Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Zoom on Resort: Carven, Thom Browne, and More

Inspired by a coffee-table book of photographs by Malick Sidibé, who captured wealthy African teens during the sixties, Carven's resort collection featured vibrant prints, bold blocks of color, and beautiful cocktail-ready attire paired with flat sandals or chunky wedges. For those of us not fortunate enough to jaunt off to an exotic locale for the holidays, one printed dress with a lush jungle landscape was everything you would expect for a season dedicated to tropical vacations.

At Thom Browne, pieces were heavier and more fit for days spent in cold climates, with looks consisting of nubby tweeds, wools, and striped tights. The dizzying array of patterns layered over more patterns was only accentuated by the elaborate wallpapered wall behind the model. A boxy, pleated look was a toned-down version of the unusual proportions common to Browne's work and featured a skirt that could have almost blended in with the background, were it not a different color.

Peter Pilotto is best known for their kaleidoscopic digital prints, and resort does not disappoint with its explosion of florals and geometric patterns. Quieter moments included several tops with a single arranged flower, a nod to ikebana, the Japanese tradition of spare and careful arrangements. Another dress resembled a hall of mirrors, with its seemingly never-ending array of rectangles acting as a modern representation of the tokonoma,  a recessed alcove where ikebana arrangements would traditionally be displayed.

Alessandro Dell'Acqua put together a group of easy-to-wear relaxed separates for his Nº. 21 resort collection, which was punctuated by feather, lace, and leopard accents. Hazy watercolor flowers mixed in with digital prints of roses and palm trees, but it was a series of green dresses and skirts that required a closer look. Click ahead to zoom in and see his take on toile, with scenes of pastoral living — donkey included.


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ESPN launches more second screen coverage with golf's US Open

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ESPN adds extra coverage to US open via second screens

ESPN is further boosting its major sports coverage by producing a raft of extra material for golf enthusiasts at the US Open. And the outlet will be doing the same during the British Open, along with Wimbledon, the US Open and Australian Open for tennis. The network is employing a special team during the tournament (including some not normally involved in golf coverage) to supplement the main ESPN broadcasts with featured group and hole coverage, hole flyovers, shot tracking and more. Some of the extra goodies will appear on ESPN3, DIRECTV, and USOpen.com. All that means you might need to drag that extra TV out of the spare room, and possibly your Xbox, laptop or tablet. Who says watching sports reduces your attention span?

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Microsoft Office Mobile for iOS quietly launches in the US, requires Office 365 subscription

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Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone quietly launches, requires Office 365 subscription

After rumor upon leak suggested Microsoft was cooking up a release of Office for iOS, you'd think its arrival would be celebrated with streamers and cake. Making a rather low-key entrance, the app is now available to those with a small-screen iOS device and an Office 365 subscription. You can create new Excel and Word files from scratch, or view and edit spreadsheets, docs and Powerpoint files stored on Microsoft's cloud services, or pinned to emails. Offline editing is also possible, as long as you've recently viewed or edited the file. You'll also be able to see any files you recently accessed at home if your computer is running Office 2013. You'll need an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6.1 (there's no iPad version just yet), and the app is limited to the US at the moment, but head to the iTunes Store source link for the full feature list.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Check out our hands-on.

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Airbus A350 completes maiden flight, uber-efficient Trent XWB engine shines

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Uberefficient Trent XWB engine shines in Airbus A350's maiden flight

With the Paris Air Show scheduled to lift off in earnest on Monday, Airbus is hoping to steal a bit of the limelight. After being conceived in 2004, the A350 finally took the public skies today in France, showcasing a highly-efficient Rolls-Royce XWB engine all the while. The jet is arguably being launched to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, and as you'd expect, it's the magic inside of the shell that's most impressive. The Trent XWB engine was built specifically for the A350, replete with titanium blades and a mixture of technologies that have led to it being deemed the "world's most efficient" airplane engine... as said by Rolls-Royce, anyway. To date, over 600 orders for the A350 have been placed, but the outfit is hoping to land even more contracts in the days ahead. Ideally, each will ship with a power port in every seat, satellite internet connections and an allergy for mechanical failures. (A boy can dream, right?)

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Editor's Letter: E3 vs. WWDC

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In each issue of Distro, Editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

DNP Editor's Letter E3 vs WWDC

One major press event going on means we need to get our game faces on. Two happening simultaneously? Hoo boy, that raises the stakes. This year we had full teams on the ground in both San Francisco and Los Angeles for the dueling media extravaganzas that were E3 and WWDC. In one, we learned a lot about two incredible new gaming systems and saw dozens of fantastic new games. In the other? Two new important operating systems, one new laptop and a new desktop that even Mac haters will have to admit is quite a thing.

We'll start with WWDC, since I was actually there for that one, and the biggest news of the day was the long-awaited unveiling of iOS 7. Apple reps were merciless in their ire toward the former versions' skeuomorphic tendencies, poking fun at the green velvet, the mock stitching and the faux surfaces that previously played such a big part of the iPhone and iPad experience. Now things are rather simpler -- and a bit more abstract.

iOS 7 is typified by a somewhat more muted color palette and a cunning use of frosted, semi-transparent overlays for things like the keyboard and the new Control Center, which slides up from the bottom of the display with a flick of the thumb and lets you quickly toggle things like WiFi and display brightness. Multitasking is far more comprehensive; a double-tap of the Home button showing you webOS card-like views of all the running applications.

WWDC 2013: iOS 7 See all photos 71 Photos

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Apple 13-inch MacBook Air review (13-inch, mid-2013) See all photos 58 Photos

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I think it looks beautiful, personally, but I can't help being disappointed by the lack of new functionality. Siri got a few new commands, sure, and overall it'll be a nicer OS to live with, but I was really hoping for a new keyboard, a handful of new gestures and, most importantly, a lot more extensibility for developers. There are a zillion new APIs for them to learn, but Apple still didn't announce in-app integration for Siri, for example, or support for third-party keyboards. Maybe there's still time to shoehorn something in before it all launches this fall.

I confess to thinking that "Mavericks" is an odd moniker for a pretty predictable set of new features ... but the promise of significantly improved battery life from better CPU management is certainly promising.

OS X Mavericks was the other big unveiling, a rather less spectacular, but solid update to Apple's venerable PC operating system -- and the beginning of a new naming scheme that will highlight favorite locales around California. I confess to thinking that "Mavericks" is an odd moniker for a pretty predictable set of new features, including tabbed Finder windows and better multi-monitor support, but the promise of significantly improved battery life from better CPU management is certainly promising.

Paving the way for that is the new Intel Haswell CPU-equipped MacBook Air, which was surprisingly the only laptop unveiled at the event. (We'd expected the Retina MacBook Pros would also see a refresh.) The new Air is virtually identical to the old, having only faster SSD storage and the new class of CPU. The result? Far better I/O performance and hugely improved battery life. The 13-inch Air logged an amazing 12 hours and 51 minutes on our battery rundown test.

DNP Editor's Letter E3 vs WWDC

Finally, there's the new Mac Pro, a cylinder of polished black aluminum containing a 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor with DDR3 RAM and PCIe storage. As the machine is rather svelte, expandability will be mostly external, enabled by a whopping six Thunderbolt 2.0 ports. Perhaps best of all? It'll be assembled here in the US. No pricing or availability was announced, but it won't be cheap, you can bet on that.

Not so fast: the PS4 doesn't include the $59 Eye camera, while the Xbox One includes Kinect.

Moving on to E3, we finally got all the details on this fall's gaming powerhouses: the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Well, almost all the details. The Xbox One will launch in November for $499, while the PlayStation 4 will launch "this holiday season" for $399. Instant victory for Sony? Not so fast: the PS4 doesn't include the $59 Eye camera, while the Xbox One includes Kinect. Not only does that reduce the price delta between them, but it also means that Sony's camera likely won't see much support in games, while Microsoft's should.

PlayStation 4 DualShock 4 and PS4 Eye (GDC 2013) See all photos 20 Photos

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Xbox One hands-on See all photos 41 Photos

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That said, Microsoft's handling of rights-management issues is definitely drawing a lot of ire. The Xbox One will need to phone home over an active internet connection once a day for any downloaded or locally copied games to keep working. This has, unsurprisingly, resulted in a lot of hate online, to which Microsoft's Xbox chief Don Mattrick had this to say: "We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity; it's called Xbox 360." Cute. The PS4, meanwhile, has no such restrictions built in, but Sony did leave room for game publishers to add their own restrictions if they like.

And that's all I have time to cover this week, dear readers, but there's plenty more to be found in this week's issue of Distro. We have Sean Buckley's feature on the evolution of E3, Ben Gilbert's look at the sad state of the Wii U and Joseph Volpe sits down with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma to find out what's in store for Nintendo's future. We've also got a review of the new MacBook Air refresh and plenty of news and impressions from the E3 show floor. Ross Rubin looks at the policies of the PlayStation 4 in Switched On while Joshua Fruhlinger weighs in on which horse he's putting his money on for the console fight in Modem World. And, if that weren't enough, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson does Q&A. Enjoy -- but watch out for the creepers.


This piece originally appeared in Distro #95.

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