Monday! Hopefully the day we all dread hasn’t been too bad for you. We have some interesting news bits for you today:
- Apple is now accepting trade-ins of older Apple Watches
- Watch out, Apple! Google Chromebooks are already eating your lunch in the education market, and now Google and Acer have teamed up for the low-cost Acer Chromebook Tab 10 tablet. Can Apple beat it with a lower-cost iPad expected to be announced tomorrow?
- Use an iPad with a PC? The Microsoft Edge browser now runs on iPad, so you can send web pages from your iPad or iPhone directly to your Windows PC
- Apple’s “original content” for streaming TV won’t arrive until next March, and they’re working on upbeat, optimistic content
- Amazon’s Kindle app for iPad now supports Split View and a new continuous scrolling mode
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Monday, March 26, 2018.
If you’re thinking about upgrading your original Apple Watch to an Apple Watch Series 3, you’re in luck! Apple is now accepting in-store trade-ins for older Apple Watches, and those recycling their watch can receive anywhere from $50 to $175 depending on the model traded in and the condition. Apple will not be accepting any of the Edition models for trade-in — those were the very pricey watches that cost about the same as a well-loaded iMac Pro.
Tomorrow at Apple’s education event in Chicago, the company is expected to debut new, lower priced iPads to help combat the flood of Chromebooks that have taken over the education market. Well, Google isn’t taking that rumor sitting down, as today the company introduced the first Chrome OS tablet in cooperation with Acer. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is the first pure tablet to run Chrome OS, as the operating system has been limited in the past to laptops, desktops and tablet/PC hybrids. With a 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 display and a weight of just over 1.2 pounds, the Chromebook Tab 10 supports Google Play which provides access to Android apps and management tools that are already being used by a number of schools. It has a 2-megapixel webcam on the front, two speakers, and a microphone. There’s a 5-megapixel rear camera for photos and videos, and the specs show a 9 hour battery life. The Tab 10 also comes with a Wacom EMR stylus that doesn’t require charging or pairing. This device will apparently start selling next month for $329; Apple will need to beat that price and perhaps throw in a lower-cost Apple Pencil to compete.
PC users who also use iPads can be happy today — Microsoft has released a version of the Edge browser for iOS that runs on the Apple tablet. The free browser works with Windows PCs the same way that Safari works with Macs — you can open a web page in Edge on your iPhone or iPad, and send that page to Edge on the desktop or laptop PC.
You know all of those new streaming TV shows that Apple is supposed to be working on and spending well over a billion dollars to develop? It appears that the company is working behind the scenes on getting things filmed so that the shows will skip the usual pilot episode method of coming to life, instead becoming full series right off the bat. A New York Times report says that the company wants programming that is aligned with “its bright, optimistic brand identity”, meaning that shows with a dark outlook or heavy social justice message will most likely be red-lighted.
One last quick note; a new update makes it possible to use Split View mode for the Amazon Kindle app on iPad. This update also provides a new continuous scrolling mode, in which you can just scroll through a book endlessly rather than flipping pages.
That’s all the news for today – join me tomorrow afternoon for another edition of the AWT News Update.
