All posts by Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

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About Gavin Fabiani-Laymond

President, CEO & Editor of https://gavinsgadgets.com Reviews & News of Technology

Apple quietly updates MacBook Pro and Air with higher specs and lower pricing

Apple Updates Processors & Prices of MacBook Pro with Retina Display –

CUPERTINO, California-February 13, 2013-Apple® is making the MacBook Pro® with Retina® display faster and more affordable with updated processors and lower starting prices. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now starts at $1,499 for 128GB of flash, and $1,699 for a new 2.6 GHz processor and 256GB of flash. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now features a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, and the top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook comes with a new 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of memory. Apple today also announced that the 13-inch MacBook Air® with 256GB of flash has a new lower price of $1,399.

Despite the lower price point, these laptops are still premium machines.

Paranoid Android 3 for Nexus Devices

PA3 has just been released for the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7, or Nexus 10. This is a custom rom that has a few unique features.

Paranoid Android’s defining characteristic is what they call Hybrid Engine. This is not a tablet mode rom it is a rom that allows you to select both dpi and layout on a per-app basis. Rather than being forced to modify the look of your entire device, you can optimize your applications to what works best. Neat.

A new and important feature in the official release of PA3 is the PIE control system. What this allows one to do is to disable onscreen buttons and use a swipe gesture to access various common functions, thereby freeing up valuable screen real estate. In addition, per app color, another significant feature in PA3 allows you set system UI colors on a per-app basis. So for example if you want a black system bar for your launcher, but a blue one for Facebook? No problem.

PA3 also corrects for the device’s gamma issues to give it the punch the IPS panel deserves.

5 years ago I might have been interested in something like this. Nowadays, I just don’t have the time, and I just want mu phone to work straight out of the box. If you do fancy this head over to XDA Developers.

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The Sound & Vision Show 22-24 Feb 2013 Bristol

The Bristol Sound & Vision Show starts next Friday 22nd Feb until Sunday 24th Feb.

There are over 187 brands exhibiting from Sennheiser to Sony to Rega and many more. So if you like music and TV its worth a visit to see what can be achieved!

Also the shows organisers have an app to help you with the show for both android and ios. Window users are out of luck but they do have a mobile web page. Details of the apps can be found here.

The app is really good and provides details on nearly every exhibitor and anything else you might need for the day. Even if you are not going it is worth downloading the app, searching for the show, install its guide and see the interface.

Samsung and Chillingo create 100% Indie

Samsung and EA’s mobile game publishing division, Chillingo have announced a new partnership called 100% Indie which goes live from 4th March. This new app partnership is to increase the availability of indie apps.

This is a clever service as it lets the indie developers keep 100% of the revenue in the first 6 months, then the next 6 months the indie developers will keep 90%, moving to a 80/20 split in year 2 and finally to a 70/30 split thereafter.

Also the developers will still be able to publish their apps on other app stores.

This is another step towards Samsung creating its own Eco system away from Google.

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Google Music on iOS

Recently on twitter several friends of mine were discussing the pros and cons of streaming music. There were arguments for local storage or streaming.

There are several services available including Google Music which allows you to store 20,000 songs for free. This is a very worthy feature as most people will be able to upload all their music library into the cloud. Amazon by contrast offers 250 songs before you need to pay and Apple is pay immediately. There are other streaming services from the likes of Spotify too.

I was thinking about the arguments for and after, and basically it boils down to whether you have a decent fast Internet coverage. And a broadband or mobile tariff that can cope with the demand in data. With on device local storage your music is always there but if you have a large music collection you are unlikely to fit it all on your phone unless you have something like an iPod Classic 160gb.

However, I think there is a major advantage of streaming instead of local storage. I have deleted all my music on my iPad and if I want to listen to anything I stream it over wifi to my iPad. This means I free up tons of space to fit more games and all my photos. It also means I don’t have to worry or think about buying a bigger capacity iPad, unless I need more space for games. But this only works because the iPad doesn’t venture away from a fixed wifi spot. If it travelled all over the place then the argument to keep the music on the local memory will win the day.

What’s your preferences?

Real Racing 3 release info

I loved the previous versions of Real Racing, especially Real Racing 2 with airplay to my TV.

The next incarnation is being released in two weeks time 28th February and it will be a free to play game. And that’s where I sigh. I just hope the game is playable and not had the fun zapped out with constant in app purchases.

I really don’t like free to play apps. Generally they remove the enjoyment and are a con just trying to exploit your bank account. I would rather pay upfront.

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