Macworld February 2017

The Mac Pro and Mac mini have languished for years. The iMac faces increased competition from rivals like Microsoft’s Surface Studio. The MacBook is thinner and lighter than ever, but not more powerful. Critics say it’s clear that Apple has put the Mac on the back burner. In a memo to employees, CEO Tim Cook said nothing could be further from the truth: “We have great desktops in our roadmap,” he wrote, according to TechCrunch. “Nobody should worry about that.” But it’s not that simple. A recent report from Bloomberg outlined the internal troubles facing the Mac team at Apple and spilled the updates coming next year. Spoiler alert: They’re minor. The iMac is getting a new AMD graphics processor and USB-C ports, while the MacBook and MacBook Pro will see…

As sure as the Earth sweeps through its orbit around the sun, the changing of a calendar year is a time to reflect about what’s happened and ponder what’s to come. Last year I made a list of things I wanted to see from the Mac in 2016; the results were fair to middling. Truth be told, 2016 was a rough year for Mac watchers. There were new MacBook Pros and a slightly updated MacBook, and of course OS X became macOS, but there were no new Mac desktops for the first time in a long time. Keeping in mind that these lists are always a mixture of informed guessing and sheer wishcasting, here’s a list of some of the things I hope we see from the Mac in 2017. MAC PRO: WANTED,…

What do Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, opened in December, and the Mac have in common? John Knoll is chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the division of LucasFilm that has been a leader in creating special effects for decades. And, yes, ILM is responsible for the special effects in Rogue One. But beyond his role as a leader at ILM, John Knoll is the executive producer of Rogue One, and the film’s story is credited to him. When Disney bought LucasFilm and announced that it would be making annual Star Wars films, including ones that weren’t the continuation of the story from Return of the Jedi, Knoll pitched an idea he had that had its origins in the opening crawl of the original 1977 Star Wars. That pitch,…

I still miss the Scrapbook that was part of the pre-OS X chain of Macintosh system releases. It was like a super clipboard that let you hold several items; you could scroll through, pick a “scrap” to copy, and then paste it into a program. Since the inception of OS X, many utilities have sought to replicate and expand Scrapbook. But for my money, I’m not sure any has brought the concept fully forward and updated it for modern needs until Pastebot 2 ($20 on the App Store). (Pastebot was in a long beta, and its maker opted to number it “2.0” as a result.) In February 2015, Joe Kissell wrote a thorough round-up of clipboard-managing utilities, some of which have a lot of non-scrapbook functions, too. Pastebot 2 has the…

Luminar 1.1.0, Macphun’s brand new flagship photo app, is the company’s answer to Photoshop and Lightroom for photographers. It’s a universal, non-destructive general photo editor that sits atop an impressive assortment of specialized Mac-only image apps and plug-ins like Creative Kit 2016, Aurora HDR 2017, and others. With Luminar, Macphun now aims to conquer the complexity of general image editing for amateur and pro users who capture photos with a variety of devices from DSLRs and mirrorless cameras to high-end smartphones. Whereas photographers who rely on Photoshop quickly encounter its famously steep learning curve, Luminar provides the tools for similar editing results with a much easier, Apple Photos-style effort. Its concentration on photo editing and styling, combined with a massive number of slider-based tools, is designed for all skill levels, giving users…

For moviegoers, the cinematic experience begins with buying a ticket at the box office. But for filmmakers, it’s a story that was years in the making—a communal voyage that began with a writer extracting ideas from their head and turning them into descriptive words and colorful dialogue that would act as a blueprint for the entire production. Since 1991, Final Draft has been the word processor of choice for most screenwriters. The software is now in use by a large majority of film and television productions, and with good reason: It not only eases the burden of formatting scripts to the rigid standards of Hollywood studios, but introduces new ways to visualize ideas. FADE IN Celebrating a silver anniversary in 2016, Final Draft 10 ($250, finaldraft.com) comes on the heels of a modest…