I've been on a bit of a tablet collecting spree in the past few months, culminating in an iPad Pro that checks all the boxes that I found on Facebook marketplace yesterday. As I've been trying to set it up, I've been endlessly frustrated by things that don't work, or at least don't work the way I think they should, or would, or in any way that's easy to figure out without a google search. It's not intuitive for me.

Example 1: You can add one email account in the mail app when you first fire it up. After that, there is no add button or instruction to add another. My husband, the apple user, couldn't even remember how, other than it was some system wide setting and we had to look it up.

Example 2: I even downloaded the app that every musician uses and loves on iPad -…

Lots of silence here for the M5 Apple Silicon debut on iPad Pros a couple days ago. Understandable. It’s just a small spec bump, though the neural engine got improved more substantially, for those who care.**

www.macworld.com

The latest iPad Pro strikes a healthy balance between power and portability for most users.

Still, it’s baby steps toward something of the MacPad a lot of users dream of (and others seem to be revolted by). Had they come out with iPadOS 26 at the time of the M1 release people would be jumping up and down and screaming “take my money!”. It’s like the frog slowly getting boiled in water without noticing it’s getting cooked.

No, I don’t think it’s going to be a “true” MacPad any time soon, if ever. Software vendors need to get fully on board, for one thing. Many seem to want to continue with a “lite” version on iPads and relegate the “Pro”, fully functional and higher priced versions on Macs even…

Now that Qualcomm showed their hand, so too now has Intel (well more of the hand anyway)

Certainly these will be the intel chips in the next "Intel for Business" models of Surface, as well as other devices like the next Galaxy Book 360 (which ever GB model has the s-pen)

I suspect thin and light devices like the Galaxy Book and Surface Pro/Laptops will likely opt for the 8c/4Xe CPU.

However the last one I find more interesting. Where as the middle 16c/4Xe is designed for systems that would utilize a Discrete GPU (Laptop Studio 3?), the 16c/12Xe is designed for use cases that want a powerful chip, but a more robust integrated graphic solution over discrete graphics. It kind of seems more poised to combat the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. Kind of curious how the 16/12 Panther Lake Chip would bench compared to the X2 Extreme.

So the other week, Qualcomm unveiled some of the newer Snapdragon Chips that will be releasing in 2026. And given Microsoft has gone all in on Snapdragon (in retail anyway) the next gen of Surfaces are likely going to be rocking these chips.

So I'd imagine they'll just have Surface Pro 12's and Surface Laptop 8's using the X2 Elite chips with probably the same form factor/designs.

But the extreme chips intrigues me. As Microsoft has killed off the Laptop Studio 2, if they were to release a new performance device to follow up the Book/Studio lines, this would likely be it. Although the very minor bump in graphics does concern me a bit. Graphics were the weakpoint of the 1st gen Elites, and the "2x" better Adreno integrated graphics is really the same bump the Intel Arc Graphics in Intels Lunar Lake was able to deliver. They seem…

For a company that would put out so few products, and take forever to update them, it seemed like they were on the verge on going irrelevant, Wacom seems to be making a lot of moves lately faster then they ever did in the past. It was just a few months ago they released the Movink Pad, and now they are releasing a more performance focused Movink Pad Pro 14.

I recently got a hands on with the 11" Movink Pad, and while interesting, it was hard to justify it over the Samsung Tab S11 given that has way more bells and whistles, of which this newer 14-inch model seems to have. Although I am digging their price points, which are shockingly affordable compared to Samsungs Tab series.

They also released a 14-inch Wacom One for like $300. Its like every time I look Wacom is putting out a…

Affinity Photo 2, Designer 2, and Publisher 2 cost $0.00 to buy after downloading and starting the free trial. Apparently something new is coming at the end of the month and these will go away/not get any more updates. Canva bought the company.

Suspicion leans toward them being bundled into a subscription package ala Adobe.

Three devices:

www.aboutamazon.com

The all-new Kindle Scribe lineup is thinner, lighter, and faster with new productivity features, including AI-powered notebook search.

Feels about right, though I hope that there's a neutral colour option for the $630 Colorsoft version. Mainstream unit is $500, and a unit without a front light is the entry-level at $430.

Soo, I went ahead and did the upgrade, somwhat under trepidation since I'm using a Gen 10 iPad. It is definitely a different beast. I can't swear to it but it is almost as if there is a Mac version available of an app it will execute that instead of an iOS version. I'm probably wrong here but some apps are totally different. One such use case is Google Docs. For some reason I can't fugre out how to switch language input. I tendo to switch back and forth between four or five different languages but now I'm stuck in English.

Multitaskning is greatly improved, lots of windows open, easy to resize and move around. The Files app now provides an Open with... option.

Well, I finally got a new laptop to replace my Galaxy Book 10.6, although it may soldier on yet as a fourth device...

Here she is all set up.

The good:

• The two screens really are handy.

• Vertical mode is great. I'm using it more than portrait.