Not Worth the $200 Premium →

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Still, those upgrades don't feel worth $290 for a device that doesn't perform its sole function any better than one more than half the price. In that context, the Oasis is meant to be the first desirable e-reader, marketed with its visual and tactile appeal instead of with its functional role in our lives. It’s appealing to customers who want a digital reading experience to feel more like a holding a well-crafted book and are willing to pay a premium for it.

My thoughts exactly. Looking at the reviews, the Kindle Voyage has half the amount of reviews of the Paperwhite and a quarter of the Paperwhite and Basic combined. Maybe I'll just add my own little "spine" invoking plate to my current Kindle for that "Oasis" feel.

PCWorld Goes Hands-on with Intel's Skull Canyon NUC →

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How much performance does that add up to? On one Skull Canyon NUC we played the new game Just Cause 3 at 1920x1080 resolution, with frame rates in the low- to mid-30s. For PC gamers that’s, well, not great, but for integrated graphics, that’s actually pretty impressive.

If you really want more power, you can hook up external graphics cabinets such as this Razer Core with a Radeon GPU inside of it using the Thunderbolt 3.0 port.

This might just be the PC that I've been waiting for. FYI: I haven't owned a Windows based PC since 2005 and at that time, I was already running concurrently with my Powerbook Titanium followed by a MacBook Pro in 2008 virtually dropping all PC/Windows related computing.  The biggest problem I have is that I am well divested into the Mac / OS X ecosystem but then again, the PC would be primarily for gaming. 

Paired with Razer's new Core Graphics external add-on for $500 (graphics card NOT included), this could shape up to be a lean, mean, portable gaming machine which is also less expensive than the Razer Blade Core combo. 

Sidenote: When the heck is the new Apple MacBook Pro going to be released? I've been stuck on a 2010 MacBook Air Core 2 Duo and it's becoming a drag! (this post written on that 2010 MBA) 

Nest Cam Now and 10% off Nest Aware + Video History

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Now's your chance to grab a Nest Cam and take advantage of their 10% off Nest Aware + Video History offer that expires March 1st. It's a beautiful product and simplistic in setting up and monitoring. Use it for home security, nanny cam or even hook it up to an exterior compartment for some outside monitoring.

I'm still surprised that Nest / Dropcam have not come up with an outdoor solution. Hopefully soon.

Will Twitter's Periscope Turn GoPro Around? →

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Do you really believe that a Twitter / Periscope and GoPro solution will bring the stock back up from it's 90% drop over the last year? This chart seems to think so.

GoPro has teamed up with Twitter, according to the Wall Street Journal, and announced that its Hero 4 cameras are able to connect to Periscope and live-stream whatever the user is recording.

The connection is designed to allow users to use both their smartphones and their GoPro cameras intermittently without interrupting the live broadcast.

I still don't own a GoPro but would like one if and only if I can actually start filming while on duty. =)

Federico's iPad Pro Review

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From Frederico MacStories' iPad Pro Review:

This is less of a "just for media consumption" device than any iPad before it. The iPad Pro is, primarily, about getting work done on iOS. And with such a focus on productivity, the iPad Pro has made rethink what I expect from an iPad.

I've find myself manipulating my iPhone 6s Plus more and more as my main device and have been updating elijahnicolas.com more often than not using only iOS.

After reading Frederico's awesome review, I find myself intrigued about the future where I used an iPad Pro as my main device.

Those who will only compare the iPad Pro to a laptop will miss the big picture – this is a large tablet that can be used at a desk and that runs iOS. The richness of the iOS ecosystem is what sets the iPad Pro apart, and the reason why, ultimately, people like me will prefer it over a MacBook. It can be used at a desk, but it's also portable, and it runs iOS.

This is where I believe he has seen the light as compared to Walt Mossberg's "I'm disappointed in the iPad Pro because it's not a laptop replacement" review. I'm actually disappointed with his review as I expected a more thorough analysis but alas, he just skimmed the top in my opinion.

If you're going to read other reviews, check out Jon Gruber's Daring Fireball and Rene Ritchie's iPad Pro Preview along with Living With: Day One story on iMore. Macworld also posted a "First Few Hours" review which is worth a read.

Apple's iPad Pro Beats Last Year's MacBook Pro →

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The benchmarks speak for themselves. Apple is out pacing Intel's x86 architecture with their own in-house ARM A series build out and it’s really impressive. See for yourself.

After a very short conversation with my wife, looks like the iPad Pro might be her next machine while I’m still reserving myself for the SkyLake Retina MacBook Pro for gaming and heavy photography processing. Maybe some video intertwined here and there.

The iPad Pro →

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The iPad Pro is without question faster than the new one-port MacBook or the latest MacBook Airs. I’ve looked at several of my favorite benchmarks — Geekbench 3, Mozilla’s Kraken, and Google’s Octane 2 — and the iPad Pro is a race car. It’s only a hair slower than my year-old 13-inch MacBook Pro in single-core measurements. Graphics-wise, testing with GFXBench, it blows my MacBook Pro away. A one-year-old maxed-out MacBook Pro, rivaled by an iPad in performance benchmarks. Just think about that. According to Geekbench’s online results, the iPad Pro is faster in single-core testing than Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4 with a Core-i5 processor. The Core-i7 version of the Surface Pro 4 isn’t shipping until December — that model will almost certainly test faster than the iPad Pro. But that’s a $1599 machine with an Intel x86 CPU. The iPad Pro starts at $799 and runs an ARM CPU — Apple’s A9X. There is no more trade-off. You don’t have to choose between the performance of x86 and the battery life of ARM.

It's getting to the point that Apple is indeed paving the way for a faster and better experience. If they up the game with iOS X (or whatever they are going to call it) and make it a more viable operating system for the notebook replacement, I can see them conquering the $1200 and lower market segment.

The only thing that sets me back on making this a replacement laptop is that sometimes, Mac OS X has more to offer in terms of shortcuts and various other apps that are NOT for mobile. Jon Gruber also points out a few short comings on using a keyboard without a trackpad. Funny though, I see my daughter (3 years old) try and manipulate my laptop and her little fingerprints are all over my screen. After some frustrations has set, she turns to me confused. 

Anandtech Reviews Apple's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus →

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The iPhone 6s in a lot of ways seems like it’s simple enough to review, but it turns out if you dig deep the changes have been significant. Over the course of a review, we’ve found major changes in the SoC, storage solution, camera, touch screen, fingerprint scanner, voice recognition software, cellular architecture, and WiFi chipset.

It's a doozy. Wonderfully technical and the most thorough that I've read. I love how both Joshua Ho and Randy Smith comb over the details on everything that Apple's latest "s" model has to offer. Even if you're not an Apple fan, the extent of technology, craftsmanship and design that Josh and Randy go over proves to be an exemplary read. Don't take my word for it.

The one disappointment here is that the iPhone 6s doesn’t have OIS, which increasingly feels like a pretty significant differentiator.

I completely agree and that's why I went with the iPhone 6s Plus. Check out the Optical Image Stabilization in the video below.

Attention is in the Details and You Wouldn't Know →

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It's also evident in the MacBook parts laid out before me. The tiny logic board (aka the motherboard) fits in one of my hands. It's literally packed on both sides with chips of varying sizes and includes everything from memory to storage and even the display drivers. It's also deeply informed by everything Apple learned from building circuit boards for handheld technologies like the iPhone. As I examine it, Ternus tells me the board is 67 percent smaller than the one found in the 11-inch MacBook Air.

Simply amazing. The palm of your hand or in other technology comparisons, smaller than the Raspberry Pi!

Every single unit gets measured on line for force required to open it, and we actually adjust every single unit," Ternus said.

In fact, Apple is apparently taking the time to custom-fit all sorts of pieces in the MacBook through a process it calls "binning." Since there can be minuscule variances that might make, for instance, the Force Touch trackpad not a perfect fit for the body or the super-thin Retina display not exactly a match for the top of the case, Apple finds matching parts from the production line. Even the thickness of the stainless steel Apple Logo, which replaced the backlit logo on previous MacBook models, can vary by a micron or so, meaning Apple needs to find a top with the right cutout depth.

It's all in the details. Simply an amazing read from an engineering perspective even if you're not a fan.

The "New" Microsoft and it's Surface Book →

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So Panay’s team set a different goal: to reinvent the laptop. They spent two years designing, prototyping, and fine-tuning—all to get to the Surface Book that goes on sale today. It’s the product of everything Microsoft has learned from making the first Surface machines, and from watching Apple eat its lunch. It’s a story right out of Cupertino, really: A small group of creatives sits in a room together, passionately slaving over every tiny detail of a product until it’s perfect. To go after Apple, Microsoft learned from Apple—and then found a few places to take right turns toward the future it imagines. It cost Panay much more than one night’s sleep.

This is what sets the course for success. Still at $1,499, makes it a little hard to digest but yes, it's definitely production and hardware plus excitement heading in the right direction.

Just in case you missed the latest shenanigans, PCWorld posted their benchmarks showing it beat the Apple's MacBook Pro 13" laptop not by twice but almost three times in terms of speed. Pretty impressive nonetheless, but 9to5Mac brings to light some of discrepancies. The biggest takeaway points to dedicated graphics cards do help in processing power and frame rate. The Surface Book has one, but the MacBook Pro does not.

Walt Mossberg on Sorkin's 'Steve Jobs' →

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Unlike Mr. Sorkin, I did know the real Steve Jobs, for about 14 years — the most productive and successful 14 years of his career running Apple, Inc. I spent scores of hours in private conversations with him over those years, and interviewed him numerous times onstage at a tech conference I co-produced. And the Steve Jobs portrayed in Sorkin’s film isn’t the man I knew.

Sorkin chose to cherry-pick and exaggerate some of the worst aspects of Jobs’s character, and to focus on a period of his career when he was young and immature. His film chooses to give enormous emphasis to perhaps the most shameful episode in Jobs’s personal life, the period when he denied paternity of an out-of-wedlock daughter.

Unfortunately, this is yet another Steve Jobs movie that I'll be skipping. I had high hopes but alas, the book was good enough for me.