Review: Apple iPhone XR

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple’s third iPhone release for 2018, the colourful and perky iPhone XR, may have been relegated to second-class citizen status behind the pricier iPhone XS and XS Max and the new iPad Pro, Mac mini and MacBook Air unveiled today.

On any other year, a device like the iPhone XR would shine and stand alone as a worthy and worthwhile iPhone release. There’s a lot to the iPhone XR that will endear it to many users whose iPhone 6, iPhone SE or iPhone 7 handsets may be on their last legs.

Yes, it is more affordable than the premium iPhone XS family and if you can get over some of the manufacturing compromises (i.e. aluminum over stainless steel, LCD technology over OLED, 3 GB of RAM instead of 4 GB, single 12-megapixel rear camera instead of two) then the iPhone XR still has plenty to offer.

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Apple's new Mac mini breathes new life into the Mac platform

Apple has listend and granted us a new Mac mini and this time what was once the most affordable Mac desktop is currently one of the most powerful computers running macOS Mojave. Encased in the same form-factor as the Mac mini devices of years past, this year's Mac mini is an impressive upgrade.

2018 Mac mini, which ship on November 7, offer 4 and 6 processor cores, up to 64GB of RAM and  8th-generation Intel Core processors with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 4.6GHz and Intel UHD graphics. Apple says that these new minis are 5 times more powerful than the models they replace. 

With a starting price of CAD $999.00, the Mac mini is highly configurable through Apple's store. Mac mini also brings Apple's T2 security processor, a bevy of ports including four Thunderbolt 3, two USB-A, HDMI video, audio, and Ethernet up to 10Gbps. 

Mac mini is now the perfect photo and video editor's desktop, provided they have their own displays and external GPUs.

Apple unveils new MacBook Air with Retina Display

Apple's second fall event focused on product categories that were languishing and in dire need of a refresh. The MacBook Air is Apple's most popular Mac and beloved by students, writers and office workers everywhere and now there's a new version. 

The latest 13-inch MacBook Air now features a Retina Display, powerful 8th generation Intel Core i5 processors, Intel UHD Graphics and faster 2133 MHz system memory up to 16GB. SSDs are now available up to 1Terabyte although the base model still ships with a rather stingy 128 GB of SSD storage and starts at CAD $ 1,199.00.

Other notable upgrades include the inclusion of Touch ID for fingerprint recognition, dual Thunderbolt ports in USB Type-C standard, Apple's T2 security chip and most importantly, the new MacBook Air features a13.3-inch Retina display with over 4 million pixels of resolution with 48 percent more colour than the previous generation, images are more lifelike than ever. MacBook Air is available for preorder on Apple.ca and will ship November 7.

IBM acquires open source software maker Red Hat for $35 billion

Considered to be the largest acquisition of a software company, IBM has just bought open source and Linux pioneering company Red Hat for US $35 billion. This deal will result in a merger propels IBM as an enterprise cloud computing provider. Now facing off against Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure Cloud, IBM says that its services will allow more businesses to shift their operations online, and that the proprietary nature of existing cloud systems means that it’s harder to move and secure data from system to system.

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst sharedthe following, "we have barely scratched the surface of the opportunity that is ahead of us. Open source is the future of enterprise IT. We believe our total addressable market to be $73 billion by 2021. If software is eating the world - and with digital transformation occurring across industries, it truly is - open source is the key ingredient. Powered by IBM, we can dramatically scale and accelerate what we are doing today. Imagine Red Hat with greater resources to grow into the opportunity ahead of us."

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