Indice dei contenuti per January 2018 in Macworld

If you’re looking for a way to save some money on new Apple products, try checking out the Apple Certified Refurbished store. You can find some good deals on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and more. Here’s a quick guide with links to the best deals you can find on the refurb store, along with a FAQ guide if you want to know more about the ins and outs of the Apple Certified Refurbished store. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE APPLE CERTIFIED REFURBISHED STORE AND THE APPLE STORE? The Apple Certified Refurbished store sells gently-used products that have been returned to the company. Apple repairs and tests these products to make sure they are in like-new condition. The Apple store, however, sells only new products that have never been opened and used.…

The Photoshop CC 2018 update has plenty to look forward to beyond the typical annual upgrade of Adobe’s subscription desktop photo/graphic design app. It integrates support for emerging technologies like 360-degree spherical panoramas and the HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) image file format adopted by Apple for macOS 10.13 and iOS 11. Combined with new features like variable fonts, paint stroke smoothing, a symmetry tool, a Curvature Pen tool, direct social media sharing, instant access to synced Lightroom photos, enhanced search, brush management, layer copy and paste, and more, Photoshop CC 2018 welcomes newcomers by incorporating training directly into the app. Photoshop’s updates and new features reflect a profound thought process about meeting changing user needs—from variable fonts to Lightroom integration to brush organization—that may well encourage non-subscriber pro users to…

WYZECAM Could a $20 home security camera actually be any good? Turns out the answer is, yeah, it can be very good. The WyzeCam has many of the same features as $200 cameras, including 1080p video, motion and sound detection, night vision, and two-way audio. It also comes with 14 days of free cloud storage—double the most generous offers of other DIY cams—for detection-alert videos and up to 32GB of local storage via microSD card. —MICHAEL ANSALDO ANKER POWERCORE FUSION 5000 The epitome of a portable battery pack, the Powercore Fusion 5000 ($26) includes an AC wall plug to pull double duty as a multi-port wall charger. When sitting in an airport near an outlet, you can use the Fusion to charge your iPhone without using any of the internal…

A talking fox. A pig doing stand-up. A singing pile of poo. A robot reciting slam poetry. You’re going to see all these things and more all over your iMessages and social media feeds in the coming months. They’re called “Animoji” and they’re Apple’s frivolous, fun, and downright addictive way to show off the capabilities of the TrueDepth camera in the iPhone X. If you want to know how they work and what you can do with them, read on. Once you learn a few tricks, they’re a lot more flexible and fun than just sending an iMessage to your friend as a talking pig. WHAT ARE ANIMOJI? The word Animoji is a portmanteau of “animated” and “emoji,” and that’s exactly what these are. It’s a feature exclusive to the…

Mophie made a name for itself with its battery-pack cases for smartphones years ago. As the company grew, so did its product line. Portable batteries are a natural extension of Mophies product offering. We tested the Powerstation Plus XL, a 12,000mAh (46.056Wh), lightweight battery pack. The $99 pack includes a cable that’s dual purpose, with a removable Lightning adapter for Apple devices and a Micro-USB adapter for everything else. There’s also a standard USB-A port on the pack. The built-in cable tucks into the edge of the pack, wrapping around roughly half of its perimeter. Removing the Lightning adapter to convert to Micro-USB is a breeze. A single Micro-USB port on the opposite end of the cable is used to charge the pack itself. A power button and four indicator…

CASE-MATE MOOD Who needs a mood ring when you can have a mood case? Case-Mate’s dual-layer Mood case ($50) has two parts: a flexible, shock-absorbing sleeve with metallic purple button covers, and a rigid backplate adorned with temperature-changing film. When you’re not touching the case, it’s mostly blue—the bumper is a bright metallic turquoise, and Case-Mate’s signature metal accent is at the bottom is an oil-slick of blue-purple-pink. When you touch the film on the back of the case, it changes from blue to purple-pink (depending on the temperature). Temperature-changing film is definitely not new, but if you fiddle with your phone frequently I think you might get some neat results. SPIGEN CRYSTAL HYBRID GLITTER CASE Spigen’s Crystal Hybrid Glitter case ($35) is sparkly, see-through, and has a built-in kickstand!…

When Apple comes to mind, it probably conjures images of slick, carefully engineered devices with innovative, envelope-pushing features. And the company’s surely had more than its fair share of those, but it’s also managed to pull off a subtler but far greater feat that goes underappreciated. The company has not only figured out how to make us eat our vegetables— technologically speaking—but it’s also turned those very features into selling points. Because it’s one thing to sell a flashy, shiny device; it’s quite another to get people excited about the mundane necessities of the technology world. BABY GOT BACKUPS In fall 2007, I’d only recently started working at Macworld, and I was assigned to cover what was the biggest of big deals in those days: the launch of Apple’s latest…

When the HomePod was announced at WWDC in June, it seemed like Apple was finally jumping head first into the smart speaker race. Introduced as a coveted “one last thing,” Tim Cook and Phil Schiller extolled the devices music playback abilities, saying the HomePod was going to “reinvent the way we enjoy music in the home” in a device that combined the fidelity of Sonos with the fun of an Amazon Echo. Like many others, I wanted to believe that pristine music quality was just one of many features Apple was bringing to the smart speaker space. But as more details begin to trickle out about Apple’s plans for the HomePod, it’s becoming clear that the new device is more of a voice-controlled speaker than a true Echo competitor. While the…

Why photo counts might differ between Photos in iOS, macOS, and iCloud.com Computers are supposed to be good at counting, right? So why do the numbers sometimes not add up for photos? Macworld reader Jeffrey asks a question that’s similar to ones asked by others: The photo count between my Mac and my iPhone are not the same. I use iTunes syncing along with My Photo Stream to keep the devices identical. Something has gone amiss. I don’t have any idea how to troubleshoot the image counts since iTunes is supposed to be syncing the images. How might I determine if a problem really exists, and if so, how do I fix it? There are long-running discussions on Apple’s forums about iTunes syncing not matching up numbers in iPhoto and…

It’s funny, Apple crowing about its biggest Mac revenue year ever at a time when there seems to be quite a bit of unrest about the Mac out there on the Internet. Is the Mac doing well or is the Mac user base frustrated at the past few years of Apple’s stewardship of the platform? It might be a little bit of both. I detailed some of Apple’s controversial laptop design decisions recently. To be sure, there are classes of users for whom the latest generation of MacBook Pro models, introduced in October 2016, are appreciably worse than the previous generation models. But I’ve also talked to a lot of people who have bought new MacBook Pros and love them. It’s possible that this swirling dissatisfaction with Apple’s laptop direction has a…

As a longtime Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom user, I periodically consider buying a digitizer, such as a Wacom tablet, to better take advantage of editing with brushes and other tools that work with pen-based input. I know photographers and artists who swear by them, but it would be a significant expense for my comparatively modest editing needs. It turns out, though, I already have an excellent pen-based touchscreen device: an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. More often than not, it’s usually on my desk at home or in my bag at a coffee shop. Astropad Studio ($79.99 per year) turns that iPad Pro into a digitizer. Most Wacom tablets incorporate a pen-sensitive surface that transmits strokes and taps over a wire. If you want to spend at least $800,…

So that $1,000+ sticker shock didn’t put you off from buying the phone that Apple calls “the future,” did it? We don’t blame you—we bought the iPhone X, too. I know you want to dive right in the moment you get the box in your hands, but slow your roll! We have a little setup advice you’re going to want to pay attention to. Sure, it seems like a drag right now, but this stuff is going to save you time and frustration later. 1. BACK UP AND RESTORE That’s right, you’ll want to back up your old iPhone after you have your new iPhone X in hand, so the backup is as up-to-date as possible. Back up via iCloud or iTunes: For an iTunes backup: Connect your old iPhone…

There are a lot of new features and changes rolled into the iPhone X. But after using the iPhone X for a few days, the one that I think will make the biggest impact on the way we use our iPhones day-to-day is definitely Face ID. It’s a huge feature that takes advantage of groundwork Apple has been laying for some time in iOS, but in the end it will triumph. Face ID changes the game by separating the act of unlocking the iPhone from physical interactions with the phone’s screen or buttons. Put together with the Raise to Wake feature introduced with iOS 10, the natural act of lifting the iPhone X and glancing at it performs two tasks that used to require interaction: waking up the device and…

Home security cameras have a couple of ways of maximizing the amount of room real estate they can cover. Ultra-wideangle lenses are the most common solution, but they often cause distortion as they squeeze the image to fit. Cameras with motorized pan-and-tilt features let you sweep the room, but this leaves you turning your back on one part of a room to see what’s happening in another. The Guardzilla 360, as its name suggests, pulls off the neat trick of monitoring an entire room all at once. The Guardzilla 360 uses the same pyramid design as the original Guardzilla All-In-One HD Security Camera, but this model is equipped with 1712p HD camera on the top pointing up. It also includes 360-degree PIR (passive infrared) motion sensors to detect movement from…

This is it—the iPhone that longtime Apple users have been waiting for. The iPhone X brings back the thrill of the original iPhone, which was introduced 10 years ago. It breathes new life into the product line with an eye toward the future, while providing plenty of functionality for today. What makes the iPhone X exciting? First, there’s the TrueDepth camera, used for Face ID (Apple’s new security feature), as well as augmented reality. Then there’s the OLED display, which is so goodlooking, you may make the iPhone X your primary device to look at pictures and watch video. And last but not least, there’s the A11 Bionic processor, which brings the iPhone to a new level of performance. The iPhone X also has a bunch of other great features: new…

In macOS High Sierra, Apple updated the Notes app with support for tables. Now you don’t need to resort to Numbers or Excel if you want to create a document and want to use rows and columns to keep your data orderly. You still may want to use a spreadsheet app, especially if you are recording numerical data and want to perform functions, or you want to be able to sort your data in different ways. Notes’ tables don’t have functions like those; they are very basic grids. CREATE A TABLE > Open the note where you want the table to appear or start a new note (Command-N). > There are three ways to create a table in Excel: 1. Click on the Add A Table button on the toolbar…

AirPlay has been with us for a long time. It’s an evolution of the old AirTunes protocol, which was meant only for music. In 2010, AirTunes got a host of new capabilities (music, photos, video) and a new name. A year later, it gained the ability to mirror your iOS or Mac screen to a compatible AirPlay receiver. With an Apple TV, you could put your Mac desktop on your PC in the blink of an eye! You’ve seen the AirPlay logo in dozens of apps, often tucked away in the Share menu. If you want to beam content from your iOS device to the Apple TV or a set of speakers, it’s delightful. But it has languished over the last several years, adding no meaningful new features while the…

The new iMac Pro will be Apple’s fastest Mac by a country mile. With 18 CPU cores, Radeon Vega graphics, and 128GB of RAM, there isn’t much Apple’s newest all-in-one won’t be able to do. But a recent discovery by Apple code spelunker Steven Troughton-Smith suggests an iPhone chip might be along for the ride. Troughton-Smith has gotten his hands on Apple’s new BridgeOS 2.0 software, which will presumably be part of the upcoming iMac Pro’s software package. And while it didn’t divulge quite as much as the HomePod firmware leak earlier this year that spilled the beans on the iPhone X, it does include some very interesting things. Chief among them is a reference to a version of Apple’s A10 Fusion chip, the same silicon that powers the iPhone 7. Why this…

Apple’s iMovie has been around for a long time, and it has always focused on one philosophy: ease of use in a clean and elegant interface. After many years, this hasn’t changed. It’s still a delight to use, if a little bit obtuse at times in its pursuit of minimalism. It lacks some of the formats and features supported in other programs, but what’s there is implemented beautifully. iMovie doesn’t offer the tutorials or wizards that some other programs for beginners do—though there is a neat movie-trailer–generation tool. Rather, it keeps the interface as basic as possible while guiding you with simple tooltips as you mouse over specific buttons and features. Total beginners might end up scratching their heads a little more than they would in apps with more explicit…

The Home button has been the one constant on the iPhone over the last decade. From day one, you would press the Home button to return to the Home screen. As Apple added features to the iPhone, the Home button took on more capabilities. But it’s time for a new era, one that kicks the Home button to the curb. With the iPhone X, Apple pushes the display right up to the very edge of the phone and eliminates the Home button. If Apple says the iPhone X is “the future,” the Home button is ancient history. How do you even use an iPhone without a Home button? Here’s a quick guide to all the new gestures and button combinations you’ll need to relearn as you acquaint yourself with the…

The iPhone X is here. Mind you, if you haven’t staked a spot in line at an Apple Store you probably won’t be able to get one, but technically iPhone X is finally available for purchase. And based on its unconventional marketing push, Apple really, really wants you to want to buy one, even if you don’t actually intend to plunk down $1,000-plus dollars. Not that it didn’t want you to lust over the iPhone 7 or iPhone 6, but there’s something different about the way Apple is hawking iPhone X. With iPhone 8, Apple is selling a new phone: better processor, better camera, new color. With iPhone X, it’s selling an experience. From the YouTube first impression videos to celebrity retweets and rolling reviews, iPhone X is being presented…

GNOG Games like The Room try to challenge and befuddle players with its puzzle boxes, while GNOG instead seems content to entertain more than confound. It too gives you a series of puzzling boxes or devices to try and unlock and explore, but it has a very loose and light feel to the exploration, encouraging you to poke and prod until something new happens. FlipFlop Solitaire Zach Gage is a prolific game designer, but lately he’s been focused on tweaking classic games into something fresh and exciting for mobile. He did that with the great Sage Solitaire and last year’s Really Bad Chess, and now he’s remixing the former card game classic again with the new Flipflop Solitaire. Tower Fortress Nitrome publishes some of the best pixel-packed games on the App Store, so…

New to this years’ iPhones is fast-charging capability. According to Apple, you can juice up your phone to 50 percent in just 30 minutes! There’s just one catch: You have to buy a new power adapter. Oh, and a new USB-C to Lightning cable, too. That’s two catches, and it’s starting to sound expensive. Is it even worth it? We grabbed five power adapters and three iPhones, ran a bunch of tests, and got to the bottom of the iPhone charging mystery. The truth is, while USB-C fast charging certainly works, you’re much better off buying Apple’s 12W USB-A Power Adapter— the one that comes with most iPads. It’s a lot less expensive ($19) and nearly as fast. HOW WE TESTED The iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus all support…

Apple’s cloud services (iTunes, iCloud, etc.) require you to create an Apple ID, which is essentially your key to access. Each person using Apple’s services should have a unique Apple ID, but sometimes people share IDs for convenience. That could led to some issues, however. For example, if an Apple ID is being shared by a couple, it can create a problem if the couple breaks up. A reader writes in with such a story: My partner and I broke up. We shared the same iTunes account. Everything downloaded on one phone appears on the other. How do I stop this? While the question is about iTunes, an iTunes account is a form of Apple ID: you can use it just for purchasing, or with iCloud for calendar, contacts, email,…

Bowers & Wilkins tends to be fashionably late when it comes to rolling out new wireless products. In the time it took the company to design the $399 PX Wireless Headphones, companies like Sony, Bose, AKG, and Sennheiser have dropped multiple models of active noise-cancelling models. This is par for the course for the British manufacturer. Its iconic Zeppelin speakers see infrequent reiterations, and the company tinkered and watched its competition for years before releasing its first Bluetooth headphones, the sublime P5 Wireless. After testing the PX Wireless for a week, I can say the resulting hardware was mostly worth the wait. HOW ARE THE B&W PX DESIGNED? Available in gray to match an iOS device or a satin-finished gold and blue to match your Victorian-era British Admiralty uniform, the PX…