TECHNOLOGY CREDITED WITH AIDING ATLANTIC CITY’S CRIME DROP
Crime is down in Atlantic City, and police are crediting several factors including technology that helps them monitor high-crime areas and identify potential risks.
Violent crimes were down more than 30 percent last month compared to a year ago, and overall crimes are down two-thirds from five years ago.
The technology includes Risk Terrain Modeling, or RTM, which maps high-crime areas but also identifies factors that can draw crime to an area.
Police also use about 1,400 cameras to virtually patrol the city. They credit the technology with helping them apprehend a teen accused of killing a man in Ventnor last week.
Deputy Police Chief James Sarkos tells The Press of Atlantic City that jobs created by the openings of two casinos this year also have helped.
Near the close of October, Apple threw the veil off the new iPad Pro, which it has hailed as not only the “most advanced, powerful iPad ever”, but also “the iPad we wanted to make from the beginning”. However, short of getting too swept up in the marketing hype surrounding the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch devices, many observers – both press critics and regular users – have held off to see whether the new iPad Pro really stands up to scrutiny in a professional context.
AGAIN IN AN iPAD PROCESSOR, X MARKS THE SPOT
As the new iPad Pro has been made available first to the media and then to consumers, the Internet has seen a flurry of opinions and appraisals of this new productivity-oriented slate. However, in an attempt to preserve objectivity about the Pro, it’s worth looking closer at how its tech specs stack up. Many people already know about the headline additions such as the Liquid Retina display and Face ID system – but under the hood, what’s powering all of these exciting features?
The answer is the new A12X Bionic chip. This is a modified form of the A12 processor that debuted in the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR earlier this fall, and with Apple not having refreshed the iPad Pro line since June 2017, the chip enhancements in the new models were clear. At the launch presentation, Apple shared reams of eye-opening statistics about the A12X – including that compared to the A10X, it delivers twice the graphics performance and 90% faster multi-core performance.
Apple also enthused that the Pro keeps pace in GPU power with the Xbox One S games console while remaining physically much smaller and not even needing a fan. You might even want to think twice before purchasing a new portable PC, as the Pro is said to be 92% faster than any on the market. For an intriguing insight into how all of this is realized, you can read this in-depth Ars Technica interview with Apple’s Anand Shimpi and Phil Schiller.
THE iPAD PRO MAKES ITS BENCHMARK
Ars Technica came away impressed with the new chip, remarking that Apple “is leading the market when it comes to mobile CPU and GPU performance - not by a little, but by a lot.”This is very much reflected in new benchmarks posted by the tech site. A test using GeekBench saw the Pro fall just short of the 35% improvement in single-core performance that Apple says the device achieves over last year’s line, while Apple’s claim about multi-core performance seemed similarly justified.
Furthermore, Apple has achieved these performance improvements without inflicting any discernibly heavy blow to the battery life. In a review for Mashable, Raymond Wong called the battery life “as excellent as on previous iPads”, noting that when he used the Pro for reading, games playing, video streaming and some writing, it endured for “up to 10 hours” as advertised. Even when tested by pro-level apps, the battery life reached about seven to eight hours.
THE ‘iPAD AS LAPTOP REPLACEMENT’ ARGUMENT RE-EMERGES
Impressive though the benchmarks look on paper, the real test is how practical the Pro proves in day-to-day use – especially in the tasks for which the tablet ought to be used. It would be fair to say that early impressions have been positive on the whole. YouTuber Jonathan Morrison recorded his favorable thoughts on video after using the 12.9-inch version for just 72 hours – while, as reported by MacRumors, regular users have commented on that version’s surprisingly small size.
However, more rigorous reviews of the iPad Pro have revived a debate that many users of previous Pro models might recall: that of whether the Pro really constitutes a laptop replacement. Given the respective starting prices of $799 and $999 for the 11-inch and 12.9inch models, you might anticipate it being able to serve as such. However, even when used with the new accessories of the second-generation Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard Folio, the Pro might still fall short.
WIRED’s Jeffrey Van Camp took issue with iOS, insisting: “Now that Apple has declared the iPad is a PC, it should take more of the guardrails off of iOS.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler reported that although he found writing, photo-editing and publishing text manageable, “I also never figured out an efficient way to multitask, sit with decent posture and work for hours, or keep it balanced on my lap”, adding that filing expense reports made him miss using a mouse.