Índex per September 2022 a Macworld

We live in a wonderful era for Apple laptops. The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros provide desktop power and stunning HDR displays. The new M2 MacBook Air has now joined the family, with a similar striking design and the Air’s trademark smaller size and weight. After a dark period where Apple struggled with flawed laptop keyboards, a painful transition to USB-C, and an increasingly frustrating relationship with Intel, things haven’t looked this bright in quite some time. That’s why, as Apple looks on proudly at the new line of laptops it has fashioned over the past couple of years, I have only one request: More, please. LAPTOPS ARE THE BEST Let’s start with the facts. For decades, the overall percentage of new Macs sold that are laptops kept going up.…

For all the tweaking and features Apple has added to macOS to help us place, resize, and hide windows, there’s no way to snap them into standard sizes, resize them against a grid, or save custom window configurations. Moom brings these missing features to macOS, allowing you to have the same sort of flexibility for any app that some programs, like Photoshop, allow for windows only within their interface frame. Moom manages most complexity by exposing its tools through the green zoom button. When you hover over this button on any window, a popup menu shows a set of standard window shapes: maximized, centered, half screen (top, bottom, left, right), and quarter screen (four corners). Click a button, and the window immediately resizes to the shape and position. Hold Option and…

I come here not to bury the iPhone mini but to praise it. If reports are true, the iPhone 13 mini will be the last of its line, replaced by a larger iPhone 14 Max this fall. And as someone who owns and loves an iPhone 13 mini, this makes me sad—sad enough to hold onto my mini for another year. It seems, however, that not enough people share my love for the iPhone 13 mini for Apple to update it for the iPhone 14 generation. No matter: The iPhone 13 mini is a great device. It’s so great, in fact, that I suspect we haven’t seen the end of its design yet. IN PRAISE OF THE LITTLE GUY There’s no denying it: People love big phones. The iPhone went on…

Excitrus has hit the target for a near-perfect affordable, high-speed, high-storage USB battery pack. With a capacity of just under 75 watt-hours (Wh) or 20,800 milliampere-hours (mAh), you can recharge a tablet, phone, laptop, and Bluetooth devices across three ports. The power pack includes support for USB Power Delivery protocols, allowing up to 100W on one USB-C port and up to 65W on its second USB-C port. Its sole USB Type-A port delivers up to 18W, and can support the Android-centric QC charging standard. On top of that, the 100W Magnetic Wireless Power Bank tells you in its name about a bonus: a 10W magnetically aligned wireless charging target on its top compatible with Apple’s MagSafe-capable iPhones. It even recharges itself at a distinctly speedy 65W over one of its…

When iOS 16 is released this fall, it’s going to change the way hundreds of millions of people use their iPhones. No, there aren’t any wholesale changes to the entire iPhone interface, so it’s not like you’ll suddenly have to unlearn the last 10 years of iPhone interface evolution. But there are scores of new features, some big and some rather small, that will come into play nearly every time you pick up your phone. These five features in particular will become a part of the way millions of people use their iPhones every single day. They’re so useful, or just so integrated into the basic iPhone experience, that they’re likely to quickly become a staple of the iPhone experience—the sort of thing we just come to associate with the platform.…

Every Mac sold since the mid-2000s with few exceptions included a Wi-Fi card, module, or chip that’s part of the motherboard. Thus, it’s surprising to any Mac user who fires up their Mac or is in the middle of using it when they see a message that reads “Wi-Fi: No hardware installed” in the system Wi-Fi menu; equally vexing is “Wi-Fi: Not configured” when you’ve made no changes and were just using it. In both cases, a hardware problem could be the root. But you should run through other troubleshooting steps first. FIX WI-FI: NOT CONFIGURED It’s possible that network settings were disrupted or corrupted, disabling Wi-Fi access in a way that can be easily fixed through the Network preferences pane. To find out if that’s the case, follow these…

Mark Levinson is to audio what Lamborghini, Porsche, and Ferrari are to automobiles. The high-end brand, named after its legendary founder, has left an indelible mark with audio products priced in the four and five figures. The Mark Levinson team is looking to add a new—and admittedly atypical—product to that legacy: the $999 No. 5909 wireless noise-cancelling headphone. This is the first headphone model Mark Levinson has ever produced, and it’s designed for the busy professional or passionate listener. What makes this headphone special isn’t necessarily its pedigree, premium materials, onboard tech, or noise-cancelling performance (though it has all of those, too). Rather, what’s notable is the No. 5909’s voicing to the so-called Harman target curve for headphones. The result? A gorgeous headphone worthy of the Levinson heritage that will…

HOW TO AVOID BACKUP BLOWOUTS BY DISABLING iCLOUD OPTIMIZED STORAGE ON YOUR MAC In macOS you can choose to optimize your usage of local storage by having your Mac automatically offload files it is already syncing to iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, and other services. The logic is that you might have limited local storage and dozens to hundreds of gigabytes of data you don’t need access to all the time, such as filed documents and photos from years past. You want them available on demand—with an active internet connection—but not necessarily filling your drive. However, there’s a big catch: So-called optimized files are backed up only in iCloud. Because there’s only a local placeholder for the synced file, Time Machine, third-party sync and backup software, and internet-hosted backup services cannot…

At various points during the past several years, Apple has been rated the most valuable corporation in the world. And it’s pretty safe to assume the company didn’t get to that point without being strategic about how it positions its products. One big part of what’s made Apple so successful is that the company makes sure it’s got products at every price point. No, it doesn’t compete in the super-budget department when it comes to devices—Apple is happy to leave those low-margin offerings to the likes of Android phones and Dell PCs—but when it does enter a market, it makes sure it always has a solid spread. Of course, when you’re a company that builds powerful, good-looking devices and values its profit margins, your options are somewhat limited when it…

If your work—or fun—involves robot-like repetitive actions taken on images, Retrobatch can put the automation in your workflow and leave you time to handle more creative tasks. The app, in development across 20 years, lets you create processing workflows for simple operations, like adding a border and changing resolution, up through massive chained sets of transformations using rules that let you choose one or more paths for an image to take. That power is controlled through visual connections, creating a flowchart-like set of connected nodes. Nodes are specialized, like applying an effect or resizing an image. Each node can have multiple inputs or outputs. A typical flow reads images from a source (a folder, a selection dialog, the Photos library, and so on), passes them through processing and decision-making steps, and…

This fall marks the eighth anniversary of the announcement of Apple’s newest major hardware category, the Apple Watch. In that time, it has become the leading example of a wearable device, and though other companies have produced competitors, none of those has quite managed to match the popularity or cachet of the Apple Watch. The device has evolved too—perhaps not as dramatically as the iPhone did in its first eight years—changing from a do-everything phone replacement on the wrist to one focused on health and fitness…and then back to its phone replacement roots. It’s gotten a larger screen, more sensors, and different case materials, but you still can’t make your own watch faces. What’s on tap for the Apple Watch this fall? What does Apple, if you’ll excuse the expression,…

Almost as soon as the AirTag appeared, people asked whether it was a good approach to tracking pets. Absolutely—with the proviso that there was no good way to attach an AirTag to most pet collars. A keychain case would tangle, potentially trapping your pet in a crevice or exposing the AirTag to damage or loss—or just worrying the pet with the extra weight on its collar. ElevationLab’s TagVault: Pet is part of its rugged waterproof AirTag case series, bringing the same attention to detail it has with its TagVault: Keychain. Like that case, the TagVault: Pet uses screws with the small Torx T6 star-shaped drive for the portion that contains the AirTag and maintains the waterproof seal. The kit includes a steel Torx T6 L-shaped wrench with screw tips on both…

If you’ve looked into how much storage space to keep unused on an SSD, you likely came across recommendations ranging from 0 to 50 percent and may be frustrated about how to sort out the right number. When you have a 1TB or 2TB drive, keeping even 20 percent (200GB or 400GB) unused might seem both wasteful and costly. For most consumer uses and even many professional ones, you can err on the low side of empty storage, down to even filling a drive up to what you might have thought was 100 percent full, depending on how you use the SSD now and plan to in the future. You may decide after reading this column not to worry about free space at all or opt to keep empty nearly…

Decades ago, early “personal” word processors were ungainly dedicated computers. Yet they introduced a strikingly modern notion we continue to use: infinite scroll. Instead of being locked to a page as with a typewriter and paper, a word processor uncoupled a flow of words from pagination. Modern users can find somewhat the same split in many apps, and some readers find themselves caught in the wrong mode. Here’s how to switch between a continuous-scroll mode and a page-oriented view in Microsoft Word and the Preview app. (Why not include Pages? Because Pages is always in a continuous scroll preview mode with page breaks—essentially the Print Layout mode of Word, described next.) HOW TO SWITCH TO SINGLE-PAGE VIEW IN MICROSOFT WORD Word offers a choice between Print Layout and Draft. With…

If you’re interested in the Hi-Res audio files streamed by Apple Music, Qobuz, or Tidal, wireless Bluetooth headphones can’t yet deliver your music in its full-resolution glory; you’ll need to use wired headphones with your streaming source. If that source is an iOS or Android device, you’ll also need a device to take over the digital-to-analog signal conversion and give the audio signal a boost. The iFi Go is a combination DAC and headphone amp that delivers that upgraded audio in a compact package. The iFi Go is approximately the size of a pack of gum and it’s that small size that a big part of its allure—and a substantial reason for its relatively high price. That compact profile also means that there’s no battery in the DAC, so you’ll…

There was a time when Apple really cared about Macs having better video chat quality than any other computer you could buy. Almost 20 years ago, it introduced the iSight Firewire webcam, and it was a revelation. For $149 (less than the best webcams today!), it delivered clarity and audio quality far superior to that of all those PC webcams. Fast-forward 20 years, and Apple’s just not keeping pace. The webcams built into Macs these days are fuzzy, grainy, and low-res. Some are still capable of only 720p video, and only the latest models support 1080p. I regularly use a Logitech C920 webcam from 2012 that has the same video resolution, and usually far superior color and clarity. Only now are Mac webcams getting to be on par with the USB webcam…

KEYCHRON Q8 The Keychron Q8 employs the Alice key layout, created by Yuk Tsi. The basic design is a 60 percent layout with the central letters and numbers tilted slightly for an ergonomic cant. The Q8 features a heavy all-aluminum body, a choice of Gateron G Pro switches (linear red, clicky blue, tactile brown), interchangeable hot-swap PCB, high-quality doubleshot keycaps in the OSA profile, RGB lighting, QMK or VIA programming, and a premium gasket mounting. You also get the choice between a circular volume knob or a regular key in its place. —MICHAEL CRIDER C-SEED M1 While extravagantly enormous televisions are nothing new, the C-Seed M1 beats them all with its dramatic folding and unfolding action. The TV swings up from its base in a massive column, unfolding like…

Your iPhone can automatically drop a pin in Apple Maps when you’re parking your car. iOS infers this through your connection to your car audio system, relying on Bluetooth or CarPlay. When you disconnect or turn the car off and walk away, the location you left is where your iPhone believes you parked. However, you might find that this feature isn’t working for you, as a family member did. In fact, they couldn’t even find the option, which is usually in Settings → Maps as Show Parked Location. Apple mediates this feature through privacy settings. It requires that you have Settings → Privacy → Location Services turned on and Settings → Privacy → Location Services → System Services → Significant Locations also set to On. The reason? Apple derives locations…

So you’re ready to buy a new laptop. What do you need it for? What do you really need it for? It’s tempting to look at a top-of-the-line model, but most of us aren’t doing complex professional video edits on 4K video, heavy-duty scientific work, or really big coding projects every day. Most of us spend our time with some browser tabs open, a handful of apps for email and messaging, editing photos or maybe some simple videos, watching streaming video, that sort of thing. If you’re a gamer that wants to play the latest games, our sister site, PCWorld, can point you in the direction of a Windows laptop, but for everyone else—everyone who doesn’t use their laptop for very intensive tasks all day long—the MacBook Air is exactly…

Smart outlets can be useful as part of smart-home scenes: When the last person in your family has left the house, some lights, appliances, or other devices turn off automatically, and the reverse happens when you return. When you go on vacation, a schedule has smart outlets simulate the pattern of an occupied home to deter burglars. When you want more than one smart outlet in a certain place in your house, however, many designs take up the space of two AC outlets. You can purchase a two-outlet version of smart plugs, but it’s still limiting. Meross Technology tries to overcome multiple limitations with its Smart Wi-Fi Surge Protector, and it succeeds—at least from an interface and feature perspective. This surge protector has three independently controllable AC outlets and a…

You may have noticed that nearly all modern iPhones and AirPods list support for Bluetooth 5.0 (the first-gen AirPods supported by Bluetooth 4.2). You might surmise, then, that audio streams are being sent using a modern, advanced Bluetooth connection. Not so fast on that assumption! With nearly all headphones (and phones, tablets, or laptops) that list Bluetooth 5.0 on the spec sheet, that’s not the case at all. The core Bluetooth audio standards used for nearly all wireless audio are based on what they call “Bluetooth Classic,” the foundation of which is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. That spec is around 15 years old, and while Bluetooth technology has gone through a bunch of changes and improvements since then, most of those improvements have been to enhance things other than the…

LG raises the immersion bar with the S95QR, a Dolby Atmos/DTS:X soundbar with not two, not four, but five up-firing drivers, including one for the center channel. LG’s new flagship soundbar for 2022 does a superb job of peppering the room with surround and height effects, putting you in a bubble of thrillingly immersive sound, while the additional center height driver shores up the dialogue. The LG S95QR also arrives with AirPlay 2 and Chromecast support, not to mention an AI-powered room correction tool that adjusts the soundbar’s audio according to your home theater’s acoustics. On the downside, I had a tough time getting the LG S95QR to connect to my Wi-Fi network (I eventually succeeded after several tries), and the power cords for the two rear speakers are way,…