Macworld June 2014

Patrick J. McGovern was initially skeptical about the Mac. The founder and CEO of International Data Group (which in 1983 already owned a rapidly expanding roster of computer-related magazines in the United States and around the world), McGovern had seen Apple launch both the Apple III and the Lisa with little success. So he didn’t know why he should believe that the company’s next new machine would be any more popular, and he didn’t know why anyone would want to start up a magazine about it. But David Bunnell was a believer. The founding editor of both PC Magazine and PC World, Bunnell had wanted to launch an Apple-focused magazine ever since visiting the US Festival (sponsored by Apple’s Steve Wozniak) in 1983. Apple, Bunnell realized at that point, “made…

Although Apple released its redesigned Mac Pro near the end of last year, high demand quickly pushed the systems’ estimated ship date to February 2014 and beyond. Now, finally, we’ve received the two base machines—the entry-level model and the high-end stock model—in the Macworld Lab. Priced at $2999, the least-expensive Mac Pro has a single quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor running at 3.7GHz, 256GB of PCIe-connected flash storage, 12GB of RAM, and dual AMD D500 graphics with 2GB of VRAM each. The $3999 high-end Mac Pro ships with a single six-core Intel Xeon E5 running at 3.5GHz, 256GB of flash storage, 16GB of RAM, and dual AMD D500 graphics with 3GB of video RAM each. Despite the existence of the two stock configurations, the new Mac Pro is really meant…

Laptops frequently serve as desktop computers, with external displays, hard drives, and printers plugged into the ports. When you need to pack up your laptop and use it as a mobile machine, however, you have to expend some effort unplugging all of those devices first—a task that’s simple but annoying and time-consuming. With a Thunderbolt dock, you can plug all of your devices into the dock and then connect the dock to the laptop, usually using just a cable or two—no more unplugging, untangling, and reinserting a bunch of cables. (You can also use one of these docks with a Thunderbolt-enabled desktop Mac—our testing with desktop Macs went without a hitch. But desktops tend to already have the connectivity you need.) Macworld Lab evaluated several Thunderbolt docks, and all worked…

Jony Ive’s move to the head of software design bore its first fruit last year with the launch of iOS 7, which shook up some established Apple design conventions and broke a long pattern of focused iteration in a company not known for its wild mood swings. What can we expect to see next? We have a few clues. TRANSFORMING iOS From the first iPhone OS, Apple’s mobile design style has been to make digital things look like real things by employing clear lines, friendly gradients, and deep shadows. This overt physicality, or skeuomorphism, had its roots in Mac app design but flourished on the iPhone and iPad, where “pressing a button” meant literally pressing your finger against something. As iOS thrived, many of these embellishments of literalism found their…

Green America, a Washington, D.C.– based nonprofit group, and The Nation magazine launched a campaign in March intended to persuade consumers to boycott Apple products unless the company changes its production and supply-chain operations. A key message of the campaign is that it would cost only $1 for Apple to substitute out benzene and n-hexane, two of the most toxic chemicals used in its supply chain. Green America derived the figure from industry insiders’ “best guess” as to the cost involved, says Elizabeth O’Connell, Green America campaign director. The campaign is asking Apple to create a healthcare fund for workers who have fallen sick while assembling products, allegedly due to poisoning from those two chemicals, as well as to improve conditions in general. The campaign is also asking consumers to…

Apple’s annual shareholder meeting is one of its most un-Applelike gatherings. Attendance is limited to company shareholders and press, CEO Tim Cook and other executives often take questions, and attendees are asked not to bring electronic devices with them. For this year’s meeting, held in late February, all of that added up to an interesting trickle of information from various sources around the Web. TURN ON THE APPLE TV By all accounts, Cook spent a good chunk of time at the meeting discussing the Apple TV, telling shareholders that the company had sold more than $1 billion worth of the set-top boxes and related content in the past year. “It’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days,” he told the crowd, according to Reuters (go.macworld.com/appletvhobby). Analyst…