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We’ve finally fully emerged from winter and dad might be feeling a little cooped up. (I know I am, at least.) Now that the days are getting longer, they’re probably itching to get outside ASAP. If your dad or father figure is the type to wander off into the woods — perhaps for days at a time — we’ve got some suggestions for Father’s Day gifts. Whether they’re an ultra-light backpacking maniac or a car-camping comfort seeker, or maybe they dabble in a little bit of both, we’ve got just the thing.

JetBoil MiniMo

The Jetboil Flash is basically inescapable on the trail. Its lightweight, easily packable design and fast boil times make it attractive to backpackers. But the MiniMo is worth the extra money and weight. It’s only one ounce heavier, but the MiniMo’s wider, shorter cook cup is easier to handle. Plus it can actually simmer things, unlike the Flash. And let me tell you, dehydrated eggs are bad enough as is, even without burning them in what amounts to a coffee tumbler mounted on a jet engine. Trust me, this is one of the best upgrades you can make to your dad’s setup.

Leatherman Free series multitools

The Leatherman Free series has been a staple of Engadget buying guides ever since it debuted in 2019. There are plenty of options out there when it comes to multitools, and many of them are great. But, the Free series was a serious game-changer with its one-handed access to every tool. Plus everything, including the knife, locks into place so you’re less likely to pinch or cut yourself. It even requires less regular maintenance and cleaning than older Leatherman like the Juice series which, while great, tended to collect lint and dust in every nook and cranny at an alarming rate. Your dad might not need every tool while hiking the Appalachian, but he’ll appreciate having options other than a knife or a rock.

Biolite Headlamp 425

After food, water and shelter, the next most essential thing on the trail is light. This year we’re recommending the Biolite Headlamp 425. It’s similar to the Headlamp 330 we’ve recommended in the past. It’s ever so slightly bigger and heavier, at 10 millimeters thick and 79 grams, but it also lasts significantly longer. You get up to 60 hours of illumination on low and four hours on high. That’s up from just 40 hours on low and 3.5 hours on high with the Headlamp 330. The 425 is also quite a bit brighter – hitting 425 lumens as the name suggests.

The rear battery pack now has a red light on it, with both solid and strobe modes, so that your father’s hiking companions can easily spot him if it starts to get dark. And Biolite has finally ditched MicroUSB for USB-C. All the same basic features and modes are still here that you’d expect on any decent headlamp too, including spot, flood and strobe modes, plus eye-sight-saving red light.

Sea to Summit X-Mug

I love my old-school enameled steel camp mug. It’s indestructible and has an undeniable classic look. But, it also conducts heat like nobody’s business. I’ve burned my hands and lips on enough white hot cups of instant coffee to know they’re just not that practical. Sea to Summit’s X-Mug with cool grip promises to protect your little fingies from your boiling hot beverage. Plus, it collapses into a neat little puck for easy storage. Admittedly, I have not tried the Cool Grip model yet, but I’ve been using the company’s collapsible bowl for over a decade. And my hiking buddy uses the regular X-Mug, so I’m pretty confident in recommending Sea to Summit’s gear.

Therm-a-rest NeoAir XLite

I skipped a sleeping pad on my first backpacking trip. I regretted it immediately. Therm-a-Rest pads are the industry standard. And the NeoAir XLite is pretty much smack in the middle of their backpacking lineup. It’s not the lightest or the warmest, but it’s probably the most versatile. The R-value (a measurement of insulating power) of 4.2 is good enough for three-season camping. And it packs down to about the size of a water bottle. This particular model has been around for a long time, and it will probably continue to be a staple of Therm-a-Rest’s lineup for years to come.

Garmin Enduro

Full disclosure: I haven’t tested the Enduro. Nor has anyone else at Engadget. But, we’re big enough fans of Garmin’s sports watches to feel comfortable recommending it. But why pick this particular one? Simple: battery life. Garmin says it lasts up to 80 hours in GPS mode, which is frankly absurd. If your dad likes to quantify everything in his life, including multi-day hikes, this is a pretty great way to do it. It not only has a giant battery, but also a built-in solar charger. Plus VO2 max estimates for trail runners, heat and altitude acclimation tools for the parent that’s into mountain climbing or desert hiking, and even navigation features to keep him from getting lost. And, once he’s found his way back to civilization he can snag a coffee at Starbucks using Garmin Pay.

Sawyer Squeeze water filter

More than even food or shelter, water is essential on the trail. But, dad can’t just go drinking from streams and ponds, nor can he carry enough with him for a multi-day trip. That’s where the Sawyer Squeeze filter comes in handy. There are tons of different ways to purify water, from old-school iodine tablets to boiling to pump filters. But a squeeze filter system is often the fastest and easiest to use. Sawyer’s are probably the best known for good reason — you can fill up the pouch and drink straight from the filter or use the to fill up a reservoir or water bottle. They’re not ideal for places where dad might be reduced to getting water out of shallow muddy springs or where viral pathogens are a concern. But they’re perfect for more developed and regularly trafficked trails.

Ultralite PackTowel

Your dad will need a towel on the trail. Trust me. Maybe he’ll be lucky enough to find a shower. Or perhaps he’ll go for a dip in a lake. Or, maybe like me, he just sweats enough to drown a small animal. Regardless, an Ultralite PackTowl is an absolute must-have. They’re incredibly small and lightweight, yet seem to have unlimited absorption power. I’m pretty sure they’re actually a portal to another dimension where the water is stored. I have two that I take with me on every trip: one body-sized and the other a face towel that stays clipped to my shoulder strap for when I need to mop my brow.

Snow Peak Titanium Spork

This should go without saying, but your dad needs a utensil to eat. Yes, even on the trail. And there’s nothing better than a good old fashioned spork to save space and weight. I’m a big fan of this titanium model from Snow Peak. The company makes a ton of great gear, but this simple and indestructible essential is probably my favorite. Plus, it comes in a handful of fun shades like blue, green and purple in case your dad is known for his colorful personality.

Aeropress Go

If your dad would prefer to burn his lips on real coffee, consider getting him an Aeropress for his adventures. This is, admittedly, a luxury when you’re backpacking. But, I’ve tried instant coffee, coffee “tea” bags, mesh coffee steeping contraptions, camping french presses and honestly, nothing makes better coffee with less cleanup than an Aeropress. You could go for the full-size model, but the Go version shaves off a few precious ounces, which could be crucial when trying to cut weight for a long trip. But, I actually bring the full-size version when I hit the trail and have had no problems.

Goal Zero Lighthouse 600

Not every dad wants to strap three days worth of gear to his back and walk off into the woods. Some are perfectly content driving up to a campsite, pitching a tent and building a fire. For them the Lighthouse 600 is a great gift. It is, first and foremost, an LED lantern perfect for food prep, reading or even playing cards around camp. But, he can also use its 5200mAh battery to charge his phone or headlamp. And, if he does happen to sap all its juice it has a hand crank for recharging through manual labor, and an optional solar panel.

Joby GripTight Action Kit

Obviously, part of the reason dad disappears into the wilderness is to escape from technology and enjoy nature. But I’m sure he wants to capture at least some of it for posterity. Dragging a DSLR or even a mirrorless camera into the woods is overkill, especially when he’s probably got a pretty good camera with him already: his cellphone. Joby’s unique GorillaPod tripods are perfect for the outdoors. And the affordable Action Kit is pretty flexible. It comes with a Bluetooth remote, it can hold most phones or even a GoPro camera, and it has a cold shoe adapter for a light or microphone.

Lodge Cast Iron Cook-it-All

Look, if he’s driving up to the campsite anyway, there’s no need to fight with alarmingly thin steel pans or tiny fuel canister stoves. The 14-inch cast iron Cook-it-All from Lodge is the perfect campfire companion. It can be a dutch oven, a griddle or a skillet. You can even bake a pizza inside it. ( I’ll admit, though, that I’ve never considered baking a pizza while camping.) Cast iron is heavy and bulky, but it’s also damn near indestructible and holds on to heat for a long time, which is good when you’re dealing with a finicky campfire. Plus, if seasoned properly and treated with care, cast iron is reasonably nonstick. So, dad might even be able to make some sunny-side-up eggs for breakfast.

Helinox Chair Zero

Had you asked me ten years ago, I’d have said there’s no way I would drag a chair backpacking with me. But, as age (and fatherhood) have started to catch up with me, I’m ready to at least consider giving my poor broken body some respite while I’m on the trail. There are a few lightweight and packable options out there, but the Helinox Chair Zero is the most highly recommended, and it’s easy to see why. It’s durable, reasonably comfortable, not to mention ridiculously small and light.

At just one pound for the Zero and one pound, seven ounces for the Zero L, it’s one of the few chairs – and I mean actual chairs, not one of those foam mats you put on the ground – that someone would want to take on a multiday hike. They also pack down small enough that your dad might not mind sacrificing valuable pack space to them. The Chair Zero fits in a stuff sack just 13.8 x 3.9 x 3.9 inches, while the L is a little larger at 14 x 4.5 x 4 inches. The difference between the two is that the L is wider and taller and can support up to 320 pounds for big and tall types.

Gear Aid Medium-Duty 325 Paracord

Paracord is one of the most useful things dad can bring on any camping trip, whether it’s from the comfort of a car or thru hiking the Appalachian. The medium-duty stuff is good enough for tying down tents, hanging food bags or replacing boot laces. It can even be split open and the inner threads used as a fishing line, but hopefully your father never finds themselves in a situation that desperate. This isn’t a flashy gift, but it might get more use than anything else on this list.

Tribit StormBox Micro 2

One of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers makes an excellent camping companion. The StormBox Micro 2’s twelve-hour battery should be more than enough for casually unwinding around a fire after a day of hiking. And its IP67 rating means it should be able to take a solid beating without giving up the ghost. Add to that a strap that makes it easy to clip to a backpack or just hang from a nail in a lean-to and the ability to act as a battery bank in case you need to top up your phone in an emergency, and this is a versatile little speaker for dad to keep in their hiking bag. The sound isn’t going to blow anyone away, but it’s good enough, especially at just $60.

Backpacks

Engadget

Last year we recommended Osprey’s Atmos AG 65 for anyone looking to be as comfortable as possible while backpacking. This year, we’re doing the same, just with some updated Osprey designs. The Atmos has been given a minor face lift, but the bigger deal is that it’s now made with 100-percent recycled materials. You still get an integrated rain cover, Anti-Gravity suspension and fit-on-the-fly adjustment system. It’s just now more eco friendly.

As part of the redesign, the capacity has been increased to better reflect the pack’s name. Before, if you bought the Atmos 65 in a small, you actually only got 62 liters of storage. Now the small is a full 65 liters. The one downside is that the new materials and carrying capacity have led to a slight increase in weight too, with the S/M Atmos AG 65 coming in at four pounds, 10 ounces.

The women’s equivalent of the Atmos is the Aura AG 65, which is slightly smaller and lighter, but has the same suspension system and similar lugging capacity. And if you’re on a tight budget this year, you can still find the older model available in some places at a steep discount.

Tents

Coleman

Obviously, one of the most important pieces of camping equipment is a tent. Not everyone’s dad wants to spend their nights in a lean-to. But their needs will dictate what kind of tent to buy. If your giftee is an avid backpacker who needs something ultra light to take on the trail, I heartily recommend Big Agnes’ Tiger Wall UL 2. It’s not their lightest offering, but it strikes a great balance between weight and convenience. It can sleep two, and has two vestibules for stowing gear, but as a single person tent it’s borderline luxurious. Even with the optional footprint (which I highly recommend for any tent), the pack weight weighs under three pounds, and the mtnGLO light system means no fussing with a lantern or headlamp to read and sort gear after dark.

If unabashed luxury is more your dad’s thing, consider REI’s Wonderland 6. At $599, this is no casual investment, but it should last quite some time. The walls are nearly vertical and it reaches a height of six and a half feet in the middle, meaning all but the tallest of humans should be able to stand upright inside. The 83-square feet of floor space is plenty of room for a family of six to sleep in, and it has large ventilation windows to keep the inside cool during the hottest months. The one caveat is that, if you happen to do most of your camping in rainy environments, you might want to shop around for something with fewer windows and better rainfly coverage.

Neither the Wonderland, nor the Tiger Wall are cheap. So if budget is an important factor, or if dad is just looking to dabble in the world of car camping, consider the Coleman Skydome 6. Coleman gear is nothing fancy. You can find it in practically any Walmart or Dick’s Sporting Goods across the country. But it’s so ubiquitous because of its rock solid reliability and reasonable prices. The Skydome 6 is nearly the same size as the Wonderland, but comes in at just $130 (or $199 if you opt for the Darkroom model). The ceiling is shorter, and the walls more angled, but if you’re only using the tent to sleep in, that shouldn’t be a major concern.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon is in discussions with multiple US-based phone carriers about offering cheap – around $10 a month – or even free phone service to Prime customers. The company is reportedly negotiating with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile as well as the Dish Network, though it sounds like talks with AT&T have fallen off in recent weeks.

It'll likely be awhile before you see such an offer – if a deal is struck at all. Bloomberg says talks have been underway for about six to eight weeks. Given how expensive mobile plans can get, especially in the US, this could be a potentially interesting offer for Amazon customers.

If you're not already hooked on a Prime subscription, with its delivery perks, video service, music service, free games and things I’ve already forgotten about, would this convince you to sign up?

– Mat Smith

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Final Cut Pro for the iPad makes a compelling case for a tablet-based studio

And Logic Pro, too.

Engadget

The latest argument for making Apple’s iPad your go-to work machine received a boost when the company revealed its own powerful chips – and put them to work in its tablets. But to push those chips hard, you needed some tough software. Now, with versions of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro for the iPad, we get audio and video workstations to make your iPad even more versatile. And while it comes with a subscription cost, ($5 a month or $49 a year, each), on the Mac, you’re looking at a $200 one-time purchase for Logic Pro, or $300 for Final Cut Pro. It could be a cost-effective way to get more powerful software in your hands.

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Scientists claim they're the first to transmit space-based solar power to Earth

This appears to be the first-ever successful attempt.

Solar space power is a thing now. We recently reported that Japan’s space agency, JAXA, aims to send solar power to Earth from space by 2025. Now a team of Caltech researchers have accomplished early success in practical experiments last week. Their space-borne prototype, called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1) collected sunlight, converted it into electricity and beamed it to microwave receivers on a rooftop at Caltech's Pasadena campus.

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Even the cheapest Tesla Model 3 now qualifies for the full $7,500 tax credit

The Model Y, too.

Tesla has updated its website to show the rear-wheel drive Model 3, including long-range and performance options, now qualifies for the full federal tax credit for EVs. You'll also get to enjoy the same amount of savings if you're buying the all-wheel, long-range or performance Model Y. This means you can now get the maximum possible tax credit of $7,500 no matter which model you're getting.

To comply with the Inflation Reduction Act, the US government issued a revised set of guidelines for which electric vehicles qualify for the federal tax credit in March. When these guidelines went into effect on April 18th, vehicles using battery components 50 percent made or assembled in the US qualified for a tax credit of $3,750, but shoppers could only get the full $7,500 credit if their manufacturer sources at least 40 percent of their critical minerals from the US or its free trade partners, which don't include China.

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Google's Pixel 7 is still one of the best value smartphones available and now you can grab one at the lowest prices we've ever seen. Amazon is selling the 128GB Pixel 7 at $200 off for just $499, and throwing in a $100 Amazon gift card, effectively bringing the price down to $399. It's also selling the 256GB Pixel 7 Pro at an all-time low of $699, for a savings of $200 (22 percent) over the regular price. It's all part of a huge Amazon sale on Google Pixel 7 devices, offering discounts on nearly every model, colorway and memory configuration. 

The Pixel 7 offers a lot of refinements over the previous model, making it Google's most polished smartphone to date. It uses the company's own Tensor G2 chip, and while it's not quite as fast as Qualcomm's latest processors, it unlocks some nice AI camera tricks like Super Res Zoom, Photo Unblur and Cinematic Blur features. The 6.3-inch, 90Hz display offers smooth performance, while being small enough to do most things one-handed. It comes with a 50-megapixel main and 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, both among the best in the industry. 

The Pixel 7 Pro, meanwhile, offers 5X telephoto and ultra-wide-angle lens that has a solid macro function. Meanwhile, the 6.7-inch 120Hz display allows for smooth gaming performance. You can also expect modern features like wireless charging, strong water resistance and an improved design.

Best of all for many buyers, both devices offer Google's bloatware-free Android experience with first crack at updates and exclusive features like Clear Calling and a free VPN. The only downside is a slightly laggy fingerprint reader and temperatures that can get a bit warm under load. 

Those aren't the only two models with nice discounts, either. Amazon has slashed prices on nearly every Pixel 7 model as part of a larger sale, including different colors and memory configurations, with and without Amazon gift cards. So if you've been waiting for a deal, now is the time to act. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

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It seems like every few weeks, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) drop an impressive image from the James Webb Space Telescope that is both stunning to behold and advances our knowledge of the universe. The latest is of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, called a "barred" galaxy because of the bright central bar you can see in the upper left of the above image. It's a combination image consisting of infrared shots taken from the telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) sensors. 

What those sensors captured is a galaxy in the Virgo constellation about 20 million light-years from Earth, and because the JWST can see through the dust and gas that surrounds stars as they're born, the instrument is particularly suited to producing images that show the process of star formation.

Looking at the two individual images that make up the composite reveals different layers of the galaxy. As Gizmodo notes, the image produced by the MIRI sensor provides a view of the galaxy's structure and the glowing gas bubbles that represent newly formed stars.

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and

The second image, taken from the NIRCam, put the focus on a huge swath of stars in the foreground. The composite, meanwhile, shows both the enormous amount of stars in the region as well as the highlights of the stars that have just been "born."

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and

There isn't one specific breakthrough finding in this image; instead, NASA notes that this is part of a wider effort to collect as many images of star formation from nearby galaxies as it can. (No, 20 million light-years doesn't exactly feel nearby to me, either, but that's how things go in space.) NASA pointed to another few images as other "gems" from its collection of star births, including this impressive "Phantom Galaxy" that was shown off last summer. As for what the agency hopes to learn? Simply that star formation "underpins so many fields in astronomy, from the physics of the tenuous plasma that lies between stars to the evolution of entire galaxies." NASA goes on to say that it hopes the data being gathered of galaxies like NGC 5068 can help to "kick-start" major scientific advances, though what those might be remains a mystery.

Ever since Apple released the first iPad in 2010, a common refrain is that the tablet is great for consumption, not creation. Right from the start, Apple tried its best to battle that perception. The first iPad came with fairly capable versions of the company’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote productivity apps, and the more powerful iPad 2 was released alongside tablet-specific versions of GarageBand and iMovie.

Since those early stumbles, years of advancements in software and more capable hardware — like the iPad Pro — have forged Apple's tablet line into an extremely capable creative tool. In fact, since Apple started putting its M1 and M2 chips in the iPad Air and iPad Pro, it hasn’t been totally clear what all that power is for. Apple provided an answer to that question a few weeks ago when it announced versions of its Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro for the iPad.

I’m not a movie-maker, and I’ve only dabbled in digital audio workstations, but I was nonetheless intrigued to see how successful Apple was at bringing them to the iPad and how well they performed.

Logic Pro

Of the two apps, Logic Pro requires less horsepower. It’ll work on any iPad with an A12 Bionic or newer processor, which covers a lot of devices: Pros from 2018 onward, Airs from 2019 or newer and even the basic iPad, starting with the 2020 release. I tried it on a current-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro with an M2 chip as well as an older 11-inch iPad Pro from 2020 with the A12Z chip. In both cases, the app was extremely responsive as I blasted through demos that showed me how to create beats with the step sequencer, play and tweak the huge variety of software instruments included, build tunes with Live Loops and more.

That said, there’s no doubt this app is best with the largest display possible. As anyone who has worked with a DAW before will know, there are a lot of elements to manipulate and the screen can get very crowded quite quickly. (Even using most DAWs on larger laptop screens can feel pretty cramped.) If you’re serious about using Logic Pro as a significant part of your workflow, you’ll want the biggest iPad you can get. You can also use M1 and M2 iPads with an external display and Stage Manager multitasking, but a big draw for these apps is portability, something you can’t take as much advantage of when hooked up to a monitor.

In addition to the wide variety of built-in instruments and samples, you can plug instruments directly into the iPad and record them. I hooked up my guitar with an IK iRig HD 2 and was immediately impressed with the huge variety of different tonal options available. Off the bat, I didn’t notice any latency when running my guitar live through different effects and amp presets. There are a ton of those to try, and you can dig into each to see exactly what effects are being applied and modify them to your liking.

The app also shows you the signal chain, so you can move things forward or backward and see what differences that makes. Finally, you can route the signal through multiple different amp and effects chains at the same time, so you can simulate sending your guitar tone into both a clean amp with some chorus and delay as well as a distorted stack, which added some great texture.

Apple helpfully included a demo song with Logic Pro that contained a total of 36 tracks across multiple vocals, pianos and synths, guitars, bass and drums. I was able to manipulate this all in real-time as the song played back – for example, I could drop a new instrument patch on the keyboard track to change the tone and it would render near-instantly. You can also add effects in real time, like when I decided to drop a heavy metal stack simulator on a “smooth and gentle” keyboard track.

I also quickly dabbled in third-party Audio Unit Extensions. Since iPadOS is much more closed than macOS, the only way to load up a third-party plugin is to download its app from the App Store. If the AU isn’t offered there, you’re out of luck. The good news is that they’re completely plug-and-play – Logic Pro automatically detects if you have compatible AUs installed and displays them in the interface. There are AUs in the App Store from major companies like Eventide, Baby Audio, FabFilter, Moog and more.

You can use Logic Pro with a keyboard and trackpad, but I found that Apple did a great job of making it touch-friendly. There are a ton of things that you can do in the app that easily lend themselves to a touch interface – things like drum machines or triggering samples, as well as dragging and dropping tracks or adjusting sliders in the mixer. The Beat Breaker and Step Sequencer tools are two more examples of manipulating audio where touch felt extremely natural. While the interface is filled with virtual knobs, Apple smartly lets you drag your finger up and down rather than requiring you to “turn” the knob to adjust it. Overall, the interface feels well-tuned to a touch interface, and there were few if any times it wasn’t an ideal way to control things – though there is a definite learning curve to the huge amount of customization you can do here.

Naturally, the Apple Pencil works here as well. For the most part, it just acts as another way to work with the app, but given the amount of interface elements, it can provide a little more precision over your finger. One feature where the Pencil shines is with automation curves. It’s simply much easier and more intuitive to draw these changes with the Pencil rather than doing it with a mouse cursor or even with your finger.

One of the more compelling things about Logic Pro is its price. For $5 a month or $49 a year, you have access to everything the app can do (Apple is also offering a 30-day free trial before committing). On the Mac, you’re looking at a $200 one-time purchase. If you’re unsure about whether the app will meet your needs, this is a pretty low-risk way to try it out. Any projects you make on Logic Pro for the iPad can be easily transferred back to the Mac app, as well. The Mac app still has the advantage of wider third-party Audio Unit Extension (AU) support – on the iPad, you’re limited to apps and plugins you can find in Apple’s App Store. And moving Logic projects between the iPad and Mac won’t be nearly as smooth if you’re using the desktop app with third-party AUs that aren’t available on the iPad – you’ll have to render those tracks to audio before moving to another platform. Beyond this potential issue, Logic Pro for the iPad still looks like a pretty powerful and portable music-making tool.

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro isn’t Apple’s first time making video editing software for the iPad. Like GarageBand, iMovie was first released along with the iPad 2 in 2011. Also like GarageBand, iMovie has improved significantly over the years to become a surprisingly capable video-editing tool, but there’s also no doubt that Final Cut Pro is significantly more powerful.

Final Cut Pro has the same pricing model as Logic Pro: $5 a month or $49 a year, after a one-month trial. Again, that feels fair for such a powerful tool, though I do wish both apps had a one-time purchase option too. But before you plunk down your cash, you’ll need to make sure your iPad is up to the task – only iPad models with an M1 or M2 chip can run Final Cut Pro. Only the most recent iPad Air and the iPad Pro models released in 2021 and 2022 have the necessary horsepower. And given the complexity of a video-editing app, you’ll be best served running this on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

As I said earlier, I’m no movie-maker. But Apple’s 30-second demo project included in Final Cut Pro is complex enough to see what the app is capable of. It includes more than a dozen different video clips, several voiceover tracks, some audio effects, title cards and a few music tracks. I didn’t notice any slowdowns while scrubbing through the project timeline, applying effects to different video clips, rearranging and editing various pieces of footage and exporting a finished video file to the iPad’s storage.

The layout will be familiar to anyone who has used Final Cut Pro on the Mac, with a timeline across the bottom showing everything in your project, along with a preview window and a clip viewer up top. You can resize all these elements depending on what you want to focus on, and you can pinch to zoom in and out of the timeline for more granular editing. There’s also a virtual jog wheel that shows up on the right side of the screen by default so you can scrub through the project with fine precision, or give it a more forceful spin to move back and forward quickly.

There are some handy Apple Pencil features, as well. If you have the M2-powered iPad Pro, you can hover the pencil over your timeline and move forward and backwards. Naturally, you can also make edits and trim clips and do basically anything you can with your fingers with the Pencil, which offers a little more precision in my experience. There’s also a new “live drawing” feature, where you can record yourself sketching or writing and have that animation play in the video, either on its own or overlaid on top of another clip. It’s a fun and potentially powerful tool that visual artists should be able to take great advantage of, and there are lots of other potential use cases here as well. It’s the kind of feature that could be very useful when creating demonstration videos or educational resources, or something a coach could use to mark up game footage for players to review, just to give a couple examples.

The latest iPad Pro and iPhone models also let you capture video in the ProRes format, which means you can shoot footage and edit it directly on an iPad Pro. You can also combine and sync multi-camera footage and then tap through it to choose the best angles as you go. But people who know more than me about video editing have also pointed out a number of missing features in Final Cut Pro for the iPad, like familiar keyboard shortcuts for editing as well as things like some video stabilization tools.

Considering that Final Cut Pro for Mac costs $300 (a cost that’ll get you six years of Final Cut Pro on the iPad), it’s not surprising that the feature set isn’t exactly one to one. Though, using the name Final Cut Pro obviously carries some expectations that you’ll be able to do the same things with this iPad app that you can on the Mac. Still, I think that any video editor who likes using an iPad and has familiarity with Final Cut Pro could find the iPad app to be a useful tool, but probably not their only one. That also applies to Logic Pro; both apps feel like potentially great on-the-go options for professionals. And given the affordability of both apps, enthusiasts who want more power than they can get from iMovie and GarageBand should find a lot to like here as well.

We Americans love to have ourselves a big old time. It's not just our waistlines that have exploded outward since the post-WWII era. Our houses have grown larger, as have the appliances within them, the vehicles in their driveways, the income inequalities between ourselves and our neighbors, and the challenges we face on a rapidly warming planet. In his new book, Size: How It Explains the World, Dr. Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, takes readers on a multidiscipline tour of the social quirks, economic intricacies, and biological peculiarities that result from our function following our form.

William Morrow

From SIZE by Vaclav Smil. Copyright 2023 by Vaclav Smil. Reprinted courtesy of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Modernity’s Infatuation With Larger Sizes

A single human lifetime will have witnessed many obvious examples of this trend in sizes. Motor vehicles are the planet’s most numerous heavy mobile objects. The world now has nearly 1.5 billion of them, and they have been getting larger: today’s bestselling pickup trucks and SUVs are easily twice or even three times heavier than Volkswagen’s Käfer, Fiat’s Topolino, or Citroën’s deux chevaux — family cars whose sales dominated the European market in the early 1950s.

Sizes of homes, refrigerators, and TVs have followed the same trend, not only because of technical advances but because the post–Second World War sizes of national GDPs, so beloved by the growth-enamored economists, have grown by historically unprecedented rates, making these items more affordable. Even when expressed in constant (inflation-adjusted) monies, US GDP has increased 10-fold since 1945; and, despite the postwar baby boom, the per capita rate has quadrupled. This affluence-driven growth can be illustrated by many other examples, ranging from the heights of the highest skyscrapers to the capacity of the largest airplanes or the multistoried cruise ships, and from the size of universities to the size of sports stadiums. Is this all just an expected, inevitable replication of the general evolutionary trend toward larger size?

We know that life began small (at the microbial level as archaea and bacteria that emerged nearly 4 billion years ago), and that, eventually, evolution took a decisive turn toward larger sizes with the diversification of animals during the Cambrian period, which began more than half a billion years ago. Large size (increased body mass) offers such obvious competitive advantages as increased defense against predators (compare a meerkat with a wildebeest) and access to a wider range of digestible biomass, outweighing the equally obvious disadvantages of lower numbers of offspring, longer gestation periods (longer time to reach maturity), and higher food and water needs. Large animals also live (some exceptions aside — some parrots make it past 50 years!) longer than smaller ones (compare a mouse with a cat, a dog with a chimpanzee). But at its extreme the relationship is not closely mass-bound: elephants and blue whales do not top the list; Greenland sharks (more than 250 years), bowhead whales (200 years), and Galapagos tortoises (more than 100 years) do.

The evolution of life is, indeed, the story of increasing size — from solely single-celled microbes to large reptiles and modern African megafauna (elephants, rhinos, giraffes). The maximum body length of organisms now spans the range of eight orders of magnitude, from 200 nanometers (Mycoplasma genitalium) to 31 meters (the blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus), and the extremes of biovolume for these two species range from 8 × 10^12 cubic millimeters to 1.9 × 10^11 cubic millimeters, a difference of about 22 orders of magnitude.

The evolutionary increase in size is obvious when comparing the oldest unicellular organisms, archaea and bacteria, with later, larger, protozoans and metazoans. But average biovolumes of most extinct and living multicellular animals have not followed a similar path toward larger body sizes. The average sizes of mollusks and echinoderms (starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers) do not show any clear evolutionary trend, but marine fish and mammals have grown in size. The size of dinosaurs increased, but then diminished as the animals approached extinction. The average sizes of arthropods have shown no clear growth trend for half a billion years, but the average size of mammals has increased by about three orders of magnitude during the past 150 million years.

Analyses of living mammalian species show that subsequent generations tend to be larger than their parents, but a single growth step is inevitably fairly limited. In any case, the emergence of some very large organisms has done nothing to diminish the ubiquity and importance of microbes: the biosphere is a highly symbiotic system based on the abundance and variety of microbial biomass, and it could not operate and endure without its foundation of microorganisms. In view of this fundamental biospheric reality (big relying on small), is the anthropogenic tendency toward objects and design of larger sizes an aberration? Is it just a temporary departure from a long-term stagnation of growth that existed in premodern times as far as both economies and technical capabilities were concerned, or perhaps only a mistaken impression created by the disproportionate attention we pay nowadays to the pursuit and possession of large-size objects, from TV screens to skyscrapers?

The genesis of this trend is unmistakable: size enlargements have been made possible by the unprecedented deployment of energies, and by the truly gargantuan mobilization of materials. For millennia, our constraints — energies limited to human and animal muscles; wood, clay, stone, and a few metals as the only choices for tools and construction — circumscribed our quest for larger-designed sizes: they determined what we could build, how we could travel, how much food we could harvest and store, and the size of individual and collective riches we could amass. All of that changed, rather rapidly and concurrently, during the second half of the 19th century.

At the century’s beginning, the world had very low population growth. It was still energized by biomass and muscles, supplemented by flowing water turning small wheels and wind-powering mills as well as relatively small ships. The world of 1800 was closer to the world of 1500 than it was to the mundane realities of 1900. By 1900, half of the world’s fuel production came from coal and oil, electricity generation was rapidly expanding, and new prime movers—steam engines, internal combustion engines, steam and water turbines, and electric motors—were creating new industries and transportation capabilities. And this new energy abundance was also deployed to raise crop yields (through fertilizers and the mechanization of field tasks), to produce old materials more affordably, and to introduce new metals and synthetics that made it possible to make lighter or more durable objects and structures.

This great transformation only intensified during the 20th century, when it had to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing population. Despite the two world wars and the Great Depression, the world’s population had never grown as rapidly as it did between 1900 and 1970. Larger sizes of everything, from settlements to consumer products, were needed both to meet the growing demand for housing, food, and manufactured products and to keep the costs affordable. This quest for larger size—larger coal mines or hydro stations able to supply distant megacities with inexpensive electricity; highly automated factories producing for billions of consumers; container vessels powered by the world’s largest diesel engines and carrying thousands of steel boxes between continents—has almost invariably coincided with lower unit costs, making refrigerators, cars, and mobile phones widely affordable. But it has required higher capital costs and often unprecedented design, construction, and management efforts.

Too many notable size records have been repeatedly broken since the beginning of the 20th century, and the following handful of increases (all quantified by 1900–2020 multiples, calculated from the best available information) indicate the extent of these gains. Capacity of the largest hydroelectricity-generating station is now more than 600 times larger than it was in 1900. The volume of blast furnaces — the structures needed to produce cast iron, modern civilization’s most important metal — has grown 10 times, to 5,000 cubic meters. The height of skyscrapers using steel skeletons has grown almost exactly nine times, to the Burj Khalifa’s 828 meters. Population of the largest city has seen an 11-fold increase, to Greater Tokyo’s 37 million people. The size of the world’s largest economy (using the total in constant monies): still that of the US, now nearly 32 times larger.

But nothing has seen a size rise comparable to the amount of information we have amassed since 1900. In 1897, when the Library of Congress moved to its new headquarters in the Thomas Jefferson Building, it was the world’s largest depository of information and held about 840,000 volumes, the equivalent of perhaps no more than 1 terabyte if stored electronically. By 2009 the library had about 32 million books and printed items, but those represented only about a quarter of all physical collections, which include manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, globes, moving images, sound recordings, and sheet music, and many assumptions must be made to translate these holdings into electronic storage equivalents: in 1997 Michael Lesk estimated the total size of the Library’s holdings at “perhaps about 3 petabytes,” and hence at least a 3,000-fold increase in a century.

Moreover, for many new products and designs it is impossible to calculate the 20th-century increases because they only became commercialized after 1900, and subsequently grew one, two, or even three orders of magnitude. The most consequential examples in this category include passenger air-travel (Dutch KLM, the first commercial airline, was established in 1919); the preparation of a wide variety of plastics (with most of today’s dominant compounds introduced during the 1930s); and, of course, advances in electronics that made modern computing, telecommunications, and process controls possible (the first vacuum-tube computers used during the Second World War; the first microprocessors in 1971). While these advances have been creating very large numbers of new, small companies, increasing shares of global economic activity have been coming from ever-larger enterprises. This trend toward larger operating sizes has affected not only traditional industrial production (be it of machinery, chemicals, or foods) and new ways of automated product assembly (microchips or mobile phones), but also transportation and a wide range of services, from banks to consulting companies.

This corporate aggrandization is measurable from the number and the value of mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and takeovers. There was a rise from fewer than 3,000 mergers — worth in total about $350 billion — in 1985 to a peak of more than 47,000 mergers worth nearly $5 trillion in 2007, and each of the four pre-COVID years had transactions worth more than $3 trillion. Car production remains fairly diversified, with the top five (in 2021 by revenue: Volkswagen, Toyota, Daimler, Ford, General Motors) accounting for just over a third of the global market share, compared to about 80 percent for the top five mobile phone makers (Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo) and more than 90 percent for the Boeing–Airbus commercial jetliner duopoly.

But another size-enlarging trend has been much in evidence: increases in size that have nothing to do with satisfying the needs of growing populations, but instead serve as markers of status and conspicuous consumption. Sizes of American houses and vehicles provide two obvious, and accurately documented, examples of this trend, and while imitating the growth of housing has been difficult in many countries (including Japan and Belgium) for spatial and historical reasons, the rise of improbably sized vehicles has been a global trend.

A Ford Model T — the first mass-produced car, introduced in 1908 and made until 1927 — is the obvious baseline for size comparisons. The 1908 Model T was a weakly powered (15 kilowatts), small (3.4 meters), and light (540 kilograms) vehicle, but some Americans born in the mid-1920s lived long enough to see the arrival of improbably sized and misleadingly named sports utility vehicles that have become global favorites. The Chevrolet Suburban (265 kilowatts, 2,500 kilograms, 5.7 meters) wins on length, but Rolls Royce offers a 441-kilowatt Cullinan and the Lexus LX 570 weighs 2,670 kilograms.

These size gains boosted the vehicle-to-passenger weight ratio (assuming a 70-kilogram adult driver) from 7.7 for the Model T to just over 38 for the Lexus LX and to nearly as much for the Yukon GMC. For comparison, the ratio is about 18 for my Honda Civic — and, looking at a few transportation alternatives, it is just over 6 for a Boeing 787, no more than 5 for a modern intercity bus, and a mere 0.1 for a light 7-kilogram bicycle. Remarkably, this increase in vehicle size took place during the decades of heightened concern about the environmental impact of driving (a typical SUV emits about 25 percent more greenhouse gases than the average sedan).

This American preference for larger vehicles soon became another global norm, with SUVs gaining in size and expanding their market share in Europe and Asia. There is no rational defence of these extravaganzas: larger vehicles were not necessitated either by concerns for safety (scores of small- and mid-size cars get top marks for safety from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) or by the need to cater to larger households (the average size of a US family has been declining).

And yet another countertrend involving the shrinking size of American families has been the increasing size of American houses. Houses in Levittown, the first post–Second World War large-scale residential suburban development in New York, were just short of 70 square meters; the national mean reached 100 in 1950, topped 200 in 1998, and by 2015 it was a bit above 250 square meters, slightly more than twice the size of Japan’s average single-family house. American house size has grown 2.5 times in a single lifetime; average house mass (with air conditioning, more bathrooms, heavier finishing materials) has roughly tripled; and the average per capita habitable area has almost quadrupled. And then there are the US custom-built houses whose average area has now reached almost 500 square meters.

As expected, larger houses have larger refrigerators and larger TV screens. Right after the Second World War, the average volume of US fridges was just 8 cubic feet; in 2020 the bestselling models made by GE, Maytag, Samsung, and Whirlpool had volumes of 22–25 cubic feet. Television screens started as smallish rectangles with rounded edges; their dimensions were limited by the size and mass of the cathode-ray tube (CRT). The largest CRT display (Sony PVM-4300 in 1991) had a 43-inch diagonal display but it weighed 200 kilograms. In contrast, today’s popular 50-inch LED TV models weigh no more than 25 kilograms. But across the globe, the diagonals grew from the post–Second World War standard of 30 centimeters to nearly 60 centimeters by 1998 and to 125 centimeters by 2021, which means that the typical area of TV screens grew more than 15-fold.

Undoubtedly, many larger sizes make life easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable, but these rewards have their own limits. And there is no evidence for concluding that oversize houses, gargantuan SUVS, and commercial-size fridges have made their owners happier: surveys of US adults asked to rate their happiness or satisfaction in life actually show either no major shifts or long-term declines since the middle of the 20th century. There are obvious physical limits to all of these excesses, and in the fourth chapter I will examine some important long-term growth trends to show that the sizes of many designs have been approaching their inevitable maxima as S-shaped (sigmoid) curves are reaching the final stages of their course.

This new, nearly universal, worship of larger sizes is even more remarkable given the abundance of notable instances when larger sizes are counterproductive. Here are two truly existential examples. Excessive childhood weight is highly consequential because the burden of early onset obesity is not easily shed later in life. And on the question of height, armies have always had height limits for their recruits; a below-average size was often a gift, as it prevented a small man (or a very tall one!) getting drafted and killed in pointless conflicts.

Large countries pose their own problems. If their territory encompasses a variety of environments, they are more likely to be able to feed themselves and have at least one kind of major mineral deposit, though more often several. This is as true of Russia (the world’s largest nation) as it is of the USA, Brazil, China, and India. But nearly all large nations tend to have larger economic disparities than smaller, more homogeneous countries do, and tend to be riven by regional, religious, and ethnic differences. Examples include the NorthSouth divide in the US; Canada’s perennial Quebec separatism; Russia’s problems with militant Islam (the Chechen war, curiously forgotten, was one of the most brutal post–Second World War conflicts); India’s regional, religious, and caste divisions. Of course, there are counterexamples of serious disparities and discord among small-size nations — Belgium, Cyprus, Sri Lanka — but those inner conflicts matter much less for the world at large than any weakening or unraveling of the largest nations.

But the last 150 years have not only witnessed a period of historically unprecedented growth of sizes, but also the time when we have finally come to understand the real size of the world, and the universe, we inhabit. This quest has proceeded at both ends of the size spectrum, and by the end of the 20th century we had, finally, a fairly satisfactory understanding of the smallest (at the atomic and genomic levels) and the largest (size of the universe) scale. How did we get there?

Amazon might be planning to offer Prime subscribers a pretty significant perk: free cell phone service. According to Bloomberg, the company is talking with multiple US-based carriers about offering cheap — around $10 a month — or even free phone service to Prime customers. Right now, Amazon is supposedly negotiating with the three major US carriers (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) as well as the Dish Network, though it sounds like talks with AT&T have fallen off in recent weeks. 

It'll likely be a while before this potential offering launched, as Bloomberg says that talks have only been ongoing for about six to eight weeks and they could still be scrapped. But given how expensive mobile plans can get, this could be a potentially interesting offer for Amazon customers. Of course, that would require a further commitment to Amazon, which already has its fingers in a frankly absurd number of different businesses. 

So far, there's no details on what Amazon's service might look like — whether it would offer the same level of service as you'd get going directly through Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T. Specifically, carriers tend to offer more data at 5G speeds depending on what plan its users choose; there are also a ton of perks that carriers tend to include these days like Netflix from T-Moble or Apple Music or Disney+ on Verizon. 

But it's not hard to imagine that a lot of customers would trade some of those perks or even less high-speed data to get mobile service for free. That's assuming they're OK tying yet another part of their digital lives to Amazon — but if you're already hooked on Prime, this could make for a compelling new part of Amazon's subscription plan. 

The idea of solar energy being transmitted from space is not a new one. In 1968, a NASA engineer named Peter Glaser produced the first concept design for a solar-powered satellite. But only now, 55 years later, does it appear scientists have actually carried out a successful experiment. A team of researchers from Caltech announced on Thursday that their space-borne prototype, called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), had collected sunlight, converted it into electricity and beamed it to microwave receivers installed on a rooftop on Caltech's Pasadena campus. The experiment also proves that the setup, which launched on January 3, is capable of surviving the trip to space, along with the harsh environment of space itself. 

"To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space even with expensive rigid structures. We are doing it with flexible lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first," said Ali Hajimiri, professor of electrical engineering and medical engineering and co-director of Caltech's Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), in a press release published on Thursday. 

The experiment — known in full as Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (or MAPLE for short) — is one of three research projects being carried out aboard the SSPD-1. The effort involved two separate receiver arrays and lightweight microwave transmitters with custom chips, according to Caltech. In its press release, the team added that the transmission setup was designed to minimize the amount of fuel needed to send them to space, and that the design also needed to be flexible enough so that the transmitters could be folded up onto a rocket.

Space-based solar power has long been something of a holy grail in the scientific community. Although expensive in its current form, the technology carries the promise of potentially unlimited renewable energy, with solar panels in space able to collect sunlight regardless of the time of day. The use of microwaves to transmit power would also mean that cloud cover wouldn't pose an interference, as Nikkeinotes.

Caltech's Space Solar Power Project (SSSP) is hardly the only team that has been attempting to make space-based solar power a reality. Late last month, a few days before Caltech's announcement, Japan's space agency, JAXA, announced a public-private partnership that aims to send solar power from space by 2025. The leader of that project, a Kyoto University professor, has been working on space-based solar power since 2009. Japan also had a breakthrough of its own nearly a decade ago in 2015, when JAXA scientists transmitted 1.8 kilowatts of power — about enough energy to power an electric kettle — more than 50 meters to a wireless receiver. 

The Space Solar Power Project was founded back in 2011. In addition to MAPLE, the SSPD-1 is being used to assess what types of cells are the most effective in surviving the conditions of space. The third experiment is known as DOLCE (Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment), a structure measuring six-by-six feet that "demonstrates the architecture, packaging scheme, and deployment mechanisms of the modular spacecraft," according to Caltech. It has not yet been deployed.