Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Macworld

A house divided against itself cannot stand. But with its dual stewardship of macOS and iOS devices, Apple is in some ways a house divided into two different ideas of what a computer should be. (And that’s without even getting to a semantic argument about what exactly “computer” means.) This week, rumors stirred the pot further, with the suggestion that support for pointing devices like mice and trackpads—traditionally the domain of the Mac—may be supported in an iOS release later this year. The takes have flown fast and furious, ranging from those suggesting this would be a huge improvement to productivity on the iOS to those decrying it as a totally useless feature. Me, I don’t have a horse in that race. Because what I want is not an iOS…

If you own Apple’s World Travel Adapter Kit, and/or you are an owner of Apple devices in Hong Kong, Singapore, or the U.K., you should pay attention to a recall that Apple has announced. The three-prong adapter used in these countries and that comes with the kit “may break,” according to Apple, and the company has recalled the part. To identify the recalled plug, Apple says that it is, “white, with no letters in the inside slot where it attaches to an Apple power adapter.” If you have a three-prong plug that is “white with gray on the inside portion that attaches to the power adapter,” you have the newer plug and you’re good. HOW TO EXCHANGE THE PLUG To exchange the plug, you need to contact your local authorized…

The Rhake Weatherproof Laptop Backpack from Mission Workshop entered my life during one of the wettest weeks in months, so of course I subjected the 22-liter rolltop bag to a trial by flooding. I tossed in my expensive 15-inch MacBook Pro along with our iPad Pro and another MacBook. Beyond that, I stuffed it with my AirPods, my iPhone, my Bose QuietComfort 35s, a jacket, a book, and even a Satechi keyboard. (I was already impressed that it could hold all this junk.) In this manner I braved a deluge for several blocks toward the train station, armed with nothing besides the Rhake and a trashy umbrella. Half a mile on, I was soaked. Water seeped into uncomfortable crevasses in my jeans. But when I unrolled the Rhake at home,…

We’re still a long way away from hearing anything official about Apple’s next system-on-a-chip. The A13 is likely to be unveiled in September, along with the new iPhones it will power. But the design, manufacture, and testing of these chips takes years, far too long for Apple to suddenly make radical changes. The A13 design is likely, for all intents and purposes, set in stone by now. By looking at past A-series chips and extrapolating from what we know of the manufacturing process Apple will use this year, we can get a reasonable picture about what to expect from the A13 chip. It will almost certainly be the fastest SoC Apple has ever developed for iPhones, but exactly how fast can we expect? BUILT ON AN IMPROVED 7NM PROCESS For…

You can now play PlayStation 4 games on your iPhone with Sony’s official PS4 Remote Play app! You’ve been able to stream games for years with the unofficial R-Play app, but we’re happy to see official support from Sony itself. And for free! Just don’t get the impression that this is a replacement for your actual PS4. Yes, it lets you control games straight through your iPhone, but it’s essentially a streaming service that merely beams the games that are playing on your PS4 to your iPhone. The iPhone doesn’t host the games themselves as you might expect from a Nintendo Switch, so if you don’t have a stellar Wi-Fi signal, you’re gonna have a bad time. But still! PS4 games on an iPhone! The possibilities are, well, limited! Because…

THE ELDER SCROLLS: BLADES EARLY ACCESS Technically The Elder Scrolls: Blades is only in early access, but considering that developer Bethesda claims that well over a million people have already accessed it early, there’s no reason why it can’t included here. If you’re looking for Skyrim on the iPhone, this isn’t it (although the graphics come decently close). Instead, it’s a fun made-for-mobile game about rebuilding your ransacked hometown and delving into dungeons where you fight baddies by using carefully timed taps for either your sword or shield. REST IN PIECES Rest in Pieces is one of the best horror games on iOS in a while, which is remarkable because it’s also one of the simplest. It’s a pendulum game, but here the pendulum is a porcelain figure of a…

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 15 years since Apple first announced Spotlight as a banner feature of Mac OS X Tiger. In fact, Spotlight has been around so long that I suspect that most Mac users take it for granted, not entirely understanding just how broad its purview is and how powerful it can be at finding the stuff that’s on your Mac. Whole books could be (and have been) written about Spotlight, but let me take you through a few details that you may have never learned. MORE TO THE SEARCH BAR Spotlight is a search engine that runs on your Mac. In the background, the Spotlight metadata engine is scanning new and changed files on your computer—and it’s not just looking for the names of…

MacOS can act in mysterious ways, and it can be difficult from either the Finder or through Apple Menu → About This Mac → Storage view to figure out exactly what is eating up your disk storage. Especially on external drives, which the Storage display doesn’t break out into categories, or when System or Other seems to be occupying a truly enormous portion of your drive, and you can’t find a folder with that much data in it to examine. Third-party apps can help. Several apps can graphically represent storage in detailed categories or by folders (or both). Some of those go further and can identify duplicated or unnecessary data you can remove, or can let you select files or folders you don’t need, and delete them directly within the…

The high-end Danish speaker maker Bang & Olufsen, affectionately known by its initials B&O, has long been known for building audio and video components sporting stylish, striking designs that command very high prices. Hit hard by the 2008 economic crisis, B&O has since refocused on its traditional strengths, including building a solid line of headphones. The B&O Beoplay H9i reviewed here are the company’s flagship over-the-ear, active noise-cancelling cans. STYLING AND FEATURES The Beoplay H9i are simply gorgeous. These are stylish, eye-catching headphones that scream premium quality and first-class construction. They come in two colors: Traditional black and natural. The latter was the color of my review pair. The headband’s arms are made from brushed aluminum anodized to match the headphones’ color. The aluminum arms slide in and out in…

Tim Cook is not one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2019. Nonetheless, as a three-time honoree of that list, he was invited to be interviewed by Nancy Gibbs at the Time 100 Summit. As expected, Cook didn’t reveal any details about new products, software, or services. Instead, the questions posed and answers given were broad, touching on Cook’s and Apple’s values and how technology fits into the world we live in. Here’s some of what he said about a variety of issues. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. ON APPLE’S VALUES “I’ve always deeply felt that people should have values, a corporation is nothing more than a collection of people, and therefore by extension a corporation should have values. “We’ve always had a set of things that…

IPhone sales might be leveling off, but Apple is doing just fine. Apple on Tuesday announced its second quarter results for 2019, and it’s clear that the shift in it business model is in full swing. While Apple still posted revenue of $58 billion, iPhone sales were relatively flat, posting just $31 billion compared to $37.5 billion in the same 2018 quarter. Apple stopped breaking out unit sales last quarter, but it sold 52 million units in the year-ago quarter. Elsewhere, Apple is looking stronger than ever, particularly when it comes to Services. Apple reported a record $11.5 billion tally for the category (which includes Apple Music, digital sales, and Apple Pay) versus $9.2 billion last year. It was the first time Services broke the $11 billion mark. Paid subscriptions were…

ARLO ULTRA The Arlo Ultra offers 4K video with HDR, a 180-degree field of view, color night vision, automatic zooming and tracking, and an integrated 100-lumen LED spotlight. There’s also a pair of noise-cancelling microphones and a siren built into the camera. You can view the camera’s live feed right from the device tab in the Arlo app, or you can enlarge for a full-screen look. 4K HDR video may seem like overkill for security footage, but its unparalleled sharpness and clarity can make a world of difference when you need to discern an intruder’s facial features or capture the license plate on a moving vehicle. The camera’s 12X zoom helps even more in this regard.—MICHAEL ANSALDO HISENSE H8F 4K UHD TV The H8F is a 55-inch 4K UHD TV…

Sometimes you have two bars but can’t load any webpages. Sometimes you have four bars, but your friend with a different phone on the same network has only two. We’ve become reliant on signal bars to tell us how strong our cellular connection is, but in truth, the bars are bullshit. Those signal bars are almost completely arbitrary. Yes, more bars should mean a stronger signal, but there is no standard scale. Every phone manufacturer gets to decide how much signal strength equals how many bars, and it often varies widely from model to model. If you really want to know how strong your cell signal is, you need to look at a direct measurement of the signal strength, as measured in decibels (dB). Fortunately, there’s a hidden “Field…

When I reviewed last year’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I praised its power but remained skeptical that it could take the place of a MacBook. Logitech seems to have taken such concerns as a challenge in designing the Slim Folio Pro for the 2018 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, and it did so well that I feel safe in saying that this is the closest you’re going to get to making Apple’s pricey tablet feel like a laptop. The keyboard is a joy to type on, and so represents an improvement over both Apple’s Smart Folio Keyboard case and the butterfly keyboards of a MacBook. The case is tough enough that it can shrug off most everyday scrapes and bruises, and the bottom panel feels sturdy even when I’m typing on…

Apple’s new iPad Pros are high-end tablet marvels, with a new slim-bezel design, Face ID, crazy-fast A12X chip, and new wireless Apple Pencil. But when Apple introduced the overhauled third-generation models, it also blew up the price. The old 10.5-inch Pro was $649 and the new 11-inch replacement is $799, while the 12.9-inch model jumped from $799 to $999. That leaves a big price gap for anyone who doesn’t want an iPad Pro, but wants more than the basic $329 iPad. Apple is filling that gap with a strange middle-child product that borrows the design of the old 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the name of the retired-for-years iPad Air, and an odd mix of hardware features. Starting at $499 with 64GB of storage, the iPad Air is a set of compromises and…

I fell in love with the Mac nearly 30 years ago, in the fall of 1989. It’s been the center of my tech world ever since, and I’ve been writing about it professionally for 25 years. And yet these past months, I’ve noticed something strange creeping into my thoughts occasionally while I sit at my desk working on my iMac Pro: iOS does this better. It’s disconcerting, after three decades, to suddenly find that manipulation of files and folders in the Finder has gone from being business as usual to seeming like it’s more fuss and effort than is necessary. And yet that’s where I am now, thanks to a couple of years of using an iPad Pro rather than a MacBook Air whenever I’m away from my desk. The…

The HomePod is enjoying a bit of a resurgence now that Apple has slashed the price by $50, and I suspect a lot of you are wondering what you can do with Apple’s essentially buttonless smart speaker. Let’s get this out of the way: No, it still doesn’t do as many things as your average Alexa-powered speaker. It can, however, do a heck of a lot more than it could do at launch thanks to a couple of big patches Apple rolled out last year—though many features aren’t obvious. Follow the tips below, and you’ll find that HomePod can feel like a member of the family, after all. A quick note: You’ll need to set up Personal Requests to use some of these features. Once you’ve set up your HomePod,…

Let’s not beat around the bush: $400 is, for most of us, an insane amount of money to spend on a pair of Bluetooth earphones. For that price, they’d best sound significantly better than anything else you’ve ever jammed into your skull, excluding earbuds that cost $1,000 or more. Shure’s SE535 earphones meet this qualification with moxie. Yet their exceptional audio isn’t the only reason why I recommend them: Their clever modular design and Shure’s reputation for exceptional customer service also render the SE535s practically damage- and future-proof. They may cost more than some new iPads, but their winning combination of wonderful sound reproduction, repairability, and adaptability make them an outstanding investment. There may be better-sounding earphones in the SE535’s price range, but I’ve yet to find them. DESIGN Shure released…

Five years ago, Apple stopped development on Aperture and iPhoto, two apps made for photo management, the former being the professional app and the latter the app for general consumers. Apple replaced those apps with Photos, but you could still run the older apps, and Aperture users were more likely to stick with Aperture. However, Apple recently announced that Aperture, a 32-bit app, will not work in future versions of macOS, which will eventually support only 64-bit apps. If you’ve been holding out, you have to make one of the following choices: > Switch over to Photos > Switch to a third-party app, such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom > Never upgrade macOS beyond Mojave, the last version that will work with Aperture If you really love Aperture, you could pick…

Apple seems to have settled into a groove with a two-year update cycle for the iMac. The latest iteration of the company’s all-in-one desktop computer comes nearly two years after the previous release—and the 2017 iMac came two years after its predecessor. Updates to the processor, RAM, and graphics card are in the spotlight for Apple’s newest iMac; the rest of the machine remains unchanged. This review evaluates the 21.5-inch iMac with a 3.0GHz Core i5 processor. The standard configuration of this iMac is priced at $1,499 but the model reviewed here has the graphics card upgraded to the Radeon Pro Vega 20, which adds $350 to the price. FASTER CPU, GRAPHICS, AND RAM Two of the 2019 21.5-inch iMacs are built around Intel’s eighth-generation Core processor, while the entry-level $1,099…

Apple no longer breaks down iPhone sales by model, so we have to rely on third-party data to see which models are selling best. During its earnings call in February, Apple only said that the iPhone XR was its most popular model, but didn’t give any indication of what that means. A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners may give us a better idea. It states that the iPhone XR alone accounted for 38 percent of iPhone sales in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2019. The iPhone XS and XS Max make up another 21 percent combined (leaning heavily toward the XS Max), and the four older models (7, 7 Plus, 8, and 8 Plus) combine to account for the other 41 percent. It’s our best view yet…

It took 12 versions of iOS to finally get parental controls and screen time tracking, but some people still aren’t happy about it. According to a report in The New York Times Saturday, numerous developers of time monitoring apps complained that Apple was limiting features and in extreme cases, straight up shutting down their apps “out of the blue with no warning.” Out of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental control apps, the Times says Apple either removed or restricted 11 of them, leaving precious few remaining. The developers interviewed say Apple is “systematically killing the industry” by crippling apps that mimic Screen Time’s functionality. They contend that Apple is taking aim at their apps because they offer functionality beyond what Apple provides in Screen Time. That’s not the case,…

The $30 RavPower Alpha Series Fast Charge Wireless Charging Pad is a small, black, puck-shaped device, made of plastic, and sporting a rubber ring around its top surface. That rubber helps keep your smartphone in place while charging, so an accidental bump of your nightstand or vibration from incoming alerts doesn’t cause it to fall off. The Qi-compliant pad is capable of 7.5W speeds for iPhones, and up to 10W speeds for Android devices. Included in the box are the pad, a USB Type-A to microUSB cable, and a 24W wall adapter that’s Quick Charge 3.0 compatible. That means, if wireless charging is going too slow for your liking, just use the included power adapter to charge your phone the old-fashioned way. Using our standard testing procedures, I spent the last…

Apple has a reputation for forcing change on us right when we’ve gotten comfortable with its designs. Sure, we often resist (and sometimes Apple is wrong), but more often than not the Cupertino company proves that breaking out of our comfort zones leads to better user experiences and perhaps even a better future. That’s why I’m surprised to see the new fifth-generation iPad mini. On the outside, it looks like a twin of its 2015 incarnation, to the point that I once accidentally picked up the old iPad mini to take it home for the evening. As far as I can tell, the only exterior feature that’s changed is that the regulatory information is no longer printed on the tablet’s backside. Even the display hasn’t changed much, as it…

As the Nobel Prize laureate once sang, “The times, they are a-changin’.” 2019 is a big year for Apple, and at the forefront of the questions circling around the company is the future of macOS. Last year’s demonstration of “Marzipan” technology—letting iOS apps run on the Mac with little alteration—shook the foundations of what many people considered a Mac app. Long time Mac users are, understandably, nervous about what this could imply for the future of their chosen platform. Will apps get “dumbed down” and features lost? Will developers eschew Mac-specific programs for the ease of deploying one app everywhere? As Mac users, we’re used to feeling dour and grim about what’s to come, especially those of us who lived through the dark times of the mid-1990s. But amidst all of that doom…

Founded in 1961, KEF is a well-known, high-end British speaker brand with many outstanding products to its credit. These days, small wireless speakers are all the rage, and KEF has embraced that market with several models, including the new LSX. Let’s see if it’s worthy of KEF’s legacy. The KEF LSX is relatively small, measuring 9.5 x 6.1 x 7.1 inches (H x W x D), but it feels quite substantial (weighing just under eight pounds). To match almost any decor, it’s available in five colors: black, green, blue, red, and gloss white. In each case (except white), the sides, top, and bottom are wrapped in a color-matched fabric from Danish textile designer Kvadrat. A gently convex front baffle helps minimize diffraction of sounds from the driver. Speaking of which,…

HOW TO USE AND TROUBLESHOOT AIRDROP FOR SIMPLE FILE TRANSFERS AND HANDOFFS Apple’s AirDrop feature first appeared in 2011 for transferring files and other kinds of information. It first worked only intra-platform: from iOS to iOS and macOS to macOS. Later versions could cross between iOS and macOS. It’s useful for your own equipment, when you want to send a photo from your Mac to an iPhone, and just as handy as when you’re reading an article and want to share the URL with someone you know nearby. AirDrop relies on proximity, and requires both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on. It also won’t work on an iPhone or iPad while you have Personal Hotspot enabled, as it relies on a some Wi-Fi functions that are shifted to other purposes. Readers…