When Apple announced the new M4 iPad Air and a revamped M2 iPad Air, including the all-new 13-inch display option, the company didn't make a big deal about the battery life that buyers can expect from either one. Apple did however note that the M4 chip is more power efficient than the previous-generation M-series chips, but that was as far as things got. So it's perhaps interesting that Apple's published battery life for the new iPads is essentially the same as it has been for years.

As MacRumors points out, Apple says that the new iPads both manage the same 10 hours of battery life that the company has been advertising for years, and that's notable given the fact that both of these tablets now have better, more power-efficient chips than the models that they replaced. It's notable that the new chips are also faster of course, so there's a trade-off to be made there.

The new M4 chip is built on a second-generation 3nm manufacturing process which means that it's more power efficient than even the M3 that came before it. It also has six efficiency cores which is two more than the M2 that was in the 2022 iPad Pro that this new model replaces. The tandem OLED display is also thought to be more energy efficient, all things that might have been expected to allow Apple to save some battery life and increase performance.

The new M4 iPad Pro and a refreshed M2 iPad Air are now available for preorder after they were announced during the Let Loose event yesterday. The event was a big one despite its relatively short length, unveiling not only the new tablets but also a new Apple Pencil Pro and a refreshed Magic Keyboard. All of those new things are now available for preorder and they'll officially go on sale on May 15. But those who choose to pick up a new iPad Pro or iPad Air won't get something that Apple device buyers have become so used to.

That thing isn't something that's a big deal but it's something we're so familiar with. The thing? The familiar Apple stickers that have been included in boxes for decades at this point.

The news hasn't been confirmed by Apple but a 9to5Mac report based on a memo that has been distributed to Apple Store teams notes that there will be no stickers included in any of the new iPad boxes.

Apple announced the brand-new M4 iPad Pro yesterday and it brings with it some big upgrades, not least that superfast M4 chip that everyone's talking about. But the thing that most people will notice first is likely to be the new OLED display and it's something that Apple focused on heavily, too. But there's one feature that we would have liked to have seen arrive that was sadly missing - an always-on display like the iPhone 15 Pro.

An always-on display was never seriously rumored for the arrival of the new iPad Pro but the news that it would be using an OLED display similar to the iPhone had given some hope that Apple might spring a surprise. Now, Apple has published technical specifications for the new iPads and has confirmed that the new OLED display features a variable refresh rate that can go as high as 120Hz and fall to just 10Hz. And as impressive that is, and as much battery life it could help the iPad save, it doesn't go as low as the iPhone 15 Pro display's 1Hz. And it's that 1Hz refresh rate that is needed to offer an always-on display.

The iPad Pro has offered a 10Hz refresh rate since 2017 with the tablet fluctuating between 24Hz and 120Hz depending on what the device is being used for at the time. The high refresh rate is useful for high-speed on-screen content and fluid animations, but refreshing the display that many times per second can impact the battery life terribly. Moving to a 10Hz lower refresh rate will help Apple save battery life to be sure, but 1Hz would have been even better.

Apple announced the brand-new M4 iPad Pro yesterday alongside the new M2 iPad Air and the Apple Pencil Pro, not to mention the revamped Apple Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro. There was plenty announced during the event, but it's the M4 iPad Pro that's particularly notable. It's a hugely powerful tablet and one that comes with plenty of RAM and storage. But it turns out that if you pick two particular storage options you'll also get some other things thrown in for good measure, too.

Apple didn't make a big deal out of the news when it announced the M4 iPad Pro, but it's since been discovered that anyone who spends the extra $600 to upgrade from 256GB of storage to the 1TB model (or higher) will also get an additional CPU core and twice as much RAM.

Apple has historically not chosen to give details about what cores the iPad has and how much RAM is offered, but in the case of the M4 it turns out that the base model with 256GB of storage comes with an M4 chip that has a 9-core CPU. But if you then choose to buy a 1TB or 2TB storage option you'll actually get an M4 chip that has a 10-core CPU instead. You'll still get the same number of GPU cores so there is nothing of note there, but it's interesting that Apple is putting two versions of the same M4 chip into the same tablet here.

It's impossible to miss the fact that Apple announced the new M4 iPad and M2 iPad Air yesterday alongside a new Apple Pencil Pro and a refreshed Magic Keyboard, but did you know that Google also announced a new product? You probably didn't, because it chose to announce it on the same day that Apple sucked all the air out of the room. Which is a shame, because the phone is actually pretty good.

The Pixel 8a was a phone that we'd seen leaked here and there in recent weeks, a phone that offers people the chance to get their hands on a new phone with high-end features at a price that doesn't cost high-end figures. The Pixel 8a is sure to be a popular device, as well as it should because it has a ton of features that make for a great experience. And at $499, it's going to be hard to beat.

Google's Pixel 8a features a new Actua display that measures 6.1 inches. It has a high-speed 120Hz refresh rate and is 40% brighter than the display that was already a solid option in last year's Pixel 7a. The good news doesn't end there, either, with a new 256GB storage option available for those who want it.

Windows 11 users running an inactivated copy of the operating system may find that in the future, there's a further penalty exacted on them for failing to activate - and it involves Microsoft's Edge browser.

Windows Latest noticed that in a fresh test build of Edge, there are several flags that hint at the potentially incoming move. These are:

Just by looking at those flags you can guess the functionality being leveraged: a check for activation, then a trigger if Windows 11 isn't activated that means Edge Settings are locked.

The Senate officially banned TikTok in the United States, giving the popular app owner the choice of selling it to a US government-approved buyer or having it banned from app marketplaces.

The US government has deemed TikTok a national security risk due to its owner being China-based company ByteDance, which officials believe have ties to the Chinese government. More specifically, the US government believes TikTok is capable of scraping the personal data of 170 million Americans, and that data could then be shared with the Chinese government. Furthermore, the US government believe TikTok could be used to spread misinformation throughout the US.

The banning of the app gave its owner 270 days to sell TikTok, with an additional 90-day presidential extension. TikTok and ByteDance have since responded to the new legislature by filing a lawsuit that directly challenges the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Biden signed into law last month.

Sabrent has just launched its newer, faster M.2 2242 SSD with the release of its new Sabrent Rocket NANO 2242 SSD.

The new Sabrent Rocket NANO SSD has been designed for specialized devices like the Lenovo Legion Go, Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other portables, but the company is clear that the Rocket NANO SSD will work anywhere. The new Rocket NANO SSD can be extended to M.2 2280 form factor, or you can adjust your motherboard standoffs while most enclosures, add-in cards, and devices such as cloners will work "as-is," says Sabrent.

This is a new DRAM-less SSD, so the Sabrent Rocket NANO SSD is single-sided, so there's no need to worry about whether it'll fit in your machine or device. Now, let's talk about those important read and write speeds, shall we?

Sabrent has the true one-stop storage management solution for SATA and IDE HDDs, SSDs, and optical drives like CD/DVD-RW. It easily connects to Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems and other host d evices over an integrated 5Gbps USB-C port (USB Gen 3.2 1x1).

The maximum speed of the Sabrent USB-DS12 will depend on the drive's interface at speeds of up to SATA 3Gbps (SATA II, or SATA-300). The USB-DS12 adapter is plug and play, making it super-easy to work with virtually any device as it requires no drivers, and is hot swappable at all times.

If you've got a new HDD or SSD, or an old HDD or SSD, both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives require additional 12V power to operate reliably, so Sabrent -- the good guys they are -- have included an external power supply.

The US government is reportedly preparing to make another move against China to prevent the nation from gaining access to the US's best artificial intelligence capabilities.

The Biden administration has already taken measures to prevent China from gaining AI supremacy by banning the exportation of specific high-end NVIDIA graphics cards, which are used to train the AI models, and proposing a rule that requires all US cloud companies to inform the government when foreign customers are using their cloud systems to train AI models.

According to reports, more guardrails are being considered by the Commerce Department, which plans on targeting the exportation of proprietary or closed-source AI models. The idea behind these new purported regulations is to prevent US-based AI giants such as the Microsoft-funded OpenAI, the company behind popular AI tool ChatGPT, or Google DeepMind, creators of Gemini, from taking their world leading AI models to global market and selling them to the highest bidder.