Índex per November 2014 a Macworld

There’s no stopping change. But when you’re a provider of technical support, there’s also no stopping the reaction of clients who might be less than enthralled with the changes you had to make to save their data, upgrade their Macs, and/or get those Macs working again. Yes, they have their computers back, but something is either slightly or radically different, and that’s sticking in their craw. They don’t like the changed user interface in the new version of Microsoft Office, they preferred the old version of iTunes, or they didn’t expect those funny icons in that Mac OS X update you had to install to make a print driver or software work. As much as clients’ frustrations may add to your workload (you’ll most likely have to spend time off…

Apple’s profits keep climbing even as some critics complain that the company has miscalculated its strategy. The company’s fiscal third-quarter earnings report detailed revenue of $37.4 billion and a net profit of $7.7 billion—a record June quarter for the company (go.macworld.com/3q2014). Those numbers were up from the third quarter of 2013, when Apple tallied $35.3 billion in revenue and $6.9 billion in net profit. Apple CEO Tim Cook called out a surprisingly strong 26 percent revenue growth in China as a major driver of the record-setting quarter. iPhone: Sales of the iPhone were up year over year. The company sold 35 million units—a third-quarter record— generating $19.75 billion in revenues, compared to 31.2 million units, generating $18.1 billion, a year ago. However, sales were down from the second quarter of…

I’ve been reading comics off and on all my life, and I went to college in San Diego, yet I didn’t start attending San Diego Comic-Con International until the release of the iPad. I wanted to see the impact that device would have on the comics industry, and sure enough, over the past five years we’ve witnessed massive change. These days the freak-outs about how digital comics would destroy printed comics are gone, by and large. That isn’t to say, however, that there aren’t some hot tech topics in the comics industry. COMIXOLOGY CONCERNS At this year’s Comic-Con, leading digital-comics retailer ComiXology (www.comixology.com) had more or less the same booth as in previous years. Just from looking at that booth, you’d never know what has happened lately. Amazon bought ComiXology…

FlipBook Felix Brand’s $60 FlipBook (iPad 2, 3, and 4; go.macworld.com/flipbook) is a simple and stylish, full-body folio case for your tablet that emphasizes ergonomics and ease of use. The case doubles as a viewing and typing stand in portrait or landscape orientation, and is compatible with the iPad Air’s magnetic sleep/wake feature. It comes in black or tan. ExoShift The $40 ExoGear ExoShift (iPad mini; go. macworld.com/exoshift) faux-leather sleeve is slim and lightweight, but it can also transform into a viewing and typing stand that supports multiple angles in portrait or landscape orientation. It’s available in black or red. RUGGED FOLIO Zagg’s $150 Rugged Folio (iPad Air; go.macworld.com/zaggrugged) incorporates a rechargeable Bluetooth keyboard with backlit keys, and protects your tablet with a polycarbonate and silicone shell. The case’s magnetic…

Email Favorite Tweets to Yourself TOOL: IFTTT As I scan my Twitter stream, I often see links to articles that I’d like to read but can’t delve into at the moment. Rather than saving them to Safari’s Reading List or to a service such as Readability, I prefer sending such tweets to my email inbox so that I can process their links later, when I have time. IFTTT lets me do so instantly— all I have to do is favorite a tweet. First I activated the Email and Twitter channels in IFTTT. Then I set up the basic recipe: If Twitter, then email. In the action, I accepted the default subject line: Favorite tweet by @{{UserName}}. And for the body of the email message, I also accepted the default…

Set Track Numbers for Albums in iTunes TOOL: AppleScript As a classical-music reviewer, I get prerelease recordings, on CD and by download. Often these recordings aren’t tagged correctly; track numbers in particular tend to be inaccurate (or nonexistent). For tracks to appear in the correct album order, their Track Number tags need to be correct. Fixing them manually is a pain, but AppleScript can help. First, download Doug Adams’s Albumize Selection script (go.macworld.com/albumize) and add it to your iTunes Scripts folder. (Adams provides installation instructions, if you need them.) Next, put the tracks you want to rearrange in a standard playlist. After making sure the leftmost column header is selected, simply drag and drop the tracks into the order you want. Now select the tracks and run the script.…

Modern presentation applications such as Keynote and PowerPoint still encourage us to think in terms of “slides”: discrete, isolated objects presented one after the other, as though we were still using old projectors to show film-in-square-frames slides. Our audiences may even expect to receive printed or PDF copies of our slides, one tidy image per page. But that metaphor is a relic of an earlier time. Technology has moved on, and you can assemble far more interesting and appealing presentations if you move beyond the idea of slides and adopt a more fluid, seamless approach. The best-known tool for slide-free presentations is Prezi (prezi.com). This software provides a huge canvas on which you place individual elements; you can then pan, zoom, and rotate the view to highlight specific items. It’s…

Burn Movies to Disc in an iDVD-less World Q: I haven’t burned a movie to a DVD in ages but I now need to. How do I manage that when iDVD no longer exists? via the Internet A: iDVD, though dead to Apple, still works with Mavericks. So it’s simply a matter of laying your hands on a copy of the program, installing it, and going about your burning business. Apple no longer sells iLife ’11 (which includes iDVD 7.1), but you can find a copy on Amazon for $40. I’ve seen the software on eBay going for as little as $10. Of course, you can’t predict how long iDVD will continue to work. It is, after all, now an unsupported app. Thankfully, it’s not your only option. Roxio recently…

In July, Apple updated its Retina MacBook Pro line. While the new models are externally identical to their 13- and 15-inch predecessors released late last year, the Mid-2014 models feature slightly faster processors. These internal improvements, though modest, provide more performance bang for the buck. The new lineup includes five standard configurations. The $1299 system has a 13-inch Retina display, a 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (up from 2.4GHz in the previous $1299 model), 128GB of PCIe-based flash storage, and 8GB of RAM (up from 4GB). For $1499, you get the same system with 256GB of flash storage. The high-end 13-inch model, at $1799, includes a 2.8GHz dual-core Core i5 processor (up from 2.6GHz in the previous high-end 13-inch model), 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of fast flash storage.…

HOME MONITOR: Create a Home Surveillance System With AirBeam Pro Whether you want to strengthen your home security, set up a baby monitor, or merely pretend that you’re James Bond, Appologics UG’s AirBeam Pro provides an inexpensive, powerful way to transform your Macs, iPads, and iPhones into a sophisticated surveillance system. After a simple installation, the app starts looking for AirBeam-enabled cameras on your Wi-Fi network. It won’t work with third-party cameras, but if you’ve purchased and installed a separate copy of AirBeam for your iPhone or iPad, or if you have AirBeam running on other networked Macs, it will find those devices and display crisp real-time video streams on them. You can also use your Mac’s camera and broadcast that video to AirBeam on your portable devices, or…

In late July, a couple of days after a security researcher alleged that iOS permitted “backdoor” access to user data (go.macworld.com/iosback), Apple posted an article explaining many of the systems under scrutiny. In “iOS: About diagnostic capabilities” (go.macworld.com/iosdiag), Apple calls out three services: a packet-capture tool called “pcapd,” another tool called “file_ relay,” and a third dubbed “house_arrest.” According to Apple, all three “help enterprise IT departments, developers, and AppleCare troubleshoot issues.” The company emphasizes that users must unlock their devices and connect them (via cable or iTunes Wi-Fi Sync) to a trusted computer for the data to be retrieved— and even then, data transferred between the two platforms is encrypted, and the tools do not share the keys with Apple. The article offers only a brief overview of the…

MUSIC APP: Capo Touch 2.0 Helps You Play Your Favorite Songs Available for both OS X and iOS, Capo helps musicians learn songs by altering a tune’s speed without changing its pitch, as well as by generating chords and making other tweaks. Capo Touch 2.0 brings the Mac app’s innovative chord recognition to iOS. The recognition feature works well and offers a great starting place for learning songs, but it’s not perfect; I had to perform at least a little editing for every song I tried. Luckily, Capo Touch makes it easy to add, edit, and move chords. The tap-and-hold action opens options for many Capo Touch functions. Although this approach keeps the design clean and uncluttered, the method for finding certain controls wasn’t always readily apparent to me;…

Open Work Apps When Connecting to Office Wi-Fi TOOL: Keyboard Maestro Some of my most productive time is in the early morning: I usually arrive at the office before everyone else, and I get the most done in those hours, without interruption. Trouble is, I’m also easily distracted. When I sit down at my desk in the morning, it can be too tempting to open Twitter or some other shiny object on my Mac that will draw my attention away from the work at hand. To get focused, I use Keyboard Maestro. Despite its name, Keyboard Maestro can do a lot more than merely trigger events in response to a keyboard shortcut. It can also respond to other triggers, such as connecting to a specific wireless network. So I created…

In March 2014, Apple revealed the first glimpse of CarPlay, the company’s initiative to integrate the iPhone’s capabilities with the built-in display that is the centerpiece of so many cars’ dashboards. Apple has begun to deliver its new car technology, with Ferrari the first car maker to release a model supporting it— to one customer, anyway (go.macworld.com/ferrari). Other car makers are also preparing to roll out a number of new models, and we’ll also see some thirdparty upgrade products. But how does CarPlay work? And, more importantly, how will it make using your iPhone in the car a safer, more holistic experience? Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s new car interface. WHAT IS CARPLAY? Originally dubbed “iOS in the Car,” CarPlay is an Appledesigned interface for interacting with…

Tim Cook recently said that he performs 80 percent of his work on an iPad—and that he thinks everyone else should do the same. But is that a realistic option? The answer depends on the kind of work you do. Perhaps Cook spends his day in email and a Web browser. If so, the iPad may be adequate. Also, when Cook made that statement, he was touting the iOS compatibility that will come to many corporate apps thanks to Apple’s alliance with IBM (go.macworld.com/ibmapple). But what about the rest of us, whose work tools lie somewhere between browsers and bespoke corporate software? To get a take on how well the iPad suits at least one specific job description, we asked editors at Macworld and at our sister publications PCWorld and…

As I’ve traveled around the world giving presentations, I’ve seen Murphy’s Law in action, up close, many times. Much as I might prepare in advance, things still go wrong all the time. And whenever something does go wrong, I add another item or two to my emergency toolkit so that I’m better prepared for the next presentation. If you have an important speaking engagement—especially if it’s out of town, where you won’t have access to your usual resources—consider putting together a similar emergency toolkit of your own. GADGETS AND SOFTWARE First, let’s talk about the gadgets and software in the toolkit. Adapters (Mac): I usually present from my MacBook Pro, and more often than not, it’s connected to a projector with a VGA input. So I always carry my Apple…

Editor, Boston.com WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT DO YOU DO? I recently became the News & Homepage Editor of Boston.com (part of the Boston Globe). Before that, I was the founder of ChartGirl (chartgirl.com). And before that, I investigated fraud and money laundering, and the occasional political scandal. WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE? When I’m at my desk, I have a MacBook Pro hooked up to two Dell 22-inch monitors. I also have a MacBook Air that I bought a year or so ago and never use. I listen to a Uniden Bearcat police scanner at work. I just bought a Slingbox 500 to record TV shows and press conferences. I use a Verizon Jetpack when I need to edit something and I’m without Internet access. I keep a Canon…

IT’S BEEN A WHILE since Apple made any changes to its board of directors, but the company recently welcomed its newest member, financial executive Susan L. Wagner (go.macworld.com/wagner). A founding partner and the director of asset management company Black-Rock (blackrock.com), Wagner served as that company’s vice chairman until mid-2012. She replaces Intuit chairman Bill Campbell, who has served on the Apple board since 1997. “Sue is a pioneer in the financial industry, and we are excited to welcome her to Apple’s board of directors,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an announcement. “We believe her strong experience, especially in [mergers and acquisitions] and building a global business across both developed and emerging markets, will be extremely valuable as Apple continues to grow around the world.” Wagner earned a bachelor’s degree…

xMac Pro Server Sonnet Technologies’ xMac Pro Server ($1499 for the basic kit) hosts your new Mac Pro in a 4U rack mount enclosure. It accommodates three PCIe expansion cards (connected via Thunderbolt 2), as well as two 5.25-inch mobile rack bays. The xMac Pro Server provides a hefty power supply and quiet dual fans, and it extends the Mac Pro’s own expansion ports to the back of the enclosure (sonnettech.com).—JOEL MATHIS KICKFLIP Bluelounge’s $18 Kickflip hinge attaches to the back edge of your MacBook and raises the keyboard at an angle to make typing easier. The Kickflip folds flat on the MacBook’s underside, and it attaches with an adhesive, which the company says will leave no residue if you want to remove or reposition the hinge. It comes in…

I’m not a watch guy. That’s not a fashion statement—I’ve just never liked having anything on my wrists. But after trying the Apple Watch at Apple’s recent press event, I saw how much attention the company has paid to every detail—from its impressive looks to the solid stainless steel case to the sapphire crystal screen. But looks alone don’t explain why this gadget impresses where other smartwatches have left me cold. Three things stand out. IT HAS CLEVER CONTROLS You’ll do some on-screen tapping and swiping with the Apple Watch, but the screen of a wristwatch doesn’t lend itself to smartphone-style touch controls. So Apple turned the crown, which on traditional watches can set the time and wind the watch, into an all-purpose controller. You turn it to scroll through…

Smart Mac users know that taking some time to figure out a faster way to do something pays off in the long run. That’s why they employ powerful tools such as AppleScript, Automator, Hazel (noodlesoft.com), If This Then That (ifttt.com), Keyboard Maestro (keyboardmaestro.com), TextExpander (smilesoftware.com), and others—tools that let you automate tasks you perform frequently so that you can make them happen with single keystrokes (or other quick triggers) instead of running through all of the steps every time. We’re always looking for ways to save time, so we asked some of our colleagues and friends for their favorite timesaving tricks—the most useful, cleverest systems they’ve set up to automate everyday tasks. The quantity and quality of the replies were stunning. You’ll find our picks in the pages that follow.…

Get a URL and Title in Markdown TOOL: Keyboard Maestro In much of my writing, I use Markdown (go.macworld.com/markdown) syntax. I also frequently refer to articles on the Web, which requires me to copy and paste the article’s title and its URL into the Markdown format, in this form: [Article Title](http://article-url-here). That workflow used to mean two copy-and-paste trips from my browser to my text editor. But I now use a Keyboard Maestro macro that copies the current webpage’s title and URL and puts them on the Clipboard in the proper format. In Keyboard Maestro, choose File → New Macro and enter a name (such as MarkdownURL). Choose Hot Key Trigger from the New Trigger pop-up menu. Press a key combination (I use command-<Control>-U). Click New Action, and then…

Paste the Previous Clipboard Contents TOOL: Keyboard Maestro I often paste something and then immediately realize I wanted the previous contents of my Clipboard. To make a quick keyboard shortcut that will paste whatever was in the Clipboard just before the current thing, I set up a Keyboard Maestro macro. Choose File → New Macro and enter a name (such as Paste Previous Clipboard). Choose Hot Key Trigger from the New Trigger pop-up menu. Press a key combination (I use command-<Control>-V). Click New Action, and then double-click Set Clipboard to Past Clipboard (under the Clipboard category). Leave the Past Clipboard number set to 1. Next, double-click Type a Keystroke (under the Text category), click in the Simulate Keystroke field, and press command-V. To use the macro, copy something to your…

I’ve sat through countless dull PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. And I’ll admit that some of mine have been snoozers, too. Based on my observations of colleagues’ presentations, and on the feedback that I’ve received about my own, I’d like to share one simple tip for making presentations better: Don’t focus on the software. You read that right: In some of the most successful presentations I’ve seen, I barely noticed the material on the screen. If your audience leaves feeling informed, inspired, or entertained, you’ve done a better job than if they leave talking about your fancy 3D effects. START WITH THE MESSAGE Nobody watches an Apple keynote address to see the slides. People watch these presentations to see Tim Cook and other executives in action and to learn about new…

N o one likes to think about disasters such as burglaries, earthquakes, fires, the zombie apocalypse, or other catastrophes that could potentially wipe out your Mac, other gadgets, and perhaps even your entire home or office. But these things do happen (with the possible exception of the zombies), and despite your best efforts, you might not be able to prevent a loss. You can, however, minimize the damage and speed up your recovery by making sure that you’ve taken a few commonsense steps ahead of time. INSURANCE Let’s start with your hardware—your Mac(s), hard drives, monitors, printer, scanner, and so on. If you pull into your driveway and find a huge crater where your home stood, replacing your com- puter equipment will probably appear in the top ten items on…

As you may have heard, Shazam’s music recognition technology will be incorporated into Siri in iOS 8. Having the ability to identify a song playing in the background (and then purchase it via the iTunes Store) is great for mobile devices. But what about those of us sitting in front of our Macs? The answer comes in the form of the free Shazam for Mac (go.macworld.com/shazammac). Available in the Mac App Store, you just download it and doubleclick to install it, and Shazam keeps an ear out via your Mac’s built-in mic or a microphone plugged in to the computer’s microphone port (USB mics are not currently supported). EASY IDENTIFICATION Shazam makes itself known by appearing in your Mac’s menu bar, and starts listening right away. When Shazam hears a…