Hoodie or T-Shirt? App Provides Fashion Advice Based on the Weather

Once you upload your favorite looks, Cloth can help you decide what to wear based on the weather. Image: Cloth

The only weather app I’ve ever wanted is one that tells me what I should wear each day based on the conditions outside. That app is finally here — and it didn’t start out as a weather app at all.

In its original incarnation, Cloth simply let you photograph and catalog different outfits from your wardrobe. You could also share your favorite items to social media — you know, for those days when you’re feeling particularly fabulous. It was a great tool for budding fashionistas, but perhaps not a must-have for the less fashion-inclined. Starting Wednesday, though, the app will include integration with Wunderground for real-time, location-based weather stats.

Here’s how it works: Cloth will automatically tag uploaded outfits based on the day’s current weather conditions, generalized into sections like rainy, warm, or hot. When those same conditions come up again, you can pull up combinations from your closet that work for that day’s weather. It takes all the guess work out of deciding to wear pants or shorts, or if it’s too warm out for that wool shirt.

“The app’s been incredibly useful since New York’s weather has been so topsy turvy lately,” Seth Porges, the app’s co-creator (and longtime tech-writer), told Wired. “It’ll be 50 degrees one day and 80 the next.” He and his girlfriend decided to create the app after he noticed her taking photos of her favorite outfits, and saving them willy nilly in her iPhone’s photo album.

The Cloth app will be free when it’s back in the App Store Wednesday, with the new weather integration feature (bundled with advanced photo editing features) available as a $1 in-app purchase.

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Retina Display Teardown Reveals Ingenuity and Surprises

Apple managed to cram four times as many pixels in a display no bigger than its predecessor's. Image: iFixit

The Retina display is arguably the pièce de résistance of Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It’s an engineering marvel, bearing a 2880×1800 resolution, which is good for 5,184,000 pixels.

Last week, iFixit tore apart the MacBook Pro with Retina Display and found it was virtually impossible to repair or upgrade after the time of purchase. But the Retina display itself was left un-dissected — until now.

The entire display assembly is slightly thinner than the display of its predecessor, yet manages to pack in four times as many pixels. It’s only a fraction thicker than 7mm at its thickest point, and just over 3mm at its edges. The Retina display is also so delicate and tightly constructed that the experts over at iFixit couldn’t separate its front panel without cracking the glass in two places — and eventually obliterating it completely.

“If you want a world-class laptop screen that doesn’t take up much real estate, don’t expect to be able to pop it out and back in at will,” iFixit writes in the teardown.

Apple told us in its WWDC keynote that it used a new manufacturing method to build the display into the notebook’s unibody aluminum housing, eliminating the extra layer of cover glass normally requisite of displays. Indeed, Apple turned the entire display assembly into the LCD panel, using the aluminum casing as the frame. Normally an LCD panel is sandwiched between a front piece of glass and a back case.
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Hands-On With Microsoft Surface Tablet for Windows RT

When you attach the Touch Cover, your tablet's desktop assumes the keyboard's color. Photo: Alexandra Chang/Wired

Microsoft stole headlines and wowed us with two Windows 8 tablets, dubbed Microsoft Surface, at its LA event on Monday. If you followed our liveblog, then you got the details of what was announced, and the promises Microsoft execs made about Surface’s many charms.

But how does the device actually look and feel up close?

I spent some hands-on time with Microsoft Surface for Windows RT right after the announcement. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take a device home, but I did get a chance to hold the tablet, swipe around the software, look at the display, and play with the Touch Cover and Type Cover — two offerings that double as full-sized keyboards with trackpads.

The Surface tablet is definitely impressive, and it’s clear that Microsoft is serious about manufacturing full-fledged mobile hardware. The company’s hardware division, most known for making mice and keyboards, has come out of its software counterpart’s shadow to create a tablet that can rival the iPad and wipe out Android devices.
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8 Awesome Gadgets — For When You’re Living in a Van, Down by the River

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For decades, we used our cars’ cigarette lighters to actually light cigarettes. It was a smelly affair, but no one was yet complaining about second-hand smoke. Then tobacco became passe, and gadgets became much more mobile. From the CD Walkman with its 12V adapter to modern smartphone chargers, consumer electronics now make ready use of the electricity surging through our automobile power ports.

But have you looked at what can be plugged into your car’s cigarette lighter lately? The options are amazing -- you can now take a full complement of lifestyle accessories on a camping trip. Or, in a pinch, you could use your vehicle’s cigarette lighter to power the amenities of a happy (albeit cramped and slightly downmarket) home.

For video evidence, click the movie above. For more exacting detail, enjoy our gallery of awesome, automobile console-powered gadgets.


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All Photos: Ariel Zambelich/ Wired

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Microsoft Dives Head-First Into Mobile Hardware With Two 10.6-Inch Tablets

Steve Ballmer caresses Microsoft Surface, his company's ambitious new Windows 8 tablet platform. Image: Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES — Forget about operating systems. Forget about mice, keyboards and snoozy computer accessories. Microsoft is now a full-fledged, no-excuses mobile computing manufacturer. On Monday a team of excited executives showed off Microsoft Surface — a pair of Windows tablets accompanied by clever keyboard covers that aspire to true innovation in the mobile space.

“It’s a PC that is a great tablet, and a tablet that is a great PC,” said Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows and Windows Live Division.

Sounds simple enough, right? No, most decidedly not. Surface is much, much more than a new tablet platform. It’s also Microsoft’s first fully branded computing device — an ambitious new development direction after years of making only simple computer peripherals. And Surface is also a challenge to every hardware partner in Microsoft’s OEM stable.

“Its a bold move on the part of Microsoft,” says Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. “This is a real change in strategy for them, and it’s certainly a vote of no confidence for their partners. This shows how high the stakes are. There is competitive pressure from Apple that is clearly a threat to their business. Steve Ballmer seemed to be channeling Steve Jobs on stage, saying hardware and software have to be designed to together.”

We covered the new Surface tablets in exacting detail in our live blog of Monday afternoon’s event. But here’s the cheat sheet if you just want the quick, hard facts.

Microsoft Surface comes in two iterations: One running Windows 8 Pro on top of Intel Silicon (an Ivy Bridge chip with yet-to-be-defined specs), and one running Windows RT on top of Nvidia silicon (perhaps the next iteration of Nvidia’s Tegra family — neither nVidia nor Microsoft is currently sharing specifics). The two tablets share a common industrial design language, including bezeled edges angled at 22 degrees, and physical chassis made of “VaporMG,” a fancy-schmancy new material that aims for a tactile finish worthy of a high-end, luxury watch.

“When you put it in your hands, it feels elegant,” said Panos Panay, the general manager of the newly announced Surface division. “When you touch it, you’re going to want to hold it, I promise you.” VaporMG can be molded down to a thickness of 0.65mm — thinner than a credit card and comparable to a hotel room key, as Panay demonstrated at the event.
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