#android-apps

#android-apps

Perhaps save for the Apple iPad Pro and its equivalent Samsung Galaxy Tab S, there are still some people who are not yet sold on what a tablet is for.Some simply see it as a larger phone, which has become less relevant these days thanks to larger phones and foldables.Others treat them like the next step from laptops, at least those that are powerful enough or can run the apps they need.

(Image credit: Microsoft / Samsung / Lenovo / Future)
The best touchscreen laptops can be valuable tools for digital artists and content creators.Despite Apple's disdain for the form factor (no, you're not going to find any MacBooks on this page, sadly), laptops with touchscreens can be extremely useful thanks to their versatility.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 514 has some eye-catching features that give this ChromeOS 2-in-1 a premium feel and performance.The star is the large 14-inch Full HD touchscreen that is widescreen and ideal for video streaming.It's large enough to be used as your home laptop and compact enough to take on your travels.

Google has announced that it will be putting its Privacy Sandbox into Beta stage across Android 13 systems from early 2023, which will include limits to apps' abilities to track user data (opens in new tab) for advertising purposes.The sandbox seeks to preserve user data available to advertisers, whilst concurrently respecting individual privacy (opens in new tab).

Police reform, carjackings, and abortion have shaped the race between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas.Listen & Subscribe
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The Willow Project from ConocoPhillips may be one of the last of its kind-but environmental advocates still worry about its impact on the Arctic.Listen & Subscribe
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Colleges are dropping the test requirement to create fairer admissions processes-but what will take its place?Listen & Subscribe
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Mozilla discovered privacy disclosure discrepancies for apps like TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook following investigation into Google Play Store data safety labels.An investigation into data safety labels on the Google Play Store has allegedly uncovered "serious loopholes" that allow apps like Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook to easily provide false or misleading information regarding how user data is shared.

Next summer, courts will decide whether Google is guilty of "misleading" millions of Google Play users by warning them against using any other app stores or services to download apps.A judge this week granted class-action status to antitrust litigation that now covers 21 million Google Play customers in 12 states-Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Wyoming-and five US territories, including American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.

Google Play Games is launching in open beta in the US today, allowing anyone to try out a selection of Android games on PC.Google launched an initial beta of the software on Windows PCs earlier this year, but it was limited to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan.Today's launch sees the beta service expand to the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Having just released its new brand platform, "It's Diner Time, " earlier this month to celebrate its 70th anniversary, restaurant chain Denny's has also begun to introduce augmented reality (AR) to engage young customers who can now see their food before they order.Featuring a redesigned menu that continues to include classic dishes such as "Moons Over My Hammy" and "Build Your Own Burger", the addition of the AR feature will aim to bring each item listed to life.

TikTok, as we know it today, is a social media platform that holds millions of viewers' attention with fascinating short videos 15-60 seconds long, easily one of Android's best apps.The platform promotes expression and self-discovery and is a means to connect your general interests and talents to the young public eye.

Google released the first developer preview of Android 14 and it brings our first-ever look into the next version of the OS.We also get to see a fresh new logo design that looks to be inspired by NASA space mission patches.Android 14 will focus on optimizing background processing to ensure optimal resource consumption and improved battery life.

Many Android apps display web content within themselves - this keeps the user from bouncing back and forth between the app and the browser, for example, when tapping on a link in Gmail.One way to do this is to use the WebView component, but Google believes that Custom Tabs are the better solution and it has now made them even better with a couple of improvements.

Google has officially announced that Android will support the RISC-V instruction set architecture.The announcement is from the RISC-V Summit held last month.For those unfamiliar, RISC-V is the Reduced Instruction Set Computer V architecture - an open, free-to-use standard without licensing or royalty fees.

Passkeys are here to (try to) kill the password.Following Google's beta rollout of the feature in October, passkeys are now hitting Chrome stable M108."Passkey" is built on industry standards and backed by all the big platform vendors-Google, Apple, Microsoft-along with the FIDO Alliance.Google's latest blog says: "With the latest version of Chrome, we're enabling passkeys on Windows 11, macOS, and Android."

Since about 1980, every article I've written has been on a personal computer first an Apple II, then an IBM PC and over the decades a series of Apple or Windows desktop and laptop PCs.But this column is an exception.I'm writing it using an iPad Air tablet connected to a Logitech Folio Touch keyboard case, which also has a built-in track pad.

Parental control apps may do more harm than good, according to researchers who found 18 bugs in eight Android apps with more than 20 million total downloads that could be exploited to, among many nefarious acts, control other devices on the parents' network.Fabian Densborn and Bernhard Gründling of the SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab discovered the vulnerabilities and found that the parent web dashboards were susceptible to cross-site request forgery (CSRF) and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Apple Podcasts will only work on MacOS operating systems since Catalina.We do not support Android apps on desktop at this time.Listen on your device:RECOMMENDED  These links will only work if you're on the device you listen to podcasts on.We do not support Stitcher at this time.

What lower test scores are telling us-and what they can't.Listen & Subscribe
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Apple Podcasts will only work on MacOS operating systems since Catalina.We do not support Android apps on desktop at this time.Listen on your device:RECOMMENDED  These links will only work if you're on the device you listen to podcasts on.We do not support Stitcher at this time.

We design products through a series of trials and errors.But where the errors happen is very important.An error that occurs after you release a product on the market can negatively impact your business.Luckily it's possible to avoid that using a tool called prototype.In this guide, I want to discuss what a prototype is, the different levels of fidelity (or realism) that a prototype can have, and three different types of prototypes.

Meta, parent of Facebook, is in the midst of migrating its Android app Java code to Kotlin, a younger programming language that also relies on the Java Virtual Machine, or JVM.Created by software tool maker JetBrains, Kotlin debuted in 2011 and by 2016 had reached its 1.0 release.The following year, it was adopted by Google as a first-class (supported) language for Android development and was put under the management of its own foundation, funded by JetBrains and Google.