MacworldMarch 2018的目錄

The discovery that in iOS 11.3 Apple is renaming the iBooks app to Books seemed…not particularly revelatory. We’ve all read about how Apple’s been slowly stripping away the lowercase i prefix from older products. New products and services are a generic word preceded with the word Apple, as in Apple TV and Apple Watch. This is the conventional wisdom. But is it true? NO, KILL ‘i’ Apple’s made no pronouncements itself about it. Yes, it seems the i prefix introduced with the iMac 20 years ago has fallen out of favor. (I’m reminded of the time when Steve Jobs said that the power prefix of the PowerBook and Power Mac had gotten tired.) And yet that same prefix continues to appear in front of some of Apple’s most popular products and…

Pixelmator is an impressive image editor. In my review of version 3.5, I wrote, “Pixelmator represents that percentage of Photoshop’s features most people actually use on a regular basis.” But some developers just can’t leave well enough alone. That’s good news for photographers and designers looking for an inexpensive ($60) Photoshop alternative. Pixelmator Pro 1.0 Whirlwind (Mac App Store link) is an all-new application designed with more demanding needs in mind. Although there’s plenty of feature overlap between it and Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro is a fresh start. FLOAT AWAY, PALETTES Pixelmator Pro presents an effectively clean and sparse experience, keeping your focus on the image. Editing tools appear in a single panel at the right side of the window. The entire left edge is devoted to layers, represented as thumbnails.…

Hot on the heels of iOS 11.2.5, which brought HomePod support, Siri news, and a fix for the Messages text bomb, Apple has started to release betas of iOS 11.3. And it’s going to have some pretty cool features on board, including the one we’ve all been waiting for: a toggle for CPU throttling on phones with old batteries. Here’s everything you need to know about what’s in iOS 11.3, when it’s coming, and how to install the beta. WHAT’S IN iOS 11.3? Battery and Performance As promised, Apple will bring some much-needed power management to the battery settings in iOS 11.3. Apple says users will now be able to see their overall battery health, and will recommend if it needs to be serviced. You will also be told if…

After admitting that it was purposefully throttling some older iPhones in order to conserve battery life, Apple has announced a new program that offers replacement batteries to all customers that may be affected. Here’s everything you need to know about it. IS MY iPHONE PART OF THE BATTERY REPLACEMENT PROGRAM? If you have an iPhone 6 or later you are eligible to receive a battery as part of the program. The complete list of phones included are: > iPhone SE > iPhone 6 > iPhone 6 Plus > iPhone 6s > iPhone 6s Plus > iPhone 7 > iPhone 7 Plus I HAVE AN iPHONE 5S. AM I OUT OF LUCK? It seems that you are. But you have nothing to lose by heading to your local Apple Store and talking to…

The Room: Old Sins What, three atmospheric and deeply satisfying puzzle adventures weren’t enough for you? The Room series has provided some of the most engrossing puzzle experiences on iOS, but the fun isn’t over: The Room: Old Sins is a new entry that delivers another series of perplexing contraptions to fiddle with and unlock. World of Warships Following in the footsteps of the popular World of Tanks Blitz, the new World of Warships Blitz scales down its larger free-to-play PC experience into more of a pick-upand- play naval combat simulation. Like Tanks, Warships Blitz condenses the the action into a streamlined 7-on-7 mode that lets you jump in for speedy battles whenever you please. Antihero We’ve seen plenty of hit board games translated into strong touch experiences, but Antihero is something different: it plays like…

HomePod may be the first new Apple device since Apple Watch nearly three years ago, but for many of us, it’s not the oh-my-god-I-need-to-have-it gadget we wanted it to be. Unless you’re specifically looking for a way to play Apple Music in your house, you’re probably on the fence about whether to buy one. If that’s the case, here are 10 things you might want to consider before placing your order. 1. YOU’LL NEED AN iOS DEVICE RUNNING IOS 11.2.5 Before you consider buying a HomePod, you’ll need to make sure you have the proper hardware: > iPhone 5s or later > iPad Pro (all models) > iPad (5th generation) > iPad Air or later > iPad mini 2 or later > iPod touch (6th generation) If you’re an Android…

Amid the battles over bezels, screens, and battery life, there’s one thing that all iPhones have in common: They’re powerful enough to replace your PC. Now before you start yelling at your screen, I’m not talking about the iMac Pro (see page 61) or the HP Omen. If you use your laptop or desktop to do something you can’t do on your phone, the point is moot. PCs and Macs still have their place in the world, and it’s going to be a long while before our mobile devices can handle the more strenuous tasks we call on our PCs to do. But for the majority of people, an iPhone is enough. Apple knows this. It’s already marketing the iPad as a computer, and the iPhone is just a stone’s…

If you watched the Grammy Awards, you saw a lot of Bruno Mars, a lot of Kendrick Lamar, and a lot of HomePod. Apple’s new smart speaker was featured in several 15-second ad spots throughout the show, none more prominent than the one that immediately followed Lamar’s show-opening performance. The spot featured audio of Lamar singing “I got loyalty” from his hit song “DNA,” which he had incidentally just finished performing. It was as well-timed as it was electric, capitalizing on a blistering performance and showcasing the HomePod’s street cred. For many people, it was an introduction to the HomePod that wasn’t about Siri or home control or even tech—it was about music. The HomePod ads—featuring a black screen with the word HomePod across it and a clip of a popular…

WHY DOES A SAFARI COOKIE REAPPEAR AFTER YOU DELETE IT? Safari for macOS lets you view the kind of data cached locally by websites in your browser. Select Safari → Preferences → Privacy, and then click Manage Website Data, and you can see the kind of data stored by every site. It can include Cache, Local Storage, Databases, Cookies, and much more. You can select items to remove them, or even go nuclear and click Remove All. Those are different categories of local storage, but they’re all managed by the Web site with the permission and mediation of the browser. Cookies is the most likely one to see, as cookies contain a login token used to keep a session going as you navigate among pages, or tracking data used…

If there’s one philosophy that seems to exemplify the vast majority of decisions that Apple has made about its products, it’s this: “We know best.” Now, I get it. That’s kind of the upside of having a benevolent dictator: decisions get made for you, and you don’t have to worry yourself about making the right ones. Of course, the downside to a benevolent dictator is that they’re still, fundamentally, a dictator. Apple’s taken its fair share of backlash over these kind of high-level decisions throughout the years, and the latest firestorm is about the company’s decision to make the trade-off of battery life versus performance in older iPhones. Whether or not the company is right to have chosen for us, it’s now walking that decision back, with Tim Cook saying…

My first typewriter was grandma’s old 1933 Royal Model 10-S, and those vintage keys spit out thousands of pages during my formative teenage years before the arrival of word processors. I still miss the firm, satisfying snap of metal keys, which I’ve never been able to replicate on Mac keyboards. Leave it to Azio, a company known for sturdy mechanical keyboards aimed at gamers and hardcore typists, to come up with the next best thing. The Retro Classic ($190, available on Amazon) combines modern technology with vintage good looks in a new line of luxury keyboards that offer the same type of circular keys I grew up with. VINTAGE STYLE The first thing you’ll notice is how solid this keyboard is, weighing in at a hefty 3.5 pounds thanks to…

It’s rare that Apple fans cheer a lack of new features in an upcoming product, but that may be the case with the next round of iPhone updates. After a flurry of embarrassing bugs in this year’s release of iOS, Apple is reportedly scaling back its plans for iOS 12 as it shifts its focus to quality and performance. And iPhone users should applaud this decision. WHAT’S NEW IN iOS 12? iOS 12 will certainly add new features, just not as many as originally planned. That is, if this story by Axios is true. Features on the chopping block The report says that VP of software engineering Craig Federighi told employees that Apple will delay several features originally due to land in iOS 12. According to wellconnected reporter Ina Fried,…

If there’s anyone who loves our iPhones more than we do, it’s our kids. Whether it’s an iPod touch, iPad mini, or a hand-me-down iPhone 5s, a whole generation of children are growing up with Apple’s mobile devices, giving them a whole new set of risks and dangers to navigate. But while Apple has done an admirable job keeping the App Store safe and apps engaging for kids, it hasn’t done much to protect them from the effects of the device itself. Last week, an influential group of Apple investors published an open letter to Apple titled, “Think Differently About Kids” in which they note a number of problems arising due to too much screen time. In younger eyes and brains, they write, several hours a day of smartphone use can…

SPECK PRESIDIO GRIP + GLITTER The Speck Presidio Grip + Glitter has grippy panels to help you not drop it, as well as a shock barrier inside for 10-foot drop protection. It’s a little less fussy than the Presidio Ultra, too, with an all-in-one design and open ports. You can get the plain Presidio Grip for $39.95 without embedded metallic glitter, but to be honest I prefer this sparkly version for $44.95. CAUDABE SYNTHESIS Caudabe thinks serious protection shouldn’t need to add a lot of extra bulk, and the $29.95 Synthesis is a slim case that consists of a hard back and an attached flexible bumper that absorbs bumps and shocks. The company says it can survive a drop of 3 meters (just under 10 feet). OTTERBOX PURSUIT SERIES OtterBox’s…

Allow me to indulge my imagination for just a moment. Over the past few months there’s been plenty of discussion about the future of the macOS and iOS platforms. About the possibility that they might come to share more hardware (go.macworld.com/shre) than they already do. About the potential for a unified application architecture between the two platforms. But device proliferation is at an all-time high: I have devices that range in size from an Apple Watch to a 5K iMac. There’s a place and purpose for each and every one of these devices; they serve distinct and specific niches in my work and play. I’d be hard-pressed to part with any of them. Still, part of me yearns for the simplicity of accomplishing all the same tasks, but with fewer…

Apple is said to be spending as much as $1 billion over the course of 2018 on original TV programming. That’s a lot of TV! It’s not the $8 billion Netflix is going to spend, but it’s still a huge commitment. What can you get for a billion dollars? Well, some simple math gives us 200 episodes at $5 million a piece (a reasonable per-episode price for high-end TV). But we’re not likely to actually see 10-20 shows with 10-20 episodes each, all costing around that much. For starters, that billion dollars has to cover a lot more than per-episode production costs. The bulk of Apple’s TV content is likely to be in production throughout 2018, with actual release dates in 2019. We’ll probably see a mix of show types,…

Apple’s AirPods are far from perfect, but they some of the best true wireless earbuds on the market, particularly for those with a lot of Apple gear. Everyone knows that AirPods work with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but we tend to overlook the fact that they also work wonderfully with Apple TV (4th generation or 4K). With the audio beaming wirelessly across your living room to your AirPods, you can enjoy late-night or early-morning TV without disturbing everyone else in your house. Here’s how you make it happen. PAIRING WITH APPLE TV If your Apple TV is running tvOS 11 or later, and it’s logged in to the same iCloud account as the iPhone or iPad you’ve paired your AirPods with, you’re already done! AirPods automatically pair with other Apple devices using…

If the iPhone X is slumping, it’s sure not affecting Apple’s bottom line. In the quarter ending December 31, 2017, Apple reported a record revenue of $88.3 billion, a 13 percent increase over last year’s $78.4 billion (which was also a record). Additionally, Apple posted an all-time record quarterly earnings per diluted share of $3.89. And that’s with one less week of sales over last year’s first quarter. Leading the way was the iPhone, but not due to unit sales. Apple moved 77.3 million iPhones in the three-month holiday quarter, about a million less than last year, but revenue grew by more than $7 billion to $61.6 billion. While Apple didn’t break out the different iPhone models, it’s clear that the higher price of the iPhone X contributed to the gains.…

8BITDO SN30 PRO 8bitdo’s SN30 Pro is a Bluetooth-based wireless controller designed for die-hard retro gaming fans, taking its design cues from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. If you’re used to the SNES’s controller, you’ll need to adjust to the SN30 Pro. On the face of the controller is the usual D-pad, start, select, and face buttons, but they are shifted up to allow room for analog sticks and two extra buttons. Overall, the SN30 Pro feels solid, and gamers who appreciate retro nostalgia, want contemporary functionality for current games, or are looking for a great portable option, will like the SN30 Pro.—ADAM PATRICK MURRAY UA SPORT WIRELESS FLEX You might find smarter wireless headphones on the market, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more practical sports headphone than…

We’ll fix it in post.” It’s a longstanding joke in the podcast community—when somebody flubs a line or misspeaks during recording, we just kick the can down the road and repair it in editing. (For shows that actually do editing, anyway.) But lately it’s started to seem like a more common occurrence across the tech industry, and even Apple’s jumped aboard the train. We’ve seen a number of places where Apple announced a particular feature shipping in a product—whether it be a new hardware device or a major software update—only to eventually release the product without said feature, promising it in a subsequent software update. The most recent example is the HomePod (see page 70), which will lack support for multiroom audio, stereo pairing, and AirPlay 2 when it ships…

It’s not a bad idea to keep a small battery pack in your backpack or purse at all times. You’d be surprised how often a little extra juice can save the day. But what if you have bigger needs? Laptop-scale needs? What if that 12-hour international flight doesn’t have seat outlets? What if you’re doing a lot of work on your MacBook at an outdoor venue and you have no idea if you’ll have access to an outlet? A large power pack with an AC plug, like Mophie’s new Powerstation AC, may be just what you need. CLASSY DESIGN The Powerstation AC has a welcoming design. It’s about the size of a small paperback book, but much heavier at about 1.66 pounds. The cloth exterior looks and feels good, and…

Four years since Apple last shipped a desktop Mac with the word pro in the name, the iMac Pro has arrived. Holding down the high end of the Mac product line until the day (hopefully in 2018) when a new Mac Pro arrives, the iMac Pro fuses the look of the 27-inch 5K iMac with the priorities of a professional workstation. This is not a computer designed for the masses—a new iMac Pro starts at $5,000 and you can pay five figures for a high-end model. If you aren’t sure you need the power of the iMac Pro, you almost certainly don’t. If, on the other hand, you are hungry for multi-core performance and a powerful GPU that will let you crank through intense tasks—in video editing, software development, photo and audio processing,…

First Alert invented residential smoke detectors decades ago, so imagine my surprise when I walked into First Alert’s booth at CES and saw a router bearing the company’s name. And it’s not just any router: The Onelink Connect is a tri-band 802.11ac model that comes with two mesh access points in addition to the one inside the router. What’s more, the system boasts a dedicated wireless backhaul channel, a feature found in our top two picks for best home router, the Netgear Orbi RBK50 and the Linksys Velop. The inclusion of parental controls—an increasingly common feature in consumer routers these days— will empower mom and dad to control the kids’ access to and time spent on the internet using tools such as internet filters, internet pausing, and time limits. The router…

Apple’s HomePod smart speaker is finally here. After a month-long delay that caused it to miss the all-important holiday-shopping season, Apple has announced that the HomePod will begin shipping on February 9, more than eight months after we first got a glimpse of it at WWDC. Apple is billing the HomePod as an audio device (hence its home under the Music tab on Apple.com), but in the age of growing Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, it needs to be much more than a really good speaker to compete with its fellow AI-enabled competitors. Here’s how the fight is shaping up: 5 WAYS HOMEPOD BEATS AMAZON ECHO AND GOOGLE HOME Messaging and calls Apple’s biggest advantage over Android is with Messages, and that will only strengthen with the HomePod. While you can…

I thought the Fender Newport Bluetooth speaker that I recently reviewed was a clever homage to guitar amps, but the company’s Monterey takes the guitar amp metaphor to the absolute max. With real hex bolts holding its back in place, solid analog controls, as well as genuine Tolex covering and a Fender ‘68 tweed grill, it could easily be mistaken for the real thing. Where the Newport is a punchy, portable, battery-powered speaker that can be used just about anywhere, the Monterey is more of a static conversation piece. It’s large, heavy, and has no battery, so you can’t really take it with you to the park. Okay, maybe an industrial park. And at $350, it’s not exactly an impulse buy. That said, it sounds good and it’s rugged, so I’m…