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The new M4 iPad Pro is really, really thin. That's inevitably going to make certain aspects of repairing the device even more difficult, which iFixit confirmed in a teardown published this weekend. But it does shine in one area — when it comes to replacing the battery, Apple made some seriously helpful changes.
"For the first time in an iPad Pro, we're able to remove the battery immediately after removing the screen," Teardown Tech Shahram Mokhtari wrote in a blog post. Mokhtari notes that "immediately is relative," as there are still some screws and brackets to remove before the battery can be taken out, and the video documenting the process shows it takes a bit of work to get to the pull tabs beneath the batteries, but the new setup still shaves hours off the process compared to earlier models.
"The fact that you can remove the battery without having to remove every major component inside this device is still a huge win for repair
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Video game horses tend to play a fairly uncomplicated role, at least in mainstream titles. Like semi-sentient meat bicycles, they often exist as little more than a way to make the player travel faster, jump farther or occasionally defy the laws of physics. With the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2, an outlier beloved for its equine verisimilitude and breadth of riding-related activities, horses in video games are generally emotionless props, notorious for janky animations and unnatural anatomy.
That's fine for most players' needs, but for those who are drawn to certain games in part because they have horses, there's a lot to be desired. Especially since the alternatives — dedicated horse games — haven't proven to be much better. The genre is plagued with shoddy graphics, unoriginal storylines and drawn-out, repetitive caretaking tasks like hoof-picking. While horse games of the aughts, like the Barbie Horse Adventures series, sparked a lasting interest in the niche for a lot of young gamers, we've yet to really see what their maturation can look like for the now-adults still chasing that high.
The biggest actual horse game today, the decade-old MMORPG Star Stable Online, is distinctly tween-girl-coded. Suffice it to say, there's a hole in the market as big as a Clydesdale. But some extremely passionate developers are trying to change that.
Alice Ruppert, who runs
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Sony used to be a fairly major player in the smartphone space, but its offerings never quite made a splash in the US. Despite that, the company has been pumping out yearly refreshes of its Xperia line of smartphones and the just-announced Xperia 1 VI looks like the perfect device for both amateur and professional photographers. Sony, after all, is no slouch when it comes to cameras.
The sixth-generation of the company's flagship smartphone is filled with so many camera-centric features that it could actually lure people away from rival iPhone and Pixel devices. There's a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus and a telephoto camera for snapping macro shots.
This breaks down to three cameras on the back, in the form of a 24mm main c
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I love this thing, and I've got it attached to my desk for easy access. The meat of the kit is the iFixit all-metal, magnetic driver, which comes in a box with 64 of the most common bits necessary for repairing PCs, electronics, and pretty much anything smaller than a car. We're talking eleven different Phillips and flathead bits, another dozen Torx bits, another dozen for hex screws and bolts, and exotic square, gamebit, and tri-point bits for weird proprietary stuff like Nintendo controllers and consoles.
The magnetic top is great for organizing screws while you're working. On top of all that, you get a bit extender tool for those hard-to-reach spots and a cloth roll that holds bigger tools, including precision tweezers, pry tools, a suction cup, and even an anti-static wrist strap. It's everything you'll need to get a smartphone open and replace the screen. Except, well, a replacement screen.
It's a compact package full of high-quality gear, and barely a week goes by when I haven't reached for it for some kind of repair or tinkering. Go grab one for yourself, and maybe an extra for dad (Father's Day is a month away).
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