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How the MacBook’s Force Touch trackpad works

Now playing: Watch this: Test driving Apple’s Force Touch trackpad 2:49 Apple’s new Macbooks include a wider, more spacious trackpad, giving you more room than ever to use Force Touch. Force Touch, originally introduced on Apple’s 2015 MacBook and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, is like 3D Touch for your Mac. When you push into your …

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Amazon’s $99 Prime problem

Amazon is in a pickle. It would probably like to raise the fee on its popular Prime membership to offset its skyrocketing shipping costs. That fee, though, already stands at $99 a year, meaning an increase of just a buck would push membership to the psychologically important $100 barrier. Here’s the rub: the inherent contradiction of Prime is that the …

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Why Twitter killed off Vine after a short

At least it lasted longer than six seconds. The popular microvideo platform that Twitter scooped up in 2012 is headed for an abrupt ending, as Vine announced in a blog post Thursday morning that it would be shutting down its app. Vine was a widely used app where videos looped and were limited to 6-second clips, pioneering a short-form video …

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Vodafone hit with record £4.6M fine for pocketing customer payments

The UK’s telecoms watchdog has issued its largest ever fine, after Vodafone was rumbled taking customers’ money and failing to credit payment to their account. Telecoms regulator Ofcom today levied a fine of £4.6 million against Vodafone for trousering payments without crediting customers, and for subsequent failures in dealing with customer complaints. Vodafone, one of the UK’s major mobile carriers, …

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Your next phone could have USB Type

There’s a tiny-but-terrific change happening in phoneland. USB Type-C, or USB-C is a new protocol for the charger port phone makers are embracing in droves. You can learn more about it here, but the bottom line is that the USB protocol for phones, tablets, laptops and accessories is changing for the better. USB Type-C has taken over — here are …

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Turn your iPad into a second monitor for $9.99

CNET’s Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page. Look at that iPad of yours, just sitting there doing nothing while you slave away at your laptop. What a slacker! Okay, it’s …

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How to tell if your Apple Lightning cable is fake

Earlier this month, Apple filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com for selling counterfeit Apple products — specifically, unapproved third-party Lightning cables and power adapters sourced from Mobile Star LLC — on its website. Apple purchased a number of third-party Apple-branded power products that were sold directly from, and fulfilled by, Amazon.com, and determined that almost 90 percent of those products were …

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