Techmeme: iPad Air 2 Review: The Best Tablet Needs to Work Harder (Joanna Stern/Wall Street Journal)

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October 21, 2014, 10:40 PM

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Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:

iPad Air 2 Review: The Best Tablet Needs to Work Harder — It Has a Quality Screen and Build but It Needs to Go Beyond One-App-at-a-Time Functionality — When Steve Jobs plopped down on the couch, minutes after showing off the iPad for the first time, he said, “It's so much more intimate …

More: Re/code, The Verge, TechCrunch, Telegraph, Engadget, Guardian, New York Times, Associated Press, AppleInsider, iMore, MacRumors, Tech.pinions, SlashGear, Mashable, Cult of Mac, CNET and 9to5Mac. Tweets: @reckless

David Pogue / Yahoo Tech:

The iPad Air 2: Thin, Gorgeous, Powerful — and That's Enough — Hey, kids! It's time to play Apple Announcement Mad Libs! … Yes, it's gotten to the point that we tech critics can pretty much recycle our iPad reviews from year to year. — This is it: The new iPad Air 2 (Deanne Fitzmaurice/Yahoo Tech)

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

iPad mini 3 review: with Touch ID the only significant improvement over the iPad mini 2, buy the 2 and save $100

More: TechCrunch, Guardian, The Tech Block, Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Mashable, SlashGear and TUAW

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Nexus 6 hands-on: supersized, even by today's standards, with much improved camera — The Nexus 6: hands-on with Google's phablet — After watching Apple unapologetically release the gigantic iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung release the fourth iteration of its massive Galaxy Note …

More: TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Phandroid and 9to5Google

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Nexus 9 hands-on: premium feel, impressive screen quality, but unlikely to challenge iPad

More: 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, Android and Me, HTC Source and PCMag Australia cpus …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Beats In Q3 With Revenue Of $1.09B, EPS Of $0.52 — With all eyes on what Yahoo will do with its $5 billion+ in Alibaba cash, Yahoo today reported its Q3 earnings after the close of trading, with sales of $1.09 billion excluding traffic acquisition costs and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.52.

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Reveals Mobile Sales for First Time: $200 Million, 17% of Total

More: Gigaom, MarketWatch, Engadget, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, AdExchanger and Seeking Alpha. Tweets: @dmac1

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

iPad Air 2 Up to 55% Faster Than iPhone 6, Up to 68% Faster Than iPad Air — A short time ago, we highlighted a new benchmark appearing to show an iPad Air 2 device carrying an A8X chip with a triple-core 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM. — While we mentioned that the enhanced specs …

More: Ars Technica, Laptop Mag, AppleInsider, Business Insider, MacRumors, BGR, iMore, Gigaom, Gizmobic, Tapscape, 9to5Mac, TechnoBuffalo, App Advice, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com and MobileSyrup.com

Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:

Sexist French Uber Promotion Pairs Riders With “Hot Chick” Drivers — “Who said women don't know how to drive?” the Uber blog post asks. The post was deleted after an inquiry from BuzzFeed News. — Yesterday, Uber's Lyon office unveiled a new promotion with an app called “Avions de Chasse.”

More: The Daily Caller

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Apple Launches “Maps Connect,” Self-Service Local Listings Portal — This afternoon Apple notified us of a new self-service portal to add or edit local business listings: Apple Maps Connect. It's intended for small business owners or their authorized representatives (though not agencies) …

More: AppleInsider, The Verge, 9to5Mac, iMore, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, Apple Spotlight and iDownloadBlog.com. Tweets: @julipuli

Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:

GT Advanced To Sell Furnaces for Cash to Pay Back Apple, Says Fortune — Fortune columnist Philip Elmer-DeWitt a short while ago tweeted from the courtroom in Springfield, Massachusetts that one-time Apple (AAPL) supplier GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) has agreed to pay off its debts to Apple …

More: Wall Street Journal, StreetInsider.com, CNET, 9to5Mac, Reuters, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Electronista, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, Seeking Alpha and Cult of Mac. Tweets: @philiped

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft Lumia to replace Nokia brand, starting in France, global rollout in the coming weeks — Microsoft Lumia will replace the Nokia brand — Microsoft started dropping hints about its plans to kill off the Nokia and Windows Phone brands last month, and now the company is ready to make it official.

More: Re/code, TechCrunch, MobileSyrup.com, TechnoBuffalo, FierceWireless, Electronista, InfoWorld, SuperSite for Windows, TechSpot, Pocketnow, Ubergizmo, WMPoweruser, WinBeta, The Next Web, Windows Phone Central and Business Insider

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Staples investigating credit card breach at its retail stores after multiple banks report fraud — Banks: Credit Card Breach at Staples Stores — Multiple banks say they have identified a pattern of credit and debit card fraud suggesting that several Staples Inc. office supply locations …

More: Ars Technica, VentureBeat, The Verge, Fortune, BGR, DailyTech, Reuters, TechCrunch, New York Times, Ubergizmo, internetretailer.com, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, ABC News, Network World, SC Magazine, BBC, ZDNet, Inquirer, Forbes, The Register, Electronista, CNET and Help Net Security. Tweets: @lessien

Kelly Hodgkins / MacRumors:

Apple Pay Shown to Work Internationally Using U.S.-Based Credit Cards — Apple Pay launched on Monday with iOS 8.1, allowing iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners to make contactless payments via NFC with Touch ID for authentication. — Though the initial launch is occurring in the United States …

More: Mashable, Ubergizmo, tbreak.ae, iPhone in Canada Blog, TUAW, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, MacDailyNews, Redmond Pie, AppleInsider, iPhone Hacks and BGR

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Banks racing to become your first card in Apple Pay as most users will use the default card

More: Beau Giles, 9to5Mac, ReadWrite, iMore, BGR, PandoDaily, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, iLounge and MacNN

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

HP to announce Sprout, a computing device combining a large display, touch surface, 3D scanner, and overhead projector — HP Will Unveil New Computing Product Called Sprout Next Week — When Hewlett-Packard announced it would split in two — one company devoted to PCs and printing …

More: Engadget, Digital Trends, ZDNet, Windows Phone Central and Business Insider

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with a Notification Center — Microsoft released its first Windows 10 Technical Preview just three weeks ago and the software maker is now ready to issue a fresh update. If you're already testing Windows 10 then a new preview build (9860) …

More: Blogging Windows, ZDNet, BGR, Electronista, BetaNews, GeekWire, Windows Phone Central, WinBeta, SuperSite for Windows, Gotta Be Mobile, ZDNet, VentureBeat, CNET, Neowin, The Next Web and Windows Phone Central

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Acquires Firebase To Help Developers Build Better Real-Time Apps — Google today announced that it has acquired Firebase, a backend service that helps developers build realtime apps for iOS, Android and the web that can store and sync data instantly.

More: Firebase, Google Cloud Platform Blog, Gigaom, The Next Web, VentureBeat, 9to5Google and VatorNews

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Raspberry Pi Founder Shows Off Incoming Touch Panel For Making DIY ‘Pi Pads’ — Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, has shown off a new piece of hardware that's likely to expand the ecosystem around its single board computer — namely a touchscreen display.

Kurt Wagner / Re/code:

New Social Network Tsu — Which Pays Users Who Post — Raises $7 Million — New social network Tsu believes it can get you excited about seeing advertisements. (Seriously!) — That's because Tsu, which launched on Tuesday with a $7 million investment led by Sancus Capital …

More: Billboard, Examiner and VentureBeat

John Cook / GeekWire:

Former Microsoft exec Bob Muglia raises $26M for Snowflake, a data warehousing startup — Bob Muglia is floating in the clouds, or should we say on some snowflakes. The longtime Microsoft veteran — who left the company in 2011 after 23 years, including a stint as the president …

More: TechCrunch, PE Hub Blog, The New Stack, InfoWorld, Bloomberg, Gigaom and VentureBeat

Bloomberg:

EMC Said to Absorb VCE Joint Venture as Cisco Reduces Stake — EMC Corp. (EMC) is buying out much of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO)'s stake in joint venture VCE, which sells high-end data center equipment, according to people with knowledge of the matter. — EMC will meld the joint venture …

More: The Register and Seeking Alpha

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