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Best Buy’s weekend sale takes up to $200 off the pricey iPad Pro (updated)

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MacBooks

AppleThe current model of the MacBook Air, which was released last month, is $100 off, so you can snag one for $1,000, instead of $1,100. The newest MacBook Pro is also $100 off — $1,200 instead of $1,300. The prior models, released in late 2018, have even steeper discounts.

iPads

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There are some solid deals on the excellent, but ordinarily very expensive, iPad Pro. For a short time, Best Buy was offering a whopping $600 off the most expensive 12.9-inch iPad Pro with 1TB of storage and cellular capabilities, but that deal was either incorrect or has already expired. You can still save up to $200 off all iPad Pro models, though. For example, the 11-inch 256 GB model, which usually sells for $1,100, is on sale for $949.

The basic iPad with 128 GB of storage is $300, down from $429. The Smart Keyboard for the 10.5-inch iPad Air and iPad Pro is $90, down from $160. If you bundle a current-generation iPad Air with the Smart Keyboard, you’ll save $160.

Microsoft Surface

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Microsoft’s Surface Go with a keyboard, which usually sells for $679, is on sale for $549. The current-generation Surface Pro 6 with keyboard is $799, a substantial drop from its normal price of $1,059.

Sony

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Sony’s crisp and comfortable WH-1000XM3 noise-canceling headphones are on sale for $300, down from $350.

Samsung

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And if you’re ready to preorder a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 or 10+, you can save up to $700.

Other Deals

There are plenty of deals on Apple Watches, TVs, smart home gadgets and home theater setups. If you were planning on buying new tech any time soon, it’s worth taking a look at this weekend’s sales.

Update, 8/16/19, 3:15PM ET: This post originally said Best Buy was offering $600 off the top-level iPad Pro. That deal was either an error or expired; as such we’ve updated this with the current deal.

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The best creative and productivity apps for students

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If you’re an artist who likes using the Apple Pencil, Procreate should be well worth your $10. It invariably shows up on any list of the best iPad drawing apps, and with good reason. The app skillfully re-creates traditional tools like oil pastels, charcoal, pencil, watercolors and many more. If the built-in tools aren’t quite what you’re looking for, Procreate lets you built your own, as well. You can draw using all of these with the Apple Pencil, and you can also use the touchscreen to “smudge” or blur your artwork, just like you could in real life.

Procreate has a robust export system, letting you bounce your creation to PSD, TIFF, PDF, web-ready JPG and many more formats. A recent update added a robust text-creation framework, which lets you import your favorite fonts and add typography to your creation quickly. There’s also a time-lapse recording of your creations, so if you want to give fans an inside look at how your latest masterpiece came together, the app will do that too. There may be plenty of good, free drawing tools in the App Store, but it’s hard to say that Procreate isn’t worth the money.

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What makes the Mac Mini a great computer?

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Hardware

User Luuthian said “the form factor is great” and the Mini was also “discrete, quiet and didn’t need a massive power cable.” Like Chris, James approved of the CPU upgrade, explaining that the “desktop class CPU allows it to support 64GB of RAM and makes this model a massive upgrade over not only my MacBook Pro but also prior generations of Minis.” Chinito77 said they “really can’t imagine anyone not getting the i7 model.”

Apple Mac Mini 2018

Interestingly, given that it was one of Chris’s cons, none of the user reviews mention being displeased at the lack of a GPU. Luuthian noted that “Yes, it doesn’t have a GPU but it ran the Sims 4 on a 4K monitor at 30FPS on medium settings. That’s all I really need in a device like this.” Luuthian also felt that the available USB ports “make this really expandable if you want an eGPU or the like.” Many other users agreed that the array of available ports on the Mac Mini really improved the machine’s potential, with Darrell easily plugging his Mini into external storage and a 4K monitor via the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Performance

Users reported different experiences with regards to the Mini’s performance: Darrell found it to be a “great little computer with plenty of power for Photoshop and Lightroom.” James said his Mini is “noticeably faster than my MacBook Pro while doing more things at the same time.” Mike had no problem running Windows in Parallels, web browsing, checking emails, using creative software or doing some app development on his Mac Mini. Luuthian, who admittedly doesn’t do heavy professional work, still found theirs to be “extremely zippy with anything I’ve thrown at it from emulation to web surfing and minor gaming.”

Apple Mac Mini 2018

However, other users had less than smooth performance from the machine. Chinito77 found that “things like VMware and video editing can slow it down a bit and cause the system to really heat up.” Chinito77 also said that sometimes their Mac Mini “forces itself into a power save mode, especially if I watch 4K videos at 60FPS on YouTube.” Even Luuthian said that while doing “something really intense, like gaming, it can heat up a fair amount before those fans kick in so just be mindful that you may want to use Fan Control to change temperature thresholds for the fans.”

Expandability

While Mik said that with a good USB hub attached, the Mac Mini “also has reasonable expandability,” most users said the inability to easily upgrade portions of the Mini was a huge drawback. James said his only complaint “would be that the SSD is integrated and cannot be replaced or upgraded.” Robert pointed out the Mini “lacks basic internal upgradeability and expandability,” and Maxsmart felt that the Mini “really should have an easier way to add memory and increase drive size.” Luuthian’s only gripe is “that you’re stuck with Apple’s memory options for storage space and they’re clearly overpriced.”

Apple Mac Mini 2018

Price

In fact, most users agreed that price was an issue: Robert said the computer was “not cost-effective,” because “by the time you configure a Mini to make it a reasonably functional computer, it’s costly enough that it’s within a small amount of money of a similarly configured iMac.” Mike acknowledged the same, declaring the ‘Apple Tax’ a factor. Dejanb said the Mac Mini “would be almost perfect if the price was not that high — you can buy a more powerful Intel [NUC] and a fanless enclosure for a fraction of the price and it becomes a much better living room PC.”

The price wasn’t enough to deter James who recalled that “when it debuted, it was the fastest computer in Apple’s lineup (except for the spec’d out Mac Pro). That’s pretty impressive given it form factor, and when you consider that, the price wasn’t unreasonable at all.” James went to far as to say that, in his opinion, this is “perhaps the best Mac Mini that’s ever been made,” though “it’s a close call with the late 2012- early 2014 Mini.” T said it “works great as a Mac development desktop.” Scott found his Mini to be a “tiny computer that performs very well, reliable and rugged,” while Darrell said “it sits there and does its job quietly. That’s all I need.”

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‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ fined $395,000 for using emergency alert tones

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The FCC points out that using such tones is prohibited outside of emergencies, adding that it was a serious public safety concern. “These rules aim to protect the integrity of the alert system by helping to avoid confusion when the tones are used, alert fatigue among listeners and false activation of the EAS by the operative data elements contained in the alert tone,” it explained in a news release.

ABC told the FCC that there was a “misunderstanding that the use of the tone was permissible.” The network has reportedly removed the part of the episode featuring the tones from YouTube and elsewhere, and elected to not rebroadcast the episode.

While the idea of the skit was amusing, government officials said last year that neither Trump nor any other president could “wake up one morning and attempt to send a personal message” using the system. Earlier this month, FEMA conducted a real emergency alert test to confirm that it would work if there was power but no internet.

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Serious Bluetooth flaw leaves devices open to attack

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The fact that attackers can exploit the flaw even for devices that had been previously paired makes it even worse. According to the paper the researchers published, the vulnerability affects devices that use Bluetooth BR/EDR (or Bluetooth Classic) connection. The attack will only work if both devices establishing a connection have the vulnerability. That said, all the Bluetooth chips the researchers tested were vulnerable. KNOB’s official website says:

“The KNOB attack is possible due to flaws in the Bluetooth specification. As such, any standard-compliant Bluetooth device can be expected to be vulnerable. We conducted KNOB attacks on more than 17 unique Bluetooth chips (by attacking 24 different devices). At the time of writing, we were able to test chips from Broadcom, Qualcomm, Apple, Intel, and Chicony manufacturers. All devices that we tested were vulnerable to the KNOB attack.”

Tech giants like Apple and Microsoft have already rolled out patches to fix the flaw, and the Bluetooth Core Specification has been changed to require a minimum encryption key length. For those measures to work against what the researchers say is “a serious threat to the security and privacy of all Bluetooth users,” though, people must update their devices when a fix becomes available.

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Motorola’s latest cheap phone tries to double as an action camera

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According to Motorola’s market research, many people — too many, perhaps — shoot most of their videos while their phones are held upright. Sure, that means these people don’t have to two-hand their mobile cameras when some interesting is happening in front of them. Unfortunately, that also means the videos in question don’t actually look very good when you try to view them in landscape mode or on external displays. To address that, Motorola stuck this video camera into the phone rotated 90 degrees to the right, so that videos shot while the One Action is being held vertically fill the entire screen when you review them later. And the weird stuff doesn’t end there.

Motorola is also pushing this third, video-only sensor as an action camera — hence the name. That’s largely because of the electronic video stabilization Motorola built in here, which to their credit, did seem to do a good job reducing shake and jittering in the test footage we shot. The demo space Motorola set up was pretty dark, too, so it helped that the One Action effectively treats clusters of 4 pixels on that sensor as one for improved brightness. I sort of doubt it would fare as well as, say, the super-steady video mode found in premium Samsung phones, but based on a little hands-on time, the feature fares more respectably than you might think at first. Not bad for a phone that’ll only cost €259 (about $287) when it goes on sale this week.

This is exactly the kind of weird camera stuff Motorola has been leaning into lately, so the video gimmick here almost doesn’t register as a surprise. I guarantee people who use that video camera for the first time will be surprised, though, because they’ll see that wide-angle view bounded by lots of dead space above and below. Even though I knew exactly what to expect when I started to test the camera, I still got the immediate impression that I was doing something wrong or that the phone was acting up.

Motorola One Action

The resulting 1080p footage was indeed expansive and correctly rendered, but what you see while shooting it runs counter to everything you’d expect after using a smartphone camera for years. No wonder Motorola didn’t try to pull off a feature like this in something like a Moto G — in North America at least, Motorola’s mainstream cheap phones are especially popular among older men, and I can’t help but think of the frantic phone calls I’d get from my dad if I gave him a One Action to use.

For better or worse, the rest of the One Action package is fairly standard: It’ll ship with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of onboard storage (which you can expand upon with a microSD card), a non-removable 3,500mAh battery and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. Oh, and despite what the name suggests, the Motorola One Action won’t actually be an Android One device everywhere — it’ll run that super-clean version of Android in markets like Brazil, Mexico and Europe, but Americans will instead get the usual Motorola tweaks and interface layered on top of Android Pie.

I’ve spent a lot of time here calling the Motorola One Action weird, and it certainly is. The rationale that went into it, however, was anything but. This smartphone brand has finally started to turn a profit thank its to cheap devices like the Moto G family, but by throwing caution to the wind and trying outlandish tricks in its Motorola Ones, Motorola hopes to speak to a new kind of customer. These aren’t people who buy smartphones because of their utilitarian value — these are younger people who want ambitious features that could change what they think of Motorola in the future. In a way, the One Action isn’t just a smartphone with GoPro ambitions; it’s a clear indicator of Motorola’s unabashedly interesting future.

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Some Microsoft Surface devices are being severely throttled

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There are too many devices and protocols.Smart homes are a broken mess and Nest wants to fix it

Rishi Chandra has a vision for what a smart home should look like in five years. As the lead for Google Nest products, well, it’s his job. There are several devices that make up this ecosystem, and therein lies the problem: It’s not convenient for the consumer. “There’s no one thing I can put in my home and just put in the wall and be like, ‘Oh, now it’s all smart,'” Chandra said. Individual smart home companies sell bits and pieces of a puzzle, but all that fragmentation creates friction. And it’s off-putting for a lot of us.

Too bad, Tesla.Audi’s E-Tron becomes the first EV to win top safety award

The 2019 E-Tron, Audi’s flagship electric vehicle, has won the 2019 Top Safety Pick+ award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), making it the first electric vehicle to earn such recognition. The award for the E-Tron must be gutting for Tesla, however. Tesla’s Model X was recognized for its exceptional safety, but the IIHS tests of the Model S didn’t go so well. The institute will begin safety testing the Model 3 this week.

Digital nagging is here.Google Assistant takes on the sticky note with assignable reminders

You can now ask Google’s Assistant to assign a reminder to someone. The command would go something like this: “Hey Google, remind George to pick up the dry cleaning at 4PM” After that, you’ll get a confirmation that the task was sent, and George will get a notification that you’ve set him a reminder. Then, at 4PM, another notification nudging him to pick up the dry cleaning. When George marks the task as completed on his phone, you’ll get a notification, too. In short, Google’s assignable reminders help you bug and nag your family.

The VMS Eve mothership has arrived at the spaceport.Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America is no longer an empty hangar

Virgin Galactic has officially opened Spaceport America’s Gateway to Space, a few months after it started moving its staff and spacecraft to the New Mexico facility. In addition, the VMS Eve arrived at the spaceport this week, which Chief Pilot Dave Mackay says brings “Virgin Galactic closer to starting commercial service.” VMS Eve is the aerospace company’s launch vehicle, in charge of carrying its spacecraft to the skies before dropping it mid-air. The company will use VMS Eve to fly simulated spaceship launch missions from the spaceport in the coming days. Later this year, it’ll go back to Mojave to pick up Virgin’s VSS Unity suborbital vehicle, so their flight tests can be conducted from New Mexico where commercial flights will take place.

They definitely don’t play… much.Some Microsoft Surface devices are throttling down to 400MHz

A Windows feature meant to keep a device from overheating is causing Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 and Surface Book 2 to run at a cripplingly slow speed. The problem seems to stem from a firmware update released two weeks ago.

It’s particularly pronounced because the specs of the Surface devices are pretty snappy. The Surface Pro 6 runs at 1.9GHz, for example, so the drop to 400MHz is an immense performance hit. Microsoft has issued a statement promising a fix via firmware update soon.

Sony brings back rose gold like it never went out of style.The PS4 is finally getting a rose gold DualShock 4 controller

Your next PS4 controller is metallic and pink, all at once.

But wait, there’s more…

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YouTube warns its copyright changes could result in more takedowns

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YouTube said it’s making the move to push back against music companies that are overzealous about enforcing copyright claims. “One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos,” it wrote. “These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed.”

One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed.

YouTube believes that by eliminating the money incentive, music owners will be less likely to go after the revenue of barely-infringing content. However, that remains to be seen — instead, labels could simply start to block more videos, which is what YouTube actually expects in the short term. To enforce the new system, it will remove the manual-claiming privileges of labels or other rights-holders that repeatedly break the new rules.

The changes will only affect manual claims and have no impact on music found automatically by YouTube’s Content ID system. That generates the vast majority of claims, and has paid rights-holders some $3 billion since it was implemented.

YouTube also changed the rules for manual claims last month, forcing copyright holders to provide exact timestamps for offending music. It also updated Creator Studio to allow YouTubers to use the timestamps to edit music out of disputed clips, a process that automatically restores monetization.

“As always, the best way to avoid these issues is to not use unlicensed content in your videos, even when it’s unintentional music playing in the background,” YouTube wrote. “Instead, choose content from trusted sources such as the YouTube Audio Library, which has new tracks added every month.”

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Disney+ may become home to a new ‘Star Wars’ series with Ewan McGregor

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Unfortunately, details are scarce at this point — the show doesn’t have a title yet, and its story remains a mystery. Variety says a standalone Obi-Wan film had been in talks for years, but it was put on hold after Solo’s disappointing performance. While Disney has yet to confirm the report, company chief Bob Iger said he expects a third Star Wars series for Disney+ a few months ago. The company is also working on The Mandalorian (written and executive produced by Jon Favreau) and a Rogue One sequel for the service.

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