Innehållsförteckning för December 2023 från Macworld

Perhaps you’ve heard that for the past few quarters, Mac sales have slumped. Perhaps you’ve also heard that the new iPhone 15 Pro has some nifty new features that have Apple fans flocking to stores to buy one. Hey, how about this for an idea? Apple should incorporate some of those nifty new iPhone features into the Mac. That’s a sure way to boost Mac sales—customers benefit, too, with features that make the Mac a more powerful tool. Here are the iPhone 15 Pro features that Apple should bring to the Mac. TITANIUM The iPhone 15 Pro has a titanium body instead of the stainless steel that has been used since the iPhone X. Apple describes it as “the most premium material” ever used on an iPhone. Titanium is strong,…

Now that macOS Sonoma is here, it brings with it a new feature that Apple calls Game Mode. When activated, Game Mode kicks in automatically when a game launches, giving top CPU and GPU priority to maximize performance. It also improves connectivity with wireless devices, so items such as controllers and AirPods have less latency. Game Mode is all part of Apple’s efforts to make the Mac more appealing to both developers and users as a gaming device. As a user, here’s what you need to know about Game Mode and how to use it in macOS Sonoma. Also check out Apple’s support document about Game Mode on the Mac. WHAT IS GAME MODE? If there’s one thing serious gamers have in common, it’s a never-ending desire for hardware that…

HOUSE OF MARLEY STIR IT UP LUX WIRELESS TURNTABLE House of Marley continues its commitment to recycled and renewable materials, and its upscale Stir It Up Lux will make your home audio setup stand out. This versatile belt-drive turntable offers both wired and wireless (Bluetooth 5.3) connections and offers easy setup for anyone new to vinyl listening. It features a solid bamboo plinth, a solid glass platter, and an aluminum tonearm with an adjustable counterweight and anti-skate mechanism. The turntable comes with the excellent Audio-Technica AT95E moving-magnet cartridge, which is noted for its accurate tracking and low distortion.—JAMES BARBER BENQ LAPTOPBAR The Benq LaptopBar is a light bar built for laptops. It rests on top of a MacBook’s screen, and it has an adjustable height to widen or shrink…

A recent report by supply chain analyst Jeff Pu claims that Apple is likely to use an A18 processor in all of next year’s iPhone 16 models, Pro and regular. At first glance, this would seem to fly in the face of recent trends that suggest the iPhone 16 Pro models will have an A18 Pro and the non-Pro models will get this year’s A17 Pro or a non-Pro version of it, just as they got an A16 this year. Don’t get your hopes up. Pu’s prediction is more nuanced than that, and Apple has already telegraphed a change to the way it names and possibly how it produces A-series processors. AN A18 BY ANY OTHER NAME When Apple introduced the iPhone 15 Pro, we took special note of the…

If you drive an older car, you don’t have CarPlay. You can find third-party products you can buy to replace and modernize your car’s system, but they can be limiting or not worth the expense and labor. However, you might find the screens of Apple’s iPhone Pro models large enough for use as a navigation and entertainment system. You can use a car mount to hold your iPhone, but figuring out how to attach it to your car is tricky. Many mounts use a suction cup that sticks to the windshield, but they sometimes do not hold on tight enough and fall off while you’re turning a corner. Or they stick so strongly that you need to apply muscle to pull them off. Mophie’s Magnetic Vent Mount gets around this problem…

Of the quartet of new iPhones released this fall, the iPhone 15 is the cheapest, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the sexiest, and the iPhone 15 Pro—powerful and portable—is the connoisseur’s choice. But the iPhone 15 Plus might just be the most fascinating. After all, this is a form factor that didn’t exist at Cupertino until last year. Apple’s philosophy until then was that small things should be cheap and large ones expensive…which admittedly has some logic to it. But phone buyers don’t like being put in neat boxes, and some of them would quite like to get a large screen without having to pay for the very latest features and processing power. That’s where the Plus line comes in. We’re looking at a compromise phone, then—one that sacrifices in…

There has been a lot of talk of late about Apple’s default search engine, which is Google (and for a time, Bing would power Siri and Spotlight search requests). Recent court documents have shown just how much Google pays Apple to be the default search engine across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Microsoft reportedly pitched selling Bing to Apple back in 2020, but with Google paying Apple billions of dollars a year to remain the default, Apple decided against it. There have also been reports of Apple building its own search technology, with crawlers indexing the web to provide answers to common Siri questions and such. That fueled further speculation (yet again) about Apple launching its own search engine, though that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon. Apple’s…

A new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg gives some insight into Apple’s plans to revamp its AirPods line. According to the report, Apple plans to overhaul the entire AirPods line starting next year and continuing through 2025. The AirPods were once viewed as just an accessory, but now sell tens of millions of units a year and bring in an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion in revenue. On their own, the AirPods would be a Fortune 500 company. In 2024, the report says, Apple will revamp the entry-level AirPods, with a new earbud design, a new look for the cases, and improved audio quality. Apple would produce two new 4th-gen AirPods that would replace the 2nd-generation and 3rd-generation AirPods, both still currently sold. Apparently, the 3rd-gen model doesn’t sell…

The Siri Remote for the Apple TV has a tiny operating system, like those of so many small devices. In some cases, you might need to reboot the remote control, something I had never considered. This can happen particularly when using a Siri Remote (any generation) as an infrared transmitter after training it to mimic remote control features, such as power on/off and volume up/down. I found in setting up a new Apple TV that the remote crashed a couple of times as I wrestled with IR programming. Every function worked except those related to infrared. A forced reboot solved this. Here’s how to reset a Siri Remote when that happens: 1. Hold down the TV/Control Center button and the volume down (–) button at the same time. 2. Count…

The Mac Pro’s history has had excellent high points, as well as challenges that had to be dealt with. When Apple replaced the Power Mac G5 with the Mac Pro, the switch to Intel chips made the future look bright, while at the same time, users had to deal with the technology transition. In 2013, Apple proved it could think differently about its flagship Mac, with a cylindrical design that morphed our notion of what defines the Mac Pro. But the “trash can” Mac suffered much criticism for its lack of upgradability and reliance on external devices. The 2019 Mac Pro brought back the tower that users demanded, but Apple had to win back a lot of customers. Good or bad, the release of the new Mac Pro was an…

Trend Micro is probably known by business users, which is where the Japanese manufacturer puts its focus. However, Trend Micro also has a long history with private users looking for virus protection and is one of the best on the market. FEATURES Protection against ransomware is provided and monitors selected folders for suspicious actions. If blackmailing software starts to encrypt data in the Documents folder, for example, this function should prevent this. As usual with many antivirus programs, there is also the mandatory browser extension, which is intended to protect against malware sites. But the range of functions seems quite limited compared to competitors such as Norton and Avast. For example, there is no anti-phishing function and no VPN application included in the package, which is quite unusual today. Instead, the…

One of the biggest imprints Steve Jobs and Jony Ive left on Apple’s design process is a certain kind of product idealism. At its best, Apple is striving to take ridiculously complex products, fusions of cutting-edge computer hardware design and eye-wateringly enormous software code bases, and make them simple. It’s a philosophy that has led Apple to build wildly successful products its customers love. And there’s one new iPhone 15 feature that perfectly illustrates why Apple’s idealism can take it to very interesting places. KEEP IT SIMPLE When Apple introduced Portrait Mode to the iPhone in 2016, the goal was to get smartphone photos to look as pretty as images captured on expensive cameras with long lenses—and that meant analyzing the photo and adding an artificial blur to the background.…

One of the biggest points of anticipation around this year’s iPhone models was the transition from Apple’s proprietary Lightning port to the USB-C standard. Some were worried about the transition requiring them to replace all their accessories, while others—yours truly included—looked forward to a future of being able to use a single cable for their iPad, MacBook, and iPhone. Now that the new models are out in the wild, however, the USB-C transition has proved to be a rose bearing some thorns. It’s not as simple as having one port to rule them all, and in some cases, the move away from Apple’s controlled ecosystem has introduced some challenges that its users haven’t had to deal with in the past. These bumps in the road may get ironed out in time,…

Multiport chargers make a lot of sense as everyone has more than one battery-driven device that needs charging every few days, and in the case of Apple devices, they may need charging daily. MacBook owners should look for a USB-C charger offering at least 65W of power—enough for everything but the top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro. Apple also recommends 100W for the 12-core 14-inch MacBook Pro that comes with a 96W charger in the box; the 10-core entry-level model ships with a 67W charger. Remember that a charger is rated at its total power out, so a 100W multiport charger won’t offer its full charge to a laptop if you are using the other ports for your iPhone, AirPods or Apple Watch, or even a second laptop. Ugreen’s Nexode GaN range…

If the bricks of Apple’s business are its hardware and software products—iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the software that runs them—then the mortar that holds them together is composed of the company’s services, the chief ingredient of which is iCloud. That mortar, however, has been eroding for some time, which is one reason you don’t typically hold bricks together with clouds; there are serious structural concerns. While the company has tried to up the value proposition of the service in recent years by introducing new paid features under the moniker of iCloud+” it’s the basic, free-to-all features that are desperately in need of some tender ministrations. BABY, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CLOUD I will say this about iCloud Drive: It’s improved greatly from its earliest days when it was basically a…

The Wi-Fi Alliance, which sets the certification process for industry-standard Wi-Fi gear, created a new branding system a few years ago for all the generations of Wi-Fi that had ever appeared. Previously, Wi-Fi was typically identified by the IEEE engineering standards group’s obscure working group numbers, like 802.11n or 802.11ac. To make it simpler to mix and match gear and know what generation you were using, the Alliance labeled products Wi-Fi 4, 5, and 6. (The earliest 802.11 standards were so out of date that they didn’t get numbered but are, by inference, 1, 2, and 3.) Wi-Fi 4, 5, and 6 represented generations of standards, each faster and more capable of covering areas of homes and offices with the highest speeds. The most recent updates focused on simultaneously delivering…

Sun, surf, and carefree outdoor holidays seem like distant memories right now. Autumn has the Northern Hemisphere in its grip and the conditions for testing a portable speaker may not be optimal, at least when it comes to judging their outdoor performance. But Harman Kardon’s new luxury Go + Play 3 is a highly anticipated entry in the portable Bluetooth speaker market, so let’s just bite the bullet and take one for the team. I tested the Go + Play 3’s predecessor, the Go + Play, almost exactly seven years ago. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, but I remember the Go + Play as a good performer. So with fond memories as a starting point, I had high expectations for its successor. DESIGN AND BUILD…

HOW TO FILTER SPAM AND UNKNOWN SENDERS IN MESSAGES The average person receives an awful lot of spam and scam messages by phone, text, and email. Both Apple and internet service providers offer anti-spam tools for email (which have varying degrees of effectiveness), and cell carriers and third parties have also worked to provide ways to identify or block unwanted or illegal calls on your phone. Texts, however, are still fairly open to abuse. One overlooked set of options, available on your iPhone and in some cases your iPad or Mac, comes with notification and filter settings that can at least let you avoid seeing any of the incoming garbage. 1. iOS 16: The message lists with filtering on On an iPhone, you can go to Settings → Messages, scroll…

Due to an extremely weird series of troubleshooting maneuvers, I recently found myself having to set my Mac up from scratch without migrating any of my preferences for the first time in longer than I’d like to admit. Think decades, not years. This meant I had to experience every single Apple software default, enter license numbers into software not bought in the Mac App Store, and generally recall every decision I had taken over the last few years to get back to where I wanted to be. More than anything else, though, the experience reminded me that Apple has a lot of work to do when it comes to making the experience of upgrading or migrating to a new Mac more pleasant—and that its security and privacy team clearly has…

For many Mac users, running Windows applications is a necessity. Perhaps your employer uses software that’s available only for Windows, or requires the use of a website that relies on Windows-only technology. Or maybe you want to play Windows games on your Mac. Or you need to test applications and services on alternative operating systems—the only way you can install macOS alongside Windows is on a Mac, because Apple won’t allow macOS to be installed on anything else. When Apple moved to Intel CPUs back in 2006, running Windows on a Mac became easier with the introduction of Apple’s own Boot Camp, which made it simple to run both Windows and macOS natively on a Mac. But times have changed, and Apple has now transitioned from Intel to its own…

Apple’s latest big announcement wasn’t a new iPad—it was a new stylus for the iPad. Rather than replacing either of the previous ones, this one goes on sale alongside them. So there are now three Apple Pencils, and it’s going to be even more confusing for iPad owners looking to buy one for their tablet. Largely following the design of the 2018 Pencil (complete with matte finish and flat side with magnetic attachment), the new stylus differs in the inclusion of a sliding cap, which reveals the USB-C port for charging. Interestingly, Apple is not referring to the new device as a 3rd-gen model, but rather as “the new Apple Pencil” or “Apple Pencil (USB-C),” perhaps because the company doesn’t want customers to think it’s more advanced than preceding models. This…

For a product that isn’t debuting until 2024, Apple has said a lot about the Vision Pro, its mixed reality headset. Apple spent nearly an hour in the WWDC keynote discussing it. It has rolled out developer tools for visionOS, which has given us even more clarity about what visionOS can and can’t do. And yet I remain firmly convinced that Apple hasn’t told us the whole story. The WWDC keynote was the time to make a first impression—but there’s half a year to go before the final story is told. As a result, Apple emphasized the features of the device that it felt would best represent the device. It emphasized the fact that it’s an augmented-reality product that keeps you connected with people around you as a way to blunt…

It’s probably fair to say that the Apple Watch is not prone to radical change. In the eight years and nine standard generations since the first model launched in 2015, the fundamental design has barely altered, and it’s often difficult to differentiate one generation from another. One day, perhaps, this will change. But not today. The Apple Watch Series 9, launched in fall 2023, doesn’t mess with the formula that has seen Apple effortlessly dominate the smartwatch market for the best part of a decade, and it differs from last year’s Series 8 in only a few respects. But does that mean it’s a bad watch? Of course not! Aside from the Apple Watch Ultra line, which is aimed at a different audience, this is the best smartwatch Apple has ever…

Having typefaces to pick from at your fingerprints has been a hallmark of the Mac since its earliest days. But what happens when you install a font and Pages (or Numbers or Keynote) insists it’s not there, even if you quit the app and relaunch it? macOS has had strong font management features for many years, due in part to Apple’s adoption of the PostScript-centric NeXT operating system as the basis of OS X. But there are still hiccups. Some internal cache that lists available fonts doesn’t seem to get the message. You’ll know this situation when it happens: 1. Select some text in Pages. 2. If the Format Inspector at the right of your document isn’t displayed, click the Format button (if visible) on the toolbar or choose View…

Ahead of its “Scary Fast” Mac event, Apple dropped another surprise, and this one wasn’t so exciting. The price for three of its services—including Apple TV+—is going up. Apple hasn’t officially announced the pricing changes, but the sites for Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+ list new monthly prices that are significantly higher than they were before. They are as follows: Apple TV+: $9.99 (previously $6.99) Apple Arcade: $6.99 (previously $4.99) Apple News+: $12.99 (previously $9.99) The price of the Apple One bundles have also increased to reflect the change and offer some additional savings over the new prices: Individual: $19.95 (previously $16.99) Family: $25.95 (previously $22.95) Premier: $37.95 (previously $32.95) The new prices, which affect the U.S., U.K., and many other countries, represent the largest price increases for…

Supplanting the four-year-old Bose Headphones 700 at the premium end of the company’s line, the pricey Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones up the ante on the two most critical fronts: sound quality and active noise cancellation. These comfy music makers also run longer (up to 24 hours on a charge) and faster (with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound Technology Suite), offer advanced Bluetooth 5.3 capabilities, support aptX streaming, and feature Bose’s CustomTune technology for personalizing the headphones’ audio to your unique ears. And finally, like their in-ear cousins, the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones deliver a homegrown spatial audio option that should please a lot of people at least some of the time. DESIGN AND BUILD In terms of industrial design, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are much less controversial than the…