Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Macworld

Last year ended up being a good one for the Mac, thanks to the somewhat surprising introduction of the M3 series of chips and the launch of the 15-inch MacBook Air. But what about this year? What will happen to the Mac lineup in 2024? Well, it looks like not a whole lot. We’ll get some new macOS features revealed at WWDC in June, but hardware-wise, we’ve reached a stage in the M-series Mac evolution that will likely be more routine than revolutionary. Put it all together and you’ve got the makings of a very dull year for the Mac. CHIP CYCLE PLATEAU The M3 chip got a lot of attention leading up to its October release in the iMac and MacBook Pro. It’s the first 3nm chip to be used in…

Most PCs use fans to help their chips maintain an optimal operating temperature. These fans are bulky and noisy, which is why the super-thin MacBook Air doesn’t have one. But Frore Systems has a solution—its new cooling system, AirJet, is super thin—thin enough to fit in a current MacBook Air and boost its performance while under heavy load. Since the MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan for the SoC, its performance will throttle down during processor-intensive work to maintain a proper operating temperature. The M2 13-inch MacBook Pro, on the other hand, has a fan that expels excessive heat so the chip can keep chugging along. The AirJet is what Frore calls a “solidstate active cooling chip” that measures 27.5×41.5×2.8 mm, a lot smaller and thinner than a typical computer…

OWC EXPRESS 1M2 SSD You absolutely can’t beat the versatility (any USB or Thunderbolt port), or the performance (over 3GBps) of OWC’s Express 1M2 external USB4 SSD. It’s a tad large and looks like a giant silver heatsink, but it’s super sturdy. It’s available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, or 8TB capacities, or you can buy an empty enclosure and supply your own SSD module.—JON L. JACOBI AMAZON ECHO FRAMES Amazon’s third-generation Echo Frames smart glasses arrive with several welcome improvements, including new styles, thinner temples, better audio, and improved battery life. If you find Alexa indispensable and you want the voice assistant hovering around your temples all day, the Frames are an easy recommendation. But you’ll still want your AirPods when it comes to music.—BEN PATTERSON CLICKS CREATOR KEYBOARD…

As a photographer, I need a power bank for my iPhone, MacBook, and camera that I can stash in a backpack while traveling on my motorcycle. A small power bank like the Anker Prime 12,000mAh Power Bank is ideal. DESIGN & BUILD Measuring 5.29×2.17×1.36 inches (13.4×5.5×3.5 centimeters), the Power Bank is very compact given its 12,000 mAh power capacity, and its brick design sits comfortably in the hand. It comes equipped with a 2-foot (150-cm) USB-C charging cable and a soft transport bag. The Power Bank has two USB-C Power Delivery 3.0 ports to charge two devices simultaneously. It also provides high output power for a MacBook—each port delivers a maximum of 65 watts of power. The possible combinations of voltage and current for the input and output are 5V/3A,…

Unless you have an obvious problem with your Apple device like a cracked screen, it can be hard to tell if an issue your device is having is something that needs repairing or something software-related that just needs a reinstall. Short of trial and error, such an issue requires heading down to the Apple Store for a Genius to diagnose the problem. Now you can save yourself a trip. Apple has announced that its Diagnostic troubleshooting suites are available for iPhone and Mac as part of its Self Service Repair program. Apple explains that the tool is “intended for users with the knowledge and expertise to repair Apple devices,” and “will give customers the same ability as Apple Authorized Service Providers and Independent Repair Providers to test devices for optimal part…

The import feature in Numbers for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS can take data in the common comma-separated values (CSV) and tab-separated values (TSV) formats and parse that right into a spreadsheet’s fields. However, you may have encountered a problem if you bring in data that was exported from elsewhere or formatted by hand that shouldn’t be interpreted as a number but rather as plain text. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service’s zip code system is one of the most common uses of leading or padding zeroes in numbers you deal with every day. In a zip code like 04843, the initial zero is a necessary part of the Zip code—but if you import a CSV or TSV file with 04843 in a field by itself, Numbers (like Excel) automatically treats it…

FaceTime finally came to the Apple TV a few months ago with the arrival of tvOS 17, and now you can join Zoom meetings using your Apple TV streaming box, too. Apple had previously said that Zoom would be making its way to the Apple TV shortly following the arrival of FaceTime for tvOS, and just as promised, the Zoom app landed on the Apple App Store in early December (as spotted by AppleInsider). Zoom on Apple TV relies on an iPhone’s rear camera for capturing video. Specifically, you’ll need an iPhone that supports Apple’s Continuity Camera feature, which works on any iPhone released on or after 2018 (think the iPhone XR or better). I gave the Zoom app for tvOS a brief once-over on my Apple TV 4K from 2021…

HOW TO MAKE YOUR iPHONE PHOTOS APPEAR IN THE CORRECT ORIENTATION The Camera app on an iPhone or iPad makes it a snap (sorry for the pun) to take pictures in either portrait or landscape orientation. But what do you do when the rotation is incorrect, either when making the shot or when reviewing it later? Check for the rotation in the interface Camera uses subtle signals to let you know that your photo will be captured in landscape or portrait. Certain text and icons rotate to the position that Camera registers the photo will be captured as. In the figure, you can see that if your iPhone or iPad is in portrait orientation, the symbols at the top and the text for magnification appear in that orientation (note the…

Three years ago today, Apple’s M1 chip had a tremendous debut in the Mac mini, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. Since then, those Macs have gone through their cycles and have had chip upgrades—or have been replaced altogether. But a single M1 Mac remains in Apple’s current Mac lineup: the M1 MacBook Air. Apple keeps the M1 Air around because at $999, it’s the company’s only sub-$1,000 laptop (yes, by only a $1, but, you know, marketing). It’s actually a decent MacBook by today’s standards, but it’s also a three-year-old laptop that’s no longer worth that price—especially when the M2 model is just $100 more. 3-YEAR-OLD LAPTOP, 5-YEAR-OLD DESIGN The $999 price was the original price back in November 2020. But the price isn’t the only thing that hasn’t…

There’s generally a difference between a product’s marketing copy and what the software is capable of living up to. For all its bluster on the Mac App Store, BitMedic Pro Antivirus (version 3.1.3 at the time of writing), developed by Pocket Bits, is a good antiviral program, albeit with some shortcomings that need to be worked through. The program, which retails for $10 on the Mac App Store, features a nice complement of tools, including an Antivirus Scan module, an Adware Cleaner module, a Result Log, a Custom Scan module, a Browser Privacy module, and a System Settings module that allows you to schedule deep scans, customize system behaviors, and create a whitelist of files not to scan. Just download the software and assign it the requisite permissions, and you’re…

The Wall Street Journal in late December had the scoop on a new unannounced iPhone security feature debuting in iOS 17.3. Called Stolen Device Protection, it’s a new setting that makes it more difficult to make major changes to your Apple ID and digital life using only your iPhone’s passcode. The feature comes after a WSJ report early in 2023 highlighted how thieves would watch users enter their six-digit iPhone passcode before stealing the phone, and then use that passcode to lock the users out of their Apple ID, view their passwords, apply for the Apple Card, send money, and more. The basic idea is simple: With Stolen Device Protection activated, your iPhone will require biometric identification (Face ID or Touch ID) to perform many actions—your iPhone passcode will no longer serve…

It’s not uncommon for local police departments and local news to warn parents about imaginary risks. Not a single Halloween goes by without breathless warnings to protect your kids from poisoned or drugged candy, though there’s no evidence that such a thing has ever actually happened. Now they’re starting to send out needless warnings about protecting your kids from…NameDrop. Yes, local police departments are broadly misunderstanding the feature that lets you more easily share contact info if you choose to, and sharing warnings on social media. Here’s one from the Crenshaw County Sheriff’s Department. And here’s another from the Middletown Division of Police. This one from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office seems to sort of understand that you have to deliberately choose to share your info but warns you to turn…

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro have plenty of great new features, but some are not quite as obvious as a 5× zoom lens and an Action button. If you just picked up one of the latest iPhones, you have more options, settings, and functions than you realize, many of which you have to know where to find. You could be missing out on something that will totally change the way you use your new iPhone. Here, we’ll reveal several of our favorite “hidden” features of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. Some only apply to the Pro models, some apply to both, but all of them are worth knowing about. 1. SET AN 80 PERCENT CHARGE LIMIT All modern iPhones have an Optimized Charging feature, but the…

It’s easy to wind up with multiple iCloud accounts. You could wind up using different accounts for different purposes or sets of machines and want to consolidate receiving email for all of them. Apple doesn’t offer an obvious way to add iCloud accounts just for email in the Mail app. (Any third-party app makes it easy.) That’s because Apple steers you to select iCloud as your account type in the setup process, and only then warns you that account would then be used for all your iCloud purposes, not just email. There’s a way to do it that requires using an app-specific password, which is Apple’s term for a password used exclusively for email, calendar, and contacts access. This kind of password is required because all other syncing is locked…

Still navigating to the iTunes Movies and TV Show apps to buy and rent videos on your Apple TV? If so, get ready for some big changes. With the arrival of tvOS 17.2, which was released Monday, the iTunes Movies and TV Shows apps for the Apple TV have been deprecated. Now, if you try to open those apps on your Apple TV, you’ll jump to a screen that directs you to the Apple TV app to rent or purchase movies or TV shows, or to view your previously purchased videos. The update won’t come as a surprise to anyone following Apple’s tvOS beta software—and indeed, the mere existence of the Apple TV app had been a clear sign that the old iTunes apps were on the way out. Still,…

It’s well known that headphone listening can cause irreversible damage to your hearing if the content is played too loudly. As an adult, you might chalk it up to aging, but imagine your child having difficulty hearing birds sing or the teacher giving classroom instruction because you let them wear your headphones while they watched YouTube or played games on the tablet you gave them. Puro Sound Labs has a solid reputation for building headphones that limit the volume of sound pumped into kids’ ears, and their latest product—the BT2200 Plus Bluetooth headphone—is a superbly well-made product comparable to the best personal audio products designed for adults. Its key feature is that it delivers very good sound, with its output volume limited to 85dBA. DESIGN AND BUILD Unlike most products…

MacBooks are great portable computers, but they lack one key feature for true, on-the-road usability: cellular connectivity. That may change in a future MacBook—but it’s going to take a while. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman provides a progress report about Apple’s in-house chip development. One major project Apple has been working on is its own cellular modem, which has been in the works for some time. Gurman reports that the modem could be ready by 2026, but it will take “two or three additional years” for it to be used in the iPad and Apple Watch (both of which can be bought with Qualcomm modems), and yes, the Mac. If the modem is ready in 2026, why so long for it to be used in the…

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 a back-mounted USB-C hub. Alogic has now added two new monitors to its Clarity range: the Clarity Pro and Clarity Pro Touch. The Clarity Pro adds an all-important webcam to the display. The Clarity Pro Touch also has a webcam, but adds a touchscreen display that you can use much like an iPad with on-screen tap, swipe, slide, and pinch. SCREEN PIXELS AND COLORS Of course, the most important consideration when buying a display is the picture quality. As with the original Clarity, the Alogic Clarity Pro and Pro Touch offer a 4K (3840×2160 pixels) screen, capable of displaying over a billion colors at a…

At Worldwide Developers Conference in 2022, Apple briefly unveiled what it called “the next generation of CarPlay.” The vision, expressed in fancy mock-ups rather than real cars, was impressive. CarPlay would take over all your car screens! What Apple had done for awful infotainment interfaces, it would do for awful everything interfaces. After about a year and a half, we haven’t seen any new details at all about this next evolution of CarPlay. We were told back in June 2022 that vehicles would “start to be announced late next year.” Apple blew past that deadline, and now it’s looking at this year. On the apparent cusp of finally getting those car announcements, it’s fascinating to note that we’re left with more questions than answers about the new CarPlay. And even…

A power bank for your iPhone is a necessity unless you stay at home all day or observe the most rigorous charging schedule. Mobile power banks used to be a metal slab with a port for attaching a cable to connect the battery pack to your power-fading phone. With Apple’s smart MagSafe technology, a new species of portable power bank became available. MagSafe has been available on all iPhones since the iPhone 12. It allows you to magnetically clamp a compatible accessory to the back of your iPhone. The best usage is for wirelessly charging your iPhone. Wireless charging will never be as fast as using a cable attached to a charger, as it is inherently less efficient. However, it is often far more convenient than locating and then carrying…

Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes, from the littlest kindergarteners to the world’s most valuable and powerful corporations. What’s most important is how we respond to our mistakes, of course. Do we learn and grow? Do we deny and deflect? Or do we just give up? What I’m saying is that sometimes Apple learns important lessons from its failures that inform its future attempts…but sometimes it seems to just shrug its shoulders and give up. ADORABLE FAILURES AND THEIR REACTIONS Apple is a proud company that hates making mistakes and hates owning up to them even more. When Apple corrects a mistake, it generally does so by pointing out how much better the correction is and how customers are just going to love it. It doesn’t dwell on the past—and…

Time Machine no longer lets you delete individual files from backup snapshots, though you can still delete an entire snapshot. That shouldn’t be a problem: In almost no case does it make sense to delete a file from a Time Machine backup in the first place. As part of Apple’s transition from its traditional Mac filesystem, HFS+, to the more advanced APFS, Apple took a few years to flesh out Time Machine support. Since macOS 11 Big Sur, you’ve been able to back up directly to an APFS volume. Before APFS, you could browse a Time Machine snapshot in HFS+ and choose to delete all instances of a given file across all snapshots. APFS snapshots can’t be modified, however; you can’t remove a file (or folder) within the backup. But…

Spatial audio is one of the big draws for Apple Music, and it appears Apple wants to squeeze even more Dolby Atmos–mixed spatial tracks onto its streaming music service. Starting in 2024, Apple will give “added weighting” to Apple Music tracks mixed in Dolby Atmos, the object-based audio format that powers Apple’s Spatial Audio technology, according to Bloomberg (subscription required). That could mean a particular Atmos track might be more likely to pop up in an Apple Music search than a typical stereo track, and that means musicians looking for bigger royalty payouts would have more incentive to mix their tunes in the format, as Bloomberg notes. Apple has good reason to push spatial audio, as it offers a clear selling point over its biggest rival: Spotify, which has yet to…

The Bluesound Pulse M wireless speaker presents a glass-half-full versus glass-half-empty predicament. The BluOS multi-room audio platform it runs on is capable of transmitting sizzling ultra-high-res performances, as evidenced by such hardware as the $599 Bluesound Node Audio player and the $1,499 NAD C700 Streaming Amplifier. The good news is that the $399 Pulse M not only costs less than either of those components, but it also has integrated speakers—you don’t need to buy anything else. The bad news is that its audio performance doesn’t come anywhere close to those components when they’re paired with speakers of comparable quality. On the other hand, listeners looking to add BluOS components to rooms where space is at a premium and background music is valued over critical listening sessions—in the kitchen or the home office,…