Road-testing the new iPad
Plus, blast your way through an intergalactic adventure and redesign your living room
By Tim Martin
Apple iPad Pro 10.5in From £619/$649 Apple’s top-of-the-line tablet swings into the Goldilocks zone of laptop replacement with its iOS 11 update, a full-featured rewrite of the operating system. Among the iPad Pro’s quiet techno-miracles is a lavish screen that adjusts its refresh rate depending on what’s being shown, improving the reading experience and permitting uncannily precise work with the Pencil stylus (£99). iOS 11 adds improved multitasking, file navigation, augmented-reality support and a plethora of other features. I’ve been using the Pro, along with a fold-out smart keyboard (£159), for several weeks now of all-day computing while my once-loved laptop languishes untouched.
Heat Signature, PC (Steam) £10.99/$14.99 This fabulously hectic space-heist game casts you as a tiny interstellar freelancer, flying about a huge universe and glomming on to the sides of hurtling star-cruisers to complete missions: kidnap a VIP, rub out the guy who killed your dad. But executing these plans, in steel warrens of scuttling soldiers and primed alarms, requires prudent use of insane gadgetry (invisibility shields, teleporters, “everything guns”), a hair-trigger pause button and a serious aptitude for fast-moving catastrophe management. One mission ended with my character and her quarry sucked by depressurisation into the vacuum – only to be scooped to safety as her remotely piloted spacecraft whizzed by. Take that, Imperial scum.
Housecraft, iOS Free Apple makes a big deal of iOS 11’s support for its augmented-reality technology, which uses a device’s camera to place 3D-rendered objects in the real world. It’s entertainingly illustrated by Housecraft, a fun app that lets you reposition and resize a selection of furniture (chairs, shelves, beds, TVs), then peer through your phone or tablet to see how the space looks. More commercial enterprises like IKEA and Houzz are introducing similar features to their own apps, but neither one has Housecraft’s “Disaster” feature, which lets you summon a miniature tornado and watch as your new AR furniture is whirled helplessly away: an unbeatably cathartic experience for the home-improvement averse.
ILLUSTRATIONS ANDY MARTIN
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