitably a problem that any robots that aim to mimic humans are going to encounter. According to The Big Think, the number of academic papers citing the phenomenon has jumped from 35 in 2004, to 510 in 2015 - suggesting that it could be something that roboticists are already encountering.
Forming emotional bondsBut let’s assume that one day scientists can successfully bridge the uncanny valley, and are able to trick us with Turing Test smashing robots: can this ever really be called friendship? This is perhaps more of a question for philosophy than technology.
Dr John Danaher has written on this subject for the Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technology, and he is more sympathetic to the idea of robot friendships than many of his peers.
In his piece, he defines three different types of friendship that people can have: Utility friendships - such as having rich friends who get you access to stuff you otherwise couldn’t. Pleasure friendships - where the value to you comes from your interactions with that person (the example he gives is a tennis partner, from whom you derive pleasure by playing together). And perhaps most deeply, there’s what he calls “Aristotelian” friendships, where you share values, concerns and interests with the other person - and where interactions are mutually enriching. According to the literature that Danaher cites, these latter relationships are founded on certain preconditions, like honesty between the two parties, and that you both think of each other as equals.
The famous C-3PO and R2-D2 of Star Wars.
Essentially, he argues that in the first two cases it would be relatively easy for robots to replicate: it’s easy to imagine how you might want to use your utility friendship with C-3PO to climb the social ladder and get invited to parties with Princess Leia. Or perhaps you might enjoy playing tennis with the Robot Federer 3000 because it provides a good challenge at your level ability.
The third category - Aristotelian friendships - are more difficult because, well, how can robots be authentic or share your values and concerns when it is just a machine simulating these things? Essentially, this means that however good technology gets, it is intrinsically not possible to have a genuine, deep friendship with a robot.
However - this is where Danaher disagrees. He argues that this isn’t so different from our interactions with other humans. We might believe that our pals share our values and are acting honestly, but just as with robots, we have no great insight into their inner mental life - all we have to go on is the stuff on the outside, just like with robots. And if you think the brain is just a machine following rules, why would a brain that has been simulated in silicon be any different?
In any case, Danaher argues that while we might struggle to form “Aristotelian” friendships with robots, there is already examples of people forming the first two kinds of attachments - such as soldiers who held a military funeral for a bomb disposal robot, or…. Well…. Some weird men and their sex bots. (Yes, we made it almost to the end of the article without mentioning sex bots.)
So will we ever be friends with robots? The technology is clearly heading in that direction, but there is still a philosophical argument to be had. But hey, if we ever do, let’s hope our robot pals are more like Bender and Data than Ava.
TechRadar's AI Week is brought to you in association with Honor.
Best entry-level DSLRs: what to look for and what to buy in 2018
If you've outgrown your point-and-shoot camera or are no longer satisfied with the snaps you get from your smartphone, and feel like you're ready to take your photography to the next level, then an entry-level DSLR is the most obvious choice.
Entry-level DSLRs deliver a big step up in image quality from a compact camera or smartphone, offering far more manual control and the ability to change lenses to tackle a huge variety of projects. Don't worry though – there are also a host of auto modes to help you out until you're comfortable with the more creative controls that a DSLR offers.
Obviously, the more features you want, the more you'll pay, but do you actually need them? Our top camera is one of the cheapest on the market, but still offers impressive performance and image quality, plus enough features to handle most assignments, especially if you're still learning.
You may also want to consider a mirrorless camera as an alternative. If so, you'll find our Mirrorless vs DSLR cameras: 10 key differences guide very useful. Or, if you're not sure what kind of camera you need at all, then read our easy-to-follow guide to camera types: What camera should I buy?
DSLR bundlesIf you're buying your first DSLR, it makes sense to buy it as a kit, which generally includes the camera body along with an 18-55mm lens. Often referred to as a 'kit' lens, this covers a pretty broad zoom range, perfect for everything from landscapes to portraits, but that's just the start.
They're more than adequate to get started, but the key advantage of DSLRs over compact cameras is that you can add to your kit with additional lenses. For example, wide-angle and telephoto zoom lenses, a flashgun, and other accessories, to make the most of whatever types of photography you're into.
Canon and Nikon offer the largest collections of DSLR lenses, but Pentax and Sony also offer decent ranges. You're not limited to own-brand lenses either, with the likes of Sigma, Tamron and Tokina selling quality lenses at prices that are often lower than the camera manufacturers' equivalent lenses.
Nikon's D3400 builds on the brilliant D3300, which was until recently our top pick. Sharing pretty much the same design and specification as its predecessor, the D3400 adds Nikon's SnapBridge bluetooth connectivity to transfer images directly to your smart device to make it that much easier to share images. The 24.2MP sensor resolves bags of detail, while the D3400 is also a very easy camera to live with. Its clever Guide Mode is a useful learning tool that gives real-time explanations of important features. There's no touchscreen though, but otherwise this is our favorite entry-level DSLR right now.
Read our in-depth Nikon D3400 review
The EOS Rebel T7i (known as the EOS 800D outside) sits at the top of Canon's entry-level EOS DSLR range. Sporting a newly designed 24.2MP sensor that delivers an improved high ISO performance over older models, the Rebel T7i's autofocus also gets a boost, now with a 45-point arrangement that's backed up by excellent live view AF system. There's also newly designed graphical interface that will certainly make this camera even more appealing to new users, but the absence of 4K video and the quality of the exterior materials disappoint. Perhaps the most expensive option out there, but definitely one of the best.
Read our in-depth Canon EOS Rebel T7i review / Canon EOS 800D review
The D5600 competes directly with Canon's EOS Rebel T7i / EOS 800D at the upper end of the entry-level DSLR market. Where Nikon's D3000-series cameras are designed as cost-conscious introductory DSLRs, the D5000-series is preferable if you want to get more creative. The D5600 sports a large 3.2-inch vari-angle touchscreen, and while the live view focusing speed could be quicker, the 39-point AF system is the best you'll find in a entry-level DSLR. There isn't much wrong with the D5600's 24.2MP sensor either, delivering excellent results, while the logical control layout of the D5600 makes it easy to use.
Read our in-depth Nikon D5600 review
Replaced by the D3400 last year, the D3300 and D3400 share a very similar set of features (and design for that matter). The biggest difference between the two though is the D3300's lack of connectivity - if you want to transfer your images to your smartphone or tablet, you'll need to invest in Nikon's cheap plug-in Wi-Fi adapter that plugs into one of the ports on the D3300. With stocks running down as the D3400 takes hold, the D3300 is becoming less easy to come by, but if you do track one down at a good price, then you'll get yourself a great beginner DSLR.
Read our in-depth Nikon D3300 review
The EOS Rebel T6i (Called the EOS 750D outside the US) may have just been by the EOS Rebel T7i / 800D last year, but is still a great option if the price of the newer model puts you off. While the sensor isn't quite as good as the one in the newer T7i despite sharing the same resolution, it's still very good, while the vari-angle touchscreen is still one of the best around. AF performance could be better though, but overall this is still a very capable entry-level DSLR.
Read our in-depth Canon EOS Rebel T6i review / Canon EOS 750D review
The D5300 was around for little more than a year before the D5500 technically replaced it (which has in turn be replaced by the D5600). It shares the same 24.2MP sensor with an identical maximum ISO25,600 sensitivity as the D5500, whilst the D5300's EXPEED 4 image processor and 39-point autofocus system have also been carried over to its replacement. The D5300 doesn't sporta fancy touchscreen control, you do get GPS instead, while the D5300's 600-shot battery life will still outlast a Canon T6i / 750D. All in all, it may not be the latest entry-level DSLR, but the D5300 is still a smart buy.
Read our in-depth Nikon D5300 review
Canon introduced the EOS Rebel SL1 (EOS 100D outside the US) to compete with the influx of compact system cameras and it was the smallest DSLR available when it was introduced in March 2013. Now replaced by the EOS Rebel SL2 (EOS 200D), its slightly bulkier proportions make it feel more like a slightly pared-down Rebel T7i / 800D than anything unique. It's not a bad option for new users, but there are better-value alternatives available at the moment.
Read our in-depth Canon EOS Rebel SL2 review / Canon EOS 200D review
Stick the EOS Rebel T5i (EOS 700D outside the US) next to the T6i or the T7i and you'll struggle to tell them apart. The EOS Rebel T5i is really intuitive to use, regardless of your ability, but the T5i's sensor can trace its roots back to the T2i that was released in 2010 and it's now outclassed in terms of noise suppression and dynamic range. The 9-point autofocus system is also dated and you don't get Wi-Fi connectivity. The T5i's slashed price does make it a tempting proposition though, but the T6i or T7i is a more future-proof choice.
Read our in-depth Canon EOS Rebel T5i review / Canon EOS 700D review
The EOS Rebel T6 (known as the EOS 1300D outside the US) is Canon's cheap and cheerful entry-level DSLR. While not featuring quite the same impressive spec as pricier models up the Canon range, you still get a solid set of features for the beginner including Wi-Fi and NFC technology built-in. This means you can transfer images to your smartphone for super-quick sharing. Images from the 18MP sensor are more and adequate, but is starting to show its age against rivals with higher pixel counts.
Read our in-depth Canon EOS Rebel T6 review / Canon EOS 1300D review
Pentax is renowned for producing DSLRs with maximum bang per buck, and the K-70 is no exception. Weatherproof DSLRs that are rain and dust resistant usually cost a packet, but the K-70 offers this protection at a reasonable price so you can shoot in all conditions. Just remember that you'll have to partner it with more expensive WR (weather resistant) lenses to get the full benefit. Regardless of the lens you use, the new hybrid live view autofocus system makes live view shooting an enjoyable and practical alternative to using the viewfinder. Pentax's in-camera Shake Reduction system cuts camera shake and can even correct slightly skewed horizons. The only reason the K-70 isn't higher on our list is Pentax's relatively restricted lens range.
Read our in-depth Pentax K-70 review
Also consider...
The OM-D E-M10 Mark III is a great alternative to an entry-level DSLR. Some will criticise the smaller Micro Four Thirds sensor format (roughly half the area of APS-C) but the effect on image quality is minor and it means that the lenses are as compact and lightweight as the camera itself. Sporting a 5-axis image stabilization system, decent electronic viewfinder, an impressive 8.6fps burst shooting speed and 4K video, it's no toy – the E-M10 Mark III is a properly powerful camera.
Read our in-depth Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III review
What camera should I buy?Best cameraBest DSLRBest full-frame DSLRBest mirrorless cameras
Meltdown and Spectre Windows patch halted for AMD PCs after it causes boot failure
At CES, Intel may have been keen to insist that the whole Meltdown and Spectre fracas will be largely put to bed by the end of next week, but it appears more havoc is being caused right now, with Microsoft’s Windows patch aimed at tackling the flaws causing AMD-powered PCs to stop booting up.
This is only affecting some AMD machines, but clearly enough have been hit, because Microsoft has made the decision to halt patching AMD PCs in order to resolve the problem.
Speaking of which – what is the problem? It lies in AMD’s documentation for its CPUs, Microsoft asserts, which is erroneous in some respects, and whatever differences there are between the documents and reality of AMD’s processors are serious enough to have caused affected machines to fail to boot.
As the Verge reports, Microsoft issued a statement to say: “Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates.
“After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown.”
Blame gameSo, as mentioned, the blame appears to lie firmly with AMD, although we’ve yet to hear a response from the chipmaker itself. Though you might also argue that Microsoft’s pre-patch testing should have stumbled across the issue, perhaps, given that it seems to affect a fair number of AMD-powered PCs, judging by reports across the net (which also seem to suggest that it’s older AMD CPUs that are more likely to be affected, in the main).
For the full details on the block put on the update, check out this Microsoft support post. There are also some handy links which may help in troubleshooting PCs that have been rendered unbootable.
Microsoft says it’s working with AMD to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but for now, all AMD processor owners can do is wait. Meanwhile, you can always check out our guide on how to protect against the Meltdown and Spectre bugs.
Check out our list of the best laptops
Sandisk squeezes 1TB storage into a prototype thumb drive
Can you ever have enough digital storage space? As file sizes continue to expand with 4K videos, hi-res audio and mammoth applications, the answer is definitely 'no'.
But real-world space is always at a premium, which makes Sandisk's new CES 2018 prototype one to get excited about. It's squeezed 1TB of storage space onto a thumb stick – making it the smallest flash drive with that much space available.
With a USB-C connection on its male end, that means the drive would conceivably work with mobile devices as well as computers – exponentially opening up the amount of media you could take on the go with you.
Prototype patienceHowever, as a prototype demonstration, there's no word yet on a release date or pricing information for the new drive.
If you're looking for capacious, compact storage, Sandisk is also launching the Ultra Fit USB 3.1 flash drive at CES. It too is currently lacking a release date or price, but is coming to market packing 256GB of storage is a dinky thumb-tip form factor.
That's enough for "approximately, 14,000 photos, 10 hours of full HD video and 16,000 songs, with 64GB still available for files", according to the press release accompanying the announcement, and should tide you over until the prototype becomes a reality.
New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2018 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
Oculus Go release date, price, news and features
During October’s Oculus Connect 4 event, Facebook unveiled the Oculus Go, an ambitious device that at last gives meaning to a term like “affordable virtual reality device.”
Up until now, your best options for wallet-friendly VR rigs were units like the sometimes-free Google Cardboard or the Samsung Gear VR headset, both of which involve awkwardly slipping a smartphone into the unit when you want to hang out in virtual spaces. It could get relatively pricey, too. If you picked up latest Samsung Gear VR with its controller, you’d be paying $129/£119/AU$199 for the privilege.
The Oculus Go, though, is a fully standalone “all-in-one” device. That means you no longer need a smartphone to power it as with the Gear VR, but more importantly, you don’t need to hook it up to your PC as you do with the pricier $399/£399 (around AU$640) Oculus Rift headset.
In providing middle ground between these two extremes, the Oculus Go represents an impressive leap forward for both virtual reality technology and affordability. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed at the Connect 4 event that he’d like to put one billion people in VR, and devices like this make such a goal seem more attainable.
Below you’ll find all the information we currently have on the Oculus Go.
Cut to the chase What is it? An inexpensive "all-in one" standalone Oculus virtual reality headset When it is out? Early 2018 What will it cost? $199 (about £150, AU$255) Oculus Go price and release dateThe Oculus Go will come in at $199 (UK/AU pricing are still TBA, but £199/AU$299 are our best bet). The headset will release first to developers in November of this year, with a full consumer version ready by early 2018.
Oculus Go featuresOne of the chief complaints about virtual reality is that looking at images often feels as though you’re looking through a screen door, but Oculus’ VR chief Hugo Barra said the Go should help eliminate much of that problem.
The technology involved includes a fast-switch LCD display boasting a 2560 x 1440 resolution, which will also help get rid of some of the lag as you move and the images adjust to your movements. The lenses are even better than the ones currently used for the Oculus Rift, offering "significantly reduced glare." In short, the Go is probably less likely to make you motion sick than its competitors.
Nor is Facebook neglecting the audio experience. Spatial audio is built right into the headset, improving the immersive experience as you move around. If you need more privacy, though, or if you believe the Go’s speakers just don’t deliver the quality you seek, you can hook up your own headphones through the 3.5mm audio jack as well.
From what we heard at CES 2018, the Oculus Go is powered by a Snapdragon 821 processor, the same as the one inside phones such as the first Google Pixel and the LG G6.
We also learned that Xiaomi is Oculus' official hardware partner for the Go headset, and will indeed be producing a rebadged device for the Chinese market called the Xiaomi Mi VR Standalone. The hardware will be the same in both headsets.
You’ll also get a remote controller with the Go, but it doesn’t fully track your motions, likely in an effort to keep the price down. Yet it intentionally resembles the remote used for Samsung’s Gear VR set, thus freeing developers to create apps for both units at once. Developers will start receiving kits for the Go sometime in November.
Last but certainly not least, the Go should be comfortable to wear. Manufacturers of virtual reality devices often don’t like to play up that these devices often leave you sweaty and a little stifled after prolonged use, but the Go appears to remedy a bit of that with the lightweight, breathable mesh fabric used for the facial padding and the comparatively light frame itself. It also feature adjustable straps, leading Barra to claim the unit "practically disappears when you're in VR."
Attractive features all, but it remains to be seen what we’re really getting in terms of a “middle-of-the-road” virtual reality device. We know that you’ll be able to play everything in Samsung’s Gear VR library with the Go, but so far we don’t know if the Go is compatible with full-fledged Oculus Rift apps.
Smartphone-powered devices like the Gear VR grant only a taste of what bigger units like the Oculus Rift (and the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR) are capable of, and the Gear VR’s library is thus disappointing and relatively small. If Zuckerberg really wants to wow one billion people with what virtual reality offers, then the Oculus Go may still not be good enough.
On the bright side, if the Go ultimately proves too limiting, the fully featured Oculus Rift is now just $399. That’s a massive price drop from just last year, when you would have ended up paying $599 for the Rift headset alone and $199 for the Touch controllers. Now, though, you get all of that in a convenient and relatively affordable package. It still might be worth it to pay double the price of the Oculus Go if you really want to invest in virtual reality.
The catch is that the Oculus Rift remains a wired device, so you’ll have to use it while it’s still plugged into your PC. For that matter, you’ll have to constantly be aware of the cord so you’re not tripping and falling on your face while you’re fighting dragons of whatever.
That’s why we’re looking forward to Oculus’ so-called “Project Santa Cruz” headset, which is a standalone “all-in-one” device like the Oculus Go but with the presumed power of the Rift. And that sounds more like the future. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more about it.
Black Friday 2017 is right around the corner – and Oculus Rift's new $399 price could make for a pretty tempting impulse buy
Razer and Philips Hue team up to make your home lighting react to your games
If you’re a fan of Razer gaming products you’ll probably be familiar with the company’s colorful Chroma lighting system. It brings dynamic rainbow backlights and accents to everything from keyboards and mice, to controllers and headphones – all of which can be synced to your computer to create a lighting pattern that delights and perplexes in equal measure.
For anyone that would like to take this color customization even further and bathe, say, their entire home in that neon gamer glow, Razer is teaming up with Philips Lighting to make that possible.
Announced at CES 2018, the partnership will make it possible for those with Razer Chroma devices and Philips Hue smart lighting in their home to sync up these systems and experience an immersive gaming environment.
Well color us immersedWhile not all game developers have used the Chroma SDK to integrate the dynamic lighting systems into their games, there's a long list of titles that do support it. Popular titles such as Overwatch and Quake Champions, for example, already have lighting effects that dynamically change during play.
Keyboard glowing red when your health is low? So will your whole room. No pressure. Lights flickering in the game? They will in your own room. Now that's atmosphere. You can see a little bit of the system in action below:
To get this immersive system you will, of course, need a bit of kit. You’ll need a Philips Hue V2 bridge, Philips Hue color-capable lights and the latest Philips Hue app software update, and a PC or laptop with the Razer Synapse 3 software installed, which will be free to anyone who owns a Razer Chroma-enabled device from January 9.
This software will be where you'll be able to configure your set-up, whether you want each light to turn a different color and sync all your lights together.
Once you have all that it’s simply a matter of waiting for the software update to roll out on January 9 which will allow all the games that have been designed with the Philips Hue and Razer Chroma Link integration and light effects abilities to start syncing.
Apparently you don’t even have to be playing a game to make the most of the syncing between Chroma and Hue – it’ll be possible to sync up your gear and select any lighting “to create a perfect ambience, whether relaxing, hosting friends or simply surfing the web”.
It might be nice to bathe your home in a soothing blue before jumping into comments sections.
Read all the latest announcements from CES 2018
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