Techmeme: iPad Air review: lighter, more portable, more usable and faster than any previous iPad (Anand Lal Shimpi/AnandTech)

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October 30, 2013, 11:40 AM

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John Poole / Primate Labs Blog:

iPad Air Geekbench: Over 80% faster than iPad 4, A7 processor 100MHz faster than iPhone 5s — iPad Air Benchmarks — Geekbench 3 results for the new iPad Air are starting to appear on the Geekbench Browser. I've charted the results for all iOS 7 capable iPads below.

More: Ars Technica, AppleInsider, ZDNet, CNET, 9to5Mac, MacDailyNews, Gotta Be Mobile, Redmond Pie, Touch Arcade, MacNN, Softpedia News, Phones Review, iDownloadBlog.com, MacRumors, iPhone in Canada Blog, PhoneArena and Cult of Mac

Tweets: @drbarnard and @parislemon

Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:

Speed and Power Packed Into a Thin iPad Air — One reason for the phenomenal success of the iPad has been Apple's ability to pack speed and versatility into a thin, light body with long battery life. It doesn't do everything a laptop does, but for many common scenarios, it has replaced the laptop as its owners' go-to device.

More: New York Times, TechCrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat, Telegraph, ZDNet, Macworld, Digits, Guardian, The Register, SlashGear, Bloomberg, CNET, AnandTech, IntoMobile, NBCNews, App Advice, Cult of Mac, Electronista, The Next Web, TUAW, AppleInsider and Gizmodo. Tweets: @franciscome. Thanks:@sidharthdassani

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

iPad Air review: lighter, more portable, more usable and faster than any previous iPad — The iPad Air Review — It seemed like a foregone conclusion that the 10-inch tablet market was done for, with all interest and excitement shifting to smaller, but equally capable 7 or 8-inch tablets instead.

More: The Loop, A Note from Pogue, CNET, USA Today, Fox News, Tech.pinions, Reuters, Telegraph, TIME, Mashable, Gigaom, iMore, Guardian, InfoWorld, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, Pixel Envy and Business Insider

Tweets: @tapbot_paul and @stroughtonsmith

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

iPad Air light enough to supplement a laptop, fast enough to replace one for most people — The iPad Air — There are so many millions of iPad users that no simple explanation can cover all use cases. But my take, since last year, has been that the full-size iPad is best seen …

Tweets: @reneritchie, @adamnash and @dlpasco

AllThingsD:

Intel May Turn Over Its Web TV Project to Verizon — Intel's efforts to break into the TV business may be coming to a close. — Sources say the chipmaker is close to a deal to hand over control of Intel Media, the unit that has been trying to build a Web-based subscription TV service …

More: Gizmodo, Reuters, DSLreports, Engadget, CNET, Electronista, bizjournals and FierceOnlineVideo News

Tweets: @jyarow and @sai

Jean-Baptiste / Forbes:

Exclusive: Intel Opens Fabs To ARM Chips — As the old adage goes, if you can't beat them, join them! Well, that's exactly what Intel finally decided to do relative to its lagging mobile business. — At the ARM developers' conference today, Intel partner Altera announced …

More: Engadget, ZDNet, CNET, MacRumors, Gigaom, InfoWorld, PhoneArena, Digital Trends, iMore, Android Beat, The Droid Guy, The Register, AppleInsider, iDownloadBlog.com, EE Times, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, SiliconANGLE, ARMdevices.net, Gizmodo, stratechery and Softpedia News

Tweets: @lessien, @mlchild, @dalmaer and @gusfuldner

Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:

“Manufacturing issue” responsible for fast battery drain on “limited number” of iPhone 5Ss — Shortened Battery Life Found in Some New iPhones — The Apple iPhone 5S is supposed to have significantly longer battery life than its predecessors.

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Sprint swings to profit of $383M, but loses a net 313,000 customers — Sprint swung to a third-quarter profit its first period under new ownership. — The company, which reports for the first time after the completion of the SoftBank takeover and Clearwire acquisition …

More: MacRumors, Sprint Newsroom, eWeek, The Verge, AppleInsider, DSLreports, Gigaom, 9to5Mac, BGR, Sprint Newsroom, Engadget, iDownloadBlog.com, TUAW, Electronista, Reuters, Bloomberg and App Advice

Mat Smith / Engadget:

Nintendo sells 300,000 more Wii U consoles, but over two million more 3DS handhelds — Nintendo's just released its financial results for the last three months, and while hardware sales have increased substantially, it still made a loss. Wii U sales have rebounded significantly.

More: VentureBeat, Digits, Associated Press, Electronista, The Verge, WebProNews, Reuters, Bloomberg and BBC

Matt McGee / Glass Almanac:

California Woman Gets the First Ticket for Driving with Google Glass — This is history: the first known case of a Glass Explorer getting a ticket for driving while wearing Google Glass. — Cecilia Abadie told her story on Google+ late Tuesday night, and shared this image of the citation …

More: Phandroid, The Atlantic Wire, Engadget, Ars Technica, Betabeat, The Verge, Gizmodo, Consumerist, The Next Web and Ubergizmo. Thanks:@mattmcgee

Andy / TorrentFreak:

IsoHunt Resurrected Less Than Two Weeks After $110 Million MPAA Deal — Earlier this month some pretty surprising news hit the file-sharing scene. After many years battling aggressively with the MPAA, Canadian BitTorrent site isoHunt suddenly agreed to a settlement with the MPAA.

More: Guardian, PC World, The Verge, The Switch, Digital Music News and Ars Technica. See also Mediagazer

Iljitsch van Beijnum / Ars Technica:

OS X 10.9 brings fast but choppy Thunderbolt networking — If you open your network settings in the System Preferences after upgrading to OS X 10.9 “Mavericks”, you'll be informed that a new “Thunderbolt Bridge” network interface was added to the system. So it's now possible to network two Macs over Thunderbolt.

More: ZDNet

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Favorite, Reply, RT now directly in Twitter feed, reducing the threshold for sharing, virality — Why Twitter Just Turned Itself Inside Out — Clicking is dead, scrolling is king. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the fight for the ultimate feed. — dailydot.com

More: New York Times and SocialTimes. Tweets: @michellelockett, @jayrosen_nyu, @felixsalmon, @budip, @rsarver, @cpen and @andrewphelps. See also Mediagazer

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Twitter tries to entice new users with media previews, facilitates banner ads

More: Twitter, BetaNews, SocialTimes, Telegraph, bizjournals, AllTwitter, Digiday and Daily Dot

Tweets: @bryce, @jvanslem, @cwarzel and @panzer

Jack Clark / The Register:

IBM gives up fight to build CIA's $600m secret cloud, hands deal to Amazon — Withdraws injunctive action and scuttles back into shadow — IBM has stumbled away from its legal tussle with Amazon over a strategically important contract to build a $600m cloud system for the CIA.

More: Gigaom, ZDNet, Federal Computer Week and Forbes

Sharon Gaudin / Computerworld:

Mysterious barges in Maine and San Francisco ignite Google rumors — Is Google building floating data centers? Transporting Google Glass outlets or retail stores? Everyone is mum on the subject — Speculation that had been growing about mysterious barges harbored on both sides of the U.S. is exploding.

More: Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Verge, The Atlantic Wire, CBS San Francisco, Reuters, Softpedia News, Geek News Central and Portland Press-Herald

Daniel P. Howley / LAPTOP Magazine:

Lenovo Yoga Tablets Hands-on: 3 Modes, 18-Hour Battery, From $249 — The Surface isn't the only tablet with a built-in stand. Say hello to Lenovo's new Android-powered Yoga Tablets. On sale Oct. 30, these tablets come in an 8-inch version ($249 at Best Buy) and a 10-inch flavor ($299 at most major retailers).

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Google:

Google shows off second gen Google Glass w/ mono earbud coming later this year — After announcing yesterday that Google Glass hardware would be revised later this year and offered to current Glass Explorers interested in swapping to a newer unit, Google today gives us a look …

Brian Heater / Engadget:

Barnes & Noble's Nook GlowLight is lighter, brighter, whiter, with less Simple Touch for $119 — As a ketchup bottle once famously said: Good things take time (we're paraphrasing here, of course). Roughly a year and a half ago, Barnes and Noble made its top-notch Nook Simple Touch even better, with the addition of GlowLight.

More: Barnes & Noble, Inc., TechHive, LAPTOP Magazine, Digital Trends, WebProNews, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Gotta Be Mobile, The Verge, Gigaom, Mashable, Digits, SlashGear, I4U News and New York Times. See also Mediagazer

Jason Wilson / VentureBeat:

Oculus Rift virtual reality headset coming to mobile — but just Android, not iOS [corrected] — REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Virtual reality meets today's mobile reality. Oculus VR announced that it's bringing its virtual-reality headset, the Oculus Rift, to mobile gaming.

More: Digital Trends, Inquirer, PhoneArena, Gearburn, Softpedia News, BGR, TechEye, VG247 and GeekWire

New York Times:

As It Denounces U.S. Spying, Europe Delays Privacy Protection at Home — BRUSSELS — Even with Europe in an uproar over intrusive United States surveillance, its leaders are looking for ways to slow down legislation aimed at preventing violations of privacy at home.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Cloud-Based Device Management Startup Soluto Acquired By Device Insurers Asurion For Up To $130M — Looks like another exit for an Israel-based startup - this one straddling the worlds of cloud services and hardware control. Soluto, a service that lets users manage PCs and other connected devices remotely …

More: GeekTime, Globes Online and No Camels. Thanks:@ingridlunden

Matt McGee / Marketing Land:

Google+ Hits 300 Million Active Monthly “In-Stream” Users, 540 Million Across Google — As expected, Google touted the growth of its “social layer” Google+ during a special event today that also saw the introduction of 18 new features. — The big numbers that Google talked about are as follows:

More: USA Today, AllThingsD, CNET and Soshable. Tweets: @marypcbuk

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Google:

Google adds location sharing, animated GIFs to Hangouts, integrates SMS

More: The Official Google Blog, Electronista, Search Engine Roundtable, Softpedia News and Engadget

Tweets: @mikeisaac and @panzer

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