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The Apple Vision Pro, a new AR headset, offers a range of streaming options, but Netflix is notably absent from the list of native apps available at launch. However, users can still access Netflix through the headset's web browser. This absence is not surprising given Netflix's past relationship with Apple. Other major streaming services like Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Paramount+ are included in the lineup. The Vision Pro offers immersive entertainment experiences, including the ability to stream 3D movies and access exclusive content. [Extracted from the article]

Apple's HomePod speakers and Apple TV streaming players will soon have the ability to allow others to control music playback. This feature will be enabled through SharePlay, a two-and-a-half-year-old Apple feature that allows users to share their currently playing media. SharePlay music control will be available on the HomePod, HomePod mini, and Apple TV through a software update. Users can share a QR code with friends or family to give them control over music playback, and users will have the option to approve or deny control requests. Apple Music subscribers will be able to initiate SharePlay music control sessions, but non-subscribers can still control playback. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the recent addition of Zoom functionality to Apple TV. Users can now join Zoom meetings on their Apple TV 4K by using their iPhone's rear camera for video. The setup process is simple and requires enabling Continuity Camera functionality between the Apple TV and iPhone. While the Zoom app for tvOS offers a polished and easy-to-use experience, it does not support custom backgrounds or touch-up appearance settings. Other features include in-call chat, breakout rooms, and automatic echo cancellation. The Zoom app for tvOS is available for download from the Apple App Store. [Extracted from the article]

Apple Music will reportedly prioritize Dolby Atmos music tracks starting in 2024, encouraging more musicians to mix their songs in this format. This move aims to enhance the spatial audio experience on Apple Music and differentiate it from competitors like Spotify, which has yet to introduce spatial audio support. Dolby Atmos allows for a 360-degree sound experience, but the quality of Atmos tracks can vary depending on the mastering process. Users can choose to disable Dolby Atmos support on Apple devices if they prefer stereo tracks. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the recent deprecation of the iTunes Movies and TV Shows apps on Apple TV with the release of tvOS 17.2. Users will now need to use Apple's TV app to rent or purchase movies and TV shows on their Apple TV. The update also brings interface changes, including a sidebar for easy navigation to various features. The move away from the iTunes apps aligns with Apple's previous efforts to move away from the iTunes brand. [Extracted from the article]

PLAY LIST LG raises the immersion bar with the S95QR, a Dolby Atmos/DTS:X soundbar with not two, not four, but five up-firing drivers, including one for the center channel. The LG S95QR's remote is the same revamped wand that LG packs in its other recent soundbars, and its sleek, ergonomic design is a major improvement over older LG soundbar remotes. Likewise, the LG Sound Bar app offers access to all the LG S95QR's modes and settings, along with plenty of options for trimming speaker levels. [Extracted from the article]

If you have an older TV that lacks HDMI-ARC support, you can connect the Streambar Pro's HDMI port to one of your TV's HDMI inputs, and then send audio back down to the soundbar via an optical (Toslink) cable. PLAY LIST Roku has been slowly expanding its line of affordable soundbars, most recently with last year's compact, "pretty good" Streambar (fave. co/3soGb8S). That said, the Streambar Pro does mark Roku's first soundbar with a virtual surround mode, which (according to Roku) delivers a "rich and immersive sound experience" without physical surround speakers. [Extracted from the article]

MAC USERHot StuffCHAMBERLAIN MYQ SMART INDOOR CAMERAmyq.comWith 1080p video resolution, a 130-degree field of view, custom motion zones, and "smart" people and pet detection, this indoor camera has two-way audio is supported, allowing you to chat with anyone within the camera's view. It works with the myQ iPhone app so you can view the camera feed.—BEN PATTERSONPHOTO (COLOR) [Extracted from the article]

MACUSERsamsung.comThe Music Frame is a bit of a throwback—it’s designed to showcase actual prints (up to 8×8 inches) rather than display digital photos. Behind the picture are four front-firing drivers (two tweeters and two midrange drivers) plus a pair of back-firing woofers. With support for Dolby Atmos, the Music Frame can operate on its own as a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi speaker, and it even offers a built-in IoT hub that works with Samsung SmartThings.—BEN PATTERSONPHOTO (COLOR) [Extracted from the article]

MACUSERamazon.comAmazon’s third-generation Echo Frames smart glasses arrive with several welcome improvements, including new styles, thinner temples, better audio, and improved battery life. If you find Alexa indispensable and you want the voice assistant hovering around your temples all day, the Frames are an easy recommendation. But you’ll still want your AirPods when it comes to music.PHOTO (COLOR) [Extracted from the article]

HandBrake Total Encode Time Seconds Cinebench R15 0.38 Again, we see the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE's multicore performance fall behind those of its heavier competitors (with the 6-pound-plus Aorus and MSI laptops again leading the pack), but take a look at the Triton's single-threaded performance. 3DMARK PORT ROYALE To wring out the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE's ray-tracing performance, we fired up 3DMark's Port Royale benchmark, which puts RTX-powered laptops through their paces with ray-traced reflections, shadows, and glass surfaces. PHOTO (COLOR): The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE's ray-tracing performance isn't bad given its RTX 3060 GPU; those laptops above it have RTX 3080 graphics cards. DEPARTMENTS An on-the-go gaming rig with ray-tracing chops that won't break your budget or your back, the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE serves up an enticing mix of value and performance. [Extracted from the article]

Priced at just $99, the HomePod mini brings Apple's smart speakers into the realm of affordability (although they're still not nearly as inexpensive as the Echo Dot and Google Nest Mini [ fave.co/3ukICsU ], which are $50 each). It's no wonder Apple wants to put the HomePod mini front and center, since it By solves many (if not all) of the HomePod's most vexing problems while moving the older model out to pasture. Why did Apple's original HomePod fail?. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is just the kind of powerful, light, and long-lasting laptop you'll want to take with you on post-pandemic business trips - and it's handy even now just because it's so easy to take all over the house. As far as looks go, the ThinkPad X1 Nano follows in the footsteps of Lenovo's other ThinkPad laptops - which is to say, it's all business. At just a sliver under two pounds (Lenovo says it weights 1.99 pounds, and my own measurements confirmed it), the X1 Nano is Lenovo's lightest ThinkPad ever. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS The luxurious HP Spectre x360 14 is back with some new bling - Intel's Tiger Lake CPU. Speaking of the camera shutter, the Spectre x360 14 actually gives you visual feedback when the shutter is closed, something we wish more laptop vendors would implement. The HP Spectre x360 14's physical camera shutter gives you visual feedback when the shutter is closed. DESIGN HP's Spectre x360 laptops have long been sleek, gorgeous creatures, and this new Spectre x360 14 is no exception. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS The second time's the charm for the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, a slim, light Porsche-branded laptop that lacks its predecessor's flash but nails it in the performance department. The Porsche Design Acer Book RS absolutely crushes it with HandBrake, easily outpacing two laptops with more powerful Core i7 Tiger Lake processors, the Acer Swift 5 and Dell XPS 13. While 2017's Porsche Design Book One (go. pcworld.com/pbk1), the first laptop with a detachable display and a 360-degree hinge, took a shock-and-awe approach in terms of its form factor, the elegant but much more traditional Porsche Design Acer Book RS keeps the fireworks under the hood. 3DMARK SKY DIVER 1.0 Acer isn't positioning the Porsche Design Acer Book RS as a gaming laptop, given that it packs merely Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics core (not to be confused with the company's Iris Xe Max discrete mobile graphics [ go.pcworld.com/xmxx ]). [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS Packed with features sure to make productivity mavens happy, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 delivers both performance and value in a slim and trim shell, even if its battery life isn't quite what we'd hoped. The IdeaPad Slim 7's battery life fell a little short of our expectations, and the laptop's staid design, while pleasingly slim, won't wow anybody (which shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Lenovo's IdeaPad line). PORTS The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 has just about every base covered when it comes to ports, including (on the left side) one that we rarely see in this price range: Thunderbolt 3, handy for connecting a pair of 4K monitors or hooking up a fully loaded laptop hub. PHOTO (COLOR): The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 snags an impressive third place in our HandBrake benchmark, behind only a couple of more powerful Core i7 laptops. [Extracted from the article]

Auto focus and auto keystone functionality should allow you to point the Freestyle on just about any surface. Hot Stuff SAMSUNG FREESTYLE GEN 2 WITH GAMING HUB samsung.com Samsung's nifty-looking Freestyle portable projector lets you stream from popular video services such as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and Apple TV+. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS We've long been fans of Acer's line of affordable Nitro 5 gaming laptops. Unlike the much lengthier HandBrake test, Cinebench is usually done in mere minutes, and thus shows us how a laptop CPU handles crushing but short-term processor bursts. While the Nitro 5 has been whipping its competitors when it comes to CPU power, the laptop's GTX 1650 is a decidedly mid-range graphics card. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS Few things in life are as annoying as finding that your Android handset refuses to install any more app updates because it's run out of storage. You'll find it inside the Files app on most phones - though it's called My Files on Galaxy phones - and it's a favorite hideout for miscellaneous junk files downloaded from the web or some other app. There are also several apps that can track your app usage and tell you which apps you're using the least, among them: App Usage (go.pcworld.com/ausg) and QualityTime (go. pcworld.com/ qltm). [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS At first glance, it's easy to dismiss this particular model of Lenovo's Yoga C640, a Best Buy exclusive with a relatively anemic dual-core i3 Comet Lake CPU, a puny 128GB SSD, and a $600 price tag. It's also worth noting that the types of daily PC activities simulated by PCMark 8 are single-core tasks, which means that laptops with quad-core or better CPUs won't necessarily enjoy an advantage over a dual-core laptop like the Yoga C640. 3DMARK SKY DIVER 1.0 With its integrated Intel UHD Graphics core, the Lenovo Yoga C640 won't cut it as a gaming laptop (although you can game on just about any laptop now, thanks to such streaming gaming services as Nvidia's GeForce Now and Google Stadia [ go. pcworld.com/nwst ]). PHOTO (COLOR): A second USB SuperSpeed 5Gbps Type-A port sits on the right side of the C640, along with a USB SuperSpeed 5Gbps Type-C port. [Extracted from the article]

PLAY LIST When I settle in for some quality headset time, a pair of wireless earbuds generally isn't the first thing I reach for. Once I settled on the best-fitting eartips, the Liberty 2 Pro earbuds felt quite comfy, and I was able to shake my head vigorously without fear that the earbuds would fly out. [Extracted from the article]

Switching the speaker to the custom EQ mode and sticking with a flat frequency response, the Motion+ sounded pretty impressive given its $100 price tag, although I wouldn't have minded more high-end detail from the speaker's twin tweeters. Anker promises 12 hours of battery life from the Motion+'s rechargeable battery, and after several hours of playback, I'd only put a modest dent in the speaker's battery meter. You can fiddle with the Anker Soundcore Motion+'s EQ settings using the Soundcore mobile app. [Extracted from the article]

The HP Pavilion x360 14 2-in-1 laptop comes in many flavors, and ours (14m-dh0003dx) should please productivity-minded professionals with its smooth quad-core performance and a keyboard that feels great. For our performance charts, we've grouped with HP Pavilion x360 with a mix of laptops, ranging from a 8th-gen, dual-core i3 model to a system with Intel's latest six-core Ice Lake CPU, along with a series of quad-core laptops in the middle. Like many midrange, productivity-minded laptops, the HP Pavilion x360 isn't much of a gaming machine, although its integrated graphics core is designed to deliver enough adequate performance for light photo editing and similar tasks. For smooth gaming performance, you'd need a laptop with discrete graphics, such as the two laptops at the top of our chart, which both boast entry-level Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics cards. [Extracted from the article]

Lenovo's 15-inch S340 line includes models ranging from $630 up to $830, although Lenovo's continual "instant" deals typically shave a couple hundred or more off the manufacturer's list prices. GLO:pcw/01dec19:84n2.jpg PHOTO (COLOR): Two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and a 4-in-1 media card reader sit on the right edge of the Lenovo IdeaPad S340. gl In addition to putting up a nice multi-threaded Cinebench score, the Lenovo S340 also posts the best single-thread result on our chart, demonstrating the efficiency of the S340's individual CPU cores. The Lenovo IdeaPad S340 isn't the first solid laptop line to come with lower-end TN-equipped models, and as such, we wouldn't condemn it on the basis of the particular configuration we tested. [Extracted from the article]

Hands-on with HP's new Spectre x360 13: Shrunk down and supercharged with Ice Lake Memory options will include 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 RAM, which should allow for plenty of multitasking headroom, while storage options range from a 256GB solid state drive to a roomy 1TB Intel SSD with 32GB of Optane memory. PHOTO (COLOR): A switch on the right edge of the HP Spectre x360 13 electrically disables its IR camera, while a new mic mute button with an LED indicator sits on the keyboard. [Extracted from the article]

Beyond its various parental controls, Amazon's FreeTime service offers thousands of Audible books and scores of premium skills tailored for kids, not to mention the run of Amazon Music. Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition. [Extracted from the article]

The article evaluates the Acer Aspire 5 A515-54-51DJ laptop from electronics company Acer.

The article offers tips on browsing through Netflix's collection of movies and television programs to find the perfect video for the moment using the desktop version of the application. One can filter the choices by clicking either TV Shows or Movies at the top of the Netflix homepage to access the Genres pull-down menu. The InstantWatcher.com website can help users filter Netflix videos by year or rating.

Us.govee.com The 6.5-foot-long LED Strip Light M1 has 50 controllable color light segments, more than 64 light modes, and is Matter-compatible so it can be controlled within Apple's Home app as part of a smart home. The light strip has a peel-and-stick backing for easy installation, and you can splice the M1 together with an extension to double its length. However, you need to use Govee's smart home app to control the M1's animated color modes and effects, including the ability to change the colors of the strip's individual segments. [Extracted from the article]

The article evaluates the Model 3579 of the Dell G3 15 gaming laptop from computer company Dell.

The article evaluates the Acer Nitro 5 laptop computer from Acer.

The article discusses ten methods to clear storage space on an Android device or handset which has been overloaded with files and applications. Topics discussed include clearing cached application data, cleaning the downloads folder and management of downloaded music and podcasts. Topics including Google Map management, removal of apps which are not used very much and enabling the smart storage feature are discussed.

The article evaluates global positioning system (GPS) trackers for children, which include the AngelSense GPS tracker, the GizmoPal 2 from company LG and the TruSense GPS Pendant.

IOS CENTRAL Apple just announced a bevy of new features coming to the Home app and HomeKit courtesy of iOS 14, including adaptive lighting for HomeKit-compatible smart bulbs, facial recognition for cameras, and a redesigned interface. First up, HomeKit will be getting support for adaptive lighting, which means HomeKit will be able to change the color temperature of a smart bulb or a group of bulbs automatically depending on the time of day. Security cameras will also be getting some new HomeKit features in iOS 14, most notably facial recognition, allowing HomeKit to identify friends and family members waiting on your doorstep. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on how to prevent technology companies Amazon, Google, and Apple from listening and sharing recordings of smart speakers with their employees. Topics mentioned include the capacity of such companies to analyze the responses of their virtual assistants and manually review them, privacy settings rolled out by Amazon and Google that let users opt out of allowing third parties from reviewing their voice recordings, and suspension of grading programs by Apple and Google.

The article reviews the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 3rd generation laptop.

The article evaluates the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN laptop computer from Asus.

The article evaluates the Notebook 7 Spin laptop computer from Samsung.

The article evaluates the LG Gram laptop computer from LG Electronics.

The article offers instructions on how to create storage space on a smartphone or handset device using the Android operating system.

The article evaluates the Safari web browser for iOS operating sysytem devices from Apple.

Wyze.com The Wyze Mesh Router is a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router powered by a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A53 processor. It supports more than 50 devices per router with up to 3Gbps of Wi-Fi bandwidth and 1Gbps of internet throughput. You can set up and configure the Wyze Mesh Router using the Wyze app, which also lets you check the status of the router and prioritize which connected devices should get the most bandwidth. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers tips for maintaining the safety of one's iCloud password. These involve turning on the two-factor authentication, adding trusted phone numbers and changing the password. It also suggests to monitor devices signed into the account from various products provided by consumer electronics firm Apple Inc.

The article discusses security measures for the smartphone the Android cellphone. Topics, including locking the Android phone, tracking lost Android phones through using the Android Device Manager, having mobile apps from the web resource Google scan the Android and preventing hacking with upgrades and patches, are discussed.

The article reports on the five alternative ways to unlock one's Android phone. The methods suggested includes Keeping phone unlocked whileit's in the pocket and keeping phone unlocked at home, at work, ornear another specific place and keeping phone unlocked near a trusted device and Unlocking the phone with face and voice.

The article offers tips and advice to users of the alarm feature on Android smartphones. Emphasis is given to topics such as setting of the Android Clock application, monitoring the settings for the Do Not Disturb feature, maintaining and boosting the alarm volume level, and use of the Snooze alarm delay.

The article offers step-by-step instructions on how users of the mobile application (app) Play Music from Google can get plenty of stuff from the app.