Apple Supplier Epistar Says Clients Are Working on Mini-LED Products Amid Rumors of Mini-LED iPad and MacBook

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Epistar president Chin-Yung Fan said his company's clients are developing notebooks, tablets, smartphones, and monitors with Mini-LED backlighting systems, which will naturally boost demand for Mini-LEDs in the second half of 2020, according to Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes.

Epistar is an Apple supplier, leading to the possibility that the iPhone maker is one of the unnamed clients working on Mini-LED products, as previously rumored, but Epistar declined to comment on any specific clients.


Last week, noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of investor firm TF International Securities said Apple plans to release an iPad with a Mini-LED display between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, followed by a MacBook with a Mini-LED display in the first or second quarter of 2021.

Kuo said Epistar will be one of Apple's suppliers for those iPad and MacBook models. Epistar is the largest LED manufacturer in Taiwan.

Kuo expects the iPad and MacBook to be positioned at the high end of their respective product lines due to costly Mini-LED display components, suggesting they will be iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models. He previously said the iPad will have a 10-12 inch screen and the MacBook will fall in the 15-17 inch range.

Kuo added that the Mini-LED backlit displays will allow for thinner and lighter product designs, while offering many of the same benefits of OLED displays used on the latest iPhones, including good wide color gamut performance, high contrast and dynamic range, and local dimming for truer blacks.

The future iPad and MacBook displays will each use approximately 10,000 LEDs, compared to 576 in Apple's upcoming Pro Display XDR, according to Kuo. Each LED is said to be very small — below 200 microns in size.


Apple continues to use LCDs across its entire iPad and Mac lineups for now, but if this rumor proves to be accurate, we can expect the first Mini-LED models within the next 12 to 18 months or so. Prices will likely start on the higher side, but the technology should shuffle its way down the lineup in the years to come.

Related Roundups: iPad Pro, MacBook Pro

Tag: Mini-LED

Buyer's Guide: 11" iPad Pro (Caution), MacBook Pro (Caution), 12.9" iPad Pro (Caution)

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Adobe Launches Premiere and Photoshop Elements 2020

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Adobe today released updated versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, the company's affordable photo and video editing software aimed at casual users who want to improve their photos and videos with simple editing tools.

Photoshop and Premiere Elements 2020 feature updated Adobe Sensei AI technology, new guided edits for walking users through various features within each app, and updated ways to share content.


Since the 2019 version, opening up the Home Screen in Photoshop and Premiere Elements has shown automatically generated photo and video slideshows with different effects powered by Adobe Sensei.

In 2020, there are new effects like Black and White Selection, Pattern Brush for overlaying patterns on photos, Painterly for interesting masking and crops, and Depth of Field for blurring backgrounds to bring out subjects.


Photoshop Elements has new editing features that users can take advantage of for quick but powerful edits. There's an option that will automatically colorize black and white photos or tweak the colors in an existing color photo.


With one-click subject selection, users can select the subject of a photo with a click and then apply an effect or cut out a subject to put it in another photo.

There's a new skin smoothing feature that will automatically smooth and refine the skin of a subject in a photo using Adobe Sensei technology, and Adobe has added several new Guided Edits (aka tutorials). Guided Edits include making unwanted photo objects vanish and adding creative sparkle to photos using pattern brushes.

New this year is an option to create and order more than 140 items using photo prints from Fujifilm Prints and Gifts service (U.S. only), which is now built into Photoshop Elements.

Premiere Elements 2020 has been updated with a Reduce Noise effect that makes videos more crisp, cutting down on noise in low light videos. There are also several new Guided Edits for creating time-lapse videos, replacing static skies with moving skies, and filling the frame to match the video (such as when a video is taken in portrait orientation).


Also new to Premiere Elements is a Smart Tags feature for identifying the content in videos, and HEIF and HEVC support.


For more on what's new in Photoshop and Premiere Elements 2020, make sure to check out Adobe's website. The updates are available for purchase from Adobe for $99 each starting today, with bundle and upgrade pricing available.

Tag: Adobe

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CloudApp for Mac Gains Collections, Favorites, an Updated Design and More

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CloudApp, software designed for visual collaboration and content sharing, received a major update today to add new functionality to the app.

The app has seen an overhauled interface that better matches macOS Catalina and iOS 13, Apple's newest operating systems. CloudApp for the Mac features larger interface elements and a streamlined design meant to improve the overall look and feel of the app.


Collections and Favorites are also new additions, making it easier to share screen recordings, GIFs, videos, photos, and more with colleagues. Collections lets CloudApp users better organize their content, keeping it right at their fingertips for quick access. Users can create a Collection of commonly used files, get to those files right from a folder on the desktop, and easily share the content.

CloudApp imagines multiple use cases for Collections. Customer service representatives, for example, can create a Collection of videos, screenshots, and GIFs for answering common customer questions, while marketing teams can keep design elements on hand.


Favorites, meanwhile, are aimed at making it faster for CloudApp users to get to their most used Drops from the desktop. Favorites can be accessed from the new Favorites section, right next to Collections and Drops.

CloudApp is also gaining new short links, doing away with the cl.ly short links in favor of share.getcloudapp.com links. CloudApp says these are more customer friendly, direct, and offer better security with SSL. Paid customers can continue to offer links with a customized domain.

CloudApp can be downloaded from the CloudApp website. It's free for individual users and can be used to create and share videos, GIFs, screenshots, and more. The free plan is limited to 5 minutes of screen recording and 100MB of storage.

Paid individual plans are available for $9 a month with unlimited video recording, and team plans are available for $8 per user per month.


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Apple Bans App That Allowed Hong Kong Protestors to Track Police Movements

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Apple has reportedly banned an app that allows Hong Kong protestors to track protests and police movements in the city state, despite increasing international condemnation against the violence used by the authorities.


According to The Register, Apple has told the makers of the HKmap Live app that it can't be allowed in the App Store because it helps protestors to evade the police.

"Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement," the American tech giant told makers of the HKmap Live on Tuesday before pulling it.

Opposition to the Chinese state and the Hong Kong authorities has grown louder, driven by an escalation in violence against protestors over the past week. On Wednesday, thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong to denounce the shooting of an unarmed teenage student by police.

Tsang Chi-kin was shot in the chest at point-blank range on Tuesday. He remains in hospital in stable but critical condition after surgery to remove the bullet, which narrowly missed his heart.

The rise in police violence has led protesters to make use of digital networking and collaborative tools to organize street gatherings, with services like HKmap Live being used to help them avoid what they perceive as government-orchestrated attacks.

This isn't the first time Apple has acted to remove apps from the App Store to abide by Chinese law. In July 2017, Apple removed the majority of VPN apps from the App Store in China, following regulations passed earlier in the year that require such apps to be authorized by the Chinese government.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: App Store, China, Hong Kong

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Redmi 8 Snapdragon 439 SoC, 5000mAh Battery to Launch in India on October 9: Expected Price, Specs

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Mario Kart Tour is Nintendo's Biggest Mobile Launch to Date With 90 Million Downloads in First Week

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Nintendo's latest smartphone app Mario Kart Tour has been downloaded over 90 million times since it launched last week, according to new download estimates shared by Sensor Tower.


The number eclipses both Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Super Mario Run, which were downloaded a respective 14.3 million times and just under 13 million times in their debut week, making Mario Kart Tour Nintendo's biggest mobile game launch to date.

Breaking down the figure across platforms, the free-to-play game was downloaded 36.5 million times on iOS devices, while the Android version was downloaded 53.3 million times.

In terms of overall revenue driven by in-app purchases, Mario Kart Tour earned $12.7 million, so it hasn't reached the heights of Fire Emblem Heroes, which earned Nintendo $28.2 million in its first week. Super Mario Run meanwhile clocked up $16.1 million in its debut week, making Mario Kart Tour the company's third-biggest game.

Across platforms, $9.6 million (75.5 percent) was spent in-game by iOS device users, while Android IAPs amounted to $3.1 million (24.5 percent). Most spending occurred in the U.S. with $5.8 million, followed by Japan ($4 million) and France ($752,000).

Announced in January 2018, Mario Kart Tour was delayed several times before its debut last week. The game features an optional "Gold Pass" subscription, which introduces various in-game items and badges and also unlocks the faster 200cc mode. Nintendo is offering a two-week free trial, after which it costs $4.99 a month.

Mario Kart Tour is a free download from the App Store, requires iOS 10 or later to play, and officially supports iPhone 5s or iPad Air and later devices. A Nintendo Account is also required to play the game. [Direct Link]

Tags: Nintendo, Sensor Tower

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