The iPads are not actually vertical – it’s just the angle of the shot …

I reviewed the Brydge Keyboard for the iPad Air/Air 2 back in March. At the time, I found it hard to choose between this and the ClamCase Pro, and for a while switched between them. However, the Brydge won the battle in the end, becoming my daily driver for my iPad Air 2.

Brydge has two models for the smaller iPad, one for the iPad mini 1/2/3 and a second version coming out next month for the iPad mini 4. Both have the same all-aluminum construction, the same matching colors (silver, space gray and gold), the same three-month battery life and weigh the same 300g.

One of the beauties of the original is that you pretty much get a full-size MacBook keyboard for your iPad, with key sizes and spacing very close to that of a MacBook Air. They keys are slightly narrower and a touch closer together, but the typing experience is very similar. With the much smaller footprint of the iPad mini, however, I wondered how the BrydgeMini would compare …

My immediate visual impressions were extremely favorable. It didn’t look like a dramatically smaller keyboard, and it actually took a couple of seconds to figure out how they’d managed to fit a decent-sized keyboard into such a small space.

What Brydge has opted to do is to keep the letter keys as large and well-spaced as possible, and to sacrifice the width of a handful of other keys to pull it off. Specifically, it has a half-width combined tab and caps-lock key, and even slimmer keys for left square/curly bracket, colon/semi-colon and quotation marks (single and double). The only oddity in the setup is that the number 1/exclamation point key is also one of the extra-thin ones.

The company also combined several keys, using a fn key to access the alternative functions – more on this later – and brought the front row of keys much closer to the edge of the casing.

The payoff for these compromises is that the main keys are remarkably similar in size to the keyboard for the full-size iPad.

The rest of the design is identical to the full-size version. As with that, it roughly doubles the thickness of the iPad. On the left is the slimmer iPad Air 2, while the iPad mini is the full-fat iPad mini 2, but you can see that the keyboard thickness is virtually identical.

You do have the same slightly messy visible hinges, but I very quickly got used to those and now don’t mind them at all.

And the back of the iPad is left exposed, but that’s one of those swings & roundabouts issues: no protection versus no extra bulk and nothing to spoil the look of the device.

My iPad Air 2 has been carried around with me in a variety of bags with no rear protection, and remains unmarked more than a year later, so it’s not something I worry about.

Typing experience

With my earlier review, I had remarkably little to say about the typing experience because it was so similar to typing on a MacBook. For this review, I switched back and forth between three keyboards – my Apple Wireless keyboard, full-size Brydge and BrydgeMini – and have a little more to say.

The feel of the keyboard is identical to that of the larger model, which in turn is extremely similar to that of any of the MacBooks bar the butterfly-key 12-inch MacBook. The stiff hinges allow you to position the iPad at any angle, and have it stay there reliably. The BrydgeMini is also perfectly stable when typing on your lap.

I scarcely noticed the switch between Apple and Brydge keyboards. The BrydgeMini does feel a little more cramped – more so, I have to say, than I expected from looking at it. But given the much smaller size of the device, I’d say the company has done a great job. My typing speed was a little down, but I wasn’t making any more errors than usual.

The only thing that did prove a minor pain was that very thin colon/semi-colon key; as regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a fan of the semi-colon in particular.

I mentioned earlier that Brydge had combined several keys. These are the tab/caps lock, the tilde (~)/grave accent (`) and right-square/curly brackets with backslash (\) and vertical bar (|). As a writer, and an English one, I have little call for most of these characters, so these weren’t issues. The tab key was awkward, but completing web forms is the only time I really use it (and then only if I can’t use autofill), so this wasn’t a big deal for me. If you do frequently tab, or use any of the other characters mentioned, you may want to try before you buy.

Conclusions

The BrydgeMini is a remarkable achievement. The company has delivered something that’s 90% as good as the original in a form factor that is, of necessity, significantly smaller.

It has approached the size reduction in an intelligent way which – for most people – involves very few compromises. As with the full-size model, it’s not cheap. The model for the iPad mini 1/2/3 is $129.99, while the iPad mini 4 version is currently available for pre-order for $99.99, with shipping in January. But you’re getting something which essentially turns your iPad mini into a tiny MacBook, with very Apple-like looks and a great typing experience. If you need to do a lot of typing on an iPad, I’d say that it’s well worth the investment.

The BrydgeMini is available direct from the company: iPad mini 1/2/3 at $129.99, iPad mini 4 (pre-order) at $99.99. The BrydgeAir model is $149.99 (for iPad Air & Air 2).

Filed under: iOS Devices, Reviews Tagged: Brydge Keyboard, BrydgeMini Keyboard, iPad, iPad mini, iPad mini keyboard, iPad mini keyboard reviews, iPad mini keyboards

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The year is almost up but Apple Pay is still popping up in new places. BJ’s Wholesale Club already accepted Apple Pay in its stores for members, and now BJ’s has become the second retailer to allow their store cards to be added to the Wallet app and be used for Apple Pay. Kohl’s was officially the first retailer to add Apple Pay support to their store cards in October, while JCPenney is said to be testing support ahead of a 2016 rollout. Apple Pay is also going live with cards issued from over 60 more banks and credit unions around the country:

American Community Bank of Indiana
American United Federal Credit Union
Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Credit Union
Aspire Federal Credit Union
Bank of Colorado
Bank of Montgomery
Catholic Federal Credit Union
Cedar Rapids Bank and Trust
CFCU Community Credit Union
ChoiceOne Bank
Community Bank of Mississippi
Community Bank (Coast)
Community Bank (Ellisville)
Community Bank (North MS)
Credit One Bank
D.L. Evans Bank
Dane County Credit Union
Diamond Credit Union
East Wisconsin Savings Bank
Educational Community Credit Union
Farmers Bank
First Alliance Credit Union
First Bank & Trust Company
First Federal Savings Bank of Twin Falls
First National Bank & Trust Company of Weatherford
First State Bank of Middlebury
Fox Valley Savings Bank
Greater Kinston Credit Union
Hanscom Federal Credit Union
Home City Federal Savings Bank
Hondo National Bank
Indiana Members Credit Union
INTRUST Bank
Kemba Financial Credit Union
Land of Lincoln Credit Union
Laramie Plains Federal Credit Union
LCNB National Bank
Liberty Savings Bank, FSB
Local Government Federal Credit Union
Mississippi Federal Credit Union
Montgomery Country Employees Federal Credit Union
MVB Bank Inc
Neighbors Credit Union
New Horizon Federal Credit Union
NorState Federal Credit Union
North State Bank
NW Preferred Federal Credit Union
OMNI Community Credit Union
Pinnacle Bank Sioux City
Pinnacle Bank Texas
Pinnacle Bank Wyoming
Quad City Bank and Trust
Republic Bank & Trust Company
San Antonio Federal Credit Union
SCE Federal Credit Union
Sharon Credit Union
South Shore Bank
State Employees Credit Union
Sun East Federal Credit Union
Sunrise Banks
Texas Capital Bank
The Bank of Missouri
TruWest Credit Union
Vantage West Credit Union
Wayne Bank
Wilson Bank & Trust

As for 2016, there’s a lot to look forward to with Apple Pay including new locations accepting it like Starbucks, KFC, and Chili’s, plus potentially a new way to send cash to other Apple Pay users with a rumored peer-to-peer payment feature in the works. Walgreens recently became the first retailer to support reward cards through Apple Pay, and even more including Dunkin’ Donuts and Panera Bread are expected next.

Apple Pay works with iPhone 6 and later, Apple Watch, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, and iPad Pro.

Filed under: Apple Pay Tagged: Apple pay, banks, BJ’s, credit unions

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Sonos is beginning to roll out support for streaming Apple Music content to its wireless speakers starting today. The feature is available in beta and limited to select Sonos customers who signed up earlier this month when the update was first announced. Sonos will continue to add more people to the Apple Music beta ahead of a wider release to all Sonos customers early next year. I’ve had a chance to try out the Apple Music beta with Sonos, which works through the updated Sonos Controller app, and in some cases it looks better than Apple’s own app.

Unlike Bluetooth and AirPlay, playing Apple Music through Sonos is controlled completely from their Controller app which also supports a number of other streaming services including Spotify and Pandora Radio. Once you add Apple Music to your list of music services within the Controller app, the experience is pretty familiar if you’ve used Apple Music before, although it doesn’t look exactly the same.

Apple Music in Sonos is organized by For You, New, Radio, and My Music. The recommendations and everything else generally reflects the same content between the Music or iTunes app and the Sonos Controller app, so you’re getting the same material either way.

Apple Music in Sonos

Radio even supports streaming Apple’s Beats 1 station as well as any other featured stations or stations you create. Playlists and music libraries carry over as well, although more features around this are coming in the future as the beta has a few limitations.

In my week of testing on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even Android where Apple Music is also available, I found that for me Apple Music availability dramatically increases the appeal of Sonos speakers. Podcast playback is still a mixed experience (something a new or refurbished AirPort Express can fix), but being able to control Apple Music including my Christmas music playlists across multiple rooms through Sonos is really useful. I really like using Apple Music playlists as alarms through the Sonos speakers. It’s a nice touch to waking up.

The same content in Apple’s Music app

If you’re curious about trying Sonos, you can pick up a Play:1 speaker 2-pack in white or black from $350 (reg. $400) for a limited time. Sonos also recently released its new flagship Play:5 ($500, hands-on and reviewed here) for those looking for the top-of-the-line Sonos speaker.

Sign up to try the Apple Music beta in Sonos here, and download the latest Sonos Controller for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC here.

Filed under: Apple Music, Apps Tagged: Apple Music, Beats 1, Sonos

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Apple had a small surprise for its retail employees yesterday. After gifting them with urBeats earphones last week, Eddy Cue yesterday sent a video message stating that they would also receive a promo code for a free 9 month Apple Music subscription.

MacRumors reports that the subscription runs for nine months. While nine months rather than a year seems a little odd, it does mean that anyone who has not yet used up their three-month free trial would get a year in total.

With the headphones retailing at $100 (though cheaper on Amazon), and the Apple Music subscription worth $90, it makes the gift significantly more generous than the Incase Staple backpack they got last year.

The urBeats headphones were recently updated to offer a rose gold option.

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple Music Tagged: Apple Inc, Apple Music, Eddy Cue, headphones, Holiday gift, retail, urBeats, urBeats earphones, urBeats headphones

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Despite the $548M settlement reached earlier this month, Samsung has now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of its patent battle with Apple, reports the WSJ. The company is arguing that lower courts misapplied the law concerning Apple’s design patents.

Specifically, Samsung is asking the court to review rulings concerning “design patents” that cover the look and feel of a product. At trial, Apple convinced the jury that basic design elements of certain Samsung smartphones—essentially a rectangle with rounded corners and a touch-screen grid made up of smaller icons—borrowed too closely from Apple’s iPhone design.

Samsung argues that lower courts made two mistakes …

First, suggests the company’s lawyers, the judge failed to properly instruct the jury on the difference between ‘functional’ and ‘ornamental’ features. Samsung said that its smartphones had to adopt the same general form factor as the iPhone in order to perform the function of a smartphone.

“The jury could look at Apple’s patented designs, look at Samsung’s phones, see that both have rectangular shapes, rounded corners, flat screens and colorful icon grids, and decide, voilà, that there must be design-patent infringement—even though those shared features are…functional, not ornamental,” wrote Samsung’s lawyers, in the brief.

Second, the company says that the damages awarded were too high.

In Samsung’s eyes, according to Monday’s court filing, it was wrongly ordered to pay Apple all of its profit from infringing profits. Samsung says the 1887 law pertaining to design patents is outdated and too punitive for modern products such as a smartphone, which Samsung says contains about 250,000 design and utility patents.

The company likened the case to a car company being ordered to hand over all its profits on a car if the company was found to have copied a patented cupholder.

The U.S. Supreme Court will need to decide whether or not to hear the case. CNET quotes Stanford Law School intellectual property law professor Mark Lemley as stating that asking the court to take on a case “is always an uphill battle, but this is a very high-profile case.” The court may be influenced by the fact that Google, Facebook and others have sided with Samsung, though Apple has said that Google is not a disinterested party.

Photo: Wikipedia

Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS Devices Tagged: Apple Inc, Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Apple vs Samsung, Ltd., patent battle, Patent trial, patents, Samsung patent trial

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Earlier this month, Apple made good on its promise and made its Swift programming language open source. Following the announcement, Apple’s senior vice president of software Craig Federighi did a pair of interviews to discuss the motivation behind open sourcing the platform and what the future holds. Now, Federighi has joined John Gruber on his podcast The Talk Show to further discuss Swift

Federighi opened the interview by discussing what kind of things Apple has noticed during the first week of Swift being open source. The Apple exec noted that Swift is more active than any other language on Github and that because of this, the Swift team within Apple is more engaged with developers than any other team in the company.

Federighi also explained that many teams within Apple are incredibly excited about using Swift. For instance, the iCloud team has started applying Swift to variety of their projects, while the OS X team is also working on converting aspects of the platform to Swift. Specifically, Federighi mentioned the dock and window management tools in OS X converting to Swift. “Teams recognize what’s practical and what’s not practical and find ways to use Swift where they can,” he said.

Much like he did last week, Federighi explained that one of the biggest benefits of Swift going public is that it can now be easily taught in schools everywhere. CEO Tim Cook expressed last week that he believes coding should be taught in every public school in America, and Swift being open source enables that to be a possibility. Federighi also again mentioned that Swift will be the major language for the next 20 years.

When asked about the downsides of making Swift open source, Federighi said that there weren’t many. He explained that Apple has accepted the fact that Swift can and will now be used in all kinds of contexts outside of Apple and that developers are going to do things that aren’t related to Apple’s businesses.

In terms of timing, Federighi explained that Apple knew it wanted to open source Swift, but it wasn’t sure if it would happen this year or next year. Leading up to WWDC 2015, however, Federighi said that the “hunger was great to do it this year.”

At WWDC this year, Federighi made the comment that Swift is Objective C without the baggage, which led to some criticism from developers and fans of Objective C. On The Talk Show, however, Federighi clarified and elaborated on that comment. “What we were able to retain is the literate nature of APIS that Objective C enabled, plus a syntax that is much more concise,” he stated.

The full interview can be listened to on Gruber’s website.

Filed under: Developers Tagged: Apple, interview, Swift

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Microsoft today has released an update for its Outlook app on iOS that brings the app to version 2.0.8. The update makes Outlook join the growing list of apps that support the new 3D Touch feature of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

With 3D Touch support, Outlook users can now create new emails and events and access the calendar by simply pressing on the app’s icon on the home screen. In addition to support for 3D Touch, the update also adds the ability to print any message or conversation from directly within the app.

What’s New in Version 2.0.8

Three new features for you this week:

– 3D touch is available for all iPhone 6s users right from the Outlook icon to create new emails and events or access the calendar directly.

– Finally, you can now print any message or conversation from the email view. Check out the top right corner of the app to try it out.

The update is available now on the App Store for free.

Filed under: iOS Tagged: 3D Touch, email, iOS, Microsoft, Outlook

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Image Credit: Maurice Tsai / Bloomberg

According to a report out of Bloomberg, Apple has opened a secret production laboratory in northern Tawain to focus on developing new display technologies. The report claims that the lab, located in Longtan, has at least 50 engineers and various other employees working to develop iPhone and iPad displays.

Apple has reportedly recruited its employees for the lab from competing display makers AU Optronics and Qualcomm. Apple allegedly opened the lab earlier this year, hoping to make displays that are thinner, lighter, brighter, and more energy-efficient than other options currently on the market. In order to achieve those goals, the company is said to be switching to organic light-emitting diodes, which are thinner and don’t require a backlight.

Another goal of Apple’s with developing its own screen technology is to reduce reliance on suppliers like Samsung, Sharp, and Japan Display. Apple already does a lot of the research for its devices in-house, but outsources the actual manufacturing processes to several other companies.

Apple is said to have moved into the Taiwan lab in April. Qualcomm Display occupied the lab from 2008 until this year. Earlier today, Morgan Stanley issued a report in which it claimed Apple would see its first ever drop in iPhone sales next year due in large part to robust inventories rather than weak demand. One potential thinking on Apple’s part could be that if it begins to manufacture more components in-house, they could have a stronger control on the flow of production.

A report from last month claimed Apple will shift iPhone displays from LCD to OLED in 2018. That technology could very well be what Apple is working on in its new Taiwan lab, especially when you take into consideration a Ming-Chi Kuo report that said Foxconn has recently invested $4 billion into a new LCD display plant.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Apple, display lab, japan display, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp

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According to a report from Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple has recently purchased a former chip fav in North San Jose. The deal reportedly went through last week and saw Apple pay $18.2 million for the 70,000 square foot building.

Prior to Apple’s purchase, the plant was a manufacturing plant for semiconductor company Maxim Integrated Products. The listing for the property touted that it is well suited for “prototype, pilot, and low-volume manufacturing.” The space, however, is too small for any serious manufacturing. Maxim purchased the facility in 1997 from Samsung, but later closed ti down when it pulled out of the consumer electronic business.

More than likely, Apple will use the facility for prototyping and light development. The purchase doesn’t appear to signal an entry into chip manufacturing for Apple. It’s also worth noting that Samsung Semiconductor facilities are located just down the road from Apple’s new 70,000 square foot space.

“It’s pretty small for a fab,” said Dean Freeman, research VP at Gartner, where he leads the Internet of Things Center of Excellence. “The only thing I can think that they would be doing is potentially be saying, ‘OK, we need to do some prototyping in some way or form.’ Or they want a clean-room space to do some tweaky development. This isn’t big enough to do anything (production-wise).”

The most likely use case for Apple with this new facility is increased product-development, pre-manufactyring, and prototyping. Back in August, Apple purchased a 43-acre developmental plot in San Jose for $138 million. Apple is also, of course, currently developing its new Campus 2 headquarters in Cupertino, which open in 2016. You can read our full timeline of that project here.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Apple, San Jose, semiconductor

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Hulu gets a major update today with an all-new design for iPhone alongside a few new features in version 4.7.0.

The new iPhone design looks a lot like the design Hulu was already using on the iPad with navigation tucked under a menu button in the upper left section instead of tabs along the bottom. You’ll also find mostly grid layouts with larger images when the app is displaying lists of content.

Here’s a look at the old Hulu iPhone app (left) versus the new design in today’s update (right):

And in addition to the updated design, iPhone users will find Hulu’s Kid Lock functionality now available. The parental control feature can be enabled through settings to restrict content for children using the service.

The updated Hulu app for iPhone is available on the App Store now.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: 4.7.0, app, App Store, Hulu, iPhone, kid lock, update

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