Índex per August 2014 a Macworld

A Fine Balance Why do you use the tools you use? I’ve been thinking about that ever since I read an interview with Clay Shirky on The Setup blog (clay.shirky.usesthis.com), which we excerpted on page 92 in the July issue. Shirky is a writer, a teacher, and a Web pundit. Part of his job is to check out new stuff, to explore the cutting edge. That means he’s trying new things all the time—including the things he uses to do his job. “I actually don’t want a ‘dream setup,’” he writes. “I know people who get everything in their work environment just so, but current optimization is long-term anachronism. I’m in the business of weak signal detection, so at the end of every year I junk a lot of perfectly…

If you need Internet access on the road, carry a travel router. Use one to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot or a broadband service, and it will create a private, secure, wireless network with a robust firewall for all your devices. Using a late-2013 MacBook Pro with a Broadcom 802.11ac chipset, I tested six travel routers inside my 2800-square-foot, single-story home, evaluating speeds with the client in my bedroom (9 feet from the router, in the same room), kitchen (20 feet away, separated by one insulated wall), and home office (65 feet away, separated by several walls). I measured TCP throughput from an iMac (acting as a server) to the MacBook Pro using the WiFiPerf utility. NETGEAR TREK PR2000 Netgear’s Trek PR2000 (4.0/5.0; $50; go. macworld.com/trekpr2000) is largely self-contained: Just…

Even in a quarter that saw no product debuts, Apple boosted its sales and profits over the previous year. In late April it issued its fiscal second-quarter earnings report, showing revenue of $45.6 billion and a net profit of $10.2 billion—up from the second quarter of 2013, when Apple tallied $43.6 billion in revenue and $9.5 billion in net profit. For the 2014 second quarter, Apple earned $11.62 a share, a 15 percent jump from the $10.09 a share it earned in the 2013 second quarter. The numbers topped analyst expectations: Wall Street was looking for sales of $43.55 billion and earnings of $10.17 a share for the January-to-March quarter. Although Apple showed year-over-year growth, its results were down from the fiscal first quarter of 2014, which included the holiday…

VIDEO PLAYER APP With Beamer, you can stream video files (except those with DRM protection) from your Mac to an Apple TV. If your Mac just barely supports AirPlay mirroring, videos streamed via Beamer may look better, and stutter less, than they do when you mirror your Mac’s display. Beamer 2, a major update, adds a new interface as well as support for a larger number of file formats and high-bit-rate video. It works with any Mac that can run OS X 10.9, and it streams to second-generation or newer Apple TV models. Just launch the app and drag a video file into its window; the video plays immediately on your Apple TV. You can even use your Apple TV’s remote control to govern the playback. Version 2 brings a…

ROLE-PLAYING GAME Released two years ago, Diablo III disappointed fans and critics because it failed to push the action-RPG genre in new directions; it simply kept to its formula very well. Blizzard’s expansion pack, Diablo III Reaper of Souls, is similarly solid and not spectacular, but it checks all of the boxes on the expansion wish list. It also serves as a patch. Gone are tiered health potions, Normal/Nightmare/Hell/Inferno modes, and the randomized loot system. In their place are health potions that work for all classes, enemies that scale with your level (higher tiers are more challenging), and Loot 2.0, which raises the likelihood that you’ll get better, more useful gear. These revamps streamline the game. You’ll also find a new nonplayer character, the mystic, who lets you remix weapon…

UTILITY If you deal with lots of files, you surely have times when you need to rename a batch. (The classic example is a group of poorly named camera images.) Many utilities can help. One of our favorites, Name Mangler, is now up to version 3.3. The latest edition still lets you rename files in various ways, including Add Prefix or Add Suffix (which now supports more than 150 types of file metadata). An Advanced option allows you to create filenames using a scripting language that supports constants and functions, including logical connectors such as if, and, not, and or. But a lot of little things have changed. This version supports Notification Center and Mavericks tags. Many Tricks also says the utility is 50 to 100 times faster—fast enough to…

What We’re Raving About This Month Walnut MacBook Back The $39 Walnut MacBook Back adds elegance and protection to your computer. It’s compatible with the 13-inch MacBook Air, as well as with the 13-and 15-inch MacBook Pro. The Back is crafted entirely in the Grovemade workshop in Portland, Oregon (grovemade.com).–JOEL MATHIS NASCITA Feenix’s $97 Nascita gaming mouse offers an “8200 dpi laser engine with perfect accuracy, tracking, and pickups.” It comes with a gold-plated USB connector and an extra set of Teflon feet (www.feenixcollection.com).–JOEL MATHIS ENPASS 4.0 Sinew Software Systems’ app serves as a secure vault for your private information, including passwords, secure notes, financial data, and even ID papers. Offering military-grade encryption, the free app can import data from other password managers and supports easy synchronization with its iOS…

Although the latest tablet sales report from J.D. Power put Apple’s iPad on top, the market research firm noted that consumers are weighing price more heavily than ever before. Apple tablets scored highest in terms of satisfaction, with a score of 833 out of 1000 for the first quarter of 2014. Samsung came in right behind Apple with a score of 822. But what actually impelled shoppers to buy a particular tablet was price—it was the number one reason for choosing one brand over another. MORE FOR LESS Since 2012, the average purchase price of a tablet has decreased by $53, from $390 to $337, J.D. Power found. The survey ranked Apple’s iPad “highest in all study factors” except for price. Apple reported strong results in its most recent earnings…

GOODREADER 4 Version 4.0 of Goodi. Ware’s PDF reader, GoodReader, adds the ability to insert, rearrange, delete, and rotate PDF pages, as well as to create PDFs for your own notes (go.macworld.com/goodreader). The app now has an icon view in its file browser, a collapsible tool area, and page previews in the PDF slider. It is also finally universal, and is currently on sale for just $3.—DAN MOREN STAR WARS JOURNEYS: THE PHANTOM MENACE Disney’s $5 app for iPhone and iPad hints at how Lucasfilm might fare under Disney’s stewardship. Star Wars Journeys: The Phantom Menace (go.macworld.com/phantommenace) features a mix of storytelling, gameplay, and hidden content in each scene. You’ll even get to pilot Anakin’s entry in a big pod race. Disney promises follow-up editions soon.—JOEL MATHIS ACOMPLI Still searching…

BLUETOOTH SPEAKER Bluetooth speakers are everywhere, and I love their wireless connectivity. But their sound quality and features generally haven’t impressed me. IK Multimedia’s $300 iLoud is a portable Bluetooth speaker done right. At 9.9 by 6.5 by 2.4 inches and just under 3 pounds, the iLoud isn’t tiny, but it fits in a backpack or suitcase, or in the company’s optional travel bag. The iLoud feels rock solid, and includes a sturdy metal kickstand. The iLoud packs 40 total watts of power across four class-D amplifiers, giving it a lot more oomph than many comparable portable speakers offer. The speaker can become loud without distorting. Playback time using the built-in rechargeable battery is roughly 10 hours at normal volumes, but just 3 hours at maximum volume. The iLoud is…

SIMULATION GAME Usually, when you’re evaluating a PC or console game ported to the iPad or iPhone, the touchscreen controls are a key factor. That doesn’t apply to the cult hit Surgeon Simulator, because its creators have deliberately given it terrible controls. In this darkly comical life-ordeath sim built around slapstick physics and cartoon graphics, you’re Nigel, a catastrophically clumsy surgeon who bumbles through operations on a patient named Bob. The controls are so inaccurate that you’re constantly knocking instruments onto the floor and losing them in Bob’s chest cavity. In the iPad version, you don’t see your hands; just tap things to grab them and swipe to move them around. Tap to set a target, and then make stabbing or sawing gestures to attack—sorry, I mean operate on that…

This interconnectedness, which Apple calls Continuity, will let you answer calls to your iPhone on your Mac; start composing an email on your iPhone and finish writing it on your iPad; or use an iOS app that looks suspiciously like the Finder to open documents stored on iCloud. We’ve only scratched the surface of the two upcoming operating systems—but we’ll fill you in on what we’ve learned. In next month’s issue, we’ll have many more details. And when OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 ship in the fall, we’ll dive deep into what appears to be a brave new world.…

When iOS 8 arrives this fall, iPhone and iPad users will have lots of new capabilities to learn about. Apple’s updated mobile operating system promises a slew of new features and enhancements for improved communication and sharing. Here are the 12 features that Apple is trumpeting most loudly. 1. NOTIFICATIONS New interactive notifications in iOS 8 will let you respond to alerts without having to leave the app you’re in. Get a calendar invitation, and you can respond while continuing to compose an email message or play a mobile game. You can also interact with notifications from your mobile device’s lock screen, swiping on a notification to deal with it. iOS 8 also adds most frequent contacts across the top of the multitasking menu, so you can quickly call, text,…

In the 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web, the online world has evolved almost beyond recognition. To get a sense of where the Web is today, we asked a handful of our editors and contributors to describe their typical daily Web workflows. We also took a critical look at the state of Web browsers for OS X and iOS, asking: Is there anything new those apps could do? And we asked Rich Mogull to give some advice for handling today’s biggest online security risks. The results will, we hope, give you new ideas for managing the daily inundation that is the Web. How We SURF In the beginning, Web surfing was simple: You collected a bunch of bookmarks, and then regularly visited those sites to stay abreast of…

STROBIST (strobist.blogspot.com) Strobist is a site dedicated to the use of handheld flash units (strobes). Strobes let you, for example, bounce light off a ceiling to better illuminate a room. The site’s Lighting 101 series alone will help you avoid a lot of first-time flash fumbles. LYNDA.COM (lynda.com/photography) For people who learn better visually, Lynda.com offers extensive instructional videos. Macworld contributor Ben Long’s series, The Practicing Photographer, gets out of the studio to tackle all sorts of real-world situations. CREATIVELIVE (creativelive.com) CreativeLive takes a slightly different approach to video instruction, broadcasting up to five classes live for anyone who wants to watch online (it also rebroadcasts some classes). The classes usually span several hours over two or three days, and the sessions are interactive, so you can submit questions and…

GOOGLE (google.com) If you’re looking for a solution to a problem with your Mac or iOS device, your best bet is to start with a Google search. Enter the text of the error message you received or type in a phrase that best describes the symptoms. Nine times out of ten, this will be sufficient to get the answer you seek. APPLE SUPPORT COMMUNITIES (discussions.apple.com) For finding help with your OS X or iOS products, Apple Support Communities should be your first stop—nothing else comes close. It’s where users answer one another’s questions. If something goes awry after you update to a just-released version of iOS, OS X, or other Apple software, you can bet the matter will be under discussion here. APPLE KNOWLEDGE BASE (kbase.info.apple.com) The Knowledge Base’s thousands…

FOLKLORE.ORG (folklore.org) Founded (and largely written) by Andy Hertzfeld, the primary software architect of the Macintosh OS, Folklore.org is a collection of stories about the Mac’s early days. The site makes it easy to drop in, browse from one story to the next, and discover that hours have gone by while you wallowed in Apple’s past. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be exposed to Steve Jobs’s reality-distortion field or wanted to know how the original Mac demo was put together, here’s your source. APPLE: 30 YEARS OF THE MAC (apple.com/30-years) When Steve Jobs ran Apple, the company rarely acknowledged its past, preferring instead to focus on the present and—out of the public eye—the future. The company largely ignored such seemingly important milestones as the Mac turning…

When troubleshooting your Mac becomes necessary, you may need to get information about your system and what’s going on inside it, either to help you identify the problem and correct it yourself or to convey the information—in person or remotely—to someone else who might be able to resolve the issue. One tool that can help with this is a utility called System Information.or in systems prior to OS X 10.7 (Lion), System Profiler. By either name, this handy app lets you look up all kinds of details about your system’s hardware and software, from the serial number and firmware version of your Mac to information about the peripheral devices attached to it. You can access this system profiler in a couple of ways. One is to go to Applications Utilities,…

Your iPhone’s Camera app has lots of neat tricks for taking photos in any environment. For most images, you can adjust the lighting and focus by tapping your iPhone’s screen, though that may not be enough when you’re snapping in very bright or very dark locations. In such cases you can turn to your iPhone’s HDR (high dynamic range) feature. In a difficult setting with the HDR option inactive, your subject may be perfectly lit while the rest of the image is washed out, or the photo’s background may be well lit while the foreground is darker and slightly out of focus. When you enable HDR on your iPhone and then shoot a picture, the device snaps multiple images with slightly different exposures for each subject in the frame. It…

Slim Down Your SSD With Symbolic Links Q: I recently replaced the media drive in my MacBook Pro with a solid-state drive, leaving the original hard drive in place to hold other things. The problem I face now is that my SSD fills up quickly. Is there a way I can better manage my system’s storage so that files reside by default on the old hard drive rather than on the SSD? Josh Gillam A: I have a couple of solutions. First, if you discover that iPhoto and iTunes are consuming a lot of the storage, you can simply shift their files over to the old hard drive and then point the apps to look there for their resources. For iPhoto, copy the iPhoto Library archive from youruserfolder/Pictures to the…

The updated MacBook Air lineup offers little that’s new. Fortunately, however, the Air was already a top-notch portable. This year, the line’s subtle increase in processor speed and respectable decrease in price are positives. But although the faster processor did help the new Airs in our application tests, the flash storage didn’t perform as well as we’ve come to expect. The latest Airs come in four standard configurations. All have the same Intel 1.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, versus the 1.3GHz dual-core Core i5 in the mid-2013 Mac-Book Air. Everything else is the same as in last year’s Air models: You’ll find 4GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel HD 5000 integrated graphics hardware, and 128GB or 256GB of PCIe-connected flash storage. Prices start at $899 for the 11-inch Air with 128GB…

As much as you might want to believe that your Mac is invulnerable to viruses, Trojan horses, malware, and phishing attacks, that simply isn’t the case. In addition to well-publicized exploits involving Flash Player and Java, OS X is vulnerable to a variety of malware. This is where Mark Allan’s free ClamXav 2 (www.clamxav.com) comes in. Developed as a graphical interface for Sourcefire VRT’s open-source ClamAV antimalware utility, ClamXav doesn’t actively scan incoming downloaded files, but it does comb through your user account, your hard drive, or specified folders as needed. If infected files are hiding on your Mac, ClamXav will find them, describe what they can do, and offer tools to deal with them. The app lets you put infected files in a quarantine location, and delete them as…

Late last year, Wall Street was in a panic over Apple’s China prospects, fearing that the newest iPhones were neither cheap enough nor exciting enough to drive sales. According to Apple’s 2014 second-quarter earnings statement (see page 16), however, net sales in China reached a record $9.3 billion last quarter, a year-overyear increase of 13 percent, versus a 5 percent increase for revenues worldwide. THE NEW iPHONES TAKE OFF Greater China is Apple’s third-largest geographic segment, representing 20 percent of its quarterly net sales. That’s up from 12 percent a few years ago, and it’s not far behind second-place Europe. Unsurprisingly, the biggest driver for all that growth is the iPhone. As CEO Tim Cook noted in an earnings call, iPhone sales in China were up 28 percent last quarter.…

PHOTO PRINTER Aimed at pros and enthusiasts who want to produce photo prints, the Canon Pixma Pro-10 is big and heavy—it weighs just under 44 pounds and measures 27.2 by 15.2 by 8.5 inches. The installer on the CD said the software was incompatible with Mavericks, and suggested going to Canon’s website for the latest versions—but I had to figure out what I needed when I got there. Then, setting up Wi-Fi printing yielded an error, as nothing had indicated that the printer must be connected via USB during setup. I used Canon papers, as well as third-party papers and ICC profiles. Test output was outstanding. When I printed from a calibrated iMac, the color fidelity, brilliance, and saturation were superb. Even viewed under a magnifying glass, fine detail and…

FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER GAME Tactical shooters require you to act strategically, and many feature realistic damage and bullet physics. In Insurgency, you can die in one shot if you aren’t careful. This game demands teamwork and patience. Those willing to learn its mechanics will find a tense and satisfying shooter. Insurgency’s 32-player maps offer a lot of variety. The urban cityscapes have you crawling across streets under the cover of smoke, while other maps have you creeping around mountains with a sniper rifle. My favorite is a multistory building with numerous ways to flank the enemy team. Fortunately, this game built on teamwork provides a full complement of communication options. Built-in voice chat is clear and easy to use at the press of a button. Team chat and “all” chat make…

PRODUCTIVITY APP For years my favorite outliner has been Omni-Outliner Pro. Version 4 provides a welcome interface refresh and tweaks to make working with outlines simpler. The interface is cleaner and easier to use. One great new feature is the ability to zoom in or out on your outline. Creating outlines is faster with the new Resource Browser, which contains more than a dozen templates. You can save your own outlines as templates, too, and you can add the styles from a template (its theme) to your outlines. After you have created and styled an outline, you might want to export it—and Word export is, in fact, a feature of OmniOutliner Pro that its maker touts. But if you spend time dressing up your outline with OmniOutliner’s tools, you may…

Search has become the foundation of just about everything we do online. We rely on a host of search tools—Google, Bing, Siri, the list goes on—and we’d be lost without those tiny magnifying glasses and search bars to guide us through the digital realm. Those tools are never more essential than when we’re shopping. Whether we’re browsing for clothes, electronics, or music, we rely on search tools to track down the stuff we want. But when it comes to shopping for apps to use on our iPhones and iPads, searching the App Store is often a frustrating experience. A SHOT IN THE DARK If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you’ll probably find it. Type the first few letters in the name of Launch Center Pro or Monument Valley,…

WE’RE A STEP CLOSER to having kill-switch technology built into our smartphones by default, after the California State Senate approved a bill that would mandate preinstallation of the antitheft feature on phones sold in the Golden State. The legislation, put forward by Sen. Mark Leno (D–San Francisco), needed 21 votes for approval, and 26 state senators backed it. The bill heads next to the State Assembly. The vote marked a reversal of fortune for Leno’s kill-switch proposal, which failed to win enough votes for approval when it came before the Senate in April (go.macworld.com/killswitchfails). But the bill underwent a few tweaks, and recently Apple and Microsoft dropped their objections to it. The CTIA, the wireless industry’s lobbying arm, remains opposed. The bill requires any smartphone sold in California to come…

Orla Kiely Belkin’s $40 Orla Kiely (go.macworld.com/orlakiely) case for the iPad mini features one of four unique patterns designed by the eponymous artist. A secure fit helps protect your tablet from the vagaries of everyday life. The case is compatible with the iPad mini’s magnetic sleep/wake feature, and it doubles as a viewing or typing stand at multiple angles in landscape orientation. 360 SWIVEL The 360 Swivel (go.macworld.com/swivel) iPad mini case from EmporiumCases features duallayer construction for maximum protection on the interior, combined with a colorful synthetic-leather exterior that gives your iPad mini a striking look. The $25 case doubles as a viewing and typing stand in both landscape and portrait orientations, and it even comes with a complimentary stylus and screen protector. Sleeve Grovemade’s Sleeve (go.macworld.com/grovemade), in contoured maple…

PHOTO ACCESSORY The iPhone 5s is a great tool for taking photos, but there’s only so much it can do with its fixed lens and digital zoom. Olloclip’s various clip-on accessories address this problem, allowing you to play with zoom, focus, and image manipulation. My current obsession is the company’s new specialty macro kit—the Macro 3-in-1 lens with 7X, 14X, and 21X macro magnification. The kit has the same clip form factor as Olloclip’s signature 4-in-1 lens, though its lenses sit significantly closer to the clip than the 4-in-1’s fish-eye and wide-angle lenses. In addition, the kit comes with two focusing hoods, which snap onto the lenses and calculate the proper distance to get your macro picture in perfect focus. In practice, these hoods were excellent for photographing a flat…

MUSIC APP Drawing from the popular website by the same name, Ultimate Guitar Tabs is a gigantic collection of crowd-transcribed guitar chords, tabs, and lyrics. Its catalog boasts over 800,000 songs—more than you could play in all the jam sessions of your life. The basic premise is simple: Search for a song, and choose to play chords, tabs (the notes or fingerings of a guitar solo), bass, or ukulele. Often a song has multiple user-submitted options; other users rate these on reliability and sound, so you get the best tab possible. Once you choose a song, you see the transcription and the chords; tap a chord to see its variations. Top-row options (some of which require in-app purchases) include a metronome, automatic tab formatting for the iPhone screen, printing, Tabs…

OS X Yosemite is a Major—with a capital M—revision to Apple’s computer operating system. That revision starts with an iOS 7–inspired visual makeover. But though many people expected that face-lift to happen, it wasn’t the most impressive thing about Yosemite’s debut at WWDC. Rather, we were wowed by a slew of significant new features. Here are eight that we want right now. 1. CONTINUITY Our favorite new feature is actually several features that aim to simplify working with and switching between devices. The goal of these features (which Apple labels Continuity) is to make switching from a Mac to an iPhone or iPad, or vice versa, as seamless as possible. Shared AirDrop: AirDrop, Apple’s easy-to-use feature for getting files from one device to another, debuted for Macs in 2011 and…

One of the many new developer tools that Apple unveiled at its Worldwide Developer Conference is HomeKit, a new suite of tools that will let the makers of smart home products integrate their wares more deeply into Apple’s mobile OS. With HomeKit, Apple hasn’t picked one specific standard protocol for the industry to rally behind (at least not yet), and it didn’t announce its own hub or gadget to bridge multiple device protocols. HEY, SIRI, CONTROL MY HOUSE Right now, most useful connected-home products are controllable by iOS apps, but users have to navigate to the relevant app and open it before they can do anything. But HomeKit will enable users to control third-party smart-home gadgets from more places in iOS 8. HomeKit will let smart locks, lights, cameras, thermostats,…

GOOGLE+ HANGOUTS (plus.google.com/hangouts) My colleagues and clients are scattered far and wide, but we can still have multiperson, face-to-face discussions—including screen sharing when necessary. My coworkers and I favor Google+ Hangouts for this, which we’ve found to be more reliable (if a bit more awkward to set up) than Skype. QUICKBOOKS ONLINE (go.macworld.com/qbol) Since I’ve been using QuickBooks Online, I’ve actually grown fond of accounting. I can create and email invoices, enter bills and payments, print checks, and review my cash flow from a Web browser. Even better, my wife (our company’s CFO), our bookkeeper, and our accountant can access the same info without having to buy separate licenses. SBA.GOV (sba.gov) The Small Business Administration has a website that’s helpful for anyone running a small business (home-based or not). It…

The first Mac Web browser arrived in December 1992: MacWWW was programmed at the CERN research center by Robert Cailliau (who had helped World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee fine-tune his initial ideas) and Nicola Pellow. MacWWW had no color or images, and used simple boldface to indicate hyperlinks. In the 22 years since, Mac browsers have evolved a lot. At this point, that evolution may have slowed down, but it hasn’t stopped. Periodic major releases have largely given way to more frequent incremental updates. And even as distinctions between browsers have blurred, the big players still try to set themselves apart. BATTLE LINES Browser market share is notoriously difficult to measure. One reason is that the main sources of market data are online advertising networks, which track the devices…

A quarter-century after the creation of the World Wide Web, Mac users can pick any browser they want, make it the default option, and have it integrate into the operating system with little problem. Seven years into the era of iOS, however, that sort of ease of use is still missing on Apple’s mobile devices. Sure, iOS device owners who are dissatisfied with the built-in Safari can easily download any of the many third-party options available on the App Store, including Chrome (go.macworld.com/googlechrome), Opera Software’s Coast (opera.com), and iLegendSoft’s Mercury (mercury-browser.com). However, Apple’s closed mobile operating system prohibits you from making any of those browsers the default, and so limits their usefulness. Clicking a link in Mail won’t send you to Chrome. Even if you actively try to avoid using…

In most respects, I already own what is (for me) the perfect work machine: an 11-inch MacBook Air. I currently have a July 2013 Haswell-based model with 1.7GHz, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB solid-state drive. My perfect machine would be the same compact size (11.8 by 7.56 by 0.68 inches), have the same light weight (2.38 pounds), deliver the same incredible battery life (typically more than 13 hours under OS X Mavericks), and offer the same apparent screen resolution (1366 by 768 pixels) except with a Retina display. That’s it for my wish list. I’ve never been happier with a computer than I am with this one. I also have a 27-inch iMac with an external 24-inch screen, a graphics tablet, a batch of external drives, and so on.…

When you collaborate on documents, sharing a folder on a cloud-based storage system such as Dropbox is a convenient way to keep everyone’s copies of the docs up-to-date automatically. But nothing in that system prevents users from opening and changing a given document at the same time, which can lead to version conflicts and confusion. You could avoid this problem—and see who made which changes when—with a formal version-control system such as Apache Subversion (subversion.apache.org), Concurrent Versions System (nongnu.org/cvs), or Git (git-scm.com) to manage their files. These tools ensure that only one person at time can modify a file, they list who’s working on a file at any moment, and they keep a record of changes so that users can recall any earlier version of the file in the future.…

Even before iBooks Author’s 2012 arrival, Mac users could build basic ebooks via Apple’s word-processing software, Pages. Now, the company is improving the app’s ePub export capabilities. Let’s take a look at what has happened. AFTER SILENCE, ACTION Pages’ ebook export option debuted in 2010. Like Pages’ Word export feature, its ebook export could translate only certain aspects of documents into the widely used ePub format. As a result, some text styles and rich-text elements appeared incorrectly in that format. And many text elements required you to set up precise formatting in the Pages document in order to appear in the exported file. But when the updated iWork suite came out, Pages 5.0 contained fixes for some of its most glaring ebook export problems. For example, you can now use…

Q: Is there a way to make an alias of a mailbox on my iPhone and put it on the home screen so I can access that mailbox more easily? I sometimes need to look back at email I’ve sent, and I hate digging through mailboxes within the Mail app to find it. Catherine Yee A: On an iOS 7 device, you can easily choose which mailboxes to view from within Mail. Launch Mail and tap the Mailboxes button at the top left until you reach the main Mailboxes screen. Tap the Edit button in the top right (or within the Mailboxes pane on an iPad). When you do so, all of the mailboxes that normally show above the Accounts area will have a blue checkmark. Below them will be…

Apple suffered a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just $119.65 million for Samsung’s infringement of several of its smartphone patents. Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages for what it alleged was massive infringement of five of its patents by nine models of Samsung smartphones and a single tablet model. But the jury found that Samsung infringed, with all of its products, only U.S. Patent 5,946,647, which covers quick links that add contextual menus to items such as phone numbers and email addresses. None of the Samsung devices was found to have infringed Apple’s patents on background synchronization of app data and on universal search that pulls in results from the phone and the Internet.…

KATIE COTTON, Apple’s VP of worldwide communications, is retiring after 18 years with the company. Cotton shaped Apple’s communications strategy, which stayed unwaveringly on message but often frustrated journalists seeking details about the company’s plans and operations. She also had a reputation as the gatekeeper who controlled access to (and the image of) the late Steve Jobs. Cotton and Apple turned tech public relations on its head: Rather than release a product and beg for coverage, Apple presents product debuts and announcements as special events, which the world at large and journalists in particular then clamor to learn more about. To further that strategy, the company is selective about who gets that information. At one point, if you didn’t cover tech for the New York Times, USA Today, or the…

IN LATE APRIL the four remaining defendants in Silicon Valley’s closely watched employee-hiring case—Apple, Adobe, Google, and Intel—agreed to a settlement, according to a court filing. The plaintiffs and the companies reached an agreement to settle all individual and class claims alleged in the class-action suit, according to a letter sent to Judge Lucy Koh and signed by the attorneys for the plaintiffs and the defendants. The letter was filed April 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. According to a May 23 filing seeking preliminary approval of the settlement, the companies will pay $324.5 million, depositing an initial sum of $1 million from the settlement amount into an escrow account within ten days of the preliminary approval, to be used for notice and administration…

UTILITY Developers have offered scores of utilities for saving and accessing multiple clipboards. I like Collective for its simple nature, robust feature set, and pleasing interface. Collective’s window shows a preview of each item in your clipboard history, alongside the icon of the app it came from. Click (or double-click, depending on your settings) any item to transfer it to the main clipboard. (Alternatively, use the up and down arrow keys and press <Return>.) Highlighting a clipping displays information in the status bar: For text, the info includes the number of lines and characters; for images, the dimensions. Pressing the spacebar gives you a Quick Look preview. A green badge identifies the item you most recently sent to the clipboard. Keeping as large a history of clippings as Collective does—the…

PRODUCTIVITY APP With version 1.1, Mail Pilot addresses some glaring feature omissions and polishes its remaining rough edges. The app retains its clean and functional design, as well as its David Allen–inspired approach to getting things done in your inbox. You can set a message aside to work on it later; set it to reappear in your inbox; move it to a custom list; or mark it as completed, which whisks the email into your archives. Draft messages are the biggest addition. The app saves drafts automatically, keeping them attached to their respective message threads and adding a pencil icon as a reminder. The original app could search by contact and subject; the new edition adds wholemessage search. My searches were both fast and accurate, although occasionally results showed before…

SPEAKER Pure is a relative newcomer to the multiroom audio market with its Jongo wireless speakers. The Jongo S3 is the most adaptable model of the family. Measuring 5.0 by 5.5 by 5.3 inches and weighing less than 3 pounds, the S3 has an internal battery rated for 10 hours of playing time. Inside are a small amplifier, four 0.75-inch tweeters, and a 3.5-inch upward-facing speaker for the low and midrange frequencies. You can create a stereo pair with two S3s, or you can stream the same music to multiple Jongo units on the same Wi-Fi network. I connected my iPad Air to the S3 via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Creating a Wi-Fi connection is convoluted, and on Wi-Fi you are limited to streaming audio that the free Pure Connect app…

Apple may be slowly and quietly improving its Maps software, but Google isn’t exactly playing the part of a shrinking violet when it comes to upgrades: In May the search giant launched version 3 of Google Maps (go.macworld.com/googlemaps3), a significant update to its free mobile mapping app for iOS and Android. Perhaps the best new feature is the ability to save maps for offline use. In the past you could do this in a makeshift fashion by framing the map of an area before switching into Airplane Mode, but Google has now added a “Save map to use offline” option in the location info pane. These offline maps even allow you to zoom in and out—great for navigating an area on foot, though you obviously can’t search the surroundings or…

When Apple introduced Newsstand back in 2011, it was one of iOS 5’s banner features, but its time has come and gone. Originally presented as a special collection of apps, it has instead become a secondclass citizen. It would be better for everyone concerned—Apple, users, app developers, and publishers—if Newsstand simply vanished. Apple conceived Newsstand as a way to add special features to the content apps offered by magazine and newspaper publishers. These apps live in a dedicated folder. In iOS 5 and 6, the folder looked like a wooden bookshelf; iOS 7 replaced that with a plain gray background. The special features include dynamic app icons, representing the latest covers of magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately, in iOS 7, Newsstand’s own icon is generic, meaning that you don’t see the…

ROLE-PLAYING GAME FTL: Faster Than Light is a relentlessly paced strategic role-playing game. For every tactical error you make, it exacts brilliantly cruel punishments (such as permadeath—once dead, your player character can’t return). But when you are victorious, it feels glorious. FTL puts you in command of a small vessel sailing through the galaxy, attempting to courier vital military data to the Federation fleet while rebels give chase. The game is effectively turn-based: Jump to a new point on the map, and the pursuing ships move forward one step. You try to stay ahead of the rebels while you collect enough resources to improve your ship’s armament and equipment, stock up on fuel, and make repairs. Each new map location brings opportunities and challenges: You may have a friendly encounter…

ACTION GAME Only One is a retro fantasy brawler set on a vertiginous cliff top. Little pixelated enemies—swordsmen, archers, and wizards—spawn near you periodically. You chase them around and slice them to bits or knock them over the cliff. A green virtual joystick appears wherever you place your left thumb, and an attack button sits on the right. The well-realized combat has satisfying sound effects and a smidgen of tactical depth. As they die, your enemies drop goodies: heart refills, shield power-ups, and tokens for upgrades, such as extra heart capacity. Power is the currency and the driving motivation of Only One. Shoving baddies over the cliff offers an easy kill, but since they take most of their useful trinkets with them, you’re better off with the slashing method. The…

Apple used the occasion of its recent Worldwide Developer Conference to announce new versions of its two operating systems: OS X and iOS. Both will ship this fall, and both are chock-full of interesting stuff. The new version of OS X—dubbed “Yosemite”—features an overhauled user interface, updated system components such as Spotlight, and revisions of its built-in apps, including Safari and Mail. The new version of iOS—iOS 8—sports a similar revamping, plus a wave of third-party apps, thanks to some powerfully simple new programming tools that Apple is making available to app makers. But the most intriguing thing to come out of Apple’s WWDC announcements is the promised new ways in which OS X and iOS will combine and communicate.…

The days of keeping fragments of your health and fitness data locked into half a dozen different apps are numbered. Apple’s HealthKit, a suite of new tools for developers, will enable them to integrate your health data into new apps (including one from Apple called Health) in iOS 8. Right now, the data that your various activity-tracking apps and devices collect typically remains siloed within those apps. Your Fitbit stats live in Fitbit, your RunKeeper runs remain in RunKeeper, and your Withings Blood Pressure Monitor data stays in the Withings app. Some developers already choose to provide APIs for other developers to share that data. For example, my Fitbit steps can show up in the Pact app. But Apple’s HealthKit tools will allow any health and fitness app to report…

Apple had a lot of ground to cover in its WWDC keynote—so much ground, in fact, that it had to make do at one point with an “iOS 8 features we didn’t have time to talk about” slide. After scrutinizing that slide, we found some intriguing new features that Apple didn’t have time to call out. CAMERA APP Burst mode for older phones: The iPhone 5s included a quick burst mode, for snapping multiple photos in succession. Owners of older iPhones got a version of this feature that snapped images once every half-second or so. In iOS 8, graphics optimizations should give those users a quicker burst mode. Panorama photos in iPad: We’ve been able to take panorama photos on the iPhone since iOS 6, and iOS 8 may finally…

SANEBOX (sanebox.com) One of the many problems with email is that there’s too much of it. That’s why I use SaneBox. It looks at the senders and subject lines of your messages (not the body) and decides which are important and which can wait. It then sorts your messages accordingly. It can also do more-sophisticated filtering. As a result, I see only important email in my inbox, with the rest safely stored somewhere else for later review. BASECAMP (basecamp.com) I work on projects with people all over the world. The idea of managing such projects just made me tired until I used Basecamp. The multiplatform Web-based project-management service lets Web-connected team members share files and task lists, and engage in discussions. Basecamp sends updates via email. HEMINGWAY (hemingwayapp.com) Hemingway is…

DOUG’S APPLESCRIPTS FOR iTUNES (dougscripts.com) Doug Adams’s 450-plus AppleScripts extend iTunes’ functionality to let you manipulate files, tweak tags, turn on hidden features, and much more. APPLE iTUNES SUPPORT (apple.com/support/itunes) For help with iTunes, start here. You’ll find solutions for problems with Apple IDs, the iTunes Store, syncing, and more. You can also contact support here. APPLE’S iTUNES SUPPORT COMMUNITIES (go.macworld.com/itunescom) These are Apple’s user forums, where anyone can get help with iTunes. Finding your exact problem and solution requires a bit of searching, but you should be able to resolve many of your issues here. COMPUTER AUDIOPHILE (computeraudiophile.com) The Computer Audiophile website is designed to help music lovers connect their entire music library to their stereo systems. It also has an excellent forum where you can learn how to…

Mac and iOS users don’t have to worry too much about traditional security threats, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune from bad things happening to us. Apple, Microsoft, and others have made great progress in improving the security of our machines. But most real-world attacks today target not the devices themselves but rather you as a person through your devices. If such misfortune does befall you, it will likely take one of the following five forms. Here’s how these attacks work and what you can do to avoid them. Phishing 1 No matter how much you rely on text messaging, social media, or chat apps, chances are good that your digital life still centers on email: You use it to buy and sell stuff, recover passwords, and receive bills and…

The scenario seems straightforward enough: You receive a message with an attachment in Mail, and you doubleclick the attached file to open it in the appropriate app. But what happens next is anything but straightforward and predictable: Mail stores the attachment you’ve opened in a hard-to-find folder; attachments sometimes get downloaded more than once; and editing an attachment sometimes seems to alter the original. WHERE IS MAIL DOWNLOADS? When you double-click a Mail attachment, it opens in its parent app, just as you would expect. But at the same time, Mail also automatically (and secretly) downloads it into the Mail Downloads folder, which, unfortunately, is buried deep in a series of folders, one of which is invisible. To view its contents, choose Go Go to Folder in the Finder, type…

For basic photo management and editing, iPhoto is a very good program, but if your library is getting too big to handle or if you need advanced editing options that iPhoto lacks, it may be time for you to look into other software. Adobe’s Lightroom (go.macworld.com/lightroom) and Apple’s Aperture (apple.com/aperture) provide better management and image tools, while Adobe’s Photoshop (go.macworld.com/photoshopcc) and Photoshop Elements (go.macworld.com/photoshopelements12) enable you to augment iPhoto’s basic editing tools with more-powerful features. Let’s look at some of the best reasons to upgrade. BETTER ORGANIZATION AND FILE HANDLING In the early days of digital photography, the average shutterbug’s saved images numbered in the hundreds; these days, most photographers, whether professional or amateur, have thousands of pictures and videos to organize. Digital asset management can be challenging, but with…

APPLY FINDER TAGS WITH A KEYBOARD SHORTCUT OS X Mavericks added the ability to apply tags to files and folders in the Finder. What it didn’t add was a convenient way to apply those tags via the keyboard—but you can easily set up a custom keyboard shortcut to open the tagging interface. The basic process will be familiar to anyone who has read Mac OS X Hints for any amount of time: First, go to System Preferences Keyboard, open the Shortcuts tab, select App Shortcuts from the list on the left, and click the plus (+) button. In the window that appears, set the Application to Finder, and enter Tags... for the Menu Title. (You can type an actual ellipsis character by pressing <Option>-; [semicolon] or just type three periods.)…

Web developer WHAT DO YOU DO? I’ve worked at GitHub for the last four years. I also write about startups, products, and emoji on my blog (zachholman.com). And I like speaking. I created speaking.io, a site to help you get better at public speaking. WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE? I’m currently on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. I’ve found myself simplifying my setup over time. Previously I had an iMac, a second display, and a MacBook, but I realized that it’s just simpler to toss everything on one machine and one screen. I have a black iPhone 5s and a black Retina iPad mini. I usually use the iPad only while traveling (I do travel a ton). It’s got most of what I need on it now, so I’m not…