Budget 2017 Singapore - budget 2017 singapore | the hr leader’s wishlist from singapore budget 2017. singapore budget 2017 - live webcast (without sign language interpretation).
bt's 5-minute guide to singapore budget 2016. gearing up for singapore budget 2017 it is vital that the country maintain a leading vibrant economy amidst growing competition with our regional counterparts.
share your views and suggestions on the singapore budget and reach websites.
singapore budget 2016 - live webcast (without sign language interpretation). finance minister heng swee keat will deliver the 2017 singapore budget next monday 20 feb.
join us as we discuss singapore budget 2017 - the productivity and innovation credit (pic) funding for smes and other manpower matters – such as whether employers hire pmes based on skills or grades whether companies see mature workers as a ready source of labour and the challenges which females face when they want to return to workforce... [pwc’s budget vlog] overall key winners of singapore budget 2017.
kpmg’s pre-budget 2017 report "building enterprises of the future" comes at a time when many firms are affected by a slowing economy global macro uncertainties and technological disruption.
2017 singapore budget wishlist!
singapore budget 2017 - budget singapore 2017.
budget 2017 singapore..
singapore budget 2017 - live webcast (with sign language interpretation). singapore budget 2016 - live webcast (without sign language interpretation).. singapore budget 2017 - driving economic growth by supporting local businesses.
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Tuesday, 12.26pm: M4 westbound - The weatherman on the radio is making the most of his extra two minutes. As the nose of theAston Martin V12 Vantage S I’m driving sweeps west over the Severn bridge, our man is warning of driving rain and 80mph winds ahead; fallen trees, flooded roads and downed power lines, possibly. South Wales will get it worse than anywhere. Jolly good.
If photographer Lacey is hearing this, he’ll be sobbing into his waterproof underpants – but I’m not. Idyllic conditions would have been all wrong for the exercise we’re about to undertake, and so would wide, smooth European roads.
Right now, as Storm Barney brews up over the Atlantic, four super-sports cars are making their way towards the Rhondda Valley. One of them, we already know, won’t be too affected by the wind and rain: it’s the original everyday-use supercar-slayer in its current guise,Porsche’s legendary 911 Turbo S.
But how will that car’s newly swollen band of rivals manage in the Welsh murk – among them the aforementioned Aston Martin, Audi’s brand-new R8 V10 Plus, and the much-anticipated McLaren 570S? Is lip service being paid to refinement and usability by the makers of the R8 V10 Plus and 570S – or has Porsche’s ultra-pragmatic performance hero finally come up against some equally usable competition?
The first thing slowly becoming clear at this early stage, besides the thick, foreboding clouds gathering overhead, is that the most obliging, impervious car in our foursome may still not necessarily win this test, even in these conditions. Prolonged and repeated exposure to every 911 Turbo since the ‘996’ generation has taught this tester that – beyond a certain point, admittedly – usability may be overrated in a great sports car. Misapplied, even, if it comes at the cost of handling precision, driver engagement or dramatic charm.
Without so much as turning a wheel in any of the other three cars involved, I can tell that the V12 Vantage S is going to have to plough its own furrow all the way to success here. It doesn’t have the mid-range torque necessary to be effortlessly fast; it’s the heaviest car here; it has only one driven axle and its hefty 6.0-litre engine is at the wrong end of the car to generate the best traction from that axle.
But, being an Aston Martin, the V12 Vantage S is also at least 50% the long-legged luxury GT and has an appeal of its own. Its engine has the kind of mellifluous smoothness and baleful howl that can only come from 12 naturally aspirated cylinders. It’s a wonderful thing.
Would I really trade that richness and charm for instant torque and unconditional traction in a daily-driven super-sports car? You know what? I’m not sure – especially if the rest of the Aston’s dynamic package is up to snuff.
Tuesday, 2.37pm: Bwlch-y-Clawdd Road, nr Treorchy - The wind and rain are already making life slippery, gusty and all the more revealing for our test’s early protagonists. There will be no sign of either the 570S or the 911 Turbo S until late tonight by the time our test cars can be freed up and driven west from Woking and Reading respectively. For now, having acclimatised to what the V12 Vantage S offers, there’s a chance to watch colleague Cackett having a similar introduction on these mountain roads, while I get reacquainted with an old friend.
That, at least, is how you expect driving the new R8 will feel: comfortable and familiar. In fact, it’s not quite so much of either. Besides being a bit short in the provision of leg room and a touch too highly set, the car’s seat is comfy enough and the fascia is an entirely predictable, perfectly executed cross between old R8 and new TT. But the driving experience is different: less confidently defined, less instantly gratifying. A worry.
The incontrovertible dynamic rightness of the previous R8 seems, at first, to be lost. The car’s steering is discouragingly light, muted and very fast around the straight-ahead, its handling is sharp, darting and unsympathetic and its supple ride has been replaced by unyielding, fidgeting firmness. More worry.
For the better part of an hour, I drive the car like this, aggrieved that such a fine sports car could be succeeded by something so dynamically over-egged. And only then, flicking through the car’s drive modes and playing with its various wheel-mounted buttons for the first time, does it dawn on me that complexity may be leading both driver and car astray.
The new R8 has the same drive modes as most of Audi’s saloons, hatchbacks and SUVs. Select Dynamic mode on one like our test car – fitted with optional magnetorheological adaptive dampers and optional active variable-ratio ‘dynamic’ steering – and you end up with a car carefully configured for smooth roads and circuits – and, as it turns out, remarkably poorly set up for a wet Welsh mountain pass.
The R8 V10 Plus has new Performance modes for track work as well, but its saving grace turns out to be the Individual setting. This allows you to calm the steering’s active functionality right down and bring back a bit of feel into the system, while simultaneously softening the ride to make it more compliant for road use and keeping the car’s powertrain in a more sporting state of readiness. Set up like this, the car’s handling is more rounded, its steering more coherent and tactile and its ride, though firm, acceptable.
What’s never in question is the brilliance of the R8’s powertrain. For its balance of mid-range tractability and high-rev drama, and the four-wheel drive transmission’s combination of blistering shift speed and feel for the right gear in any one of several automatic modes, it’s outstanding. It’s also a better standard bearer for natural aspiration than the Aston’s V12, which, although characterful, feels leaner on torque and seems to shift gears less quickly and cleverly the longer you’re acquainted with it.
But still, I’m somewhat surprised and disappointed by the R8’s handling. Audi has made a sweeter and more balanced car here than Lamborghini managed of the Huracán, using most of the same hardware – but it’s not as much fun as the Aston. Throw it into a bend on a trailing throttle and there’s liveliness and adjustability. But the lateral stiffness of the R8’s springing makes the handling less forgiving than the previous R8’s.
The slight wooliness and unpredictability of its steering makes it feel less precise. And the four-wheel drive system, which could always be relied upon before to add directional stability with power, is undoubtedly harder to pre-empt. Sometimes, throttle seems to want to send the tail wide, and other times it doesn’t.
With daylight gone and photos done for the day, we drive 40 miles north to overnight digs in Llandovery – and at the end of the drive, I’m no more convinced that Audi has made real dynamic progress with this car than I was a few hours ago. It’s fast, sure. But, in V10 Plus form at least, it’s not as supple, surefooted, communicative or confidence-inspiring as you’d like it to be on the road. It’s certainly not everything it was.
Wednesday, 7.19am: hotel car park, Llandovery - All is well. After a 6am start and a few repeat trips to the town’s most excellent jetwash, I’m looking at a car park, in breaking daylight, featuring all four of our cars together for the first time. It’s a relief, to be honest. I’d worried that we might have lost one or two of them to the risen water table by now.
And so, while the rest of the crew are breakfasting, there’s time to break out a tape measure. (I just can’t help myself at times of excitement.) Before opening up cargo compartments or peering into spaces too small to be useful for passengers, a simple and critical measurement: maximum width, measured windows down, across and through the cabin, from one outer door mirror extremity to the other.
Width can be the death of an otherwise great sports car. It’s more important than ever now because, as cars get wider, the roads and lanes that carry them only seem narrower. It takes barely a moment to note that there’s 115mm between the slimmest and widest cars here. That’s four inches. And when that tractor emerges from behind that hedge, you’d be aware of every one of them.
No prizes for guessing that the 911 is slimmest. In years gone by, it would have been so by a greater margin and yet, although it’s only a couple of inches narrower than the field’s average, that’ll be enough to easily notice on the road, I’ll bet.
There’s little between the Aston and Audi on overall width, although the R8 is the wider – and feels it. But the 570S is wider still, by quite a long way, a consequence of the relationship and the carbonfibre tub it shares with McLaren’s other models. Bad news? Perhaps.
On carrying space, the Porsche only asserts its superiority again. The combination of a decent-sized cargo box in the nose with those occasional back seats, foldable to produce as much loading area behind the seats as there is up front, gives the 911 Turbo S as big an advantage on usability today as it has ever enjoyed.
It may seem incredible that companies like Audi and McLaren can design a car from a blank sheet, five decades after the original 911, and still come up short in this respect. Incredible, but unavoidable. Until Neckarsulm and Woking start making rear-engined sports cars, you’d imagine they’ll continue at the same disadvantage.
After the Porsche, there’s a turn-up: the 570S narrowly pips the V12 Vantage S on practicality, thanks to a particularly generous cargo box up front and some useful space behind the seats and under the rear window for coats and small, squashy bags. The Aston’s boot is wide and quite long but shallow, allowing you to load stuff up to the back seats, and roomy enough for smaller weekend cases and bags but nothing bigger. The Audi brings up the rear on practicality, offering some limited space on a shelf behind the seats but not much, and only a fairly small carrying box in the nose.
Wednesday, 10.43am: near Cantref Reservoir - Against all the odds, the day started fairly dry in the Brecon Beacons National Park. It didn’t stay that way for long. The short hop up here from Llandovery was in light wind and rain. But it might have been bone dry and dead calm for all I knew: the grip, stability and unflappable composure of the 911 Turbo S was just other-worldly.
When travelling in a convoy, there are times when you know that the car you’re driving is coping much better with the conditions under its wheels than the others. You just drive differently; more confidently than your companions. Not faster, necessarily – UK speed limits having an understandably calming influence on the drivers of conspicuous 500bhp sports cars travelling together through rush-hour traffic – but more positively, quicker up to the legal limit, with a keener eye for overtaking and what advanced driving instructors used to call ‘making progress’.
That’s how the Turbo S felt earlier this morning, with the R8, V12 Vantage S and 570S disappearing in my rear-view mirrior. Compared with the Audi driven in similar conditions the night before and, to a lesser extent, the Aston Martin, the Porsche felt perfectly in tune with the slippery conditions. With the adaptive dampers set soft, it rode with just the right mix of tautness and compliance, breathing over the bumps rather than pummelling them. It had just enough feel and feedback through the steering to get a sense of the lateral grip level available, and to gauge the severity and camber of the surface being crossed.
There was sufficient agility and response to place the car perfectly on the road, and to keep it where you wanted it. And you had nothing but enormous torque and traction the instant you called for it, delivered without so much as a hint of wheelspin or the merest squirm of wasted energy.
Now the 911 is stationary, along with the rest of our convoy, in this small car park just off the road, only for the kind of weather to hove in from across the valley that books of the Old Testament were written about. Within minutes, bordering roads previously only slightly treacherous become perilous to everything – including the 911. Photographer Lacey downs tools, and we can do nothing but wait. And wait. For a while, Storm Barney is not to be trifled with.
An hour and a half later, as some breaks finally emerge in the cloud cover, it is to the 570S that I finally turn. A left-hand-drive model was all that McLaren could supply us with for this test, so we’ll save conclusive observations about the car’s width for another day. Suffice to say for now that, sure, it feels wide, but perhaps not too wide for most UK roads.
Its driving position is excellent: fine seats, almost too much steering column adjustment. Visibility is remarkable thanks to McLaren’s habitually low scuttle and skinny pillars. And although the cabin has its quirks – possibly the least intuitive seat adjustment console I’ve ever attempted to use, and an infotainment system I still struggle to penetrate, even after trying it several times – it’s comfy, solid, modern, attractive and upmarket.
The Ricardo V8 stutters into its usual noisy, gravelly, slightly toneless idle after start-up. It’s docile when manoeuvring and at low speeds and still feels slightly soft under your right foot on the road.
But even at middling revs and off boost, the 570S feels light, lithe and energetic, like nothing else here. That’s because it is light. It has 200kg on the next lightest car in our field, in fact.
Although fairly firmly sprung and always keen to change direction, it rides sensationally well – better than you’d imagine it could, given that this is the first McLaren road car of the current era to use conventional dampers and anti-roll bars. And there is such weight, positivity and detailed feel to the steering that its directness and the firmness of the car’s suspension simply don’t become problems for it on the road.
Yes, you have to concentrate when you’re driving; guide the car with more care and attention than in some of the others here and use the throttle a bit more judiciously. But even in the wet and on standard Corsa tyres no less, the McLaren’s grip level is dependable, its stability controls effective and its handling secure, communicative, delicate – and just so involving.
Which is to say nothing of what happens when you do use the throttle a bit. Wow. Fans of performance numbers will already have worked out that the McLaren’s 418bhp per tonne is a 21% improvement on what a 911 Turbo S gives you in full cry – and a 911 Turbo S is still a very fast car for your princely £140k.
Unlike the Porsche, you have to allow the McLaren to rev a bit to really let it off the leash. So you drop a couple of ratios in manual mode and squeeze the accelerator, rather than just mash the pedal, anything-goes style, as you can in the 911. But the 570S rewards you with a rate of acceleration that’s nothing short of stellar. It’s supercar level, really. I’d be amazed if a Ferrari 488 was much quicker.
The 570S’s brake pedal feel could and should be improved. It has racing car brakes (surprise, surprise), dead at the top of the travel and hard to modulate initially in a way that rivals with carbon-ceramic brakes have already moved beyond.
But in other ways, the McLaren shows just how much genuine supercar can now be bought for super-sports-car money – 911 Turbo money. The cat is most definitely among the pigeons here, and there are feathers everywhere.
Wednesday, 3.34pm: just off the A470, near Pen-y-Fan - We’re wrapping up. Motorists on Wales’ major north-south trunk road honk, wave and, in some cases, swear at four morons in a roadside car park standing beside their flashy motors in the gathering gloom and cold. By the time Cackett asks me for the finishing order of these four cars, my mind is made up about the sharp end, but it’s separating the runners-up that’s hard.
The biggest underachiever is easy, although that tag doesn’t do the car justice. Everyone expected more from the R8: a more tactile drive, greater dynamic roundedness and greater usability. The powertrain is awesome, but the four-wheel-drive chassis fails to deliver either the handling security or panache to really distinguish it on the road. More varied tests will come but, for now, the R8 still has it all to prove.
The Vantage feels as though it has been around for so long that it can have absolutely nothing left to prove – and in V12 S form, it remains a rough diamond. It offers simplicity, luxury and pure mechanical charisma as an alternative to the bamboozling complexity of its rivals, and although it isn’t on the same sporting level as the best dynamic acts here, it would always be an absorbing, disarming, enjoyable car to drive. Worth a podium place? Just about, I reckon.
And then? Both the 911 Turbo S and the 570S would make a deserving winner here. The Porsche is still absolutely untouchable in its own niche. Nothing else will take apart a streaming, slippery cross-country B-road with the same fluency, stability, user-friendliness and easy precision as it does, or cope better with the real world. In the past, I’ve never really understood the 911 Turbo. After a couple of miserable, wonderful days in Wales, I think I get it. There’s certainly nothing else like it.
But I also wonder if the car-loving world isn’t moving beyond it now – if everyone who is in or has been in the market for the ultimate, pragmatically minded, everyday super-sports car hasn’t owned at least one 911 Turbo already and may now be looking for something a bit different.
The 570S is different, all right; it’s lighter, keener, faster, more involving and more specialised. It’s less usable, too – and we mustn’t forget that. But it succeeds even more spectacularly in what Porsche tried to do 40 years ago with the original 911 Turbo, and in what Audi tried eight years ago with the original R8 – and has still to perfect. It pulls the rug out from underneath the fully fledged, £200,000-plus, thoroughbred Italian mid-engined exotic. “Anything you can do,” it says, “I can do better.” And cheaper – although you can whisper that last bit if you like.
Step forward and take a bow, then, Britain’s latest and possibly greatest giant-slayer: the McLaren 570S.
Price £143,250; 0-62mph 3.2sec; Top speed 204mph; Economy25.4mpg; CO2 258g/km; Kerb weight 1244kg; Engine V8, 3799cc, twin-turbo, petrol; Power 562bhp at 7500rpm; Torque 442lb ft at 5000-6500rpm; Gearbox 7-spd dual-clutch auto
Porsche 911 Turbo S
Price £142,120; 0-62mph 3.1sec; Top speed 198mph; Economy29.1mpg; CO2 227g/km; Kerb weight 1605kg; Engine 6 cyls horizontally opposed, 3800cc, twin-turbo, petrol; Power 552bhp at 6500-6750rpm; Torque 553b ft at 2200-4000rpm; Gearbox 7-spd dual-clutch auto
Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
Price £138,000; 0-62mph 3.9sec; Top speed 205mph; Economy19.2mpg; CO2 343g/km; Kerb weight 1665kg; Engine V12, 5935cc, petrol; Power 565bhp at 6750rpm; Torque 457b ft at 5750rpm;Gearbox 7-spd robotised manual
Audi R8 V10 Plus
Price £134,500; 0-62mph 3.2sec; Top speed 205mph; Economy23.0mpg; CO2 287g/km; Kerb weight 1555kg; Engine V10, 5204cc, petrol; Power 602bhp at 8250rpm; Torque 413b ft at 6500rpm;Gearbox 7-spd dual-clutch auto
More often than not, the most prudent path to IT modernization does not lead to new systems, but to the better leveraging of existing IT assets and applications.
A thought-provoking recent Insurance & Technology article, The Rocky Road of Modernization, examines top challenges that insurance companies face today in replacing and modernizing existing core systems.
The analysis raises salient points around the importance of a customer-focused approach and operational efficiency to effective, modern IT strategy for insurance firms. The article outlines possible IT strategies for effective change, including the assertion that, “Systems produced today” are “better able to handle the modern … environment.”
This reflects popular opinions about older IT systems and the value they can deliver to insurance companies. But it may be a misperception. More often than not, the most prudent path to IT modernization does not lead to new systems, but to better leveraging existing IT assets and applications. For insurance companies embarking on IT modernization initiatives or evaluating whether it makes sense to do so, there are a handful of considerations to keep in mind.
Don’t rush to rip and replace existing IT systemsWhen organizations set out to rip and replace their so-called legacy applications, removing a decades-old working system can be difficult. Even if the effort succeeds, a lot of money is spent for very little in return. What replaces it is -- fundamentally -- merely a like-for-like equivalent. Yet extensive budget, resources, and upheaval are consumed on this venture.
And in reality, the viability of system-wide replacement carries considerable risks that often exceed modernization of existing IT assets. Swapping out one system for another compels the organization to cope with significant changes, including functional equivalence, data integrity, user acceptance, training, hardware, and software commissioning, among others.
The new system is untested, the system being replaced is undocumented, and the possibilities for errors are huge. Studies undertaken by industry commentators and analysts talk about failure rates of between 40% and 70%, depending on the nature of the project, where implementations are excessively late, over budget or just never delivered.
So what motivates an organization to rip out perfectly good business applications and replace them with new code that may or may not do exactly the same job? It may be the result of a false assumption that sticking with the same systems will not enable the company to meet future needs, or a surface-level diagnosis of what the IT and business challenges are.
Before rushing to rip and replace existing IT systems that in most cases are highly capable and future-proofed, insurance company CIOs and IT decision-makers must gain a deeper understanding of the scope of the problem and employ a pragmatic approach to fixing processes -- without jeopardizing existing services or adding to the IT backlog. An optimal starting point is focusing on the backlog at a systemic level. Isolating and planning backlog busting projects is facilitated by new incarnations of application knowledge technology, and smarter tools for making application changes.
Understand the enduring value of COBOLThe I&T article notes that older systems are “expensive to operate” and rely on “outdated” skills, such as COBOL programming. True, COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages around, brought into the world by Grace Hopper in 1959 -- but it is far from outdated and one could argue more essential than ever in enabling insurance companies to innovate and modernize mainframes and existing enterprise applications. Even today, COBOL powers 70% of all business transactions -- everything from ATMs to point-of-sale systems and the filling of healthcare prescriptions. Currently, 250 billion lines of COBOL support today’s core business applications -- with 1.5 million new lines written every day.
Critical insurance applications running COBOL are, from a maintenance perspective, easier to understand and manage than equivalent languages. In terms of available skills, most developers in 2014 -- with their knowledge of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse or Visual Studio -- can easily pick up COBOL, the latest versions of which also work within these environments. Furthermore, today’s COBOL applications can be deployed onto modern architecture and platforms such as cloud, Web, and mobile without the risks and costs usually associated with rewriting applications.
Beware of “hidden” technical debtFor insurance company CIOs and IT decision-makers evaluating the upfront and ongoing costs associated with modernization projects, it is easy to assume that systems produced today are less expensive to maintain due to the programming languages that power these systems.
Take Java, for example. While it performs well for mobility requirements, it can lead to higher “technical debt” -- the Gartner-coined term that defines the eventual consequences of poor system design, software architecture, or software development within a code base. According to CAST Software’s CRASH report, the estimated technical debt of Java is $5.42 per line of code, compared to $1.26 per line of COBOL.
Those planning to implement a modernization project should assess risk, cost, competitive advantage, and time to implement as key considerations. Reusing current working, trusted systems, then defining appropriate strategies to modify them, requires lower-scale change that delivers value improvements quickly, but without undue risk of assuming high technical debt. Interestingly, the same reuse strategy helps tackle issues around compliance and IT backlog, concerns which also weigh on the insurance sector.
Additionally, it is important to note that modern COBOL development tools enable organizations to address application performance gaps (in Web, mobile, and cloud) with lower enablement risk than alternative rewrites to Java or repackaging.
The market expects insurers to be cost-efficient and -- naturally -- risk-averse. Embarking on a modernization strategy based on reuse is a low-risk route to better customer service and operational efficiency. Sticking with the programming language that has successfully underpinned the core application since it was created is not “outdated,” but forward-thinking and ultimately common sense.
Paul Averna is Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, at Micro Focus, a leading global provider of application modernization software.
Notices for the new iPhone have started appearing, and Apple's hardware once again is being bathed in critical acclaim, with just a few cries of discontent here and there.
The new capabilities in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus may appear underwhelming to some observers, but not to Re/code's Walt Mossberg.
"These are things that improve the quality of the phone while generally making a fluid, powerful product even better -- and faster and easier to navigate and use," he wrote. "They secure the iPhone's place as the best smartphone on the market."
Even more emphatic about the quality of the new iPhone models was John Gruber of Daring Fireball.
"'The Only Thing That's Changed Is Everything' is the slogan of Apple's marketing campaign for the iPhones 6s. I can't beat that," he wrote. "I've been testing both models for 12 days, and what Apple is saying about the new iPhones is true. They don't look new, but almost everything about them is new."
Live Photos
While many reviewers agreed that these latest models were the best iPhones yet, that doesn't mean innovation is alive and well in the smartphone market.
"Smartphone innovation has plateaued, and what we demand most in our newest phones are improvements to the essentials," wrote Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal.
Two essentials in a smartphone are taking pictures and navigation, and many reviewers noted that Apple has innovated in those areas with Live Photos and 3D Touch.
Live Photos combines video and still photography into a new content form. It automatically captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after you snap your still shot and lets you export the package as a photo-video hybrid.
"The absolute best thing about the 6s is Live Photos," Stern wrote. "They're awesome for reliving fun moments, especially of an active puppy or child, and anyone with an iOS 9 iPhone or iPad can view them."
Terrific Cameras
Nevertheless, Live Photos appears to be a work in progress.
"If you move your camera immediately before or after taking the photo, the movement will show up in the animated photo," Brian X. Chen wrote for The New York Times. "Several of my Live Photos were ruined because I put the phone down too quickly after taking the picture."
He also would like to be able to turn off audio in Live Photos and be able to edit the video in them -- two capabilities not available in the feature out of the gate.
Another glaring omission in Live Photos, Chen noted, especially in the age of sharing: no Facebook support. Live Photos can be played only on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan devices.
Those Live Photos, by the way, are being captured by what many reviewers are saying is the best cameras in an iPhone to date. "The iPhone 6s cameras are terrific," wrote Daring Fireball's Gruber. "They're fast, responsive, and accurate -- accurate meaning that unedited, right off the camera roll, the color and light reproduction look like how the scene appeared to my eyes."
3D Touch
Apple did more than tweak the quality of the cameras in the new iPhones from previous models.
"I was incredibly impressed by the differences in camera quality between the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 6s Plus," Matthew Panzarino, a former professional photographer, wrote for TechCrunch. "It's very, very noticeable and very welcome."
The new iPhones also incorporate 3D Touch, which essentially makes touch granular. A light touch can trigger one task; a heavier touch can trigger another. In addition, where you apply pressure can determine which task is performed.
The feature was a hit among some reviewers.
"This is one of those potentially huge user behaviors -- like swiping, or pinching and zooming -- that seem odd or minor at first, but which Apple historically is able to make deeply important and useful," Re/code's Mossberg wrote.
It met with a tepid response from others, including The Times' Chen.
"Unlike past touch gestures on the iPhone, like pinching or swiping, I found 3D Touch, in its current state, to be limited and mostly unnecessary," he wrote.
Processing Muscle
Of course, the reason things like Live Photos and 3D Touch work so well on the new iPhones is the new processor in the smartphones.
"If you operate an iPhone 6 side-by-side with an iPhone 6s, the difference hits you between the eyes," wrote David Pogue for Yahoo Tech. "Opening apps, switching apps, processing things -- it all happens faster on the 6s."
Battery life and storage capacity are two areas where the new iPhones received mixed notices.
"The No. 1 thing people want in a smartphone is better battery life," WSJ's Stern wrote. "The iPhone 6s doesn't deliver that."
However, Re/code's Mossberg was satisfied with the battery life he got from the phones.
"In two weeks of heavier-than-normal use (because I was testing, testing, testing) the iPhone 6s never died on me before I was ready to end my day," he wrote. "Even after 15 hours, there was typically 10 percent or so of battery life left in the tank."
Storage was an issue among many reviewers because new phones have features, such as Live Photos and 4K video, that are byte hogs.
"If there were ever an iPhone that needed more storage, it's this one, yet Apple continues to rip off customers with a 16GB base model ... rather than offer a 32GB one," Stern wrote.
Who should upgrade to the phones? The new phones are a good buy for users of older iPhones, our review sampling suggests.
"If you are thinking of buying a new phone, and you have anything older than an iPhone 6, you should buy an iPhone 6s Plus," wrote Nilay Patel for The Verge. "It is the best iPhone ever made, and it is right now the best phone on the market."
"If you're upgrading from an iPhone 5s or anything older," he added, "it will blow your mind."
Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that gazes wistfully across the landscape at a sea of changing leaves and wonders what new gadgets the fall will bring.
In our deciduous forest this week are an updated Fire TV, a low-end Amazon Fire tablet, a case that adds touch functions to the rear of iPhones and iPads, and an underwater drone.
As ever, please do not consider these reviews, for they are not. The ratings reflect only how much I'd like to try each item, and in no way relate to how much I need to have a pumpkin spice latte immediately.
Burning Up TV
In case you didn't already know it, Amazon has designs on taking over your television, and Fire TV (pictured above) seems a strong competitor to the refreshed Apple TV.
Fire TV's big advantage is that it can stream video in ultra high-definition 4K resolution, while Apple's device cannot. Nor can Roku or Chromecast. Fire TV also has voice control in the form of Alexa, which one could use to check the weather or sports scores while watching a show on Netflix.
Storage is just 8 GB, but it's expandable with a memory card.
There already are some fine games available for Fire TV, and there's a gaming edition of the system available with a controller. I like that one can search for shows and movies from across a breadth of services at once (though, curiously, Netflix is not among the list of services included in the cross-platform search at present).
At US$50 less than the latest Apple TV, I'm more tempted to pick up one of these, even though I'm more invested in Apple's ecosystem.
Amazon's making a bold statement with its latest upgrades to Fire devices, and I certainly would like to have a Fire TV in my living room.
Rating: 5 out of 5 Watch It's Hots
Bringing the Fire
Amazon's Fire tablets are more an entry point to purchasing content and shopping for physical goods than devices for productivity or quality photography. They're all about consumption.
So Amazon's plan to get its tablets into the hands of as many people as possible by offering a new introductory tablet for just $50 is a smart move.
It promises ro perform decently with a quad-core processor. Like the Fire TV, there's just 8 GB of storage, but it too is expandable with a microSD card, onto which you can download movies and shows from Amazon Prime for offline viewing.
There's a new speed-reading function that displays a word at a time in the middle of the screen at whichever speed you're most comfortable. That might help me read more books.
The 7-inch screen seems more than fair for the price. It looks like a fine budget alternative to an iPad, and if you're just looking for an on-the-go device to watch video, it's a solid option.
I can't fathom why anyone would opt for a regular Kindle over this unless they want distraction-free reading.
Rating: 5 out of 5 Catching Fires
Capacitive Case
As I mentioned in my last column, which focuses on Apple's new slate of mobile devices and Apple TV, I'm not a fan of playing complex games on my iPhone.
Anything that requires more than a few taps or swipes is best served with a physical controller, since it's difficult to manipulate multiple controls at once and make sure you're not covering the screen with your hands.
Handycase appears to go some way to resolving said problem. It's a crowdfunded iPhone and iPad case that adds touch controls to the back of the device. You know, where your fingers naturally rest while you're holding it.
It frees up screen real estate from one's sticky digits, though if you really want to see what your fingers are doing, Handycase's apps can superimpose them onto the screen.
While the idea's great -- and I hope it works well in practice -- it seems that it would require Apple to open up iOS to allow for a secondary input before Handycase had complete control over your device.
It also needs developers -- particularly ones of more complex games -- to let Handycase use it as a controller as well.
As it stands, I'm itching to get my hands on one, in the hope I can control Lego game characters and see what I'm doing at the same time.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Tablet Boosts
Under The Sea
I'm not sure when or why we started calling remote-control submersibles "underwater drones," but I'll run with it as I am determined to take the plunge with OpenROV Trident.
It's a submersible that can help one explore ocean life and learn about what's hanging out under the docks in your town's seafront. I'm particularly tickled by the option to view what the camera sees through a virtual reality headset, though I can't imagine my river would have life remotely as vivid as inFinding Nemo.
It's essentially snorkeling for layabouts, and though I love open water, I'm frequently nervous about what lies beneath the surface, so taking a look before diving in would reduce my fretting.
I'd still worry that the tether line that sends back images would snag or break, though I'm trusting the line is sturdy.
At the very least, It should prove a killer educational experience. I'd have ached for one if they were around in my youth.
The U.S. Air Force is offering $2 million to whoever can design a new and improved engine to power its airplanes.
The competition, known as the Air Force Prize, is open to American citizens and permanent U.S. residents age 18 and older, as well as corporations and research institutions in the United States. The goal of the contest is to speed up the development of a lightweight, fuel-efficient turbine engine, or jet engine, to power the aircraft of the future.
This is the first time the Air Force, or any other branch of the U.S. military, is offering a prize to stir up technological innovation among the general public, said Lt. Col. Aaron Tucker, deputy chief of the turbine engine division at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
