Macworld September 2019

A 16-inch MacBook Pro with reduced bezels and possibly a new keyboard design is coming in October, according to a report in the Economic Daily News relayed by 9to5Mac. Most notable in this latest suggestion of Apple’s next-generation laptop is the price—EDN suggests a starting price around an eye-watering $3,000. Should we be surprised? Apple has never been focused on being the low-price leader, and at the top end of its product range, it has been unafraid to charge a whole lot of money…especially for products bearing the name pro. FROM POWER USERS TO PROS Long after the arrival of the iMac as a low-cost consumer computer, most Mac power users still bought Power Macs. But during the Intel switch, Apple turned the Power Mac into the Mac Pro—and that…

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, one of his early moves was to vastly simplify what had become a bloated lineup of Mac hardware. Jobs famously showed off a two-by-two product grid: pro and consumer, desktop and portable. Filling the grid were four products—iMac, Power Mac, iBook, PowerBook—each addressing one of those combinations. The two-by-two grid lasted for several years, until the debut of the category-busting Mac mini in 2005. Since then, there’s been an almost magnetic impulse to cite the grid as the holy grail of Apple product design aspirations. Every time Apple releases a new Mac, pundits try desperately to figure out how to shove that latest addition into the already bulging grid. With the company’s recent rearrangement of its portable lineup, Apple has gotten both closer…

With macOS Catalina, Apple is providing a tool for developers (called Catalyst) that makes it really easy to take an existing iPad app over to the Mac. Apple started testing the technology in macOS Mojave last year, by porting over some of its own iOS apps—News, Home, Voice Memos, and Stocks. This year, Apple expands its list of iOS apps on Mac with Music, Podcasts, TV, Screen Time, and the new Find My app. Those first four apps introduced last year are getting an upgrade, too. While these are welcome changes, I can’t help but think Apple is missing a huge opportunity. Two of macOS’s most important apps—Maps and Messages—are so far behind their iOS counterparts that we would all be better-served by Apple just porting the iOS app in…

As you’ve probably heard, Apple is finally eliminating support for 32-bit Mac applications this fall. That means older software which hasn’t moved to 64-bit code won’t work on the latest macOS Catalina and although Cupertino has provided guidance on the impending “app-ocalypse,” identifying and taking action on affected apps is a hassle. A free (donations accepted) Mac utility called Go64 aims to ease the 64-bit transition by performing a quick scan of your applications and creating an inventory of those where 32-bit code is still present. It’s fast and painless—Go64 took less than 45 seconds to scan 1,586 apps (?!) on my iMac Retina 5K startup disk. SCANNING CODE Of those, about 150 apps were 32-bit only, many support apps from older Adobe Creative Suite installations. The remaining 45 were technically…

For average Mac users, the concept of a separate application just to manage files and folders probably sounds like overkill. After all, the Finder is free, baked right into macOS, and does just about everything one could ever want. But file manager apps are no longer just for power users, and once you’ve gone dual-pane, it’s hard to go back. Transmit and Forklift are among the most recognizable names in the Finder alternative subgenre, but the folks at Eltima Software have also been busy cultivating their own solution in recent years, and if you can deal with the less-refined Windows-style UI, has a few unique tricks up its sleeve. MASTER AND COMMANDER Featuring a dual-pane user interface with support for tabbed windows, Commander One 2.1 doesn’t look all that different from its predecessor.…

iLIFE SHINEBOT W400 The iLife Shinebot W400 is a welcome departure from the typical robotic floor mop. It diligently scrubs floors, providing the agitation needed to lift up stubborn stains and leave the surface spotless. The Shinebot W400 uses a rapidly rotating microfiber brush and a scraper to scrub and remove dirt. Inside the robot, a pair of tanks with individual inlets and outlets keeps clean and dirty water separated. Its four-step scrubbing system is extremely effective, and it comes pretty close to replicating the results of a push mop. Its ability to navigate independently and without requiring much hands-on intervention is also a big plus.—MICHAEL ANSALDO AWAIR GLOW C The Awair Glow C is a small air-quality monitor that also acts as a smart plug to automate “dumb” appliances…