Macworld September 2022

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. The last time…

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 comes to…

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…

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…

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…

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 a room divider in…