The new in the world of technology

When I opened up Apple’s new  Clips app  yesterday, as I’ve been doing for the past few days, I was greeted with the same photo-capture screen that’s prioritized in all the social “story” apps.  Take a picture! Capture video! Share! Share everything!  they scream at you. I added some text overlays and emoji, and fumbled my way through Live Titles, the feature that’s distinctive to Apple Clips. And eventually, I shared my Clips. But it took a while. Because Clips take a while. After Apple  first announced its Clips video-making app a couple weeks ago , a lot of people — including me — wondered whether this was the company’s attempt to grab some of the attention that’s been siphoned by social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. After using the new Clips app for the past five days, it’s become clear to me that this is  not  Apple’s attempt at a “social” app, at least, not in the way that social networks work. Instead, it’s a video-making ...

While Apple this week released its new iPad and talked about its  upcoming plans for an iMac Pro,  let’s not forget its other productivity machine got a refresh not too long ago. The MacBook Pro —  with  and  without  the Touch Bar — is Apple’s flagship laptop, and right now it’s available at up to $250 off. If you’re more in the market for tablets — and you happen to live near a Staples — you might be able to find the shiny new iPad for $30 off. And if you prefer spending less than $100 for a tablet, Amazon’s taking $10 to $20 off of its Fire devices. LAPTOPS At  Amazon  and  Best Buy , get up to $250 off select models of the newest MacBook Pro — with or without the  Touch Bar . We’re not exactly sure how long the prices will be discounted; some of these models are included in Best Buy’s  2 Day Sale which ends tonight , and Amazon is showing low stock on a few models so you may want to act fast. $200 off Apple MacBook P...

In anticipation of Samsung’s shiny new Galaxy S8, I’ve gone back to using the smartphone it is replacing, the Galaxy S7 Edge, and what I’ve (re)discovered is a device still very much worthy of the flagship title. A year after its release, the S7 Edge remains one of the very best smartphones you can buy, and that’s only going to get better once its price gets dinged by the S8’s arrival this month. I really didn’t set out to re-review the S7 Edge; all I wanted was to remind myself what Samsung’s TouchWiz interface was like, so as to be able to best judge the company’s changes in the 2017 iteration. But then I started admiring the S7 Edge’s screen. And I got an appreciation for the battery life that comes from a class-leading 3,600mAh battery. By the time I’d taken a few decent photos with the camera, I was convinced sufficiently to swap my SIM card over from  my beloved Pixel  and extend this Samsung test drive. Now, am I saying the S7 Edge is better than the Pixel? O...

For years, science fiction has promised that one day, technology will make paper obsolete. Instead of carrying around folders of dead trees and bulky books, we’ll use miraculous tablets instead that can store a limitless amount of information and knowledge in a single, easy-to-carry form factor. This is the idea that’s driving Sony’s newest digital paper tablet,  the DPT-RP1 . Sony has actually been trying to put paper out of business for a while. While Amazon’s Kindle e-readers may be the household name these days, it was  Sony’s Librie  that pioneered the use of an E Ink display for reading. (The DPT-RP1 itself is an updated version of Sony’s original digital paper effort, the  DPT-S1 .) The  DPT-RP1  offers a similar 13.3-inch display as its predecessor, but dramatically improves the resolution from 1200 x 1600 dots to 1650 x 2200 dots. The screen is a “non-slip” panel, which the company says will improve the experience of annotating documents...

What’s the most important feature on your smartphone? Is it the camera? The display? The design? The processor? The software and apps it runs? Chances are, it’s a combination of all of those things and more. But over the past few weeks I’ve learned that the most important feature on my smartphone is none of the above; it’s the battery life. It’s a little obvious: if your phone’s battery is dead, none of the other features are useful or even matter. I came to this realization after spending the last month using a six-month-old, midrange Moto Z Play as my primary device. I had impulsively purchased the Z Play late last year when it was on sale for the holidays (down from its already attractive price), but after briefly using it to get some initial impressions and try out Moto’s Mod accessories, it sat largely unused for months. That changed in March when Moto finally delivered the Android 7.0 Nougat update to my unlocked model and I took the SIM out of my Google Pixel and put it...