Headphones

Apple’s new wireless AirPods, introduced today at the launch of the iPhone 7, deliver a “magical experience,” the senior vice-president of marketing, Phil Schiller, promised. They will disappear before your very eyes. The AirPods look exactly like Apple’s traditional earbuds, minus the cord. The cost of making your headphones five times more likely to fall irretrievably into a grate is a more than five times increase in price, to $159. Apple is rolling out the AirPods alongside its new, headphone jack-free iPhone 7. In a presentation that denigrated the trusty (and conveniently universal) headphone jack as “ancient” technology, Schiller declared that the change was about something bigger than naked commercialism. “The reason to move on, it really comes down to one word: courage,” he said. “The courage to move on to do something that betters all of us.” The phones will come with wired earbuds that connect through the … [Read more...] about Earth to Apple: wireless Airpod headphones are like a tampon without a string

Almost every work that Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote in the 1950s seemed to break new ground, but few have had a more lasting impact than Kontakte, which he planned in 1958 and realised over the following two years in the electronic studios of West German Radio. The score exists in two versions – as a purely electronic work on tape, following the equally groundbreaking Gesang der Jünglinge that Stockhausen had completed immediately before it, and as an electro-acoustic piece (his first, and one of the first ever composed), in which the prerecorded sounds are combined with live instruments, a piano and percussion. The electronic music was created as a four-channel tape, and that vivid, spatial element of the work emerges with startling immediacy in this first binaural recording of the electro-acoustic version, with percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys. Heard through headphones, their performance gives a tingling sense of the aural perspectives that played such an … [Read more...] about Stockhausen: Kontakte review – a kaleidoscopic, headphone-friendly sound picture

Yesterday TV presenter and columnist Fiona Phillips shared the secrets to feeling and looking years younger in your 50s and beyond. Here in part two of her guide, the 58-year-old screen favourite looks at some of the most effective ways to drop a decade from every body part - from your head to your toes... Fiona says: "The world of TV is famously looks-obsessed but I’m proud to say I have never been on a diet - I threw my scales away when I was 18 and have never looked back. And as for a daily gym workout, forget it, who has time for that? "Instead I make sure I eat healthily, but don’t deprive myself of things I enjoy, and I walk EVERYWHERE! I firmly believe it’s the single best thing we can all do to make sure we feel fantastic. "That’s not to say you can’t do lots of other things though - try these and you could soon see a whole new youthful you." TUMMY Thanks to our naturally falling hormone levels and the resulting drop in metabolism, the average … [Read more...] about Fiona Phillips’ secret guide to making your whole body look 10 years younger

The Galaxy S10 is Samsung’s middle-of-the-road top-end phone, featuring a large screen in a pretty compact body for those who don’t like the current breed of massive flagship superphones. The regular, non-plus versions of Samsung’s Galaxy S line have always been the sweet spot between size, price and performance. They offer big, beautiful screens in bodies that are practically tiny by today’s giant-phone standards. The Galaxy S10 isn’t all that small, of course, measuring 70.4mm wide and 149.9mm tall with a stunning 6.1in QHD+ AMOLED screen. It’s about the same size as Apple’s iPhone XS, and considerably smaller than the Galaxy S10+, Huawei P30 Pro and OnePlus 7 Pro. It’s also one of the lightest top-end smartphones on the market at just 157g: 18g lighter than the S10+ and a full 49g lighter than the OnePlus 7 Pro. Its size and weight make it one of easiest top-end phones to handle and pocket. Not once did the Galaxy S10 feel liable to … [Read more...] about Samsung Galaxy S10 review: the sweet spot

Apple has finally given the MacBook Air the update fans have been craving for the last three years: new processors and a vastly improved Retina display. But is this the new Mac laptop for most people or has it lost some of the desirability and shine while stagnating since 2015? When closed, the new MacBook Air looks pretty much the same as the old one. The aluminium frame is still wedge-shaped. It still has the cut-out in the deck to lift the screen and still has the Apple logo emblazoned on the lid, even if it is now metallic and shiny rather than being light-up opaque plastic. Like a wedge-shaped MacBook Pro But side by side it is clear this is a smaller, more modern Mac shrunk in both width and length, but not in height, fitting exactly into the footprint of the current 13in MacBook Pro. Gone, too, are the old selection of ports from the Air, reduced to only two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports and one headphone socket. USB-C is the industry standard port of the moment, with Thunderbolt 3 … [Read more...] about Apple MacBook Air review: the new default Mac