Features

Revised and rebadged in line with Infiniti’s evolving brand design, identity and “Q” prefix alpha-numeric nomenclature, the Q70 seamlessly replaces the M saloon line. Retaining its drive-train options, the Q70’s sharpened up face-lifted lends it a more assertive presence and tweaks its resemblance to the Infiniti Q50 compact executive saloon.

Smooth, stylishly, spaciously, supple and sporty, the Q70 plays a deft hand in reconciling agile and eager handling with supple and refined comfort. A thoroughly convincing alternative to more obvious executive saloon options, the Infiniti Q70 certainly deserves more recognition and consideration, but part of is that it isn’t an obvious choice.

Swooping style

Seductively swooping, with fluidly wavy lines, eager demeanour and Coke-bottle hips, the Q70’s cabin-back design emphasises its front-engine and rear-drive layout. With long bonnet and short front overhang complemented by short rear deck and longer rear overhang, proportions are luxurious, while its shape and subtle aerodynamics achieve 0.27 drag co-efficiency and zero lift.

Visceral, emotive and seemingly ready to pounce, the Q70’s pinched-in mesh grille and slim moody and rising headlights are complemented by heavily scalloped wings. Rising and from the upper grille tips, the Q70’s sharp bonnet ridges lead towards its rakish A-pillars and trail off to long arcing roofline profile. 

Face-lifted and sportier, the Q70 receives Infiniti’s new double arch grille corporate face with chrome surround and wavy mesh and new front and rear LED lights. A more sculpted bumper treatment features flared and angled lower intake and bigger slatted foglight housings, and rearwards is more aesthetically dynamic with flatter and sharper boot-lid and blacked-out lower section.

Smooth revving

Silky smooth, eager and searingly high-revving in an executive saloon segment ever-more dominated by muscular mid-range oriented turbocharged engines, the Q70’s naturally aspirated VQ-series 3.7-litre V6 engine delivers clarity, responsiveness and progressiveness. Developing 329BHP at a haughty 7000rpm and 267lb/ft torque by 5200rpm, the 1764kg Q70 completes the 0-100km/h sprint in 6.2 seconds and tops out at 250km/h

Pulling hard from low-end and building up torque and power progressively through its rev-range, the Q70’s mid-range is flexibly muscular but linear. However, the Q70 is at its best and most satisfyingly and rewardingly eager, crisp and intense as it reaches towards its high 7500rpm rev limit, before a quick and concise gear shift.

The Q70’s 7-speed automatic gearbox features a more responsive “sport” mode and gear lever-actuated manual mode. Well-suited to its high-revving engine, the Q70 can stretch its long-legs and accelerate hard out of long fast sweeping corners in a single chosen gear in manual mode. Returning 10.2l/100km combined fuel efficiency, the Q70’s 80-litre fuel tank provides a long range. 

Balanced handling

Sporty yet smooth, the Q70 is an intuitive and relaxed yet sharp drive, with balanced weight distribution and front double wishbone e and rear multi-link suspension. Eager and agile, the Q70 turns in tidily and provides good body control through corners, while hydraulic-assisted steering is light, precise, refined and delivers decent feel. 

Balanced and tidy, the Q70 feels like a smaller car through switchbacks yet delivers high grip levels. Well-tuned for ride and handling abilities, the Q70’s handling is predictable, progressive and exploitable at its rear grip limit. Tuned for a crisp turn-in, the Q70 under-steers slightly if pushed too aggressively, and is an easily correctible sign to ease back.

Allowing one to best exploit its superb chassis balance, the Q70’s linear delivery, responsiveness and high rev-limit allow one to feed in precise power increments without unintentionally breaking rear traction and grip. Smoothly feeding the throttle by a corner’s apex, the Q70 digs in and smoothly, swiftly and seamlessly powers out without unnecessary gear change interruptions.

Refined ride

Refined and stable at speed and in town, the smooth-riding Q70 deliver good body control and is buttoned down over rebounds. However, it is also comfortable and fluid over lumps, bumps and imperfections, with 245/50R18 tyres finding a happy medium. Well-insulated from noise, vibration and harshness, the Q70 even features active noise cancellation technology.

With easy access, highly adjustable seats and steering, spacious front seats and good visibility, one can easily place and park the Q70. Elegantly finished with quality materials and soft textures, the Q70 has a classy ambiance but looks best in dark cabin tones, while rear seats offer spacious legroom and better headroom than most competitors. 

Well-equipped, the Q70 features an intuitive and large centre console and infotainment system, and includes USB and Bluetooth connectivity, rear view monitor and Intelligent Key function which memorises climate, audio and satnav settings. Advanced driver assistance and safety systems include numerous airbags, child seat latches, lane departure and brake assists, blindspot and predictive forward collision warning and around view monitor.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3.7-litre, in-line, V6 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 95.5 x 86mm

Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, variable timing and lift

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 329 (333) 245 @7000rpm

Specific power: 89BHP/litre

Power-to-weight : 186.5BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 267 (363) @5200rpm

Specific torque: 98.2Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 205.7Nm/tonne

Maximum engine speed: 7500rpm

0-100km/h: 6.2 seconds (est.)

Top speed: 250km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 14.9/7.4/10.2 litres/100km (est.)

Fuel capacity: 80 litres

Height: 1493mm

Width: 1845mm

Length: 4980mm

Wheelbase: 2900mm

Track, F/R: 1575/1570mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.27

Kerb weight: 1764kg

Headroom, F/R: 993/958mm

Legroom, F/R: 1129/919mm

Shoulder-room, F/R: 1483/1441mm

Hiproom, F/R: 1379/1358mm

Luggage volume: 500 litres

Weight distribution F/R: 54 per cent/46 per cent

Steering: Variable hydraulic-assistance

Turning diameter: 11.2 metres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multi-link, twin tube dampers, stabiliser bars

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 320mm/308mm

Tyres: 245/50R18

VAASA, Finland — Snow, preferably a thick layer of it, is the recipe for successful winegrowing in western Finland, at what is believed to be the world’s northernmost winery.

Thanks to an insulating layer of snow, winter temperatures as low as -36^oC have not managed to freeze the Riesling, Merlot and Chardonnay vines of Finnish wine pioneer Kaarlo Nelimarkka, 74.

On the contrary, Nelimarkka is more concerned about the sun’s rays than the winter frost piercing his Sundom winery in the town of Vaasa, just 400 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle.

“The winter is not a problem. The biggest problems are too short summers and the strong spring sun which can make the vine shoot out sprouts even when the soil is still frozen,” the retired Vaasa town administrator tells AFP.

He can make up to 400 bottles of whites, reds and roses in a good year, combining the hardier grape varieties Madeleine Angevine, Gewurztraminer and Solaris to make his speciality, Sundom White.

He describes it as “luminous”, and Finnish wine enthusiast Hannu Hokka, a former expert at Finland’s state-owned alcohol monopoly Alko, said he was impressed by it.

“The taste was fine and well-balanced, to go with salads or crayfish. Without knowing better, I could have never guessed it was from a minor Finnish producer,” Hokka told AFP.

There are less than a handful of winegrowers in the country, none of whom earn a living from it. At one point, Nelimarkka had hoped to make a career of it — but European Union bureaucracy reared its head.

No matter how meticulously Nelimarkka makes his wine he is not allowed to call it “wine” as Finland is not listed by Brussels as one of the official wine producing regions of the EU.

Because he can’t sell his product, Nelimarkka instead hosts groups who pay to visit his vineyard and who can enjoy wine tastings courtesy of the house.

A stick in the mail

Nelimarkka first began experimenting with Arctic winegrowing 40 years ago.

“My wife ordered some tulip bulbs from the Netherlands back in 1975 and they also advertised vines. I ordered just one and it turned out to be Pinot Noir, which is one of the most difficult varieties to cultivate, so I had to learn,” he says.

His was bemused when the mailman delivered a bare stick — which he then found out was a cutting. 

“For the first 20 years, I read all the instruction books and did everything accordingly but I always failed,” the self-educated wine enthusiast recalls.

After decades of trial and error, Nelimarkka has devised his own methods to protect his vines from the cold.

He quickly abandoned the idea of growing medium-height trunks common in traditional wine producing regions, and began cutting his vines down to under 30 centimetres for the winter.

He also piles heat-retaining stones under the vines to protect them from the humidity and cold, and covers them partly with white plastic tarpaulin for the winter.

More sun than Sicily

In summer, the midnight sun comes to the rescue, offering up to 20 hours of daylight per day at Sundom’s latitude.

Nelimarkka calculated that between March and September, there are an average of 30 days more daylight at his vineyard than what winegrowers around the Sicilian city of Palermo, in southern Italy, enjoy.

But this summer, Mother Nature has offered up another challenge for the resourceful viticulturist to overcome: an excess of rain.

While much of southern Europe had to contend with sweltering heatwaves, Finnish meteorologists recorded June and July as the coldest summer months in 50 years, with rainfall almost every day.

If an unusually warm end of the season was to save the harvest, he could be picking his grapes — he picks all the grapes himself — in early October, a few weeks later than usual.

He then ferments his wine in big glass jugs, foregoing traditional oak casks because he found that process too difficult.

Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda

Ahmed Masoud

Cyprus: Rimal Publications, 2015

Pp. 204

The very name Gaza brings to mind the hardships its inhabitants have to deal with, chiefly Israeli aggression and occupation, and the resulting poverty, devastated infrastructure and crowdedness. Palestinian author Ahmed Masoud conveys a vivid sense of these problems and how Gazans tackle them by letting Omar Ouda, the main character in “Vanished”, narrate his life, a life which is framed by incredibly difficult choices. 

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the occupation is that by controlling Palestinians’ lives at every turn, it whittles down their choices. None of the choices open to Omar are good, and sometimes there is no choice at all. 

Omar wants to be just like any other boy, like, say, his best friend, Ahmed, whose life is also limited by the hardships of Jabalia Camp, but who has a close-knit, loving family to protect him and anchor his identity. In contrast, Omar’s family is a source of puzzlement and anxiety because his father is inexplicably absent. He has a guardian, his uncle, but Uncle Attiya deals harshly with the boy. 

While Omar’s mother cares for and loves him, she will not answer his burning questions about his father. “Perhaps this is what pushed me to proclaim myself the youngest detective in the Jabalia Camp at the age of eight.” (p. 15)

Omar’s decision to make finding his father his top priority drives the plot and leads him into danger, unsolvable dilemmas and a maze of terrible family secrets.

The “detective work” Omar embarks on in 1989 soon runs into a dead end. Only Um Marwan, the woman next door, tells him something useful: that his father was “the most educated man in the whole of the neighbourhood, with a Master’s in Arabic Literature from Cairo University at a time when most people around him rarely finished high school”. (p. 21)

This information pushes Omar to excel in school, despite frequent disruptions and closures, and eventually to enrol in university, but it is not enough to satisfy him. In desperate naiveté, he contacts the Israeli general in charge of Jabalia, who is more than happy to exploit a young boy’s longing for his father. Thus begins Omar’s double life, which distances him even more from the normality he seeks. 

The novel is narrated by the adult Omar who by now lives in London with his British wife and their four-year-old son, Mustafa, named after his missing grandfather. When Israel unleashes its horrific war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, Omar feels compelled to go home. 

Thinking that something may happen to him on the trip, he starts a letter to his son, explaining his life, as he boards the plane to Cairo. His motivation for writing is clear: “I spent my whole life wondering where my father was, and I don’t want the same to happen to you… I leave it to you to judge whether I was a coward or not, but please remember that I had no choice in all of this.” (p. 13) 

Masoud deftly alternates the stages of Omar’s journey in now-time with the gradual unfolding of his past, rounding out the characters and conveying how Palestinians experienced the tumultuous events from the late 1980s onwards. Omar recounts personal as well as collective experiences, from his youthful exuberance while throwing stones at Israeli soldiers during the Intifada, to his mixed feelings about the Oslo accords and their aftermath. 

While his reactions seem typical of his peers, for Omar things are always doubly conflicted. His political ideas and personal feelings fluctuate, governed by his obsession with his absent father and the choices he made as a child.

Masoud is skilful at building up suspense; he drops no early hints of what happened to Omar’s father. On the contrary, he throws out a lot of misleading clues. In the end, the nature and role of several pivotal characters turn out to be totally different from what Omar (and the reader) have imagined. Good guys turn out to be bad guys, and vice versa. 

Only the soldiers of the occupation stay the same. This is a story about the immorality of the occupation and the resilience of a young boy. It is also a case study in how adults should not treat children, yet hope springs from Omar’s decision to break the cycle which made his growing up so conflicted, by being honest to his son. Finally, he has the chance to make a good choice, but only when he no longer lives in Gaza.

PARIS — Super Mario, the hyperactive little plumber who has become one of the best-known characters in video game history, celebrates his 30th birthday on Sunday and Japanese giant Nintendo is marking the event with the release of a creative new format.

With his blue overalls, red cap and fulsome moustache, Mario is instantly recognisable, a rare quality in the games market, matched only by a handful of characters such as Lara Croft, Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man.

So beloved is Mario that Nintendo has sold more than 310 million units featuring him since he first hit the screens under his own name in 1985, the year that Ronald Reagan began a second term as US president and the Live Aid concerts for the Ethiopian famine relief took place.

“Mario now has a status in popular culture equal to Mickey Mouse,” Florent Gorges, the French author of a book on Nintendo’s history, told AFP.

“He is likely to be around for some time yet because we notice that it’s often parents who introduce him to their children.”

Even before the first “Super Mario Bros” game was released on September 13, 1985, in Japan on the Famicom console, the character had already made an appearance in the Nintendo arcade game “Donkey Kong”, but under the name Jumpman.

The Mario moniker came from the landlord of the warehouse where the US arm of Nintendo was based, whose physical appearance made the programmers think of a video game character.

Mario’s creator, game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, said: “I had it in mind to make him an Italian when I was drawing the character, so I decided to officially call him Mario.”

Shaped by limited hardware

Mario’s plain appearance is attributed to the limitations of the hardware at the time, with a limited number of pixels and restricted range of colours — but it has possibly helped increase his longevity.

“I drew him with a big nose and a moustache so that players could recognise his face. [At first] Mario wore a white shirt and red overalls so his arm movements would be clearly visible,” Miyamoto said in an interview released by Nintendo.

There was a simple explanation for his cap too — the designers initially lacked the technology to make his hair move.

In his best known adventures, Mario comes to the rescue of Princess Peach, but our hero has also been inserted into formats featuring football, golf or karting.

The games have often been accompanied by technological advances, such as the fully three-dimensional format introduced by “Super Mario 64” in 1996.

To mark the three-decade milestone, Nintendo is releasing “Super Mario Maker” on the WiiU console, which allows players to create their own worlds for Mario, or use those created by other players and shared through the Internet.

And for adults still nostalgic for the Mario of their youth, the new game allows players a choice of four styles of graphics, ranging from those in 1985’s “Super Mario Bros” to “New Super Mario Bros U” released in 2012.

SAN FRANCISCO — The new Apple TV unveiled this week has the potential to do for television what iPhone did to mobile phones, while claiming a starring role in home entertainment.

Updated Apple TV hardware set for release in late October wasn’t expected to revolutionise the television industry, but it could strike a blow to cable companies that have been in a power seat when it comes to delivering shows and other content.

“It turns out fears surrounding the long-term prospects of the cable industry were well warranted,” said Yahoo senior Vice President Simon Khalaf, whose mobile analytics company Flurry was bought last year by the Internet pioneer.

“We believe that the industry is facing a perfect storm: apps, app stores and Apple.”

While the unveiling of a new Apple TV on Wednesday did not come with word of deals to stream shows or films from networks or studios, it will have a version of the App Store that has been a hit on iPhones.

“We believe the future of television is apps,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said.

Apple released a software kit for outside developers and showed off early versions of Apple TV applications being crafted by streaming services Netflix, Hulu and HBO.

Siri searches shows

The product launch “sent a warning shot at the cable industry in particular and the media industry in general”, Khalaf said in a blog post.

“Now rather than having dozens of channels to watch, US consumers will have thousands of apps to enjoy on their flat panel TVs ranging from games, to e-sport apps, to live entertainment apps, and to whatever these developers will cook up over the next year.”

Siri virtual assistant software built in Apple TV allowed for natural language searches for shows, such as asking for something funny or a certain actor by name.

Analysts keyed in on the fact that Siri will search across applications on Apple TV, meaning that where shows or films come from should be unimportant to viewers.

People should also be able to see what they want on-demand instead of being at the mercy of cable broadcast schedules.

These options can spur a trend of “cord cutting” or ending the subscription “bundles” offered by cable and satellite TV firms.

Apps trump TV

A Flurry report found that for the first time ever, people in the US in the second quarter of this year spent more each day using mobile applications than they did watching television: a daily average of 198 minutes versus 168 minutes

“Just as they did on the iPhone and iPads, consumers will download these apps and spend plenty of time on them, leaving the dozen or so cable channels lost in a sea of apps,” Khalaf said.

By letting media companies keep control of their content in apps, Apple could find new money-making models while sidestepping worries studios might have about distribution rights.

Since games consistently rank as the most popular apps on mobile devices, the genre is expected to be thrive on Apple TV.

An Apple TV remote control features a touchpad along with sensors that allow it to act as a motion controller similar to those that transformed video game play as part of the original Nintendo Wii console.

Apple TV lacked the kind of computing power and storage capacity found in hard-core video game consoles but was fine for the kinds of “casual” game apps that have rocketed to success on mobile devices, according to analysts.

“I think Apple TV will usher in an era of casual games in the living room,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

The new Apple TV will launch in late October at a starting price of $149.

Apple TV has lagged rivals with similar devices. According to the research firm Parks Associates: Roku leads the US market with a 37 per cent market share, to 19 per cent for Google Chromecast and 17 per cent for Apple TV. Amazon’s Fire TV devices have 14 per cent.

Apple shares rebounded a day after a lukewarm market reaction to the US tech giant’s launch of upgraded iPhones and other devices.

Shares rallied 2.2 per cent to end at $112.57.

Analysts say Apple is seeking to diversify its product line amid a competitive global smartphone market, and that its new iPad Pro, Apple TV streaming device and Apple Watch may help.

“The new offerings are welcomed additions to the portfolio that will strengthen not only the competitiveness of each product category, but also the wider ecosystem and the increasing developer effort behind this platform,” said analyst Kulbinder Garcha at Credit Suisse in a note to clients.

Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research said that while the iPhone accounts for most Apple revenue, the upgraded Apple TV device “one of the biggest and most important things announced” and “should drive significant new revenue for Apple and for developers”.

Living with computers used to be simple — in the 20th century that is.

Back then equipment manufacturers and software makers would use the term “user-friendly” to entice you and to make you believe that it would be plain sailing. The expression now is somewhat passé and the concept has shifted to something else. Besides, after all these years, consumers’ awareness and overall IT knowledge have drastically improved, implying that they are ready to handle more complex products. Strangely, you still hear the sempiternal “the Mac is easy, Windows is not” although even this concept is a bit dated.

Today, three of the main the aspects that have become annoyingly complex are antivirus software, updates and cloud storage.

Of course, computing was safer until circa 1995 when viruses started to become a real threat to data. However, the early antivirus software introduced was also rather simple to manage. Just install it on your machine, allow automatic updates, et voilà. Unfortunately today you have to choose from a large array of various products: simple antivirus, Internet security, anti-hacking, anti-spam, etc. What is the best choice? What is the safest one?

Assuming you take them all or buy a programme that provides a combination of all these types of protection, the installation and the settings are anything but easy, not to mention that such a big piece of software will constitute a burden on your device, slowing it down significantly. Good installation and handling of an antivirus has become as difficult as installing Windows from scratch.

How many times have you been unable to perform this or that operation only to discover that it is actually your antivirus that is preventing you from doing it, because it is “protecting” you from digital threats? Then your savvy friend tells you to tune up your antivirus differently, or to disable it temporarily, and so forth. More hassle in the end.

Updates, especially in the world of Windows, are a known annoyance. They tell you that they are important because they fix or improve the system. Still, they are time consuming, they prompt you to restart your computer and in some cases — rarely, one must admit — they simply damage your main system, forcing you to revert to a previous state, provided you know how to do this.

Managing cloud storage is another cause for headache. Again, it should be simple: instead of storing files on your local hard disk just save it onto the cloud space you have been allocated or you bought. Alas, if only it could be as simple as that!

There are various types of cloud storage. Some are straightforward, like Google Drive, others are trickier to manage like Dropbox for example. The latter, however, brings powerful functionality and by synchronising your data across all of your devices (computers, smartphones, tablets), lets you retrieve them from any of these devices, wherever you may be. It is precisely this synchronisation feature that can be dangerous if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. You may lose files accidently, overwrite the wrong ones, or open some and not find them in the state you saved them the last time you worked on them.

Whether Goggle Drive or Dropbox or OneDrive (Microsoft’s), with or without data synchronisation, you also have to learn how to set the sharing attribute on the folders inside the virtual drive, so as to share or not to share the files with friends, family or colleagues. Errors in sharing files can, understandably, lead to unpleasant surprises or embarrassment.

In the overwhelming number of cases, the difficulty and the eventual lack of simplicity are largely counterbalanced by the benefits. 

There is little doubt about how much we can do and achieve today with all these tools when they are handled and managed properly and efficiently. Learning your way through to overcome the hard part can greatly help. 

After all, everything in life has become a reason for continuous learning, and not only in the field of IT. Longing for the good old days or for a simpler life is not the way to go.

PARIS — A species of remarkably faithful penguins may have found the secret to monogamy — plenty of time spent very far apart.

A group of southern rockhopper mums and dads were hundreds — in one case thousands — of kilometres away from each other when not making babies, says a study out Wednesday.

Yet when the birds returned home to New Island off the coast of Argentina they managed to find each other and mate, according to findings published in the prestigious Biology Letters journal.

While their reunions may have been sweet, they were decidedly short, with the penguins together for just under a quarter of the year.

“In these extremely faithful animals — the pair bonds for breeding may last all life long in this species — the partners may actually be separated by hundreds to thousands of kilometres at sea,” researcher Jean-Baptiste Thiebot told AFP.

The birds engage in an incredible variety of behaviour including “divorce” and home building that might seem very familiar to humans.

Once back on land in October after six months or so at sea, the penguins got straight to the business of mating, egg-laying and incubation, all of which kept them busy for about a month.

There was no lingering over the kids here, as the rearing of the chicks took up another roughly 70 days before the parents split up in April.

Given the risk the animals could lose each other for good by going their separate ways in the wild, the researchers wanted to see if the creatures would make an effort to stay close together outside breeding season.

“Divorce” happens among the penguins, but it is rare to find two ex-partners breeding with somebody new, Thiebot said.

Major threat to birds

The scientists decided to follow the penguins by clipping lightweight sensors to 20 birds — 10 couples — which tracked their movements during their roughly six-month separations.

Seven pairs made it home and rekindled their relationships, while two birds came back solo. Researchers surmised the remaining penguins from their study either died at sea or moved away.

The data from the sensors showed the penguins generally stayed hundreds of kilometres apart as they feasted in the ocean.

However, researchers found one case where a couple had nearly 2,500 kilometres between them.

When the birds finally got back together they promptly turned into homebodies, with most of their time spent at the nest.

It led researchers to note that birds like Emperor penguins, which do not build a home together, are less likely to be monogamous.

“Penguins may use the same nest site or nesting area to breed every year, over and over again,” Thiebot said. “This probably helps the two partners to meet up ashore at a known place.”

The birds’ elaborate courtship rituals may also help them recognise each other.

Among the penguins it was mums who set out first after breeding, leaving nearly a week earlier than dads. The lady birds also went on to cover hundreds more kilometres than the males in their half a year away.

According to Thiebot the findings highlight the need for new safeguards to protect against man-made disasters like oil spills.

He noted that an event that kills 1,000 penguins could in fact be killing half of 1,000 couples.

“We know that when a bird loses his/her partner, its success of breeding with a new mate generally decreases, at least temporarily, or the bird even skips breeding,” he added.

SAN FRANCISCO — There were new iPhones of course. But Apple also moved into the living room with an upgraded streaming TV box and unveiled an iPad Pro aimed at reviving the flagging tablet market.

At Wednesday’s media event in San Francisco, Apple introduced two updated iPhones, aiming to build on the success of its large-screen handsets introduced late last year that have dominated the high-end smartphone market.

The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus have the same overall dimensions as the last version, with new technologies under the hood.

“They look familiar, but we have changed everything about these iPhones,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said.

One of the key new features is called “3D touch”, which responds to pressure exerted on the screen to allow users to look inside messages and applications.

‘Peek and pop’

By responding to sensing pressure, the phones enable new “peek and pop” abilities to allow users to dip in and out of content without losing their place. “Press lightly to peek at a photo, e-mail, web page or other content, and press a little deeper to pop into the content itself,” Apple said in a statement.

The new iPhones will use the upcoming iOS 9 operating system, which supports new features such as 3D touch.

The 6S has the 4.7-inch display of its predecessor and the 6S Plus — which updates one of the more popular handsets in the “phablet category” — has the same 5.5-inch screen.

But the devices have more powerful processors that allow for improved graphics, harder glass and a new aluminium body. Pricing will be kept at the same levels as the earlier versions.

For those buying without carrier subsidies, Apple will sell the devices on a 24-month installment plan at $27 per month for the $650 iPhone 6S and $31 for the 6S Plus, making the price nearly $750.

Apple will take pre-orders starting Saturday and deliver the phones September 25 in the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Singapore.

iPad Pro

The new iPad Pro has the power and capabilities to replace a laptop computer, Apple said.

Cook called the device “the biggest news in iPad since the iPad”.

The new tablet with a 12.9-inch display also includes a detachable keyboard and stylus, sold separately.

The device features “desktop-class performance” and operates faster than 80 per cent of portable PCs that shipped in the last 12 months, said Apple senior Vice President Phil Schiller.

“It is thin and light enough to work all day and be taken everywhere,” Schiller said of the new iPad, to be available in November starting at $799.

The iPad Pro includes a stylus called Apple Pencil designed for high-precision illustration and 3D design applications. Apple Pencil will be sold for $99 more and the keyboard for $169.

Avi Greengart at the research firm Current Analysis tweeted that the new tablets “are aimed directly at enterprises. That’s a long sales cycle, but could finally stop [the tablet market’s] sales slide”.

Upgraded TV box

The upgraded streaming Apple TV device includes voice search, touchscreen remote control and an app store in a challenge to Google, Amazon and video game console titans.

Apple TV was overhauled as people increasingly stream films and television shows on-demand online and turn to mobile applications for entertainment.

“Our vision for TV is simple, and perhaps a little provocative,” Cook said.

“We believe the future of television is apps.”

Apple released a software kit for outside developers, and showed off early versions of Apple TV applications already being crafted by show streaming services Netflix and Hulu, as well as HBO.

Game makers are already working on applications, as are home-sharing service Airbnb and real estate-focused service Zillow, according to Apple executive Eddie Cue.

Ask for something funny

The new Siri virtual assistant software built into Apple TV will allow for natural language searches for shows — for example, by asking for something funny or a certain actor by name.

The new Apple TV will launch in late October at a starting price of $149.

Apple TV has lagged rivals with similar devices.

According to the research firm Parks Associates, Roku leads the US market with a 37 per cent market share, to 19 per cent for Google Chromecast and 17 per cent for Apple TV. Amazon’s Fire TV devices have 14 per cent.

Apple also said the operating system for its Apple Watch, watchOS 2, would be made available as a free update September 16.

The company offered no sales figures but Cook said customers “love using Apple Watch”, and that user satisfaction “is an incredible 97 per cent”.

The latest iteration of the Watch, created with French fashion house Hermes, features a hand-stitched leather band and starts at $1,100.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Inc. announced a bigger iPad with a new keyboard and stylus aimed at business customers.

Chief Executive Tim Cook promised a day of "monster" news on Wednesday, but shares of the company remained nearly flat as executives showed off the iPad, which will be priced starting at $799.

Cook began by talking up the Apple Watch, saying customer satisfaction for the new product was 97 per cent. Apple is working with French luxury goods maker Hermes on a new watch collection, and Facebook Messenger is coming to the device, he added.

He then rolled out the "iPad Pro" with a 32.7cm screen and said it had performance similar to a desktop computer. Apple showed off a "smart" keyboard and a stylus called "Pencil".

Apple said it had partnered with Cisco Systems Inc and IBM to help power the iPad pro, which it said is up to 1.8 times faster and has a 10-hour battery life. Many people on Twitter seemed unimpressed by the new iPad and lamented its large size, however.

Shares of Apple were up less than 1 per cent at $112.68.

Cook promised "monster announcements" at the event, which is also expected to feature an updated version of its Apple TV device and of its iPhones, which drove nearly two-thirds of the company's $49.6 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter.

Apple is widely expected to keep the size of the phones the same but upgrade it with an improved camera and Force Touch, a display technology that responds differently depending on how hard users press their screens.

A year after Apple rolled out iPhones with larger screens, touching off a frenzy of sales that saw revenue in the most recent quarter increase 32.5 per cent from the same quarter a year ago, the latest upgrades may leave some investors and consumers underwhelmed.

"It's getting harder and harder for Apple to compete against itself," said analyst Bob O'Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. Apple shares are up more than 14 per cent over the last year, although they are down nearly 12 per cent in the last three months.

Fortunately for Apple, most consumers buy smartphones under a two-year upgrade cycle, meaning the company will still likely scoop up a lot of sales, said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy.

"The key point of reference is not how the new phone compares to the iPhone 6, it's how it compares to the iPhone 5s," he said.

Expectations have been rising for an revamped Apple TV, a set-top box that has seen few significant updates since its release in 2007. Although Apple has yet to hammer out deals for a long-awaited television service, analysts say the company is poised to overhaul the hockey-puck-sized device.

The device is expected to gain an App Store and an interface that allows users to make requests through the Siri digital assistant and search for specific programmes and movies across apps. The company may also discuss the device's role as a hub for gaming.

"It's a big day for the big screen!" Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue tweeted before the event.

Nearly 20 per cent of US broadband households own at least one streaming media player, and Apple has a long way to go in the market, according to data from research firm Parks Associates.

Roku is the leader in streaming media boxes, accounting for 34 per cent of all streaming devices sold in the United States in 2014, according to data from research firm Parks Associates. Google Inc's Chromecast and Amazon.com Inc's Fire TV were next. The Apple TV box came in fourth.

"It's important that [Apple] come out and really get up to date and potentially eclipse some of the other living room devices out there," Moorhead said. 

Unless one has perfected the subtle art of comic timing, it is extremely difficult to relate a story these days. There are just too many interruptions that crop-up to derail the recounting at every stage. If the listeners are paying attention in the first place, that is. Which in most cases they are not because everybody is busy with social networking on their smartphones. 

But in the very rare instance of there being an attentive audience, someone or the other dutifully takes on the self-appointed task of fact checking. We all know such people; they abound in large numbers within our group of family, friends and colleagues. 

They are otherwise harmless persons, who would never, in the normal course of things, speak up in a community gathering. They generally keep their thoughts to themselves and are the non-interfering sorts. But when they are faced with a relative or acquaintance narrating an anecdote, which they have also witnessed, their inner fact checker comes alive, so to speak. And they make it their solemn duty to correct every little detail of what they think is the truth. 

So, for instance, if the storyteller says: “You know what happened last Wednesday?” he or she will cut in to say: “Listen, it was Tuesday, not Wednesday”. 

The storyteller would apologise and continue, “Sorry, last Tuesday when I was driving to Petra, you know what happened?”, and the fact checker would say: “You were driving to the Dead Sea and not Petra.” 

The storyteller would again apologise and say: “I’m really sorry, last Tuesday when I was driving to the Dead Sea, right after lunch, what happened was,” and the fact checker would once again interrupt and say: “It was after breakfast, not lunch.”

Despite the apologies, the listener does not get even a drift of what the storyteller wants to relate because the fact checker goes through it with a fine-tooth comb and interrupts the story at every stage. 

There are so many disruptions before the comic situation is narrated that both parties give up midway. In all honesty, if the punch line is that a cop’s car broke down and he had to ask for a lift, it does not matter if it happened on a Tuesday or some other day of the week. 

Also, whether the narrator ate breakfast on his/her way to Petra or lunch before leaving for the Dead Sea does not change anything because these are trivial details that do not contribute to the joke in any way. 

Hence unfortunately, the hilarious scene that was the sight of two cops in uniform with armed pistols, flagging a motorist to ask for a ride, remains untold. 

Over the years I learned to spot a fact checker from a mile away. They were the ones who were busy amending all the inconsequential aspects painstakingly and always missing the big picture. I do not have much patience with them and if I were faced with one I would clam up instantly. 

“On my last flight to London the steward served my pre-ordered meal to someone else,” I told my spouse recently. 

“Last to last flight you mean,” my husband corrected. 

“Yes,” I answered shutting up immediately. 

“What did you do?” he wanted to know. 

“Nothing,” I mumbled. 

“Ok, like you said, on your last flight to London, when your preordered meal went to someone else, what happened?” my spouse, who was politeness personified, said. 

“I was gifted a complimentary bottle of champagne,” I smiled. 

“Liquid diet?” he asked, smiling back.