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CNET
5 hours ago
- CNET
The iPad Is Almost a Mac Now. Time to Finish the Job
What's a computer? It's whatever helps me get my work done. I love new ideas for what computers can be, but traditional work tools still win out. For my job, it's generally a PC or Mac. When I travel, an iPad is often convenient, but it's not the same, so I often bring both. The "why not both" approach is exactly what Apple has been pitching with iPads and Macs for years, but Apple has also been adamant that these platforms will never merge. I remember the stage announcement that said as much back in 2018. And back then, I said MacOS and iOS needed to combine. I'm willing to take the long game here, a game Apple is often playing with its tech. And I'm ready to step a few years down the path and wait for this merge moment to happen. But really, this moment should be happening right now. And it is: I thought the latest iPad Pro was the Mac I wanted in another form, minus the software I was looking for. That software is coming now, but things need to go even further. Watch this: The One Thing Keeping iPads from Killing the Mac 04:35 iPadOS 26 is a strong sign that the merge is already underway. Lo and behold, the more Mac-like experience is already here if you explore the developer beta. (A public beta is coming this summer, ahead of a fall release, I'd suggest you wait for before downloading.) While Apple always kept conversations about Macs and iPads very separate, this WWDC, Apple described iPad OS 26 as Mac-like quite a few times. Added support for more windows, a mouse pointer that's now an arrow and not a large circle, menu bars, a Preview app that shows files just like a Mac does, and folders that can be organized like a Mac — mostly — are some of features that already have me nodding my head in appreciation. With a trackpad/keyboard attached, the iPad can now start feeling even more flexible, able to multitask, and possibly, able to get serious work done efficiently. What concerns me, though, is it's still not a Mac. The closer anything gets to an expectation point without fully getting there is a zone that's ripe for uncanny valley disappointment. When will I use the latest iPadOS 26, get into a flow, and suddenly realize there's a part of the OS that's not quite the same as a Mac, and it throws me off? I don't know yet. Maybe it'll never happen. But my suspicion is that this new almost-Mac-like iPadOS will still, in some important ways, not be a Mac. The iPad Pro with the developer beta of iPadOS 26 is already getting so much closer to being a Mac. Scott Stein/CNET It's so close now. You can finish the job, Apple! Most iPads and Macs share the same M-series hardware and work with similar-feeling keyboards and trackpads. There's absolutely no reason I can see why an iPad couldn't also be a Mac, other than Apple deciding the software should be functionally different. (As for a Mac being an iPad, well, you'd need a touchscreen for that, and you'd need Pencil support, so it would be more complicated.) Getting all the Mac and iPad apps to be truly cross-compatible across an OS that would recognize both wouldn't be easy, but Apple can do it. Mac apps had to transition from Intel to ARM-based hardware, and before that from PowerPC to Intel. This time, at least, the hardware is the same…but the goals of the apps are different. Yet, the missions are converging. Macs and iPads and iPhones and everything else are getting similar visual designs with Liquid Glass and increasingly similar notifications and widgets. I don't want every single Apple device to work exactly the same, but when it comes to iPads and MacBooks — two product lines designed to be carried around and put in a bag — I feel their overlaps are getting pretty heavy now. iPad Pro vs MacBook Air side by side in 2024. The convergence is clearly already here. Numi Prasarn/CNET I don't think iPads should stop being simple. I agree with Apple: Let the basic iPad flow be the same, and trigger the multi-windowed work mode with the press of a button. But I don't want that multi-windowed mode to just approach being a Mac. I want it to absolutely, positively become a Mac. Let me leave my laptop behind. Let the Pro models and a certain line of MacBooks converge. This convergence is going to be necessary for another reason beyond just budget and packing convenience. If Apple really wants to make future Vision headsets or lighter-weight connected glasses that become essential devices, then it should compress its product line to make room. I could see myself carrying an iPad-slash-MacBook in my bag and a lightweight pair of Vision glasses that work with it. I don't ever see myself carrying a Vision, an iPad, and a Mac. Something has to give. As I said, I'm patient. In fact, I've waited for these changes — and written about them over and over — for over a decade. I can wait another year, maybe even two, for the next moves. I'm glad the ones I've waited forever for have finally arrived, but I still don't understand why iPad Pros can't also be Macs. Apple's latest moves make me more confident of my feelings than ever, but once again, I'm probably going to have to get used to waiting a bit longer one more time.
CNET
a day ago
- CNET
ChatGPT Free vs. ChatGPT Plus: The $20 Per Month Is Worth It
Last year when I first reviewed ChatGPT, the most well-known AI chatbot in the world, I felt that most people shouldn't pay for it. A year later, I still believe that casual users are fine using the free version. However, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has rolled out a slew of updates and improvements making it the $20 per month. That's especially true if you're increasingly using it for research or for parsing through large amounts of data. OpenAI now gives paid ChatGPT users access to the o1 and o3 reasoning models, advanced voice mode, better memory capabilities and a powerful coding agent. At the same time, OpenAI lowered token limits for more input and output text, which subsequently lets paid users generate additional images. Subscribers to the paid plan also get faster priority for image generation and keep full access to the latest models, whereas free users could be downgraded to lower models if servers are busy. Free users have seen some upgrades as well. The GPT-4 model was sunset for GPT-4o in April, meaning ChatGPT will no longer downgrade itself to the now-retired GPT-4 model when usage is high. Free users also get some imaging capabilities, although they don't get priority queue. There's also ChatGPT Search, new shopping tools and light memory capabilities available for free. ChatGPT offers a lot despite not costing you anything. If you're an occasional AI user, just looking to spruce up emails, do some light research or generate an image, then there's no major need to upgrade. But if you find yourself hitting walls consistently, where waiting three hours for your tokens to reset becomes unbearable, then it's probably time to consider making the upgrade. Here are four major questions that will help you figure out whether the paid version of ChatGPT is worth $20 per month. How patient are you? Waiting is the biggest differentiating factor between the free and paid versions of ChatGPT. OpenAI obviously wants users forking over some cash and does so by sprinkling a little inconveniences to free users. Like with free mobile games, you can be left waiting for hours before you're allowed to continue, unless you pay extra to get a fast pass. When you hit a rate limit after using ChatGPT a lot, you'll most often be asked to wait three hours. I've found that image generation is often the main culprit for suddenly running out of tokens and being asked to wait. On the other hand, for many other uses that didn't involve images, I found ChartGPT free rarely asked me to wait. When doing research, for example, I found it nearly impossible to get ChatGPT Free to kick me out. It seems that lower-level inquiries don't trigger token limits as easily. Unfortunately, OpenAI doesn't broadcast the exact amount of tokens given to free or paid users, so it's hard to do a numbers-by-numbers comparison. Creative inquiries, ones that take ChatGPT Free more time to compute, might eat away at your tokens faster, but I honestly still found it difficult to hit those limits. The writing quality did come off as a bit basic or with as much bravado and grammatical complexity as a young adult novel, but for a tool that costs no money, it's a good jumping off point, nonetheless. Will you be doing deeper research? One of ChatGPT's greatest strengths is in the realm of research. It can pull from the entire trove of online info and synthesize it in seconds. If you're a student, journalist, researcher or someone who has to put together well-sourced reports for work, ChatGPT is an incredible companion. In my use, ChatGPT Free does a good job with finding sources, but ChatGPT Plus does it better. Mainly, it's ChatGPT Plus' reasoning models, o1 and o3, that prove to be extremely useful. These reasoning models do more than spit out words on your screen. They take extra time, sometimes minutes, to put together a detailed report with sources, recursively checking the output for accuracy before generating a final result. The last thing you'd want in your report is to accidentally publish an incorrect piece of information or source something that doesn't exist. In my experience, o1 and o3 are less prone to these types of hallucinations. Still, it's important to go through and make sure all the links these models are referencing both exist and are accurate. So, it's a question of stakes. If your job or grades depend on information being correct, don't risk it by opting for the free version of ChatGPT. If you're using ChatGPT as a learning tool, more like an interactive version of Wikipedia, then the free version will suffice. But you should still fact-check either way. Do you care about generating images or analyzing photos? ChatGPT Free can both generate photos and analyze your images. It's a handy tool to play around with, for example, to see if the shoes you're wearing match your dress. If you often find yourself hitting token rate limits, that's when the free version starts to (deliberately) become an annoyance. Again, this is very much dependent on what you use ChatGPT for. If you find yourself running into rate limits, then upgrading becomes more enticing. I have friends that will jump between multiple free ChatGPT accounts when they hit rate limits to avoid handing over their credit card number. This is certainly a good tactic if you're trying to save cash. But you'll probably run into the other major annoyance when trying to generate photos: heavy server traffic. Even if you haven't hit your imaging rate limit, you'll still find yourself waiting for results to propagate. ChatGPT gives priority to paid users. With the free version, I've found myself waiting over an hour for an image to generate. Your tolerance for this may vary, but some people will undoubtedly find that $20 per month is worth the faster results. Are you planning to make custom agents? Creating GPTs, which are bespoke chatbots aimed at a specific task, is a handy tool for avid ChatGPT users. For example, say you need to use ChatGPT to improve your nutrition and help you lose weight while building muscle. Instead of prompting ChatGPT each time with your goals and parameters, you can just create a custom GPT with that info saved and ready to go. There are all sorts of custom GPTs you can create, from analyzing the latest supply chain changes to a personal budgeting assistant to an astrology birth chart expert. There's even an entire marketplace of freely available GPTs people have created, ready for your use. Some of the more popular/interesting versions include a Python coding assistant, an imaging prompt generator or a marketing mentor. Below, I took a stock photo of the Burger King Kids Club and had the Hot Mods GPT create a prompt to turn it into a cool trading card, the image of which was generated by GPT 4o. A Burger King Kids Club trading card generated by ChatGPT. Imad Khan/CNET A trading card-style image of the Burger King Kids Club characters in a rare collectible card format. Background filled with intense stylized flames in vivid red, orange, and electric purple. Add holographic foil effects with rainbow starburst radiating behind characters. Chrome gold card border with glowing edge. Card stats at the bottom: 'Burger Power: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥', 'Friendship: ★★★★★', 'Adventure Level: MAX'. In the top-right corner, a foil badge that says 'ULTRA RARE - 1ST EDITION'. Apply glittering holofoil texture over the 'KIDS CLUB' logo. Stylized burger, crown, and token icons floating in the background with a reflective shine. Rim lighting around characters to blend them into a dynamic, high-energy scene. Unfortunately free users can't create custom GPTs, but they can use custom GPTs created by others. Bottom line: Use ChatGPT Free until you no longer can Given how powerful the free version of ChatGPT is, I suggest you try using it for as long as you can before your frustrations start to mount. Depending on your usage, you might get what you need without having to pay. But if limits start becoming an annoyance, try giving the paid version a shot and see if things become easier and better for you. You can always cancel after a month or two. I myself use ChatGPT Plus outside of work. But if I weren't being given access due to my job, I'd probably find myself forking over the $20 for ChatGPT Plus access all the same. Beyond just writing and research, there are enough added benefits that the time savings is critical to my work.
Wall Street Journal
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
How People Decided It's OK to Wear AirPods Anywhere, Anytime
Hi. Excuse me. Hey. Do I have your attention? I can't tell because your AirPods are in.
Phone Arena
3 days ago
- Phone Arena
Some iPhones running iOS 26 Developer Beta 1 are experiencing very laggy performance
Those of you who ignore warnings about installing beta software and say to themselves, "What can go wrong anyway?" I'd be happy to give you the answer. First, I have no illusions. Installing the first Developer Beta of a new iOS build on your iPhone is even more of a gamble than usual. The fear is that features you rely on every day might not work on the beta. Battery life typically suffers mightily although you do get the first crack at checking out the new features (which I like to have for my job). Now some of you might be asking, if the iOS 26 Developer Beta isn't working right, why not uninstall it and go back to iOS 18.5? If you were to do that, it would force you to wipe all of your apps off your phone, If you backed up the data on your iPhone before installing the iOS 26 Developer Beta as we suggested, wiping the device and restarting is still a pain in the ass albeit a little less so. Apple has released two versions of the iOS 26 Developer Beta 1. | Image credit-PhoneArena If you are running the iOS 26 Developer Beta on your iPhone, has the handset suddenly become frozen with the content on the screen seemingly unable to follow the lead of your finger on the touch screen? The good news is that the iOS 26 Public Beta is expected sometime in July. That release could include some patches designed to exterminate some of the bugs discovered on the first iOS 26 Developer Beta. If you must have your important iPhone features working at all times, perhaps installing an iOS beta release is something that you should not be doing. Take this as a warning and next time you're prompted to load a beta version of iOS, take a wide pass. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase Check Out The Offer
Forbes
3 days ago
- Forbes
Exactly When Apple Will Launch iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air And iPhone 17 Pro
Updated June 17 with more details of the release date, what's coming and why this might be the last year to fit this schedule. Apple will launch the iPhone 17 series later in 2025, doubtless in the fall, as that's when the company has said the next generation of software, iOS 26, will go on general release — it's just had a surprise update to the developer beta cycle. Exactly when the phones will launch hasn't been announced, but it's possible to nail down the date with some accuracy. And it's worth noting that rumors are already rife about how things will change in 2026. More on that below. Here's all you need to know. To be clear, when I say iPhone 17 throughout this piece, I'm also referring to the rest of the iPhone 17 series. In other words, the regular iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro, the larger iPhone 17 Pro Max and the all-new super-slim iPhone which is predicted to be on the horizon. It may be called the iPhone 17 Air or it may have some other name which Apple feels conveys the svelte, stylish nature of this phone. So far, there have been no rumors of delays for any of the four, so I think all will be announced at the same keynote — though it's still possible that one or more could see a delay to its release date, as happened in the past for the iPhone X and iPhone XR in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Apple's biggest keynote of the year always features the iPhone, and usually the Apple Watch plus, sometimes, another product like AirPods. It always falls in roughly the first half of September, mostly on a Tuesday or Wednesday. And never on Sept. 11. This gives us three possible pairs of dates: Tuesday, Sept. 2 or Wednesday, Sept. 3, Tuesday, Sept. 9 or Wednesday, Sept. 10, or Tuesday, Sept. 16 or Wednesday, Sept. 17. We can rule out the first pair as that completely clashes with the big consumer electronics show in Berlin, IFA, which runs Sept. 5-9, with press days just before that. U.S. and international press will be tied up in Germany that week. Also, Labor Day is Monday, Sept. 1, and Apple doesn't choose the week Labor Day falls in. The final pair of dates seems too late for me, though they're not impossible — if Apple hits a snag in production, it can move the launch to that week. Most likely are Tuesday, Sept. 9 or Wednesday, Sept. 10. Last year, Apple chose Monday, Sept. 9 for the keynote, so the Monday in that week, Sept. 8, is also possible. My gut says it will be on Tuesday, Sept. 9 at 10 a.m. Pacific in Apple's Cupertino HQ. The pre-order date can shift a little, but it's usually on the Friday of the week of the keynote. So, providing September 9 is the day the keynote happens, as I believe it will be, then pre-orders will open on Friday, September 12. As for the time, this usually begins at local times, often at 1 p.m. wherever you are. This means it's first in places like Australia, later in the U.S. because of the time zones. Previously, Apple has let people get ahead of the queue the night before pre-orders open — Thursday, Sept. 11 in this scenario — so they can choose the color, storage level and model of iPhone then and complete the purchase when pre-orders open the following day. Assuming the keynote is on Sept. 10, or one day that week, the release date, as sure as eggs is eggs, will be the Friday of the following week: Friday, Sept. 19. If for some reason the keynote moves to the week beginning Sept. 17, then Friday, Sept. 26 will be the onsale date for the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max (if those are the names selected for the phones expected). But my money's on Friday, Sept. 19. Alex Lee at The Independent has just released his own prediction of the release date and I'm happy to say it coincides with mine. 'Apple almost always announces its new line of smartphones on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday in the second week of September. To give you an idea, the iPhone 16 was announced on Monday 9 September 2024, the iPhone 15 on Tuesday 5 September 2023, the iPhone 14 on Wednesday 7 September 2022, and the iPhone 13 on Tuesday 14 September 2021. The newest iPhone is always then available to pre-order on the Friday of that same week, before releasing on general sale a week later. "To break it down easy, I'm expecting Apple to unveil the iPhone 17 in the second week of September, probably sometime between 8 and 10 September, with pre-orders going live on Friday 12 September. The iPhone 17 lineup could then be released on Friday 19 September,' he says. In commenting on the release date for the iPhone 17, Cnet has said that the iPhone 17 series will likely be announced in the first half of September. But it also comments on how this might not be the way things are after this year. 'The iPhone 17 lineup may be the last to follow this fall-release model. Starting with the iPhone 18, Apple will reportedly split its phone releases so that lower-cost iPhones launch in the first half of the year and the higher-end Pro models become available later in the year. But that isn't expected to happen until 2026 so you can likely still expect the iPhone 17 Pro to become available this fall.,' it says. In which case, check back for a different release date story this time next year.
