Product Reviews

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

Review: Zagg Slim Book Pro

There are some among us who truly want a tablet to replace their laptop—by actually turning it into one, thanks to a keyboard attached to it, clamshell style. Zagg has been making tablet keyboards and cases since the beginning, and with its latest release the transformation is near completion. This iteration on the Zagg Slim Book—the Slim Book Pro—sees a number of incremental changes, the most notable of which is that the keyboard is now detachable, magnetically connecting to the case unit when you want it. As with most tablet keyboard cases, you jimmy your iPad into the backing shell component of the Slim Book Pro. The keyboard then attaches to an elongated bit that juts out of the bottom.

WIRED

In keyboard mode, the Slim Book Pro is at its best. The keys are tiny, but this is an unfortunate reality when you have only the real estate of a 9.7-inch iPad to work with. The key action is nothing special, but as a typing experience it gets the job done. A row of shortcut keys across the top help with productivity, as otherwise you have to reach up to the screen to launch apps and select items. The keyboard can be paired to three different devices (a simple button press lets you pick your poison), and there’s even a little loop on the back where you can store either your Apple Pencil or a goth eyeliner.

TIRED

A detachable keyboard adds flexibility, but it introduces a big drawback to the case design, the problem being that without a built-in, sturdy hinge, the screen can’t hold itself upright. Zagg’s solution for this isn’t the most elegant design decision ever: A huge metal flap on the back of the outer shell folds down flat against the table to hold the tablet screen erect. While this lets you meticulously adjust the angle of the screen, in practice it introduces more problems than it solves. The flap is very stiff and difficult to retrieve, forcing you to hook a fingernail between it and the case itself in order to pry it out. While a pair of rubber feet are installed to cushion the blow, I wouldn’t trust the sharpish edges of the flap against any decent piece of furniture in the house, for fear of utterly disrespecting the wood. The overall look is wholly utilitarian, and the metal flap is downright homely. For $150, I expect a bit more elegance in design and a more thoughtful choice of materials.

As well, when using my iPad disconnected from the keyboard, I just wasn’t in love with tactile feel of the case material. The rubbery surface is slick—nay, dolphin-like—and doesn’t instill confidence in a one-handed grasp. With keyboard attached, the whole shebang is also incredibly heavy, turning a sub-one-pound iPad Air 2 or iPad Pro into a monstrous 2.3 pounds all together. That’s only half a pound lighter than my laptop, although, admittedly, the latter doesn’t include a pencil holder.

RATING

4/10 – Downsides outweigh the upsides.

New York Times review pans series but then admits critic saw it in wrong order

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam review love and war in Sri Lanka

A debut novel which raises timely questions about how we regard the suffering of others

The opening sequence of Anuk Arudpragasams debut novel, in which a six-year-old child with a shrapnel-shredded arm is brought to an open-air operating theatre, feels horribly timely. The young man carrying the listless little boy finds a strange solace in discerning the childs prospects: Soon the doctor would arrive and the operation would be done, and in no time at all the arm would be as nicely healed as the already amputated thigh According to the boys sister [that] injury came from a land mine explosion four months before, the same accident that killed their parents also. It brings to mind the images of stunned, bloodied children now coming out of Syria and other war zones. The novel both implicitly and explicitly raises crucial questions about the aesthetic and ethical stakes involved in regarding the suffering of others.

Arudpragasam uses placid, even poetic prose, with results that range from brilliantly unsettling to questionably indulgent. The novel is set approximately seven years ago, in the Tamil-majority north of Sri Lanka. Its action takes place over a few days during the harrowing final months of the islands vicious civil war. Recalling Jos Saramago, The Story of a Brief Marriage takes a fraught political-historical moment and creates out of it a fable-like novel: a boy and girl meet and get married. These are humble characters known only by their first names, Dinesh and Ganga. They live in an unnamed village and in a makeshift camp in lush woodlands that are thick with tropical heat, artillery smoke and the constant threat of sudden death.

Accepting the impossibility of his own survival, Gangas father decides to do what best he can for his daughter and proposes that Dinesh marry her. Given their collective horrible situation, Dinesh is surprised by this offer. But in keeping with the muted feeling and fatalism that mark every character in the book, he accepts, as does Ganga, though neither seems particularly excited about it. The carnage surrounding them is too much for a newlywed couple to overcome, given how much each has already lost: But if they couldnt talk about their pasts, what could they say to each other at all, given that there was no future for them to speak of either?

They try to make a shared life, and their efforts produce the novels most moving material. Never mind the constant probability of death, wounding, forced conscription, starvation and rape: Ganga and Dinesh are shy, uncertain and tentative just as any other sudden new young couple would be. He proposes a stroll, which they take silently; she makes him a small meal of rice and dhal that he revels in, not least because she made it for him. Arudpragasam describes each gesture and thought, all the way down to the shape and taste of the soft grains that Dinesh savours, cleaving the rice into separate sections in his mouth. Only at chapters end does Arudpragasam reveal that allthis haute literary deferring enacts the young couples own unspoken interest in delaying the inevitable: Dinesh licked the last grains of rice offhis fingertips aware that it was time nowfor them to spend their first night together.

Soon enough, Dinesh and Gangas bleak expectations are fulfilled, though its here that the novels aesthetic and ethical ambitions fail to cohere. Shells fall once more, and amid the infernal smoke and sulphur, Dinesh searches and searches for Ganga. Eventually, he discovers her: Her left eye was half-open and the right corner of her parted lips was kissing the dirt. The cheaply evocative wording of this image suggests a literary immaturity at odds with the restraint and poise found elsewhere inthis often formidable novel.

Randy Boyagodas Beggars Feast is published by Penguin.

The Story of a Brief Marriage is published by Granta. To order a copy for 10.65 (RRP 12.99) to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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The Front Page review: Nathan Lane scoops plaudits in newspaper comedy

The hacks are cynical, the laughs regular, the Hecht and MacArthur play a familiar joy. But it is Lanes entrance as Walter Burns that really stops the press

If ever an actor was the theatrical equivalent of a banner headline, that actor is Nathan Lane. Lane, who plays the bellowing editor Walter Burns, arrives a little more than halfway through the revival of The Front Page at the Broadhurst Theatre, splashed across the stage like a 72-point font. His jubilant, giant performance injects a cantankerous vitality into Jack OBriens otherwise pleasant and respectful revival.

The talky, gleefully squawky 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur is a comedy as black as shoe polish. It is also a passionate op-ed on the romance of the bygone newspaper industry.

The action is set in a press room at the criminal courts building on the eve of the hanging of a cop killer, Earl Williams (John Magaro). The forthcoming execution doesnt especially trouble the old hands who have gathered here to drink, jaw, play a hand of poker, and call in the occasional story. Their only complaint is the timing of the hanging. Why cant they jerk these guys at a reasonable hour so we can get some sleep? one gripes.

The plot coagulates when Williams escapes from custody, just as the longtime reporter Hildy Johnson (a dapper, oddly wan John Slattery) announces his retirement from the city pages in favor of marriage to Peggy (Halley Feiffer) and a cushy job in advertising. (As Slattery only recently finished his run on Mad Men, that line gets a particular laugh.)

Journalists, Hildy complains, peeking through keyholes. Running after fire engines like a lot of coach dogs. Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them what they think of companionate marriage a lot of lousy, daffy buttinskis, swelling around with holes in their pants, borrowing nickels from office boys! And for what?

The business, of course, wont let him go so easily, especially when a scoop beckons.

The set is handsome, the dialogue sharp-witted, the cast an assemblage of some of New Yorks finest character actors (Jefferson Mays, David Pittu and Dylan Baker) and big names including John Goodman. The style is vivid and almost expressionist in the way that conversations are layered over around each other. Some of the discussion of race and gender is fairly unreconstructed, but OBrien has excised the nastiest words.

Yet the revivals energy is something less than crackling and the enterprise might have seemed merely respectable were it not for the joyously disreputable Lane. Dressed in a homburg hat and a chalk-stripe suit, with a moustache that looks like a chipmunk has attached itself to his upper lip, he gives a performance that is both outsized and just the right size.

A man seemingly devoid of ethics (he wont let a little thing like kidnapping or arson stand in the way of a good story), his Burns is outrageous, disgraceful and yet impossible not to adore. He represents the best and worst of journalism, the selfish and single-minded pursuit of the truth (and advertising dollars).

Print media may be imperiled, but one has the sense that were Lanes Burns in charge, hed shout it right back into shape.

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Orgreave campaigners consider judicial review bid – BBC News

Review: Furby Connect

People of Earth, Furby has returned. And its beady eyes are aimed at your wallet.

WIRED

For those not in the know, the original Furby was the Christmas gift of 1998, an animatronic, Mogwai-like fuzzball that spoke its own language when it wasn’tmaking rude noises. Like all fads, Furby was dying before its second birthday, and gone by 2002.

TIRED

But wait! Furby returnedwith an upgrade in 2005, andagain in 2012. New versions have launched eachyear since. The $100 Furby Connectisthe most recent edition.

As with all Furbies, the Connect is plush and effusive and so annoying that one simply cannot comprehend its enduring popularity. It is designed for nostalgic hipsters and small children (6 and up per the box), andany parent who purchases one for their tyke is setting themselves up for immediatepsychological ruin. Let me put it this way:In my 25-plus years of writing about tech, thisis the only device I’ve tested that left my entire family pleading with me to turn it off within minutes of unboxing. Let me put it another way: Google “Furby” and the top question in the “People also ask” section is, “How do you turn off a Furby?”

And let me tell you: It is freakin’ hard to turn off a Furby.

Discretion has never been Furby’s strong suit. He hollers in pidgin English (aka “Furbish”) in an especially loud and shrill voice about nothing in particular, begs to be played with or sung to, and incessantly wiggles about like a kid jonesing on too many Froot Loops. There is no power button. With the Furby Connect, the toy ships with a “sleep mask,” which, when positioned perfectly eventually shuts the thing up. This is not instantaneous, however, taking as long as10 seconds to kick in. If you’ve slightly misaligned the mask or find yourself at all inebriated, Furby won’t go down at all, and you maywell fear that Furby has become self-aware and refusing toobey instruction, at least for the six hours of play time that four AA batteries will supply.

Of course, one Furby is buta gateway to a whole pack of them. Multiple Furbies will talk, sing, and fart in unison. The toy also is a gateway to the even more nefarious side of the Furbyverse: Furby Connect World, a mobile app that lets your Bluetooth-enabled Furby interact with a rudimentary video game designed for the 8-and-under set. Furby Connect World is a game where you hatch Furbies—dozens of them if you stick with it—and put them to work like virtual (yet cuddly) slaves. The reward? More Furbies, all of which mustbe exhaustingly fed, cleaned, and medicated in the increasingly chaotic virtual world. Your real Furby can even take an e-shit on a massive toilet that speaks volumes about the target audience for this game.

Paired properly via Bluetooth (which was not always a given in my testing), your real-world Furby will offer a running commentary about the goings on in the virtual-world game, hollering and screeching and laughing at the same damn thing, over and over. The game is playable without a real-world Furby, but doing so activates a Freemium version of the game. Some of the upgrades cost a pretty penny—so think carefully before handing your phone over to Junior.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying the Furby Connect is a bad product. It does exactly what it says it will do. What I am saying is that if you allow one in your home, you are mentally deranged.

To my family, I apologize deeply. That is all.

RATING

2/10 – Sad, really.