Tips Smart

The date has been revealed by AllThingsD and the keynote should be invitation-only.

Of course, the iPad Mini 2013 and iPad 2013 are to be expected.
Both should at least sports the TouchID feature and have smaller bezels (especially for the 9.7" iPad). There are still doubts towards the Mini and a possible Retina Display. There are some conflicted reports about that but we are sure waiting for a answer from Apple to the Nexus 7 (2013).

As children, all of us shared great delight in covering our tiny paws with various colored pigments to create fridge bound masterpieces.


As you grow and develop into an artist, youre taught to pick up a brush, pencil or charcoal stick, and a whole world of mark-making opens up.

Today, creating works of art is a single tap away with some mind-blowing iPad and iPhone art apps such as Brushes, ArtRage, SketchBook Pro and Penultimate, but for many artists, reverting to using a finger to paint is a huge step backwards.

We figured that it was time to recognize that for some iPad owners, an iPad stylus is a vital part of their iOS experience.

Great product design is about creating something instinctive and intuitive to use, so that it quickly becomes a natural extension of a person. In the case of a stylus, the basic requirements are a pen-like handle and tip, but take a look at some like the AluPen and you see that both have aimed to tap into the artists experience, evoking the familiar by emulating their real-world art tools.

Art apps make the perfect testing ground for putting these iPad styluses through their paces. Youre more likely to spend prolonged periods of time holding a stylus when taking your iPad to a life-drawing session or for some plein-air painting.

1. Kensington Virtuoso Touch 

Price: £15 GBP / $25 USD
Kensington marries two worlds in style with the Virtuoso Touch. Its slim profile, satin textured body and clipped lid work together to create a comfortable, assured feel. And the rubber tip, while not the most stable, is sufficiently pressure-sensitive for diagramming. Pop the lid to reveal a handy metallic ball point for when touchscreen just isnt liberating enough.

• Buy from Amazon.co.uk

2. Truglide Pro Precision Stylus 

Price: £20 GBP / $30 USD
The aluminium body of the TruGlide Pro resembles a regular pen, rocks a classic pocket clip, and feels well balanced when gripped. But its the bulbous mesh tip that sets this stylus apart. Its made of fine microfibre strands that compress against the touchscreen and allow for beautifully controlled movement. A paintbrush-like replacement tip is also available for that uniquely artistic flourish.

• Buy from lynktec.com

3. Wacom Bamboo Stylus Solo 

Price: £20 GBP / $20 USD
Wacom clearly took notes from the humble pen in designing the Bamboo Stylus Solo, a beautifully weighted device with an elegant satin-texture metal casing. A silver detachable lid with classic breast-pocket clip fits firmly on both ends for a traditional scholarly feel, while its removable 6mm tip combines fine-edge finesse with agile responsiveness. Whether notetaking or drawing, the Solo is a pleasure to use.

• Buy from Amazon.co.uk

4. Studio Neat Cosmonaut 

Price: £23 GBP / $25 USD
Dont be put off by the astronomical dimensions of Studio Neats rubber-grip stylus. The Cosmonaut is great for scribbling and sketching, plus its perfectly weighted for both small and large hands, though its exactness may prove wanting. However, what it lacks in fine-grained precision it makes up for in robustness, with a bulbous tip that might well outlive the device it daubs.

• Buy from Amazon.co.uk

5. Just Mobile Alupen

Price: £20 GBP / $25 USD
The stubby yet comfortable to hold Alupen is reminiscent of a crayon, and maintains a similarly balanced weight thanks to its rubber core and aluminium casing, which prevents rolling due to its hexagonal shape.

Controlling the glide of the bubble tip across a touchscreen is a breeze, but those seeking finegrained sensitivity for line art drawing should perhaps opt for a slimmer profile pen.

• Buy from Amazon.co.uk

6. MediaDevil Magicwand

Price: £15 / $20
MediaDevil has designed this affordable stylus with iOS devices specifically in mind, as evinced by a detachable lanyard that plugs into the headphone socket to keep it secure (though we found its presence irksome when drawing). The diameter and weight of the clipped pen makes it extremely comfortable to use, and the fine rubberised tip is arguably the most responsive of the styluses we tested.

• Buy from Amazon.co.uk

The mere mention of the possibility that Apple might include split-screen functionality in iOS 8 caused a real ruckus on the Internet. Nearly everyone was shocked and excited to hear that Apple was finally thinking beyond one window at a time.


Then, WWDC 2014 came and went, with no mention of what would have been a real standout feature. Of course, adding split-screen functionality would also have been a huge concession to the multitasking thinking behind Windows 8 and Android, so perhaps Apple wasn’t quite ready to hear the I-told-you-sos. Now, one developer has spotted a bit of code that indicates split-screen functionality is possible in iOS 8.

It seems that Apple did not consider its efforts at creating a split-screen effect in iOS 8 polished enough for a big reveal at WWDC, but it left the door open for developers in the meantime. Developer Steve Troughton-Smith alerted his followers to the presence of special code in iOS 8 that will allow the use of two apps side by side. You can even alter the size of the app windows to maximize the use of space for specific apps. Apple has inserted code that allows for windows in three sizes: 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4.

Theoretically, you’d be able to watch a show on Netflix, while taking a peek at your Twitter feed or your email inbox on the side. Some rumors hint that split-screen functionality will only arrive on the iPad Air and bypass the smaller iPad Mini, but so far, that’s just speculation. Apple may offer the split-screen feature on all iPads with iOS 8 installed, though it probably won’t offer it on the iPhone for obvious reasons.

It’s possible that Apple is still working on the split-screen feature, but it could also be waiting to debut it during what has become known as the iPad event during the fall. Apple often keeps a few new iOS features on the back burner, so that it has something interesting to show off during hardware events. Either way, it’s likely that we’ll be seeing this long-awaited feature soon.

Fourth-generation Apple iPad has quad-core PowerVR SGX 554 GPU, Apple has touted the fourth-generation Apple iPad as being twice as fast as the previous model. At the heart of that claim is the A6X chip which is 30% larger than the A6 inside the Apple iPhone 5. To illustrate the difference, the GFlops score for the newer iPad at 300MHz doubled to 76.8 the 38.4 scored by the third-generation model. GFlops is a unit of computing capacity representing 1 billion floating point operations per second.

So what did Apple do with that extra space it added to the A6? It went to an extra graphics processing core of which there are now 4 on the chip, up from the 3 on the A6. While the CPU size remains the same on the two, the GPU cores are larger on the A6X. Not only that, but when looked at through a microscope, the 4 GPU cores are divided into 9 sub-cores, two sets of 4 and 1 central sub-core.

One analyst says this could be done for better parallel processing, or for a faster clock speed. Either way, he says that graphic speed will be blazing on the fourth-generation iPad thanks to the PowerVR SGX 554 GPU in the A6X. The chip also has double the SDRAM interface of the A6. All together, it sounds like Apple has really beefed up its full-sized tablet in time for the holiday shopping season.

source: Chipworks via AppleInsider
Via: Phonearena