PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format. The filetype was invented by Adobe and designed to look identical across different devices and screens - so, it retains consistency and maintains accuracy without formatting issues. However, because it’s standardized, it also means it can’t be edited without the use of a PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat.
AWS-CSAP Free PDF - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SOP-C01) Updated: 2023
AWS-CSAP AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SOP-C01)
Format : Multiple choice, multiple answer
Type : Professional
Delivery Method : Testing center or online proctored exam
Time : 180 minutes to complete the exam
Language : Available in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C01) examination is intended for individuals who perform a solutions architect professional role. This test validates advanced technical skills and experience in designing distributed applications and systems on the AWS platform.
It validates an examinees ability to:
Design and deploy dynamically scalable, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on AWS.
Select appropriate AWS services to design and deploy an application based on given requirements.
Migrate complex, multi-tier applications on AWS.
Design and deploy enterprise-wide scalable operations on AWS.
Implement cost-control strategies.
Recommended AWS and General IT Knowledge and Experience
2 or more years of hands-on experience designing and deploying cloud architecture on AWS
Ability to evaluate cloud application requirements and make architectural recommendations for implementation, deployment, and provisioning applications on AWS
Ability to provide best practice guidance on the architectural design across multiple applications and projects of the enterprise
Familiarity with a scripting language
Familiarity with Windows and Linux environments
Familiarity with AWS CLI, AWS APIs, AWS CloudFormation templates, the AWS Billing Console, and the AWS Management Console
Explain and apply the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework
Map business objectives to application/architecture requirements
Design a hybrid architecture using key AWS technologies (e.g., VPN, AWS Direct Connect)
Architect a continuous integration and deployment process
Domain 1: Design for Organizational Complexity 12.5%
Domain 2: Design for New Solutions 31%
Domain 3: Migration Planning 15%
Domain 4: Cost Control 12.5%
Domain 5: Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions 29%
TOTAL 100%
Domain 1: Design for Organizational Complexity
- Determine cross-account authentication and access strategy for complex organizations (for example, an organization with varying compliance requirements, multiple business units, and varying scalability requirements)
- Determine how to design networks for complex organizations (for example, an organization with varying compliance requirements, multiple business units, and varying scalability requirements)
- Determine how to design a multi-account AWS environment for complex organizations (for example, an organization with varying compliance requirements, multiple business units, and varying scalability requirements)
Domain 2: Design for New Solutions
- Determine security requirements and controls when designing and implementing a solution
- Determine a solution design and implementation strategy to meet reliability requirements
- Determine a solution design to ensure business continuity
- Determine a solution design to meet performance objectives
- Determine a deployment strategy to meet business requirements when designing and implementing a solution
Domain 3: Migration Planning
- Select existing workloads and processes for potential migration to the cloud
- Select migration tools and/or services for new and migrated solutions based on detailed AWS knowledge
- Determine a new cloud architecture for an existing solution
- Determine a strategy for migrating existing on-premises workloads to the cloud
Domain 4: Cost Control
- Select a cost-effective pricing model for a solution
- Determine which controls to design and implement that will ensure cost optimization
- Identify opportunities to reduce cost in an existing solution
Domain 5: Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions
- Troubleshoot solution architectures
- Determine a strategy to Strengthen an existing solution for operational excellence
- Determine a strategy to Strengthen the reliability of an existing solution
- Determine a strategy to Strengthen the performance of an existing solution
- Determine a strategy to Strengthen the security of an existing solution
- Determine how to Strengthen the deployment of an existing solution
Amazon Professional Free PDF
Other Amazon exams
AWS-CSAP AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SOP-C01)AWS-CSS AWS Certified Security - Specialty ( (SCS-C01)
AWS-CDBS AWS Certified Database-Specialty (DBS-C01)
CLF-C01 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)
DOP-C01 AWS DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C01)
DVA-C01 AWS Certified Developer -Associate (DVA-C01)
MLS-C01 AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty (MLS-C01)
SCS-C01 AWS Certified Security - Specialty (SCS-C01)
SAA-C02 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate - 2023
SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02)
DAS-C01 AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty (DAS-C01)
SAP-C01 AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional
SAA-C03 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
ANS-C01 AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty test (ANS-C01)
SAP-C02 AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
AWS-CSAP Braindumps
AWS-CSAP Real Questions
AWS-CSAP Practice Test
AWS-CSAP dumps free
Amazon
AWS-CSAP
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SOP-C01)
http://killexams.com/pass4sure/exam-detail/AWS-CSAP
Question: 538
You are implementing AWS Direct Connect. You intend to use AWS public service end points such as Amazon S3, across the AWS Direct Connect link. You want
other Internet traffic to use your existing link to an Internet Service Provider.
What is the correct way to configure AWS Direct connect for access to services such as Amazon S3?
A. Configure a public Interface on your AWS Direct Connect link. Configure a static route via your AWS Direct Connect link that points to
Amazon S3 Advertise a default route to AWS using BGP.
B. Create a private interface on your AWS Direct Connect link. Configure a static route via your AWS Direct connect link that points to Amazon
S3 Configure specific routes to your network in your VPC.
C. Create a public interface on your AWS Direct Connect link. Redistribute BGP routes into your existing routing infrastructure; advertise
specific routes for your network to AWS.
D. Create a private interface on your AWS Direct connect link. Redistribute BGP routes into your existing routing infrastructure and advertise a
default route to AWS.
Answer: C
Question: 539
Your application is using an ELB in front of an Auto Scaling group of web/application servers deployed across two AZs and a Multi-AZ RDS Instance for data
persistence.
The database CPU is often above 80% usage and 90% of I/O operations on the database are reads. To Strengthen performance you recently added a single-node
Memcached ElastiCache Cluster to cache frequent DB query results. In the next weeks the overall workload is expected to grow by 30%.
Do you need to change anything in the architecture to maintain the high availability or the application with the anticipated additional load? Why?
A. Yes, you should deploy two Memcached ElastiCache Clusters in different AZs because the RDS instance will not be able to handle the load if
the cache node fails.
B. No, if the cache node fails you can always get the same data from the DB without having any availability impact.
C. No, if the cache node fails the automated ElastiCache node recovery feature will prevent any availability impact.
D. Yes, you should deploy the Memcached ElastiCache Cluster with two nodes in the same AZ as the RDS DB master instance to handle the load
if one cache node fails.
Answer: A
ElastiCache for Memcached
The primary goal of caching is typically to offload reads from your database or other primary data source. In most apps, you have hot spots of data that are
regularly queried, but only updated periodically. Think of the front page of a blog or news site, or the top 100 leaderboard in an online game. In this type of case,
your app can receive dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of requests for the same data before its updated again. Having your caching layer handle these queries
has several advantages. First, its considerably cheaper to add an in-memory cache than to scale up to a larger database cluster. Second, an in-memory cache is
also easier to scale out, because its easier to distribute an inmemory cache horizontally than a relational database.
Last, a caching layer provides a request buffer in the event of a sudden spike in usage. If your app or game ends up on the front page of Reddit or the App Store,
its not unheard of to see a spike that is 10 to 100 times your normal application load. Even if you autoscale your application instances, a 10x request spike will
likely make your database very unhappy.
Lets focus on ElastiCache for Memcached first, because it is the best fit for a cachingfocused solution. Well revisit Redis later in the paper, and weigh its
advantages and disadvantages.
Architecture with ElastiCache for Memcached
When you deploy an ElastiCache Memcached cluster, it sits in your application as a separate tier alongside your database. As mentioned previously, Amazon
ElastiCache does not directly communicate with your database tier, or indeed have any particular knowledge of your database. A simplified deployment for a web
application looks something like this:
In this architecture diagram, the Amazon EC2 application instances are in an Auto Scaling group, located behind a load balancer using Elastic Load Balancing,
which distributes requests among the instances. As requests come into a given EC2 instance, that EC2 instance is responsible for communicating with ElastiCache
and the database tier. For development purposes, you can begin with a single ElastiCache node to test your application, and then scale to additional cluster nodes
by modifying the ElastiCache cluster. As you add additional cache nodes, the EC2 application instances are able to distribute cache keys across multiple
ElastiCache nodes. The most common practice is to use client-side sharding to distribute keys across cache nodes, which we will discuss later in this paper.
When you launch an ElastiCache cluster, you can choose the Availability Zone(s) that the cluster lives in. For best performance, you should configure your cluster
to use the same Availability Zones as your application servers. To launch an ElastiCache cluster in a specific Availability Zone, make sure to specify the Preferred
Zone(s) option during cache cluster creation. The Availability Zones that you specify will be where ElastiCache will launch your cache nodes. We recommend that
you select Spread Nodes Across Zones, which tells ElastiCache to distribute cache nodes across these zones as evenly as possible. This distribution will mitigate the
impact of an Availability Zone disruption on your ElastiCache nodes. The trade-off is that some of the requests from your application to ElastiCache will go to a
node in a different Availability Zone, meaning latency will be slightly higher. For more details, refer to Creating a Cache Cluster in the Amazon ElastiCache User
Guide.
As mentioned at the outset, ElastiCache can be coupled with a wide variety of databases. Here is an example architecture that uses Amazon DynamoDB instead of
Amazon RDS and MySQL:
This combination of DynamoDB and ElastiCache is very popular with mobile and game companies, because DynamoDB allows for higher write throughput at
lower cost than traditional relational databases. In addition, DynamoDB uses a key-value access pattern similar to ElastiCache, which also simplifies the
programming model. Instead of using relational SQL for the primary database but then key-value patterns for the cache, both the primary database and cache can
be programmed similarly. In this architecture pattern, DynamoDB remains the source of truth for data, but application reads are offloaded to ElastiCache for a
speed boost.
Question: 540
An ERP application is deployed across multiple AZs in a single region. In the event of failure, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) must be less than 3 hours, and
the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) must be 15 minutes. The customer realizes that data corruption occurred roughly 1.5 hours ago.
What DR strategy could be used to achieve this RTO and RPO in the event of this kind of failure?
A. Take hourly DB backups to S3, with transaction logs stored in S3 every 5 minutes.
B. Use synchronous database master-slave replication between two availability zones.
C. Take hourly DB backups to EC2 Instance store volumes with transaction logs stored In S3 every 5 minutes.
D. Take 15 minute DB backups stored In Glacier with transaction logs stored in S3 every 5 minutes.
Answer: A
Question: 541
Youve been hired to enhance the overall security posture for a very large e-commerce site. They have a well architected multi-tier application running in a VPC
that uses ELBs in front of both the web and the app tier with static assets served directly from S3. They are using a combination of RDS and DynamoOB for their
dynamic data and then archiving nightly into S3 for further processing with EMR. They are concerned because they found questionable log entries and suspect
someone is attempting to gain unauthorized access.
Which approach provides a cost effective scalable mitigation to this kind of attack?
A. Recommend that they lease space at a DirectConnect partner location and establish a 1G DirectConnect connection to their VPC they would
then establish Internet connectivity into their space, filter the traffic in hardware Web Application Firewall (WAF). And then pass the traffic
through the DirectConnect connection into their application running in their VPC.
B. Add previously identified hostile source IPs as an explicit INBOUND DENY NACL to the web tier subnet.
C. Add a WAF tier by creating a new ELB and an AutoScaling group of EC2 Instances running a host-based WAF. They would redirect Route 53 to
resolve to the new WAF tier ELB. The WAF tier would their pass the traffic to the currentweb tier The web tier Security Groups would be updated
to only allow traffic from the WAF tier Security Group
D. Remove all but TLS 1.2 from the web tier ELB and enable Advanced Protocol Filtering. This will enable the ELB itself to perform WAF
functionality.
Answer: C
Question: 542
Your company is in the process of developing a next generation pet collar that collects biometric information to assist families with promoting healthy lifestyles
for their pets. Each collar will push 30kb of biometric data in JSON format every 2 seconds to a collection platform that will process and analyze the data providing
health trending information back to the pet owners and veterinarians via a web portal. Management has tasked you to architect the collection platform ensuring the
following requirements are met.
Provide the ability for real-time analytics of the inbound biometric data
Ensure processing of the biometric data is highly durable. Elastic and parallel The results of the analytic processing should be persisted for data mining
Which architecture outlined below win meet the initial requirements for the collection platform?
A. Utilize S3 to collect the inbound sensor data analyze the data from S3 with a daily scheduled Data Pipeline and save the results to a Redshift
Cluster.
B. Utilize Amazon Kinesis to collect the inbound sensor data, analyze the data with Kinesis clients and save the results to a Redshift cluster
using EMR.
C. Utilize SQS to collect the inbound sensor data analyze the data from SQS with Amazon Kinesis and save the results to a Microsoft SQL Server
RDS instance.
D. Utilize EMR to collect the inbound sensor data, analyze the data from EUR with Amazon Kinesis and save me results to DynamoDB.
Answer: B
Question: 543
You are designing Internet connectivity for your VPC. The Web servers must be available on the Internet. The application must have a highly available
architecture.
Which alternatives should you consider? (Choose 2)
A. Configure a NAT instance in your VPC. Create a default route via the NAT instance and associate it with all subnets. Configure a DNS A
record that points to the NAT instance public IP address.
B. Configure a CloudFront distribution and configure the origin to point to the private IP addresses of your Web servers. Configure a Route53
CNAME record to your CloudFront distribution.
C. Place all your web servers behind ELB. Configure a Route53 CNMIE to point to the ELB DNS name.
D. Assign EIPs to all web servers. Configure a Route53 record set with all EIPs, with health checks and DNS failover.
E. Configure ELB with an EIP. Place all your Web servers behind ELB. Configure a Route53 A record that points to the EIP.
Answer: CD
Question: 544
Your team has a tomcat-based Java application you need to deploy into development, test and production environments. After some research, you opt to use
Elastic Beanstalk due to its tight integration with your developer tools and RDS due to its ease of management. Your QA team lead points out that you need to roll
a sanitized set of production data into your environment on a nightly basis. Similarly, other software teams in your org want access to that same restored data via
their EC2 instances in your VPC.
The optimal setup for persistence and security that meets the above requirements would be the following.
A. Create your RDS instance as part of your Elastic Beanstalk definition and alter its security group to allow access to it from hosts in your
application subnets.
B. Create your RDS instance separately and add its IP address to your applications DB connection strings in your code Alter its security group to
allow access to it from hosts within your VPCs IP address block.
C. Create your RDS instance separately and pass its DNS name to your apps DB connection string as an environment variable. Create a security
group for client machines and add it as a valid source for DB traffic to the security group ofthe RDS instance itself.
D. Create your RDS instance separately and pass its DNS name to yours DB connection string as an environment variable Alter its security
group to allow access to It from hosts in your application subnets.
Answer: A
Question: 545
You have recently joined a startup company building sensors to measure street noise and air quality in urban areas. The company has been running a pilot
deployment of around 100 sensors for 3 months each sensor uploads 1KB of sensor data every minute to a backend hosted on AWS.
During the pilot, you measured a peak or 10 IOPS on the database, and you stored an average of 3GB of sensor data per month in the database.
The current deployment consists of a load-balanced auto scaled Ingestion layer using EC2 instances and a PostgreSQL RDS database with 500GB standard storage.
The pilot is considered a success and your CEO has managed to get the attention or some potential investors. The business plan requires a deployment of at least
100K sensors which needs to be supported by the backend. You also need to store sensor data for at least two years to be able to compare year over year
Improvements.
To secure funding, you have to make sure that the platform meets these requirements and leaves room for further scaling.
Which setup win meet the requirements?
A. Add an SQS queue to the ingestion layer to buffer writes to the RDS instance
B. Ingest data into a DynamoDB table and move old data to a Redshift cluster
C. Replace the RDS instance with a 6 node Redshift cluster with 96TB of storage
D. Keep the current architecture but upgrade RDS storage to 3TB and 10K provisioned IOPS
Answer: C
The POC solution is being scaled up by 1000, which means it will require 72TB of Storage to retain 24 months worth of data. This rules out RDS as a possible DB
solution which leaves you with Redshift. I believe DynamoDB is a more cost effective and scales better for ingest rather than using EC2 in an auto scaling group.
Also, this example solution from AWS is somewhat similar for reference.
http://media.amazonwebservices.com/architecturecenter/AWS_ac_ra_timeseriesprocessing_16.pdf
Question: 546
A web company is looking to implement an intrusion detection and prevention system into their deployed VPC. This platform should have the ability to scale to
thousands of instances running inside of the VPC.
How should they architect their solution to achieve these goals?
A. Configure an instance with monitoring software and the elastic network interface (ENI) set to promiscuous mode packet sniffing to see an
traffic across the VPC.
B. Create a second VPC and route all traffic from the primary application VPC through the second VPC where the scalable virtualized IDS/IPS
platform resides.
C. Configure servers running in the VPC using the host-based route commands to send all traffic through the platform to a scalable virtualized
IDS/IPS.
D. Configure each host with an agent that collects all network traffic and sends that traffic to the IDS/IPS platform for inspection.
Answer: D
Question: 547
A company is storing data on Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). The companys security policy mandates that data is encrypted at rest.
Which of the following methods can achieve this? (Choose 3)
A. Use Amazon S3 server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service managed keys.
B. Use Amazon S3 server-side encryption with customer-provided keys.
C. Use Amazon S3 server-side encryption with EC2 key pair.
D. Use Amazon S3 bucket policies to restrict access to the data at rest.
E. Encrypt the data on the client-side before ingesting to Amazon S3 using their own master key.
F. Use SSL to encrypt the data while in transit to Amazon S3.
Answer: ABE
Reference: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/UsingKMSEncryption.html
Question: 548
Your firm has uploaded a large amount of aerial image data to S3. In the past, in your on-premises environment, you used a dedicated group of servers to oaten
process this data and used Rabbit MQ An open source messaging system to get job information to the servers. Once processed the data would go to tape and be
shipped offsite. Your manager told you to stay with the current design, and leverage AWS archival storage and messaging services to minimize cost. Which is
correct?
A. Use SQS for passing job messages use Cloud Watch alarms to terminate EC2 worker instances when they become idle. Once data is processed,
change the storage class of the S3 objects to Reduced Redundancy Storage.
B. Setup Auto-Scaled workers triggered by queue depth that use spot instances to process messages in SOS Once data is processed, change the
storage class of the S3 objects to Reduced Redundancy Storage.
C. Setup Auto-Scaled workers triggered by queue depth that use spot instances to process messages in SQS Once data is processed, change the
storage class of the S3 objects to Glacier.
D. Use SNS to pass job messages use Cloud Watch alarms to terminate spot worker instances when they become idle. Once data is processed,
change the storage class of the S3 object to Glacier.
Answer: C
Question: 549
Your company policies require encryption of sensitive data at rest. You are considering the possible options for protecting data while storing it at rest on an EBS
data volume, attached to an EC2 instance.
Which of these options would allow you to encrypt your data at rest? (Choose 3)
A. Implement third party volume encryption tools
B. Implement SSL/TLS for all services running on the server
C. Encrypt data inside your applications before storing it on EBS
D. Encrypt data using native data encryption drivers at the file system level
E. Do nothing as EBS volumes are encrypted by default
Answer: ACD
Question: 550
A customer is deploying an SSL enabled web application to AWS and would like to implement a separation of roles between the EC2 service administrators that are
entitled to login to instances as well as making API calls and the security officers who will maintain and have exclusive access to the applications X.509 certificate
that contains the private key.
A. Upload the certificate on an S3 bucket owned by the security officers and accessible only by EC2 Role of the web servers.
B. Configure the web servers to retrieve the certificate upon boot from an CloudHSM is managed by the security officers.
C. Configure system permissions on the web servers to restrict access to the certificate only to the authority security officers
D. Configure IAM policies authorizing access to the certificate store only to the security officers and terminate SSL on an ELB.
Answer: D
Youll terminate the SSL at ELB. and the web request will get unencrypted to the EC2 instance, even if the certs are stored in S3, it has to be configured on the web
servers or load balancers somehow, which becomes difficult if the keys are stored in S3. However, keeping the keys in the cert store and using IAM to restrict access
gives a clear separation of concern between security officers and developers. Developers personnel can still configure SSL on ELB without actually handling the
keys.
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We’ve tested the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives for when Adobe’s PDF editor isn’t enough.
Adobe Acrobat is easily one of the best PDF editor apps out there - the company invented the PDF, after all. But it’s not the only software capable of creating and collaborating on files. Whether you’re avoiding a Creative Cloud subscription, or you need more advanced PDF editing tools that Adobe aren’t delivering, there are plenty of alternatives to Acrobat out there. It’s not just premium, paid-for apps, either. Already, loads of the best free PDF editors rival Acrobat’s many production and productivity features.
WIth that in mind, we’ve rounded up the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives. As part of our testing, we’ve explored user interface and experience, the document creation process, platform availability, and pricing. We’ve also rated included extras like OCR, digital signing, and security features.
Today's best Adobe Acrobat deals
The best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat in 2023
Nitro PDF Pro is probably the best Acrobat alternative for those who absolutely, positively want to avoid subscriptions at all costs. You won’t find any on-going payment plans with this PDF editor. Just a one-off perpetual license.
When we tried out the product, we found it featured an impressive toolkit that compares favorably with Adobe Acrobat. The interface and experience make using the software incredibly simple and easy - a factor the sometimes overwhelming Acrobat struggles to boast.
Other tools to let you make changes to existing PDF documents, and even create one from scratch. You have a lot of tools at your disposal, including various ways to make annotations, leaving instructions for colleagues to follow.
Editing the genuine content of an already existing PDF isn’t as seamless as we’d like it to be, and that’s probably the weakest tool in Nitro’s arsenal. Everything else is very well implemented, and we especially liked how the ability to convert files to and from PDFs is performed.
Ultimately, we found this Adobe Acrobat alternative “a good PDF editing software package that allows you to make changes to documents, annotate them, and perform numerous alterations on them. It also comes with a good OCR, conversion tools.”
This PDF editing software is capable of running on a PC or a Mac, and costs $180 per license. Volume licensing for businesses is also available.
Read our full Nitro PDF Pro review
PDF24 Creator isn’t just one of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives for Windows - it’s also our top pick for best free PDF editor overall.
Despite the no-cost approach, the tool - a PC-only desktop app that works offline and is ideal for low-spec PCs - is surprisingly feature-rich.
During our time with the software, we rated it as “one of the best examples of free tools that go above and beyond. It’s packed full of features, and comes with everything you might need to create and edit a PDF document.”
Tools for PDF creation, compressing, merging, and converting are all present and results are grand. Extras like OCR and eSign are well-implemented. The interface is clean and fresh and emphasizes productivity - you can quickly find what you need and what to do.
We even felt it bested Adobe in one area. Praising Acrobat for its inclusion of tools for almost use-cases, we noted, “the only exception is if you need something more advanced for filling out forms, in which case an editor like PDF24 Creator or PDFZilla could work better, despite looking a bit clunkier.”
PDF24 Creator is available free and unlimited. The experience might not quite match Adobe’s fluid workflow, but it’s a price you can’t beat.
Read our full PDF24 Creator review
Foxit PDF Editor is a stellar substitute for Adobe Acrobat. Like Adobe, Foxit has been offering PDF tools for decades, and users can take confidence from the many high-profile endorsements proudly listed on the Foxit site, with the likes of Amazon, Google, Dell, and Intel among them.
The company's best Adobe Acrobat alternative, Foxit PDF Editor, offers dozens of useful features. This includes watermarking, adding headers and footers, tailoring password permissions, creating templates, and converting other documents to PDFs. One neat feature is being able to drag files of other formats - such as converting Excel to PDF or using the PowerPoint to PDF converter.
In our Foxit PDF Editor review, we felt it might not offer enough value to casual users, but the multi-platform PDF editor app was great for businesses who regularly need to manipulate, edit, redact, annotate, and alter PDF documents.
Indeed, the redaction tools were a special highlight for us. We were impressed with how easily they worked, thoroughly scrubbing sensitive data from documents .The feature is a boon for compliant-conscious teams who understand the importance of adhering to global data laws.
Pricing for Foxit PDF Editor is flexible, with monthly and yearly subscriptions. If on-going payments are one of the reasons you’re looking for the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives, there’s the opportunity to pick up a perpetual license for a one-off purchase.
You’ll also find two upgraded versions of the PDF editing software - Pro and Pro + - which add additional features for power-users.
Read our full Foxit PDF Editor review
EaseUS PDF Editor is the ideal choice if you’re on a PC - it’s one of the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for Windows.
Unlike many of the best Acrobat alternatives, EaseUS has a free, but limited version available alongside the Pro version. This works great in a pinch, but it restricted in many ways - not least adding a watermark to your documents. The Pro version opens up the software, however.
In our review, we described EaseUS’ offering as “a powerful, PC-only PDF editing software tool that allows you to manipulate and alter documents with relative ease. It also comes with more standard features, such as a converter, and has good OCR capabilities.” Elsewhere, you’ll find outstanding PDF converter tools and eSignature tools.
The program is impressively kitted out for PDF editing, splitting pages into boxes that can be moved and resized. Content can also be changed, such as altering the font, color, and the text itself.
And it’s all housed within a refreshingly clean user interface. This makes navigating the tool an absolute breeze - not dissimilar to the excellent user experience offered in Adobe Acrobat, with its focus on maximizing productivity.
Costs for EaseUS PDF editor vary, with monthly and annual subscriptions and a one-time-buy ‘lifetime upgrade’ option. It’s ‘one license for one computer’. Bundles are available.
Read our full EaseUS PDF Editor review
If you’re looking for the best Adobe Acrobat alternative for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, look no further than Readdle PDF Expert.
While modern Apple machines come preinstalled with the excellent Apple Preview - a tool we felt “should be able to cater to all but the most demanding PDF road warriors” - it’s more of a PDF reader and manipulator, rather than a full PDF editor, like Acrobat.
PDF Expert is much more fully featured, making it a much better alternative to Acrobat. Alongside image and text editing, Readdle’s product also comes kitted out with converter tools for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, OCR and eSign tools.
When we tested out the software, we were impressed to find it “has lots of useful features for people who use PDF files on a regular basis. It has a very clean UI design and everything is neatly organized so you don’t need a lot of help in understanding how the software works when you use it for the first time.” We also loved how well PDF Expert synced documents on all Apple devices.
A wide range of editing tools include the ability to highlight parts of the PDF and add notes, redact sensitive information, extract or rearrange pages, and merge documents. Being able to draw directly onto the PDF is also useful for those who are using the software on iPad and have an Apple Pencil.
The sleek interface and a well-organized toolbar make it simple and intuitive for new users to accomplish everyday PDF editing tasks. In short, PDF Expert makes you feel like a PDF expert.
Pricing is via an annual subscription or a perpetual license - however, only the yearly fee offers use across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Read our full Readdle PDF Expert review
PDF Architect, from pdfforge, offers a range of PDF packages that rival Adobe Acrobat. The free plan includes basic PDF creation for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs, and the ability to merge, move, and delete pages and files.
More advanced features rest in the Standard, Professional, and Pro + OCR plans. These open up necessary editing, converting, collaboration tools, and more. When we took a look at PDF Architect, we awarded it 4 stars, calling it “a great choice for those who need a reliable, advanced PDF editor with lots of extra features and a stable, reliable interface.”
We appreciated the excellent interface, which will be familiar to anyone used to Microsoft Office software, and the extensive toolkit - praising the developers for “researching the market and identifying underserved niches.” Best of all, with minimal system requirements, PDF Architect is one of the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for low-end, low-spec computers.
However, there are limitations, even beyond the free version. eSignatures, for example, require a separate module in the PDF editor. For that reason, we recommend a free trial to get a feel for what you can and can’t do, to see if it fits your current workflow.
Read our full pdfforge PDF Architect review
For those with a need to edit PDFs online and on a budget, Sejda offers a tool that might just be the best free Acrobat alternative online.
It’s available as a desktop version that saves files locally to your computer or an online version that uses cloud storage. But watch out for restrictions in the free version. You can only perform three tasks per day, you can only work on one document at a time, and file sizes cannot exceed 200 pages or 50MB.
One of Sejda’s real highlights is its security process. All files uploaded to the server are automatically deleted after two hours. Ideal, then, for businesses with a focus on data protection and compliance.
The tool isn’t without its faults, though. We found in-document text editing to be fairly basic, meaning you might encounter some issues replicating a typeface if the original PDF features a unique or unusual font. But as a useful Adobe Acrobat alternative for infrequent PDF editing, Sejda offers an excellent no-cost or low-cost option.
As we noted when we reviewed the software, it’s “a convincingly powerful PDF editor, but you'll need to pay if you need to use it a lot.”
Pricing comes in the form of a weekly and monthly subscriptions for the web app, or an annual desktop and web app subscription. Team and volume licensing is available.
Read our full Sejda review
Best Adobe Acrobat alternatives: FAQs
How to choose the best Adobe Acrobat alternative for you
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
When deciding which Adobe Acrobat alternative is best for you, you first need to consider how you will be working with PDF files.
Modern operating systems and browsers can open PDFs without additional software, meaning this is all you need if you only want to view the files.
You can make basic edits using a PDF reader, many of which are available as free versions. You'll also find plenty of PDF editors that have fewer features than Acrobat, making them the ideal choice for casual users or those who don't need anything too complex. If you need to make more in-depth edits, batch process files, or convert between file types, then a fully-fledged PDF editor is the best choice for you.
Also consider cost. Adobe Acrobat is only available as a subscription service - but alternatives to Acrobat are available on subscription and perpetual license (so you buy it once and own it forever). Some are even available free of charge.
What is a PDF?
What is Adobe Acrobat?
Adobe Acrobat is a PDF editor for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. Unlike PDF readers, lets users create, edit, and annotate PDF documents that can easily be shared and viewed by others. It’s often considered the industry standard in PDF editing software. Not only did the company design the PDF format, but also introduced a range of tools so businesses can easily build and modify documents
Why do I need an Adobe Acrobat alternative?
The best Adobe Acrobat alternatives deliver similarly effortless interfaces and experiences for PDF editing - without the need for a Creative Cloud subscription. Although Acrobat remains the obvious choice for editing PDFs, and is often considered the industry standard PDF editor, it might not fit your overall workflow, meet your needs, or your budget. This is especially true if you’re not a power-user; if you’re not a PDF power-user, alternatives may meet your needs better.
What’s the difference between Adobe Acrobat DC, Acrobat Pro DC, and Adobe Reader DC?
Adobe offers three PDF apps for a range of users and uses. When looking for the best alternative to Acrobat, it's worth knowing exactly which Adobe tool needs replacing.
Acrobat Reader is a free PDF reader for viewing, annotating, and printing files. It lacks tools like editing and document conversion.
Acrobat DC is a Windows-only app, and part of Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription package. It features all the expected tools and features of a PDF editor.
Acrobat Pro DC, for Windows and Mac, has all the same features as Acrobat DC, but adds extra tools like editing and searching scanned files and adding media to documents.
How we test the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives
We've tested hundreds of document creation and editing tools, including the best PDF compressor and best PDF merger software. So, we're familiar with what to look out for, what works well, and what's missing that users might need.
To test the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives, we downloaded and installed each piece of software to give you a first-hand opinion.
Our research looked at operating system compatibility, system requirements, and real-world performance when working with large files.
We explored each program's features, noting any significant additions and omissions compared to Adobe Acrobat.
We also investigated the price, payment models, and free versions (where available) for each Adobe Acrobat alternative. Finally, we looked at the support services and documentation offered by each developer as we feel it's a key part of the overall user experience.
Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) is a solid performer. On Jan. 1, 2020, Costco's stock was trading below $300. Two years later, the company's share price nearly doubled. On top of this, Costco shares offer investors an annual dividend with an approximate annual yield of 0.8%, though Costco announced in April 2023 it would be increasing the dividend amount to $1.02 per quarter.
The retailer has a unique business model that could impact its long-term outlook, earnings, and share price. At its most basic, the company's approach is to keep prices so low that they are barely above cost and makeup on lost potential revenue by selling memberships. The company also sells some of its own brands and makes a little more on these items. It offers some things online, but the bulk of its business is in-person, in-warehouse sales. In a nutshell, Costco makes a lot of its money off of those memberships.
Key Takeaways
- Costco has a business model that depends heavily on repeat shoppers buying memberships and retaining brand loyalty.
- Like many other companies Costco is at risk of shifting customer preference. However, Costco's reliance on specific geographical regions heightens this risk.
- Costco must compete with other membership providers in hopes of securing customer loyalty.
- Costco is not an industry-leader regarding e-commerce capabilities, though it has made investments in the space to become more competitive.
- Costco has begun expanding its delivery service to ensure better customer interaction with the sale of larger, bulkier goods.
So far, Costco has been very successful. The company boasts a membership renewal rate of 93% in the U.S. and Canada as well as 90% worldwide. In 2022, its members paid $4.2 billion in membership fees, up 9% from the year before. Company-wide net sales for the fiscal year 2022 were over $222 billion, an increase of 16% from 2021.
Although Costco has experienced tremendous success, there are several risks to its business model.
1. Consumer Preferences
Changing consumer preferences could affect Costco. The company uses a warehouse approach as it buys certain items in large quantities and tries to sell them as quickly as possible. This method only works if it can maintain those high volumes. If consumer preferences change, Costco could be left with large amounts of unwanted, and possibly perishable, goods.
Costco is also highly dependent on the operational performance of specific segments. For example, the United States and Canadian operations comprise 87% of company-wide net sales. Specific to the United States, California operations comprise 28% of U.S. net sales. Changes in these markets ranging from increased labor costs, energy costs, competition in these specific areas, or customer preference to even lower margin products expose the U.S. and Canadian operations.
2. Memberships
One of the biggest risks with Costco's business model is its dependence on memberships. This strategy works well as long as its members keep coming back and continue purchasing items in bulk as they have historically, but several issues could affect that trend. Customers could choose to move their memberships to a competitor, such as Walmart's Sam's Club. Membership costs—which range between $60 and $120 per year at Costco—are roughly the same at other wholesale retailers and the discounts are fairly similar as well. The only real difference is selection, and that is also tied to consumer preference.
Over 118 Million Members
At the end of 2022, Costco had 118,900,000 total members, and 54 million cardholders paid for the Gold Star membership.
In Costco's annual report, it admits "membership loyalty and growth are essential to our business." Costco's Kirkland Signature brand generally carries higher margins than other national brand products, any loss of member acceptance or decline in memberships could adversely impact sales.
Costco's membership approach also poses a risk for self-cannibalization. The extent of membership growth is somewhat tied to warehouse openings in new markets. If Costco decides it more beneficial to open warehouses in existing markets, there's increased risk in decreased membership growth due to an already saturated market.
3. Omnichannel Experiences
Right now, most retailers are adopting an omnichannel focus, which offers the option to buy products online or in stores. Consumers today use different connected devices to shop online, research products, and compare prices. While Costco's emphasis on the warehouse allows the bulk discount retailer to keep prices very low, it does not really translate to the type of omnichannel experience many customers expect now.
Costco is making some investments towards that goal, such as by testing out curbside pickup in select locations, but there is no guarantee that those efforts will be successful or that the changes will be implemented in time for the company to remain competitive.
In addition, Costco has recognized the need for an online, e-commerce presence. Website sales represented approximately 7% of net sales in 2022.
4. Bulk Items Delivered
When buying in bulk, transporting everything home can be a real problem. For people in urban areas who may be unable to park near their buildings or families with young children who may find transporting bulk goods too much to handle, it can be a deciding issue.
Costco offers some online services, but there are other discount bulk providers such as Amazon Prime that offer similar deals and free shipping. Amazon offers Prime membership, which includes free shipping, streaming video, and several other benefits, for $139 per year.
Although it is investing in its digital presence, Costco only carries up to 11,000 unique SKUs online. Still, the company acquired Innovel Solutions in 2020. Now rebranded as Costco Wholesale Logistics, Costco has the ability to potentially scale last-mile delivery — specifically for large bulky products that may require white-glove service.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Type of Competitive Strategy Does Costco Have?
Costco's competitive strategy is to drive customer loyalty through memberships. Members are often loyal to Costco's brand, even if its Kirkland Signature brand charges higher-than-average margins compared to other national brands.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Chief Elements of the Strategy That Costco Wholesale Is Pursuing?
Costco has recently turned its attention to the e-commerce space. By expanding its capabilities of delivering goods and increasing the number of products that can be purchased online, Costco is strategically positioning itself to adapt to the digital approach of generating sales.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Well Does Costco Link Its Mission and Strategy With Its Philosophy and Values?
Costco's mission is to continually provide members with quality goods at the lowest prices possible. It is investing in warehouses around the world, promoting the value of household memberships, and expanding its digital presence, As Costco's strong stock market performance has indicated, the company is linking it's values and strategy well.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Competitive Threats Does Costco Deal With?
There are other membership-style companies that Costco must rival to garner customer loyalty. In addition, larger online retailers may have greater digital capabilities such as larger inventory or greater delivery capacity.
When most people think of a glide path, they think of an airplane gradually and safely approaching a runway while lining up for a soft, comfortable landing.
Investors need the same thing. But instead of altitude above the earth, investors need to deal with the amount of risk they take as they grow older.
To make an extreme comparison, if you lose most of your savings when you are 25 or 30, you can very likely recover by the time you are ready to retire. But if you lose most of your money at age 55 or 60, you have a much bigger problem.
This article is the seventh in a nine-part series that I think of as Boot Camp for Investors 2023.
· The first installment was The best way to invest for retirement.
· The second was Seven simple portfolios that have beaten the S&P 500 for more than 50 years.
· The third was How to control your investing losses.
· The fourth was How to turn small amounts of money into huge sums later—and why you should invest beyond the S&P 500.
· The fifth was How to retire even if you’re not rich.
· The sixth was This is the very best way to start retirement.
· The eighth was published earlier this year: Our recommendations for exchange-traded funds.
A glide path, today’s topic, is essentially a plan for gradually making the transition from higher-risk investments when you’re young to lower-risk ones when you’re retired.
One very effective way to do that is to rebalance your investments between equities (higher risk) and bond funds (lower risk) every year as you age. The problem: Few investors will actually do that. We live in a set-it-and-forget-it world, and we want things to be easy instead of challenging.
Fortunately, there are much easier ways.
The easiest and simplest way is to invest your retirement savings in a target-date retirement fund. That way, you’ll own a gradually evolving mix of equities and bond funds, with a built-in glide path oriented to a date you select for your expected retirement.
These extremely popular funds also manage multiple risks and provide relatively low-cost access to professional diversification without requiring their shareholders to make any decisions. For simplicity and reliability, you need look no further.
And yet, if you want more money to spend in retirement, these funds are designed to be relatively conservative, and their equity allocations typically fail to include meaningful exposure to asset classes that in the past have produced higher returns, specifically value stocks and small-cap stocks.
A few years ago, Chris Pedersen, director of research at the Merriman Financial Education Foundation, found an easy way to give target-date shareholders a “piece of the action” along with the comfortable glide path those funds provide.
He calls this solution “two funds for life,” and he’s written a book about the data behind his recommendations, which I endorse. This strategy combines a target-date fund with a “booster” fund that invests in small-cap value stocks, which have the highest long-term performance record of any U.S. asset class.
A basic way to apply this strategy is to invest 90% of your money in a target-date fund and the other 10% in small-cap value.
“If somebody asked me for the simplest way to invest, that is what I recommend,” Chris told me. Compared with a target-date alone, that combination “can increase what you have in retirement by about 25% without a lot of additional risk.”
In the video we recorded, Chris showed that increasing the small-cap value percentage to 20% could boost the lifetime benefit by 75% in inflation-adjusted dollars. You might think going from 10% to 20% in small-cap value would involve taking lots more risk. Chris said that isn’t so.
From 1970 through 2022, the worst drawdown wasn’t much greater than that of a target-date fund by itself.
| Target-date fund | Small-cap value | Worst drawdown |
| 100% | 0% | 42% |
| 90% | 10% | 44% |
| 80% | 20% | 47% |
| Merriman Financial EducationFoundation |
Those figures assume no rebalancing, and they rely on the target-date fund to provide the glide path.
Here’s how to prevent the small-cap value fund from becoming too big a part of your portfolio. Multiply the number of years until you expect to retire by 1.5, then let that be the percentage of your portfolio invested in small-cap value stocks.
For example, with 20 years until retirement, 30% goes into small-cap value, the other 70% in your target-date fund. Repeat that calculation every year, and you have your own personal glide path.
Some investors wonder if they are too old to invest in small-cap value stocks. It’s a good question.
In our video, Chris cited some figures from Index Fund Advisors, a fee-only advisory and wealth management firm. As it turns out, the longer you hold small-cap value stocks, the more likely they are to outperform the S&P 500.
Based on history, small-cap value stocks beat the S&P 500:
50.1% of the time in one-month periods;
55.4% of the time in one-year periods;
57.9% of the time in three-year periods;
61.8% of the time in five-year periods;
73.8% of the time in 10-year periods;
85.3% of the time in 15-year periods;
virtually always (99.7%) in 20-year periods.
Whatever you choose, if you’re planning to embark on this two-fund strategy, I highly recommend you take the time to watch the video that Chris and I recorded.
I also highly recommend Chris’s book, “2 Funds for Life,” which he describes as an owner’s manual for this strategy. You can order it at Amazon for a hard copy or a Kindle version. Or click here for your free PDF.
A few years ago, Richard Buck and I described this strategy in a short book aimed at young investors. Your free copy is waiting behind a link at the bottom of this article.
In the final installment in this series, I’ll recap some of the most important lessons we have learned.
Richard Buck contributed to this article.
Paul Merriman and Richard Buck are the authors of “We’reTalking Millions! 12 Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement.”
The best free office software makes it simple and easy to manage office documents and spreadsheets without having to pay for a subscription.
For most users, Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Microsoft Office and Office 365) remains the original and best office suite. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint remain key office apps.
However, over the years other companies have released rival office suites to help with productivity, some of which is paid-for and some of which is free - sometimes with the same company offering both.
All of these alternatives to Microsoft Office offer a similar range of software applications, mainly based on creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
However, while most offer the ability to work with traditional Microsoft Office documents, do be aware that not all will preserve formatting when exporting to or from Microsoft Office, which can be a problem when sending documents between different programs.
Even still, for home users and new businesses, the idea of being able to create, edit, manage, and organize office documents without incurring immediate subscription costs can be very welcome.
Here below we'll list the best free office software apps currently available.
We've also featured the best free software for SMB's.
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Thought you had to pay to use Microsoft Office? Yes, you do, if you want all the full features. But noting the threat from free rivals, especially Google Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Microsoft has created its own set of free Microsoft Office online apps.
Microsoft 365 Online looks and works just like its desktop equivalent, and although advanced tools like pivot tables aren't available, though they aren’t offered by Google either.
If you generally use Microsoft document formats, Office Online is a brilliant choice. Unlike Google's free office suite, it doesn't need to convert your files before you can work on them, and you can share them easily through your Microsoft OneDrive account. Just log in using your Microsoft account (the same one you use to log into Windows 10) and you're ready to go.
There's a version of Office Online for Chrome, plus mobile editions of Office for iOS and Android.
Read our full Microsoft 365 review.
Zoho Workplace is very good in its own right. It's certainly closer to a desktop office package, and it's strong enough to have attracted businesses like the BBC and Nike as regular users.
Zoho's new-look word processor (which ditches the classic Word-style interface in favor of a formatting sidebar) is very well-presented and capable of producing professional-looking docs, and it has a sterling spreadsheet and reasonable presentation package alongside it.
They're just the tip of the iceberg, however – Zoho Workplace includes a powerful site creation tool, a file management solution and many collaborative tools. Some are on the simplistic side, so they'll likely not replace anything you might already have in place, but if you're starting out as a small business Zoho is probably a good jumping-off point.
If you want to signup for the free version of Zoho Workplace you need to search the pricing page for the "Forever free" plan. However, there's no one-click set up or access, and instead you have to go through a sign up process that begins by providing details of an existing business domain.
Read our full Zoho Workplace review.
If you own a Samsung phone, you might already be familiar with the mobile version of Polaris Office. This cross-platform free office software is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, and comes pre-installed on some Samsung handsets. It’s compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and offers a slick ribbon-based interface with some basic customization options.
Take care if you choose to install Windows version, you’ll see various additional pieces of bundled software, which could potentially include a browser extension from McAfee called WebAdvisor, a market research tool called PremierOpinion, and antivirus software. You can decline all of these – just keep an eye out.
You’ll then need to sign in with Facebook or Google, or create an account. This is necessary because Polaris Office is a cloud-based service. Your free Polaris account comes with 60MB monthly data transfer, 1GB cloud storage, and can be used across three devices (one desktop and two mobile). If that’s not enough space, you can connect Polaris Office to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive – or save work locally to your device.
Upgrading to a premium Polaris account gives you access to extra features including a PDF editor, removes ads, and the ability to search within a document.
Read our full Polaris Office review.
LibreOffice is compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and has almost every feature you'll find in the latest versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
The suite contains six programs to cover every common office task: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. The last three are tools you won't find in many other free office suites, and are designed for vector diagrams, mathematical functions and databases, respectively. The latter is particularly useful; free alternatives to Microsoft Access are hard to find.
LibreOffice is an open source project maintained by a huge and enthusiastic community of volunteers constantly working to Strengthen stability and add new features. There's a great selection of extensions and templates to make it even more flexible, and it's free for businesses as well as home users.
LibreOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, and the two are extremely similar, but LibreOffice is the better overall product and properly supports file conversion that preserves existing formatting - so your Word .doc files should look the same in LibreOffice as they do in Word, and vice versa.
LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but there are no official mobile versions available except for a document viewer for Android. It has some editing features, but they're experimental and we wouldn't advise relying on them.
Read our full LibreOffice review.
WPS Office Free is a slimmed down version of a premium office suite, but you'd hardly know it. Each of its three programs looks just as slick as the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and is packed with just as many features.
File format support is excellent, and you can save your work in native Microsoft formats for easy sharing with Office users. There's no database software, but WPS Office comes with an excellent free PDF reader that's a great replacement for Windows' built-in app.
There's the occasional ad, but these are few and far between. They certainly won't get in the way of your work, and you'll easily forget that everything in this suite is completely free.
There are versions of WPS Office Free for Windows and Linux systems, as well as apps for Android devices, but Apple device users will need to look elsewhere.
Read our full WPS Office Free review.
Like WPS Office Free, SoftMaker FreeOffice provides analogs for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations respectively).
As with all the free office suites in this roundup, there's support for Microsoft file formats from 1997 onwards. It also offers effortless conversion to both PDF and Epub formats, which is a welcome addition.
Unfortunately, some key features are exclusive to the premium version of the software. Some of these (like tabbed browsing) are nice to have but non-essential, but the lack of a thesaurus is a real drawback for anyone who writes on a regular basis.
FreeOffice doesn't look quite as smart as WPS Office, but if you dislike the Microsoft ribbon and find it unintuitive then you'll prefer the slightly more old fashioned approach to navigation.
Read our full FreeOffice review.
If you work collaboratively, or switch between a PC and a Mac, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides could be your first port of call.
For anyone who's already deep into the Android/Google ecosystem, this suite will be a natural choice. The three key tools run happily in any web browser, and are available as mobile apps for Apple and Android devices.
Google's free office suite doesn't offer the advanced tools you'll find in desktop software like LibreOffice (there are no pivot tables, for example, and there's no database tool) but everything is laid out in a clear, logical way and all your files will be saved and synced automatically so you don't have to worry about transfers and backups.
The chief disadvantage of Docs, Sheets and Slides is that opening files created using other office software is a cumbersome process and file formatting isn't is always converted properly. This is partly because Google's office tools use web fonts rather than ones stored locally on your device, and partly because Google doesn't support some of the features built into Microsoft software.
Additionally, there are some quirks with Google Docs that make it less user-friendly than other office software. As free software it does the job fine, but as a paid product it still lags far behind the features and functionality of Microsoft 365.
Read our full Google Docs review.
We've also featured the best document editing and management software.
Which free office software is best for you?
When deciding which free office software to obtain and use, first consider what your genuine needs are, as sometimes free platforms will only give you access to a basic set of tools, so you may find a paid subscription is much more worthwhile. Additionally, budget software options can sometimes prove limited when it comes to the variety of tools available, while higher-end software can really cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may need.
How we tested the best free office software
To test for the best free office software we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a obtain or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the office software could be used for different purposes and in different situations, such as syncing between devices and backing up to the cloud. We also looked at import/export features, as well as different user tools that might be expected in any office software platform, from basic to advanced, to see how well they functioned.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
© Getty Images/RoJDesign Getty Images/RoJDesign
- Corrie Alexander is a freelancer who wrote an e-book about affiliate links.
- She says creating an e-book is worth the effort because you can get sales month after month.
- Alexander says that with the right tools you can create a book in as little as a weekend.
E-books compliment any kind of business you have, whether you're a freelance writer, a blogger, or even a business that doesn't even have anything to do with writing.
Not only are they a great way to make some extra money, but they also help establish you as an authority in your niche or industry.
A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of writing their own e-book because as soon as they hear the word "book," they envision spending hours and hours hunched over their computer, banging out 70,000 words. Then there's the matter of editing, finding a graphic designer to create the cover, and figuring out how to actually sell the thing.
But here's the truth: creating and selling an e-book is really not that difficult. For one thing, e-books don't have to be 70,000 words long. In fact, most e-books are well under 10,000 words. (Some are as short as 2000 words.)
The reality is you could technically write and publish an e-book in a weekend if you have the right tools and strategy — which I'm going to show you now, step-by-step.
Step 1: Plan your e-book
Before you do anything else, you want to determine what you're going to teach your audience with your e-book. A bit of market research can help you figure out what your audience is dying to learn.
If you have an email list or a following on social media, you can take a poll on what they're struggling with most as it relates to your niche. You can also check the comment section of your blog posts, videos, or whatever kind of content you're posting and see what questions come up over and over again.
It could also be something you had a hard time understanding in the past. Because if it's something you had an interest in learning, it will probably be something your audience is interested in too.
For example, I came from a blogging and affiliate marketing background when I first started writing on Medium.
But even though affiliate links are allowed on Medium, I could find almost no one talking about it. So I experimented and found a few strategies that worked well for me, and it was something that other people commented that they were interested in when I talked about it on my YouTube channel, so I wrote a book about it.
In terms of planning your e-book, this doesn't need to be overly complicated, either. Honestly, e-books are just like glorified blog posts.
Come up with a working title, then the outline for your book as though it were a blog post. Then, for each main point in your outline, break that section down and make subheadings for it. If you want, you caan even make subheadings for your subheadings.
When you're done, you'll have an outline of your book, with each main heading being a chapter and the subheadings being the content for each chapter.
Step 2: Draft your book
This is the part that tends to intimidate people, and I get it. If you struggle with writing long-form content, I highly recommend investing in a Jasper AI Teams account to help you out. Jasper is an AI writer that can help you make short work of your writing projects by helping you write the first draft.
It's a powerful tool, but learning how to use it correctly is important because it's a bit more complicated than slapping the "compose" button and letting Jasper do the rest. However, you can find a free "Jasper Jumpstart" training on their website that will show you how to use the tool.
Whether you use Jasper or not, the goal is to just plow through that first draft and get all your thoughts and ideas onto the page.
Don't worry if it's messy or doesn't flow well; the goal right now is to finish a rough draft.
Step 3: Edit your e-book
When I edit my content, I have three phases:
1. The hard edit
Here, I go through one line at a time and rephrase things, fix grammatical mistakes, and change things that don't flow well. I'll add sections and move things around.
This is a crucial step, especially if you used Jasper to write your rough draft. Because Jasper can get a little creative with his "facts," you need to ensure everything he's written is correct. You'll also want to rewrite passages to sound the way you would say them.
2. Grammarly Pro
Yes, Grammarly has a free extension which is better than nothing, but I can't tell you how much of a difference it makes when you use the Pro version.
Not only does it help you catch spelling and grammar mistakes, but it also helps you make your writing more concise and clear, which is crucial for informational content like this.
However, I don't take all of its suggestions. For example, I don't care if I write in passive voice, and its suggestions to change words for more variety don't always make sense. But I consider each suggestion and decide for myself if I should change it.
This is also the phase when I run it through the plagiarism checker. And this is an important step regardless of whether you used Jasper or wrote it yourself because there's so much content online that you want to make sure you didn't accidentally copy anything.
Grammarly Pro has a great plagiarism checker, but it's a bit sensitive in that it flags sentence fragments and commonly used phrases as plagiarism.
Again, use your judgment here; if it's full sentences that are getting flagged, then you'll definitely want to change them. But three or four words taken entirely out of context don't really count as plagiarism.
3. Final read-through
I wouldn't do the read-through on the same day as your big edit. Take a day and return with a fresh mind, making you more likely to catch errors.
For this step, you can either read it out loud to yourself or can use a tool like Speechify to read it back to you. I prefer Speechify because it catches things that I miss. For example, it will pronounce something funny if it's spelled wrong.
Speechify has a paid version where the voices sound human and natural, but the free version does the trick too.
Step 4: Create your e-book cover
They say to never judge a book by its cover, but sadly, people do. So you'll want your cover to be professional and stand out.
You can hire an illustrator if you really want, but it's unnecessary. If you have a creative side, you can make it yourself using a tool like Canva.
Canva has a ton of free book cover templates that you can use as a springboard for your own design. It's an intuitive tool and is as easy as dragging and dropping elements and text where you want them to go on the page.
If you want to go a step further and create something totally original, you can use Jasper Art to create graphics for your book. (Jasper Art is included with every Jasper subscription.)
For example, I generated an image of a woman sitting at a laptop wearing sunglasses in "pop art" style. Then I uploaded my Jasper image to Canva and incorporated it into my book cover.
If you don't have an eye for graphic design or the thought of making your own cover makes you want to scrap the whole project, don't worry. You can skip this part altogether and go with a really simple cover, either by minimally tweaking one of Canva's templates or using a default cover in the next step.
Step 5: Create a visually appealing e-book
Technically, you can paste your document into Google Docs and just save it as a PDF.
But that isn't very visually appealing or professional-looking. To create your e-book, I would recommend one of two options:
-
Canva: The first option is to create your e-book within Canva. They have a document editor, which makes it a lot easier to create e-books than in the past. However, there is still a lot of work you'll need to do to get the e-book ready. For instance, you'll need to manually add in your table of contents, page numbers, and any other visual elements.
You also have limited ways to export your e-book. You can export it as a PDF, which is fine for selling the e-book on your site, but there are no options for Kindle format or flipbooks.
-
Designrr: My preferred tool for creating e-books is Designrr, which allows you to import your article from Google Docs and formats it for you automatically. You can choose from a wide selection of free design templates, which include professional-looking book covers.
Once you import your e-book, you can further customize the e-book to match your brand colors or add additional graphics.
You'll likely still need to do a little additional formatting, but it's much faster than Canva. The pro account also allows you to export your story in Kindle format, should you ever wish you publish your e-book on Amazon.
For now, once you're happy with your e-book, click on publish, select pdf, and you've got your finished product!
Step 6: Sell your book using PayHip
There are lots of ways to sell your e-book, but one of the fastest, simplest, and cheapest ways to do so is to set up a shop on PayHip.
PayHip is a platform that allows you to sell digital products, courses, online coaching, and memberships. It's really easy to use, and you don't pay anything until you make a sale.
One of the reasons I like PayHip over other platforms is that they handle the value-added tax, or VAT, which is a European sales tax that you need to remit when you sell your products to people who live in the countries that collect that tax.
It can be a real pain in the butt to manage on your own, but it's one less thing to worry about if you host your products through PayHIp.
All you need to do is connect it to your PayPal or Stripe account and then upload your products via the products page.
You can price your book for however much you want, keeping in mind that PayHip takes a small cut of each sale.
You can also upload a mockup of your e-book (which you can easily create with Canva) and add a brief product description.
Once you add the product, you'll get a link to your product page to share with your audience. Promote the link on your blog, YouTube Channel, email list, or in your platform bios. (You can also include it in the call-to-actions of your Medium articles.)
Creating an e-book may feel like an undertaking, but it doesn't need to be, especially when you have the right tools. And it's so worth the effort because you'll be left with a digital asset that can continue to make sales month after month.
Corrie Alexander is a freelancer and content creator.
© ViewApart, Getty Images/iStockphoto When deciding on apps, it comes down to the quality, the value it adds to your life and your preferences.
Seeing a charge come through for a streaming service you forgot you even subscribed to is a special kind of frustration.
This is bound to happen if you sign up for free trials but never set a reminder to cancel before you’re charged.
Here are the simple steps to stop this from ever happening again.
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Of course, a side hustle can help you pay for Netflix, Spotify and all the rest. Have a bunch of treasures lying around that you know you should sell?
We put together a complete guide to starting your own online resell business.
Bringing in cash is great, but stop spending so much on app subscriptions. Here's how.
What’s worth your money?
The short answer: It depends on what matters to you. Do you hate watching or listening to ads? Do you value your privacy enough to pay a premium? Do you have a job or hobby that requires specialized software?
Here’s a quick list to get you thinking. Not all of these are right for everyone, and you may decide you don’t want to pay for any apps.
◾ Music, streaming and entertainment: I pay for Apple Music because I like the variety in genres. You might need a few streaming services to watch your shows, and even YouTube might be worth it if you don’t want to watch ads.
◾ Creative tools and software: Often necessary for editing videos or photos, creating digital work, editing grammar for professional writing and more.
◾ Security and utility apps: You may need to pay for antivirus software, a VPN, a password manager, or others.
◾ Productivity: Task managers, calendar apps, project management tools, and similar apps fall into this category.
◾ Health and fitness: Depending on your lifestyle and goals, it might be worth it to pay for a specialized fitness, meditation, or nutrition app.
◾ Education and learning: Language lessons, professional and personal development, and others often cost after a free trial.
Ultimately, it comes down to the quality of the app, the value it adds to your life and your preferences. There is almost always a free version of whatever app you want.
Free tech smarts in your inbox: My daily email is trusted by 400K people. I bet it’ll be your favorite read of the day.
What’s not worth it?
This is subjective, too, but a few rules apply to just about everyone.
◾ Don't pay for a third-party app if your phone already has a built-in feature. The caveat is that the paid app does this in a better way that it’s worth it to you. But a paid flashlight, QR code, or PDF reader? No way.
◾ File and storage managers are often junk that just eats up more space. The Google Files app is excellent for cleaning junk on an Android, and Apple does this automatically.
◾ Paying for a couple of versions of similar software is a waste of money.
◾ Don't hop on the bandwagon and pay for whatever viral app everyone else uses to make artificial intelligence photos or something else.
◾ Paying for an app you never use? give yourself a week. If you still don’t open it, cancel. You can always sign up again.
How to find all the apps you pay for
To check what subscriptions you’re paying for in the Apple App Store:
◾ Open the Settings app, then tap your name.
◾ Tap Subscriptions > Choose the subscription you want.
◾ Tap Cancel Subscription. (You might need to scroll down.) If there’s no cancel button, the subscription is already canceled.
How to find your paid subscriptions for Android:
◾ Open the Settings app > Google.
◾ Select Manage your Google Account.
◾ At the top, tap Payments & Subscriptions.
◾ Tap Manage subscriptions. Click an item to see more details and cancel.
Find anything else you’re paying for
It’s also worth checking your bank statements for unusual or ongoing charges you don’t recognize. You may pinpoint a Hulu or Netflix subscription or a few app purchases you forgot about.
You can get bank statements from your online bank portal, and it’s a good idea to look them over at least once a month. Print your statements out and go over the charges line by line. If you find something you want to cancel, contact the company right away to get the account closed. Otherwise, you may end up paying for another month of useless services due to cancellation terms related to your account.
Give your email a quick check, too. It’s common for ongoing purchase receipts to land in your inbox, and they don't always appear in your primary email folder, either. You should check your spam or trash folders too.
Keep your tech-know going
My popular podcast is called “Kim Komando Today.” It’s a solid 30 minutes of tech news, tips, and callers with tech questions like you from all over the country. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts. For your convenience, hit the link below for a latest episode.
PODCAST PICK: Airplane crash for YouTube views, Apple's VR headset & laptop expiration dates
Plus, is your info safe with Amazon Clinic? I tell you why it's a privacy no-go. Also, I give my advice to a realtor dealing with an influx of spam calls. A shifty USPS employment scam, big dreams for Zuck's dead Metaverse and five ways to spot legit-looking scam websites.
Check out my podcast “Kim Komando Today” on Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for my last name, “Komando.”
Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation's largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today's digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Netflix and other subscriptions out of control? How to decide which apps are worth paying for
Chris LaBrutto has always been an avid reader, losing himself in history books in his youth and later on reaching for the science fiction and fantasy novels. But that’s not the only way his practicing habits have changed. Once an avowed fan of the print book, LaBrutto is now a dedicated Kindle reader.
Ok, LaBrutto works for Amazon, which developed Kindle, but that’s not the sole reason for his conversion. “I definitely like it much better,” he said. “It’s thin and light, and with the front light I can read it anywhere.”
Now, as a product manager at Amazon, LaBrutto and the rest of the Kindle team have designed and built the next generation of Kindle: Kindle Scribe.
Kindle Scribe features a large new display, and for the first time, this new Kindle includes a pen for customers to add notes to books, mark up documents, create to-do lists, and generally write on the screen just like paper.
“Kindle Scribe is the best Kindle we’ve ever built, creating a practicing and writing experience that feels like real paper,” said Kevin Keith, vice president of Amazon Devices. “It’s inspired by the Kindle customers who have added billions of notes and highlights to books over the years, and it’s also ideal for reviewing and marking up documents, managing your to-do list, or doodling over a big idea. I’m so excited to get it in the hands of customers soon.”
Keith said the new Kindle pairs features customers know and love, including access to more than 13 million eBooks available worldwide in the Kindle store, adjustable fonts, and weeks of battery life, with the world’s first 10.2″ 300 ppi glare-free Paperwhite display. “The screen itself is a big deal,” said Jordan Meenen, another senior product manager on the Kindle team. “Going with a display of this size means you don’t have to turn pages as often. You can use a big font for readability and get great text layout.”
Kindle has been a huge hit ever since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unveiled the first model in 2007. Since then, the company has been constantly working to Strengthen the experience by adding more functionality to the e-reader.
To understand what could come next, the team started talking to customers about what they love about practicing on Kindle and looking at what features they used the most. They found a growing interest in practicing non-fiction books and that customers around the world add billions of notes and highlights while practicing on Kindle.
Using this feedback, Amazon set out to make the practicing of non-fiction books, but also PDFs, articles, and other documents with charts, graphs, and images even more seamless. “Non-fiction readers want a larger page layout so they can see content like charts and graphs, and they also want to be able to mark up the pages,” LaBrutto said. “In many cases, they are going beyond a leisurely weekend read and are trying to learn something. Seeing all of the visual detail and their written notes are both important parts of that experience.”
The pandemic also magnified another need the Kindle team wanted to meet. “When COVID-19 hit and we all started working from home, we realized that a lot of us were looking for new devices and services that could help us be more productive,” LaBrutto said.
As personal and professional lives blended, LaBrutto, Meenen and the rest of the Kindle hardware and software teams sought to create a new kind of Kindle that could help non-fiction readers, hybrid workers, and anyone looking for an immersive and organized practicing and writing experience. This new Kindle, Meenen said, “could fully meet the needs of readers while also offering these uniquely digital experiences like sharing marked-up documents with your computer or phone; searching through, filtering and organizing notebooks full of meetings notes, journals, or to-do lists; or annotating text with sticky notes that don’t clutter the page.”
So they got to work.
Enabling the new practicing and writing features on Kindle Scribe involved a number of software and hardware design components. At the center of it all is a new large, thin display that showcases writing, graphs, and images in gorgeous detail, a battery-free pen, and new foldable covers, each element designed to delight readers and writers. Fortunately, LaBrutto and Meenen had the help of another Kindle convert, Amazon designer Tim Wall.
Wall, who studied print-making and sculpture in college, discovered the power of industrial design on the streets of Seattle in his 20s. He was working for a company that employed people recently released from prison to help clean local neighborhoods. Drawing on his art school education, he designed a replacement for the dustpans the employees used that wore out easily. “I believe that you have to do the work first to find out what the right tool is,” he said. “You don’t need to be an expert to understand what people need. You just need to have empathy or, better, the sympathy of real experience.”
Now in his forties and in Silicon Valley, Wall has spent the last 11 years applying the same lessons to Kindle at Amazon’s mythical invention playground, Lab126—1 stands for A, the first letter in the alphabet, and 26 stands for Z, the last. Amazon engineers and designers working there have conjured up new devices and innovations like Kindle, the Alexa-enabled line of Echo smart speakers, and the home robot Astro.
Kindle is the perfect example of an effective blend of innovation and comfort. Kindle marries simplicity and connectivity—you can use it to purchase, download, and search books, newspapers, magazines, and other documents in the massive Kindle store. This potent combination has succeeded in creating “a sanctuary experience,” Wall said, “reducing and eliminating distraction where possible so that the practicing experience is primary.”
Creating and maintaining that experience involves more than just removing distractions. The physical attributes of Kindle are critical as well. “Pleasing shapes that are easy to hold, thinness, lightness, those are all compelling attributes of almost all technology, but even more important in something that is meant to be distraction free,” Wall said.
That’s why adding new features like a pen that never needs charging or syncing, and a screen that feels and looks like paper was fraught with challenges that were sometimes hard to quantify. “Writing on paper goes back to some of your earliest childhood experiences,” Wall said. “Its tactile qualities are really important in humanizing that slab of electronics.”
To build a seamless and distraction-free practicing and writing device, the team started brainstorming ideas, building models and prototypes, and testing them with each other. “It still needs to be a Kindle, it still needs to be a reader, but now it’s also a writer,” Wall said. “How do you balance those things?”
They tapped ergonomics and other experts who, Wall said, “dive deep into human factors and behavior, like how would someone with this weight and this angle hold it? Where is the fulcrum? How soft are the curves and edges?”
The team worked hard on finding the right anti-glare coating on the display and the right kind of tip on the pen to mimic the feeling of writing on paper. “We tested hundreds of combinations to find the delicate balance of creating just the right amount of friction on the display for writing while still delivering crisp text for a world-class practicing experience Kindle customers expect,” said Nag Tadepalli, lead display engineer for Kindle Scribe. The team designed the pen tip using a hard felt that, paired with our custom display coating, avoids the slippery feeling produced by styluses with molded plastic tips and actually sounds like writing on paper.
Need proof that they found the right balance?
Meenen has so fully adopted Kindle Scribe that he not only reads on the device, but he uses it every day to review documents and take notes during meetings. His personal favorite Kindle Scribe feature is the ability to import, mark up, and export documents, but he’s excited for customers to discover their own favorites from among the many new features, from sticky notes for annotators, to the notebooks feature for writers, to the screen for, well, everyone. “I will be bringing my Kindle Scribe to work every day, and I think all sorts of readers and writers are going to find a variety of features they love,” he said.
Customers around the world will be able to discover their favorite thing about Kindle Scribe in time for the holidays. Like previous Kindle e-readers, Kindle Scribe retains weeks-long battery life, an adjustable warm light and auto-adjusting front light, instant access to the Kindle Store, and a host of accessibility features. For the first time ever, Kindle Scribe users will be able to write with a pen featuring customizable line widths that comes with highlighter and eraser tools. Kindle Scribe also includes templates for notetaking and to-do lists, and with the Send to Kindle feature, customers can easily transfer content from their computer or phone for practicing or notetaking, including PDF, Microsoft Word and other document formats.
From the tactile writing experience to the way it feels in your hands, Kindle Scribe has been designed to be a tool you can use in many aspects of your life. Indeed, as Wall said, “I’m inspired by the tools that we use every day. I still have on my desk my wooden brush from my first days in art school. The well-honed tool is a sign that it’s essential, that it was designed well and fits the purpose. In a way, I think that’s what we’re trying to do with Kindle Scribe.”
Learn more about the new devices announced during the annual Devices & Services Fall Launch event.
UP NEXT
Apple unveiled its vision for how computing will change in the future.
On Monday, Apple announced the Vision Pro mixed reality headset during the company's Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.
The headset incorporates both augmented and virtual reality, requiring wearers only use their eyes, hands and voice to control. The headset will launch early next year for $3,499.
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“Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing," said Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.
The Vision Pro includes a three-dimensional interface where apps appear to pop up within the room you occupy, while also still viewing your surroundings if you choose. A knob called the digital crown, also found on Apple Watch, controls how immersed users want to feel while wearing the headset.
© Apple Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils Vision Pro, its new VR headset.
The device will also support Apple's Magic Keyboard and Trackpad for those who want more traditional computing options.
With the headset, users can have browsing tabs arranged around them, stretch screens for a movie theater experience, or join video calls with spatial audio that can mimic an in-person interaction, according to Apple.
The device uses advanced eye tracking to let wearers use their eyes to highlight an app or other field. You can tap a finger to select or flick your wrist to scroll. If you view a search bar, once it's highlighted, you can speak to enter a query.
What's different about Vision Pro compared to other VR and AR headsets is EyeSight, a feature allowing other people to see the eyes of the person wearing the headset. When the wearer is immersed in an activity, the headset gives visual cues to others when they are busy. Apple said the feature is meant to keep users connected to their surroundings.
Apple also introduced iOS 17, the next operating system for iPhones. Features will include Contact Posters to give phone contacts more personality, live transcriptions of voice mails, NameDrop for quickly sharing contact information, and improvements to autocorrect for text messaging.
Scroll down for a replay of Apple's WWDC keynote.
Reactions: Apple meets 'Ready Player One'
Now that the Vision Pro is here, the immediate reactions on social media like Twitter are the comparisons to Ready Player One.
If you recall, Ready Player One is novel-turned-film about a dystopia where inhabitants seek escape by entering a virtual reality universe.
Vision Pro starts at $3,499
Want to join the future of spatial computing? Prepare to pay up. The headset will cost $3,499 when it launches next year.
Optic ID is like Face ID for Vision Pro
The headset will support Optic ID, a biometric tool for unlocking when you use Vision Pro.
How does Vision Pro sound?
The headset will feature a unique spatial audio system meant to convince users the sound is coming directly from the room.
Under the hood of Vision Pro
The front of the product is a single piece of glass providing a view for the user along with a series of cameras. The digital crown controls how immersed you want to be in the environment. Apple said it studied thousand of heads to create a modular system to make sure it can fit any wearer. Like other headsets, it includes an adjustment dial to customize fit.
Mickey Mouse meets Vision Pro
Disney is among the partners on board with Vision Pro, providing a preview of entertainment experiences on the headset. A teaser shows experiences such as courtside replays of NBA games and bringing Disney World into your living room. Disney Plus will appear when the Vision Pro launches, said Disney CEO Bob Iger.
How you view photos and videos in Vision Pro?
Users can display photos as big as your room, and panoromas can expand and wrap around you, providing a lifelike view. The headset has a camera, too, to capture moments while wearing the device. Video views and cinema environments provide movie theater style vibes, according to Apple. The headset will allow for 3D movies, too.
How you browse the web in Vision Pro
So how exactly do apps work? With Safari, you arrange the tabs all around you. For example, you might have one tab when you look left, and others when you look right. But while the tabs are open, you can still see others around you. Accessories are supported with the headset, including mouse and keyboard.
What Apple Vision Pro interface looks like
Apple's demo shows the user viewing apps that show up right in the room. The headset includes a digital crown like the Apple Watch, and it appears tethered instead of operating independently, although it's not clear what device connects to the headset. The headset itself looks sleek. You use your eyes to move to different apps, while using your hands to scroll or select. The headset supports voice, too. Just look at the search bar, then speak your query. Vision Pro will also display your eyes when wearing the headset through an EyeSight feature. It's a clear blend of VR and AR.
Apple introduces Vision Pro, a new AR headset
And here comes the mixed reality headset. Apple unveils Vision Pro. Using eyes, head and voice, you control apps and other tools. You can also see through the headset like you're wearing glasses, but apps appear in your environment like augmented reality. "Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing," said Cook, comparing it to how the Mac and iPhone revolutionized technology.
Apple Watch will add mental, vision health features
The smartwatch will leverage the Mindfulness app to describe how you're feeling, ranging from very unpleasant to very pleasant. The health app will also include standardized assessments you might take at a doctor's office to determine your state of mind, and whether you should contact a medical professional. If you're a parent, you can use Apple Watch to measure how much time they spend in daylight. Apple devices will also offer a Screen Distance feature to alert users if they're holding screens too close.
WatchOS 10: The latest updates
Even more widgets, readers! When using fun faces like Portraits, you can use the digital crown to pull up widgets quickly with simple details like weather or timers. Apps have been redesigned, such as World Clock, which has dynamic colors that change depending on time of day. The Activity app has been tweaked with a new trophy case and more full screen views. Third-party apps will see new changes such as the NBA app, which provides more in-game information beyond score (finally). Also debuting on the Apple Watch later this year: Snoopy and Woodstock.
The Watch will soon get several new feature to accommodate cyclists, such as new ways to measure cadence and a new view for monitoring your progress during a ride. Compass and Maps apps will get updates to help hiking lovers.
Apple TV is adding FaceTime
Big update to Apple TV: The FaceTime app will be available, so you can view and participate in calls right on your TV. Users can also use services like SharePlay to watch TV shows or movies with friends. You can also soon take Zoom calls through your TV.
AirPods Pro will add Adaptive Audio
An update to AirPods Pro will support Adaptive Audio, which combines the noise cancelling and passthrough modes to fit your environment. A speaking feature will automatically lower the audio from AirPods when it recognizes you speaking to others. Automatic switching has improved, too, so it happens more quickly.
What's new with Mac browser Safari?
Private browsing is updated to lock browser windows, blocks trackers for loading and remove any URL trackers. Passwords and passkeys will soon be easier to share with important people in your file. Profiles allow people to create different identities to separate histories, such as work versus personal profiles. Users can also create Web apps from pages.
What updates are coming to macOS Sonoma?
The next release, named Sonoma, is focused on improving productivity, said Federighi. Apple sure loves its widgets, because they're letting users add them directly to the screen instead of popping into view. When you open an app, widgets will fade in the background, and they adjust depending on the background of your desktop.
Macs will add a Game Mode to Strengthen latency, and developers will get better tools for porting their games over to the platform. Speaking of games, legendary designer Hideo Kojima confirmed his hit game Death Stranding will debut on Macs later this year.
For video calls, small and large overlays can easily move your video presence throughout a call. There will also be fun video effects such as fireworks exploding in the background if you give the thumbs-up.
A PDF miracle for iPad
Raise your hand if you get frustrated trying to fill out a PDF online. Apple's answer to this is the ability to autofill fields the tablet will recognize to quickly update. Apple also improved integration between PDFs and Notes, for easier access and collaboration.
iPadOS 17 beefs up widgets, lock screens
Owners of iPad, this is for you. Apple will make widgets more functional, and include customized lock screens similar to the iPhone. Users can also add lock screen widgets. Live Activities such as food orders or travel plans will appear on iPads, too. Apple will also bring the Health app to iPad for the first time.
Dropping the Hey in 'Hey, Siri'
A small change, but you soon can drop the "Hey" when waking up Siri. Users can simply say Siri. Other new features expected with iOS 17: offline maps, improvements to People albums, and a new Pets album within Photos.
The iPhone will have a Standby mode
New to the iPhone later this year is Standby, which turns the smartphone into a smart display when it's locked. It can show info like photos, time and date, or other notifications. If you want to use it as a traditional alarm clock, it will automatically dim to low light.
Journal app to debut on iPhones this year
The iPhone will get a new Apple app, called Journal. Users can chronicle key moments in their life with a combination of writing and photos. Your phone will also remind you near the end of your day if you want to start writing.
Your keyboard will become smarter
Autocorrect gets a ducking update (see what I did there). Sentence level corrections can fix more types of mistakes. The keyboard will allow you to quickly revert to your original word if autocorrects tries to fix it when you don't want it. Predictive text will improve, too, gets Federighi.
NameDrop quickly exchanges contact info
Similar to AirDrop, NameDrop allows people to quickly share contact information. Their info will appear on your phone, and you can select how you want to save details like phone number.
Stickers on Messages get more love
Stickers will get a major update with iOS 17. Users can access Stickers more easily to add to messages. They can also cut out elements from photos and create unique stickers users can customize. Emojis will be available as Stickers, too.
Live Voicemail transcribes on the fly
One cool feature coming soon to iPhones: Live Voicemail. When a person calls currently, the Phone app will transcribe the message after it's recorded. With Live Voicemail, it will transcribe as the person is leaving the message, so you can see it in real time.
Updates are coming to Messages, too, including location sharing within a thread, check-ins to alert friends or family when you are safe, and transcribed audio clips shared in texts.
It's official: iOS 17 is confirmed
Apple's Craig Federighi appears to introduce the world to iOS 17. It starts with phone calls (remember it's still a phone). You can create special visual identities for contacts and lock screen style posters that pop up whenever someone calls. "They're going to stand out in a whole new way," said Federighi.
Updates to Mac Studio
Ternus shifts to the Mac Studio, the company's supercharged desktop computer. Consumers can now buy a version with the M2 Max chip, which basically means it's going to operate super fast. Apple introduces a new chip, M2 Ultra, which doubles the performance of Macs running M2 chips, Apple said. It's clearly aimed at higher level production work such as video editing or audio engineering. Definitely don't buy this just for email or playing Wordle. Apple unveiled yet another Mac desktop, the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra.
All the big performance on the desktops come at a price. The Mac Studio starts at $1,999, while the Mac Pro starts at $6,999. A budget buster for sure.
Apple announces 15-inch MacBook Air at $1,299
We start WWDC with fresh hardware. John Ternus, Apple's senior VP for hardware engineering on Macs, joins to introduce a version of MacBook Air with a 15-inch screen. It's available in four finishes, MagSafe charging, and 1080p camera for video calls. The laptop has six speakers, and supports Apple's in-house M2 processing chip. The revamped laptop also boasts 18 hours of battery life. It starts at $1,299, and is available next week. Also, the 13-inch model will see a discount down to $1,099.
Let Apple WWDC begin
Apple CEO Tim Cook kicks off the conference in front of giant rainbow arches right outside Apple Park. Cook notes this year marks the 15th anniversary of the App Store. Cook also said the company is committed to helping developers with the tools to help them do their best work.
What time does WWDC start?
The conference begins with a keynote address starting at 1 p.m. ET.
How to watch WWDC keynote?
The keynote is available to watch through Apple's website, or on the Apple TV app. In previous years, Apple has also streamed its keynote on YouTube.
What are Apple's plans with AI?
Apple is one of the few tech companies that has remained quiet on artificial intelligence, as services like ChatGPT and Google's Bard start to infiltrate the space.
That should change Monday, said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Apple is expected to discuss its plans and strategy for AI during the keynote.
"We expect Apple to head down the path to have its own AI driven solution that will be integrated within the Apple ecosystem and enable consumers to further tap into their iOS data, video, music, applications, and Apple devices through next generation AI capabilities," Ives said.
When will we see iPhone 15?
The announcement of a new iOS brings us closer to a new iPhone. So when will we see iPhone 15 (granted they stay with the naming convention)?
Don't expect an announcement Monday. Apple saves it for its big iPhone event in September. Typically the new iPhone launches in September, roughly two weeks after its signature fall event. Last year, Apple held its iPhone event September 7, then launched iPhone 14 on September 16.
Can Apple's mixed reality headset break through?
The journey of the VR headset has felt like a rollercoaster ride. There was the initial buzz when the first headsets made their debuts. But the devices didn't take off like smartphones due to factors such as pricing and the fact that many headsets were tethered to a PC or other device to function.
Facebook parent Meta has seen some success with its Quest line of VR headsets by making them more affordable and allowing them to operate independently.
Expect Apple's rumored headset to remain a niche product for a while, said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. The more important priority is creating an ecosystem capable of creating unique AR and VR experiences.
"Let’s not forget the iPhone and Apple Watch experiences were not built overnight but took a couple of years to scale," Husson said.
What to expect from iOS 17
Among the rumored features is a new smart display that functions similarly a smart home device with screen like Amazon's Echo Show. When the iPhone is placed in landscape mode (horizontally), it will show specific notifications when the screen is locked, reports Bloomberg. The update will also add a journaling app to update friends and take notes, said the report.
More on Apple's mixed reality headset
According to Bloomberg, Apple will roll out its headset combining augmented and virtual realities during the keynote. The device will be named either Reality Pro or XR Pro, said the report, and cost around $3,000.
The headset will support VR as well as offer a pass-through mode to add AR elements, said the report. The device is meant for tasks such as communication, watching videos or playing games, the report said.
What to expect at WWDC
The main purpose of the conference is to introduce developers to new versions of software for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. Prepare to see not just iOS 17, but fresh versions of iPadOS, watchOS and macOS.
Although Apple typically reserves many of its big hardware announcements for its iPhone event in September, this year could be different. Monday could mark the debut of Apple's long-rumored mixed reality headset.
What devices will be compatible with iOS 17?
The next iOS isn't just for new iPhone owners. Like previous releases, iOS 17 will be available on multiple iPhone models released over the past couple years. Support for iOS 16 stretches all the way back to the iPhone 8, released in 2017. However, if you are still hanging on to an iPhone 8, it's possible it gets cut out from this year's release.
When will iOS 17 come out?
The keynote is typically when Apple not only unveils the next iOS but details on its launch. The arrival of iOS 17 is timed to the launch of the next iPhone, so the next update will likely debut in September a couple days before the new smartphone is available in stores.
Last year, Apple released iOS 16 on September 12, four days before the launch of iPhone 14.
What does WWDC stand for?
The annual Worldwide Developers Conference is a week-long gathering of developers of applications for Apple products including the iPhone, Mac, and iPad to connect with fellow developers and discover new tools for creating apps. The conference is free for all developers.
The conference had previously been hosted at a convention center in San Francisco before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed it to a virtual experience in 2020. This year, Apple will host a special in-person experience Monday at its Apple Park headquarters.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: WWDC keynote recap: Apple unveils Vision Pro augmented reality headset, iOS17 (watch the replay)
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The most affordable Kindle gets a better screen and more storage
I’ve been PCMag’s home entertainment expert for over 10 years, covering both TVs and everything you might want to connect to them. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand different consumer electronics products including headphones, speakers, TVs, and every major game system and VR headset of the last decade. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and a THX-certified home theater professional, and I’m here to help you understand 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and even 8K (and to reassure you that you don’t need to worry about 8K at all for at least a few more years).
The 2022 Amazon Kindle has a screen as sharp as the Paperwhite, along with more storage and longer battery life than its predecessor.
The Kindle is Amazon’s most affordable ebook reader, and the 2022 model is a strong upgrade over the 2019 version thanks to its much sharper screen, additional storage, and longer battery life. Starting at $99.99, the standard Kindle is $40 less than the Paperwhite, and this latest refresh brings the two closer to parity than ever. Ultimately, the Paperwhite remains our top recommendation and Editors’ Choice winner, but the base Kindle is a good alternative if you don’t need the Paperwhite’s waterproof build or adjustable color temperature for its front light.
Before we get into the Kindle itself, let’s talk about pricing. The $99.99 price here is for the Kindle with ads on its lock screen. If you don’t want ads, you need to pay an extra $20. The $139.99 Kindle Paperwhite has the same caveat (it costs $159.99 without ads).
Whether you get an ad-free Kindle or a Kindle with ads, the devices are the same and have the same 16GB of storage. This is double the amount of storage of the previous Kindle, and even more than you get on the base model Paperwhite (a 16GB Paperwhite costs an additional $10). For even more storage, Amazon offers the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (which doesn’t come with ads by default) with 32GB for $189.99.
The 2022 Kindle looks and feels almost identical to the previous version, but is just a hair smaller and lighter. It’s a simple, matte plastic slate (available in black or denim blue; no white version like the 2019 Kindle is available) measuring 6.2 by 4.3 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.6 ounces, with a six-inch E Ink screen framed by a raised bezel. This frame, along with the slightly smaller screen, is the most apparent difference between the Kindle and the Kindle Paperwhite; the Paperwhite’s larger 6.8-inch screen is completely flush with the rest of the face, for a more premium look and better resistance against dust and sand.
The bottom edge of the Kindle holds a USB-C port for charging and connecting to a computer (a USB-A-to-USB-C cable is included), along with a power button, just like the Paperwhite. This is a welcome upgrade from the previous Kindle’s dated and finicky micro USB connector.
The big upgrade here is the E Ink screen. It has a pixel density of 300ppi, almost twice as much as the 2019 Kindle’s 167ppi. That puts it in line with the Kindle Paperwhite in sharpness, though with a larger screen the Paperwhite has more total pixels.
The Kindle’s screen is front-lit with four LEDs, and doesn’t have any of the customizability of the Paperwhite’s 17-LED, white-temperature-adjustable display. The Kindle offers only one flavor of white with a relatively cool temperature, though you can make it brighter or darker to your preference. I find the warmer white balance range produced by the Paperwhite to be more natural-looking and soothing to the eyes. This is only an issue when the front light is on, though; if you plan to read in a well-lit environment with the front light turned off, the Kindle’s screen looks identical to the Paperwhite’s, and gives the impression of very light gray paper.
The other major difference between the Kindle and the Kindle Paperwhite is waterproofing. The Kindle isn’t waterproof at all, so you shouldn’t read it in the bath, and you should be careful at the beach or by the pool. The Paperwhite is rated IPX8, which means it can be completely submerged in water and still work. Depending on where you like to read, this can be the difference that influences your buying decision.
Amazon says the Kindle can last up to six weeks based on half an hour of practicing with wireless connectivity disabled and the light set to 13. This is a nice boost from the previous Kindle’s four weeks under the same conditions, but it still doesn’t match the Paperwhite’s ten weeks.
Ultimately, how long the Kindle will last on a charge will change depending on your front light and wireless settings, as well as how much you read. Regardless, with battery life measured in weeks and the ability to charge the Kindle to full in as little as two hours, you probably don’t need to worry much about battery life no matter which model you get.
The intended experience for the Kindle relies on using the device itself or Amazon’s website to browse, select, and obtain ebooks and audiobooks. This is perfectly fine if you want to stay within Amazon’s ecosystem. If you want to upload your own documents piecemeal, you can do so simply by tracking down the send-to email address of your Kindle in the Content and Devices section of your Amazon account.
If you have lots of ebooks from public domain sources or Humble Bundles, you can use free third-party software like Calibre(Opens in a new window). The Kindle is compatible with DOC, DOCX, EPUB, unprotected MOBI, PDF, and RTF documents, as well as GIF, JPG, and PNG image files (though they will of course only be shown in monochrome). Calibre can automatically convert different file formats, so it isn’t hard to get any documents you want on your Kindle.
The public library ebook service Overdrive can also send books to your Kindle, though Overdrive doesn’t integrate directly into the Kindle. Your library’s ebook collection needs to be configured to send its borrowed books to your device.
The obvious focus on Amazon content makes the Kindle’s interface a bit busy and unintuitive. Its home screen constantly pitches new things to read that you can get on Amazon, though fortunately, your own library appears at the top. Below that, there are rows of books to browse on Amazon, not organized in any clear way aside from popularity, though there are sections that provide recommendations based on your practicing habits, or books that are similar to specific titles you’ve been practicing recently.
In the Library section, the default tile view tends to cut off book titles, so I switched to the list view. Even then, it shows your entire library, both on the Amazon cloud and that you transferred to the Kindle itself. Setting filters is simple, and I kept the view set to only show what is on the Kindle, but even then organization is a bit awkward with non-Amazon documents. The Judge Dredd collections I purchased on Humble Bundle and converted to PDF are categorized as “documents” instead of “comics.” Fortunately, you can make manual collections fairly easily and have them stay at the top of your library list, so it isn’t too hard to get your books arranged the way you like.
If you want to make your practicing more social, Goodreads integrates directly into the Kindle. You can add books from your Amazon library, set up shelves, and follow friends. You can only automatically add ebooks or books purchased physically on Amazon, though. If you want to add any non-Amazon books, including third-party books you put on the Kindle, you need to search for them in Goodreads and add them manually.
The practicing experience on the 2022 Kindle is unchanged from previous models. The touch-sensitive E Ink screen lets you flip forward and backward by tapping the left or right side of the screen or dragging from right to left or left to right. Tap the top of the screen for a navigation menu, and drag down from the top of the screen for a settings menu.
For text, you can choose from 10 different fonts in 14 different sizes; set margins, line spacing, and orientation; and save your preferred setups as themes. Comics and books with graphics will show images full-screen or inline, depending on the context.
You can also pair the Kindle with Bluetooth headphones to listen to Audible audiobooks through it, or have the Kindle read text to you with Amazon’s VoiceView voice-to-text reader.
The much sharper screen is the new Kindle’s biggest advantage over the previous model. At 300ppi, it’s as sharp as the Paperwhite, and that means small text is much easier to see. The relatively low pixel density of the 2019 Kindle was one of our main complaints, and it’s good to see it has been addressed.
I read some books on the Kindle, both public domain mysteries like The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Amazon-purchased books like Matthew Meyer’s The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: A Field Guide to Japanese Yokai. The text is crisp at all sizes, and the screen is easy to read under all lighting. I found the front light a bit harsher than the warm light on my Paperwhite, but it still provides a good practicing experience.
I also read some Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files comic trade paperbacks I purchased from Humble Bundle, converted to PDF, and uploaded through Calibre. I was pleasantly surprised to see the text-dense comic is quite readable on the six-inch screen. It isn’t quite as easy to read as it is on the slightly larger Kindle Paperwhite’s 6.8-inch screen, and considering the original format of the comic, an even bigger ebook reader like the Kindle Oasis (8-inch) or Kindle Scribe (10-inch) would be best for this sort of content. Still, it’s actually legible on the new Kindle, whereas the same comics on the previous model had text that was too small and blurry to make out.
The 2022 Amazon Kindle is a solid ebook reader that improves upon its predecessor’s weaknesses, with a significantly sharper screen, more storage, and longer battery life. If you’re simply looking for a high-quality ebook reader under $100, the Kindle is easy to recommend. That said, if you’re willing to spend an additional $40, the Kindle Paperwhite is our Editors’ Choice thanks to its bigger screen, adjustable front light color temperature, and waterproof design.
The 2022 Amazon Kindle has a screen as sharp as the Paperwhite, along with more storage and longer battery life than its predecessor.
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I’ve been PCMag’s home entertainment expert for over 10 years, covering both TVs and everything you might want to connect to them. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand different consumer electronics products including headphones, speakers, TVs, and every major game system and VR headset of the last decade. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and a THX-certified home theater professional, and I’m here to help you understand 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and even 8K (and to reassure you that you don’t need to worry about 8K at all for at least a few more years).
Read Will’s full bio
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