Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Macworld

Apple introduced the 14-inch MacBook Pro with a base M3 chip as a replacement for the 13-inch MacBook Pro that served as the company’s most affordable pro laptop. Generally, the M3 MacBook Pro succeeds in that role, offering a combination of features that improve upon its predecessor. However, for a “pro” laptop, a question of performance value arises. Is it really up to the professional-level tasks that are associated with pro usage? SPECIFICATIONS The laptop in this review is the base model 14-inch MacBook Pro with a base M3 System on a Chip (SoC). CPU: M3 with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores), 16-core Neural Engine GPU: 10-core GPU Memory: 8GB unified memory (100GBps memory bandwidth) Storage: 512GB SSD Display: 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display; 3024×1964 native resolution…

Do you have an older Mac you want to sell? There are various ways to do it with the minimum amount of hassle. But there’s more to selling your Mac or MacBook than picking how you will sell it. This guide covers everything you need to do, from evaluating the market and choosing the right price to making sure you aren’t ripped off, and being prepared for hagglers. First things first—probably the most pressing question you have is, how much is your Mac worth? We’ll address that first. Then we will look at all the ways to sell your Mac: from selling it on eBay or other marketplaces, to trading it in at Apple, or selling it to a service that specializes in selling refurbished Macs. We also discuss the…

Ever since cellphones were a thing, we’ve been dropping them in water. And while today’s iPhones are fairly resistant to splashes, dips, and dunks, there are still times when they get too wet and the dreaded liquid-detection alert appears on your screen. For years, we’ve turned to a simple household staple when we need to save our iPhones from a liquid death: a bag of rice. The method is decidedly low-tech. Just pop your phone in a bag of rice, seal it up, and wait for a day or so. The idea is that the rice will draw the water out from inside the phone before it can fry any internal parts. People who have experienced waterlogged phones swear by it, and there’s tons of anecdotal evidence to show that it…

Twelve South makes our favorite 3-in-1 iPhone, Watch, and AirPods charger, the HiRise 3 Deluxe, and it has triumphed again with this pocketable 2-in-1 charger that can handle the iPhone and Apple Watch, or the iPhone and AirPods, charging the two devices simultaneously. If Apple made a 2-in-1 charger, it might well look like this, and it is priced accordingly. CHARGING PERFORMANCE Apple would have it running as fast as possible, too. Technically the Twelve South ButterFly 2-in-1 MagSafe Charger can’t be beaten: It is fully Apple certified, so it wirelessly fast-charges the Watch at 5W and the iPhone at 15W. DESIGN But the Butterfly’s real wonder is its clever, dinky foldable size and its MacBook-like aluminum styling. Unfurl the elegant charger and the two wireless charging pads are revealed:…

So you just got a new iPhone 15. Maybe it’s your first iPhone ever, maybe you just haven’t upgraded in a while. You went through the setup, updated iOS to the latest (currently iOS 17.2), added your apps, set up your accounts and two-factor authentication…now what? You’re probably having a great time with your new iPhone already, but there are a handful of hidden and lesser-known features and settings you’ll want to know about. Here’s a list of some of our favorite little settings and tips. You can do all this stuff in just a few minutes, and it might make your iPhone experience a whole lot more enjoyable. 1. CHANGE FOCUS AFTER YOU TAKE A PHOTO With the iPhone 15, the camera app will automatically recognize when there is…

The macOS interface for working with printers, scanners, and—yes—fax machines has always been a little quirky. Apple built the printing component on top of the open-source CUPS protocol. (CUPS once stood for Common UNIX Printing System and now is just…CUPS.) As with many server components, Apple put a friendly layer on top of CUPS. And it mostly works. When it doesn’t, you can peel back the layer and look at what keeps it ticking underneath. This is useful for setting options that may not be presented to you in Sonoma via Apple menu → System Settings → Printers & Scanners by selecting a printer and clicking Printer Queue, which opens the Print Center app. (You can also find this in Applications → Utilities). COMPLETED JOBS Trying to remember if you…

The update to the iPhone operating system, iOS 17.4, has a new feature to try out if you have the proper car. According to the developer release notes, CarPlay with Apple Maps support has been updated: In iOS 17.4, with supported CarPlay vehicles, Apple Maps will present a new instrument cluster experience with information about upcoming maneuvers. Users will be able to swap the desired display type between the main and instrument cluster screen by tapping the map configuration button on the upper right of the Maps main screen. Since this feature works “between the main and instrument cluster screen,” it appears that it’s for CarPlay implementations that use two screens. Most cars use only the main screen located in the center of the car console for CarPlay. Apple added the…

We here at Macworld used to complain that the MacBook lineup was too complicated, but Apple has now simplified it so it makes more sense. But what if Apple had gone even further—what if there was only one laptop line, the MacBook Pro, and nothing else? That’s what former Apple design guru Jony Ive wanted to do, according to journalist Walt Mossberg. In a recent episode of The Vergecast podcast, Mossberg talks about one of the ideas that Ive had while working with Tim Cook at Apple. (It’s at the 26:30 mark of the show.) Ive wanted to whittle down the MacBook lineup to one model, the MacBook Pro. “He decided there didn’t need to be an Air and a Pro,” said Mossberg. “He decided he could do the Pro…

One of our favorite third-party displays is Alogic’s Clarity, a great-looking premium 27-inch 4K monitor that can pivot from landscape to portrait orientations and boasts an excellent versatile stand and a back-mounted USB hub. Last year, Alogic announced Pro and Touchscreen Clarity models, with retractable webcam, and in 2024 there are three new versions, including the world’s first 32-inch glossy display touchscreen for Mac. Where the 27-inch Clarity Pro added an all-important webcam to the display, and the Clarity Pro Touch added a touchscreen display, the new 32-inch Clarity Max displays stretch wider. We particularly appreciate the Touch model, where you can tap, swipe, slide and pinch onscreen over a space three times larger than an iPad. DESIGN The main difference between the 27-inch and 32-inch Clarity displays is the…

Apple today announced the launch of Apple Sports, a new free app dedicated to supplying sports fans with their favorite teams’ latest scores and stats. The app covers NHL, MLB, men’s and women’s basketball, and numerous soccer leagues, including the Premier League, Serie A, MLS, LaLiga, and the Bundesliga. When you first set up the app, you’ll be asked to tell it which leagues and teams you’re interested in (if you haven’t already done so in Apple News); from then on you can choose to tailor your view to show recent, current or upcoming matches involving either your favorite leagues or your favorite teams. At this stage there are a number of surprising limitations, suggesting that it is still half-finished. The most obvious gaps are in the supported sports and…

In recent years, Apple has become quite secretive about the success of the Apple Watch. If it’s supplying figures for that product, they’re more likely to be processor specs or serial numbers than unit sales, or vague proclamations, like a record number of new users bought one during the recent quarter. Instead, we have had to fall back on third-party sources of data. Back in 2016, it was claimed that the Apple Watch had leapfrogged Rolex as the most popular watch, backed up by an analysis of social mentions; this was later confirmed by official figures from the Swiss watch industry. However, this feat was less impressive than you might think. According to data from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, the country as a whole exported between seven…

The BoostCharge Pro is one of the rare species of power banks that can charge the Apple Watch through inductive charging. You don’t have to plug a cable into the BoostCharge Pro’s USB-C port; you can just place the watch on the edge of the power bank. You can even charge a 2nd-generation AirPods Pro case this way. Avoiding the necessity to use a cable is very convenient. Its power capacity of 10,000 mAh is sufficient to charge an iPhone 15 twice, but can also provide an iPad or MacBook with energy for a short time. We measured the charging speed and found very good times. After every 30 minutes, the iPhone 15’s battery reached 55 percent and the Apple Watch reached 48 percent. The BoostCharge Pro’s 20W output limits how…

As you probably know, a battery’s charge capacity diminishes over time. If you’ve recently bought an M-series MacBook, you spent a good amount of money on that laptop, so you want the battery to be viable as long as possible. Fortunately, macOS has built-in ways to help maintain your battery’s condition. In macOS Sonoma, the Battery System Setting provides good information you can use to determine your battery’s health. There’s a chart that displays your battery charge level over the last 24 hours and the last 10 days. Another chart shows screen usage—the MacBook’s screen is one of the most power-hungry components. But there’s a setting that’s not obvious in the Battery tab in System Settings. It’s called Optimized Battery Charging, and we’ll cover what it’s about and why you…

While it’s handy that various security and utility suites are trying to fold more features into their offerings, some parts sometimes work better than others. Avira Prime, the paid version of Avira’s free antiviral software Avira Free Security, works to provide several tools for the user. FEATURES Like similar applications on the market (you can read about alternatives to Avira Prime in our roundup of the best AV software for Mac), Avira Prime is designed around several modules (Virus Scans, Protection Options, Quarantine, VPN, Passwords, Cookie Cleaner, Identity Assistant, Junk Cleaner, Uninstaller, and Startup Apps). Each module can be customized and configured as needed. The software installs cleanly enough and requests permission to fully access the hard drive, which is par for the course. Once a virus scan has begun,…

Bowers & Wilkins describes its all-new Px7 S2e headphone as an “evolved” form of the Px7 S2 I heaped praise on in my June 2022 review. Indeed, any changes in industrial design are quite subtle. The evolution comes in the form of a new digital signal processing engine that gave B&W’s audio engineers an opportunity to retune the 40mm drivers in this new headphone. Oh, the Px7 S2e are also available in a new color, Forest Green. The review sample B&W sent for this review is the very pretty Ocean Blue. Both shades are a nice departure from the black headphones I typically get in for review, but you’re not considering $399 headphones based on their color scheme. I described the previous model as possessing more steak and less sizzle,…

Sitting on a shelf in my garage is a 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro. I keep it around because it has an optical drive—it was the last Apple laptop with the feature. Since I’m the go-to tech support guy in the family, I’ve used that laptop more than I expected to get data from old vintage discs. (For you young’uns, an optical drive is used to read data from things called CDs, DVDs, and in some instances—but not this one—Blu-ray discs.) However, that 2012 MacBook Pro is now dead to Apple. As spotted by Ars Technica, the company officially put it on its obsolete list, which means that “all hardware service” has ceased and that “service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products,” according to Apple’s support document about vintage and…

It’s not uncommon nowadays to have thousands of dollars’ worth of gear that you carry around with you when you’re on the go. So it follows that you should use a carryall or holdall that securely protects your stuff. The Pacsafe X Anti-Theft 16-inch Commuter Backpack has several mechanisms to prevent theft when you’re out and about. The Pacsafe X has a few features to protect it from being quickly slashed open with a blade. The straps have wires built in, the body of the backpack has a steel mesh lining, and the zippers are made to resist punctures. In addition to the slash protection, the Pacsafe X has other safety features. The zippers in the two main compartments are protected with a lock-like system, and in the secondary compartment with…

Back in iOS 14, Apple released a new feature to let users turn any website into an app by adding it to their home screen with a few taps. Then in iOS 17, it supercharged the feature by allowing those shortcuts to send notifications and show unread badges just like a real app. Unfortunately, If you live in the European Union, Apple is about to turn that off. As part of the iOS 17.4 beta, which brings major changes to the App Store on the iPhone, Apple has also announced that users will no longer have access to Home Screen web apps. Of course, users will still be able to create bookmarks to their favorite sites within Safari, but Apple is removing the one-tap convenience of a dynamic home page icon.…

One of the greatest strengths of Apple’s product line is its ability for interplay. Not only do its devices work closely with each other, but features that begin life on one platform often make their way to others. Touch ID, for example, started on the iPhone before jumping to iPad and Mac models. The same goes for Retina and True Tone displays. Heck, Apple silicon began as part of Apple’s mobile efforts and now powers its entire lineup. As demonstrated by the proceeding, this shift tends to happen especially with devices at the more cutting-edge end of Apple’s portfolio. That’s no surprise, really, given that those tend to be the places where the company is investing the most time, money, and resources in pushing the technological envelope. Of course, the…

Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computer, a VR headset with pass-through video, hand tracking, and eye tracking, is not just another VR headset. It’s not just an expensive Meta Quest 3 with higher-quality displays. It is those things, but it’s not just those things. There are moments when you really do feel, in your gut, that you’re doing things that are going to be the way it is at some point in the future. After a week of using the Apple Vision Pro every day, one thought keeps passing through my head. “This is going to be great…one day.” But that’s the rub. That greatness of this product feels like it is always just off in the distance somewhere. Really trying to use the Vision Pro as anything more than a…

Apple went all in on USB-C, starting with the introduction of the now-discontinued 12-inch MacBook in 2015. For a while, you could buy a Mac with one, two, or four USB-C ports, all of which were also Thunderbolt 3 capable, except the 12-inch MacBook. With the introduction of Apple silicon and Thunderbolt 4, as well as faster flavors of USB 3 over USB-C, it seems like every Mac introduced since about 2018 has its own port story. The number of USB-C ports on a Mac has almost no relationship with the number of displays you can connect, however. The internal workings of the Mac’s graphical processor units (GPUs) and display controllers to which they’re connected determine Apple’s formula for the total number of displays, as does the resolution (the number…

Apple’s HomePod speakers and Apple TV streaming players will soon be getting a nifty new trick: the ability to allow friends, family, or anyone else to take turns controlling music playback. The functionality will arrive courtesy of SharePlay, the two-and-a-half-year-old Apple feature that lets you share your currently playing media. SharePlay debuted back in October 2021 on FaceTime, allowing users to share video and music playback during FaceTime calls. Last fall, SharePlay came to Apple’s CarPlay platform, perfect for letting pals in your CarPlay-equipped vehicle take charge of what’s playing over the car speakers on Apple Music. Now comes word that SharePlay’s music control feature will soon land on the HomePod, HomePod mini, and Apple TV via a software update. MacRumors spotted SharePlay music control for the HomePod and Apple TV in iOS…

HOW TO SET UP NETWORKED TIME MACHINE BACKUPS FOR A HOUSEHOLD Apple’s Time Capsule base station put a Wi-Fi access point, a network router, and a backup drive that tied into Time Machine all in a single box. That was its downfall, too: If the drive failed or became corrupted, you had relatively few options. Apple stopped selling Time Capsule devices in 2018, and many readers still miss them. You can simulate a Time Capsule if you have a desktop Mac that’s always on and has a robust network connection. There are a few asides: → You can use network-attached storage (NAS), but not all NAS systems support Time Machine. I’ve also heard many stories of inconsistent performance. → Your computer acting as a networked Time Machine destination doesn’t have…