Innehållsförteckning för January 2023 från Macworld

As a Mac enthusiast, the news that 2022 will end with no new Mac announcements was disappointing. But what was even more of a letdown is that we’ll have to continue waiting—probably until March 2023—to see the rumored update to Apple’s most affordable Mac, the Mac mini. But even before the news, I was ready for more frustration. This unofficial delay only cements the sad fact that the Mac mini gets no respect from Apple. It’s a shame because Apple’s smallest computer was once its most exciting Mac—and it doesn’t deserve to be so neglected. THE BYODKM MAC The Mac mini was born in 2005 and at the time, Apple was much more aggressive about increasing its share of the PC market. The Mac mini was marketed as an affordable Mac for…

Apple has matured its Photos app for macOS substantially in the several years since the company cut the thread for iPhoto and declared Photos its new approach. The current version mostly resembles the one introduced but with everything working reliably most of the time. However, Photos still has substantial missing pieces for managing libraries. Fat Cat Software’s PowerPhotos has filled that role since 2015, and the company released a major update in 2022 to version 2 that offers even more refinement. The app is the solution for many of the problems with Photos that people routinely write to us about at Mac 911. The program lets you merge Photos libraries, view multiple libraries without quitting Photos and re-selecting them (including in separate windows simultaneously), create libraries on external files, and move…

There’s a line I like to use a lot when I’m responding to people who expect Apple to release low-cost products that appeal to the widest swath of the masses: “Apple’s never going to be the low-price leader.” While people frequently complain about the prices of Apple products, in general they confuse Apple’s unwillingness to reach down to the lowest price categories with offering a bad value. Yes, you might pay a little more for an Apple product than a product from the competition–but you also get more. Still, there’s no denying Apple’s products are on the pricey side. As it has become one of the most profitable and valuable companies in the world, its skill in maximizing revenue growth has served it well. But as Apple sees slowing revenue…

It can be hard to get excited about the cheapest model in a range. Apple’s standard iPad has for years offered a blend of strong value and respectable specs without creating much of a buzz because the features it offers are either weaker than those on the Air, mini, and Pro models, or arrive several years later. This latest iPad, however, may change that perception. It does some interesting things, particularly in terms of its position within the range—but not all of those things are good. Being interesting can be a mixed blessing. PODCAST: OOPS! ALL iPADS! Listen now DESIGN AND BUILD: BRIGHT, COLORFUL, AND MODERN From very first impressions, it’s clear that Apple has given the humble iPad a glow-up, particularly if you’ve got one of the bright new colors.…

After months of private beta testing, the DuckDuckGo browser for Mac beta is now available to anyone (grab it here if you’re interested in checking it out). The company started as a privacy-oriented search engine and now offers mobile apps and browser extensions, all aimed at reducing the ability of companies to track your every move online. The next logical step is for the company to make its own web browser, so that’s exactly what it’s doing. I spent a few days with the DuckDuckGo beta and, while I like what I see so far, it’s not quite ready to be my everyday browser just yet. It’s clean, simple, and performs well, but it lacks a few features that are table stakes in modern desktop browsers such as extension support and…

Recently I decided to update my 2017 Apple TV 4K to a newer 2021 model after writing about a killer Amazon deal: I bought the 32GB model for $100 on something of a whim. But it was the smartest purchase I’ve ever made. I didn’t need it, mind you. Even with a five-year-old chip, my 2017 Apple TV box was as fast and responsive as it was on the day I bought it, and I had long jettisoned the terrible first-gen Siri remote for a Caavo one. But for $79 off, I decided to update to the 2021 model even though the 2022 update starts shipping today. Here’s why it was one of my best calls. I NEED ETHERNET AND WANT THREAD With the 2022 Apple TV, Apple made the surprising…

Philips is one of the great legacy brands in the audiovisual world, pioneering radio manufacturing in Europe before World War II and television after the war. It invented the cassette tape in 1963 and later teamed with Sony to develop the compact disc. Philips owned the Mercury and PolyGram record labels until near the end of the 20th century and even produced a few well-regarded movies. After deciding to concentrate on its healthcare business, Philips spun off its Philips Hue smart lighting business (an operation now doing business as Signify), sold its small appliance business to an investment firm, and inked a brand licensing deal with the Chinese manufacturer TPV (operating in the U.S. as TP Vision). The Philips audio brand finally returned to the U.S. in early 2022. The…

Best Buy on Monday announced a new MacBook buying plan that lets customers finance a laptop for 36 months and at the end of the term have the choice of upgrading to a new laptop, paying off the current laptop, or returning it and ending the program. Best Buy’s plan, called Upgrade+, is similar to Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program. When a customer enters the Upgrade+ program, the price of the MacBook is spread over 36 months, with the final payment due at the end of the plan. For example, an M1 MacBook Air at $999.99 would have payments of $19.99 per month for 36 months. At 37 months, a final payment of $280.35 can be made to purchase the laptop outright. But customers can also choose to return the laptop…

Established Mac-centric vendors have lately been forsaking hardware RAID for the more versatile but CPU cycle–stealing software variety. Hence our interest in UGreen’s CM335 hardware RAID enclosure, which tips the monetary scales at a svelte $149 yet won’t tax your computer’s CPU while doing its business. It’s a good performer, albeit requiring high-quality cables. DESIGN AND FEATURES The CM335 is inexpensive for what it is, though it sometimes shows. The construction is all plastic but still manages to strike a reasonably elegant profile on the desktop. Being largely plastic also makes it light at around 5 pounds, although it’s 8.4 inches deep by 5.3 inches wide by 5.7 inches (all approximate measurements). But the lack of heft can also translate to a somewhat insubstantial feel, at least if you’re populating…

AirDrop is great. It’s a fast and convenient way to send all sorts of data directly between Apple devices—contacts, photos, videos, web links, you name it. After the initial connection is made, the data is sent directly over Wi-Fi between devices in a peer-to-peer connection. By default, AirDrop is set to allow incoming connection requests from Contacts Only, but that setting can be changed to Everyone—popular among protesters and teens alike. Starting with iOS 16.1.1, users in China will find that the “Everyone” option has changed to “Everyone for 10 minutes.” Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and having to hop into your settings every 10 minutes to reenable the…

Using a Find My item has often involved a trade-off. Apple’s crowdsourced network of all its owners’ iPhones, iPads, and Macs (that haven’t opted out) provides robust tracking as long as somebody’s device is occasionally nearby. Many travelers discovered in the summer of 2022 that an Apple AirTag or third-party Find My item in their luggage meant the difference between a “lost” bag and being able to tell an airline where to find that bag. But the tradeoff is that makers of Find My items have to conform to an array of Apple’s rules and technology choices designed to balance tracking our stuff and the privacy and safety of others. For instance, Find My items that are away from the paired iPhone or iPad for between 8 and 24 hours…

One of the major (and majorly controversial) changes in macOS Ventura is a redesign of System Preferences. It’s now called System Settings and it’s designed to better resemble the iOS Settings app. Apple’s desire to have more commonality between macOS and iOS is understandable, but the problem is that it’s now a chore to find the settings you need. The years of muscle memory developed by Mac users are out the window and it’s time to relearn where everything is. You can find most of the frequently accessed preferences up front (Apple ID, Battery, Bluetooth, and Sound, for example). Others have been renamed to match the corresponding iOS setting, such as Security & Privacy, which is now Privacy & Security. But most notably, System Settings now uses a lot of subsections…

One gripe you’ll hear about Pages, Apple’s otherwise excellent word processing and page layout application, is that it provides little in the way of support for printing labels. While it’s true that Pages doesn’t ship with any built-in label templates, it’s actually easy to create and use standard labels using Pages. Here’s how. 1. CHECK FOR A PREMADE TEMPLATE You might already know that you can download tons of Microsoft Word templates for the most common labels directly from the company’s website. You can open a Word template in Pages, but you’ll often need to adjust the measurements slightly to make the templates work. (If you choose to go this route, skip to Step 6.) The Avery Label website has a large selection of templates, and many non-Avery labels work with…

Apple and Major League Soccer have released new details for its MLS Season Pass subscription service launching next year. For $14.99 per month or $99 per season, fans in more than 100 countries and regions can watch every live MLS regular-season match, the entire playoffs, and the Leagues Cup. If you subscribe to Apple TV+, however, there’s a discount bringing the cost down to $12.99/mo or $79/season. There will be no blackouts, although the Leagues Cup and Campeones Cup will not be available to viewers in Mexico. In addition to every game streaming live, there will be a pre-match and post-match show, and previously aired games will be available on demand after they’re completed. Apple will promote the service by making some games free for anyone to watch without a subscription,…

FACETIME GOT YOU UPSIDE DOWN? TURN THAT FROWN AROUND! The orientation lock is an easily overlooked option in iOS and iPadOS Control Center that lets you prevent apps from rotating their view when your device detects it’s turned a corner. This can be useful when viewing a video, reading a book, or engaging in other activities during which you don’t want to have the app reformat from portrait to landscape or landscape to portrait. FaceTime honors the orientation lock in a way that might confuse other people: They always see your locked orientation. If you don’t remember that you have orientation lock enabled, other participants in a call may think it’s their fault that they can’t get you in the right direction. With rotation lock off, you can rotate your…

Apple’s most recent financial quarter has come and gone, and the company posted (yet again) record revenues, pulling in a zillion dollars and ending its latest fiscal year with just shy of $100 billion in profit alone. Let that sink in. A hundred billion dollars is such a large number as to be utterly incomprehensible to most of us who will never approach anywhere near even a single billion in our lifetime. It’s bigger than the gross domestic product of some countries—and not just a few, but more than half of the countries in the world. Most of them. And again, that’s profit, not revenue, which was a soaring $316 billion, putting it in around the top 40 countries. On the one hand, good for Apple. There was a time in…

WYZE MESH ROUTER The Wyze Mesh Router is a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router powered by a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A53 processor. It supports more than 50 devices per router with up to 3Gbps of Wi-Fi bandwidth and 1Gbps of internet throughput. Available in a white low-profile shell with the “Wyze” logo stamped on top, each Wyze Mesh Router node offers up to 1,500 square feet of wireless coverage. You can set up and configure the Wyze Mesh Router using the Wyze app, which also lets you check the status of the router and prioritize which connected devices should get the most bandwidth.—BEN PATTERSON LOGITECH MX MECHANICAL MINI FOR MAC Mechanical keyboards have a unique feel all their own, one that many users prefer. Logitech’s first mechanical keyboard optimized for…

Apple has announced that its newest iPhone 14 feature, Emergency SOS via satellite, is now available to users in the U.S. and Canada. Here’s everything you need to know. DO I NEED AN iPHONE 14 TO USE EMERGENCY SOS VIA SATELLITE? Yes, the feature is only for the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. It is not available on any other device, including the newest iPad Pros or Apple Watch Ultra. DO I NEED TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING TO GET IT TO WORK? Apple only says you need to be on iOS 16.1, which was released on Monday, October 25. You can update to iOS 16.1 in the Settings app by going to General and Software Update. HOW DO I KNOW IF IT’S ARRIVED…

At Apple Park, this has been the year of the premium product, with the company aggressively pushing customers toward Pro versions of the iPhone and AirPods. The Apple Watch too has got its flagship product, and this time it actually offers some extra features beyond being made out of a costly material. But the Apple Watch Ultra is a different proposition than the iPhone 14 Pro and AirPods Pro. The Apple Watch Ultra isn’t a straightforward upgrade where you pay more to add only improvements; it’s a niche device that some customers will love, but most absolutely shouldn’t buy. A BIG CHANGE: DESIGN AND COMFORT The Ultra is considerably bigger than any previous Apple Watch model. It’s almost twice as heavy as the lightest Series 8 model and weighs 19 percent more…

There’s no shortage of cleaning and optimization utilities for the Mac these days, and while Ukrainian developer Nektony’s MacCleaner Pro doesn’t offer the most revelatory set of features, what’s present here is a handy, powerful selection of tools. MacCleaner Pro doesn’t overextend itself by promising to remove malware or move into otherwise esoteric tasks that can’t live up to their promise. These utilities are competent, clever, and run smoothly while delivering what’s promised. The suite hones in on several modules and functions (MacCleaner Pro itself, App Cleaner & Uninstaller, Disk Space Analyzer, Funter, and Memory Cleaner) and executes them well, albeit at a price point that may be high for some users. Each of the MacCleaner Pro tools is fairly powerful, and it has a good tutorial system that opens when you…

Apple has the best streaming box out there. It’s the fastest and most responsive, with the best audio and video quality (support for both Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision), and with the update in 2021, it finally has a great remote, too. The operating system works well, shows are consolidated neatly in the TV app for most major services (with the notable exception of Netflix), and the Siri voice commands are for the most part convenient and reliable. If you use other Apple products, the synergy between them makes it even more delightful to use. Unfortunately, the Apple TV 4K has also maintained its spot as the most expensive of the popular streaming platforms—by far. With a starting price of $179, it was easily three or four times the price…

If you’re someone who wears AirPods Pro frequently, there’s now a new reason for leaving them on when you’re not listening to music. A recent scientific study found that the AirPods Pro can be just as effective as some prescription hearing aids in helping those with mild to moderate hearing loss. In a study published by iScience and reported by The Wall Street Journal, researchers found that while the 21 adults who participated in the study had a preference for a $10,000 hearing aid, the AirPods Pro used with Live Listen turned on performed well compared with the other prescription hearing aids tested. Live Listen is a feature that uses the microphones on the iPhone to feed audio to the AirPods Pro. The study also involved sound and clarity tests, and the AirPods…