Macworld April 2025

Truly, Apple’s rise from near-bankruptcy to being one of the most valuable companies in the world is a story for the business history books. But as legendary football coach and analyst John Madden frequently said, “Winning is the best deodorant.” (That’s American football, for our U.K. audience.) When you’re riding high—and you have been riding high for a couple of decades—it’s very hard to notice the parts of your business that have begun to emit a bit of an odor. To take another page from football, Apple has a winning playbook, and it keeps using it. But if you keep calling the same plays without adapting and reacting, a winning playbook can become something much worse. In the past year, two major Apple product launches show just how calcified the…

If you’re fully immersed in the Apple ecosphere of products, you may not have noticed a big trend that’s happening with computing. No, we’re not talking about artificial intelligence, though that is the hot trend. It’s something that’s actually tied to AI development: graphics cards. You might typically associate graphics cards with gaming and other video-focused pursuits, but AI has had a major influence on graphics card sales. The tech involved can handle AI’s large-scale calculations well. Because of that, Nvidia, perhaps the largest player in the graphics card market, has seen its products’ popularity explode. Apple has had success with its M-series chips for its Macs and iPads. When the M1 debuted, it demonstrated impressive gains over the Intel processors it replaced, and each new M chip continues to show…

Whether you’re a veteran Mac user or a macOS Sequoia newbie, you’ve probably heard that Macs never need to be restarted. It’s a belief that goes back to the time when PC and Macs were represented by different actors and let me tell you: It’s a myth. Now, some of you reading this will roll your eyes and say, “Well, of course.” But there are plenty of MacBook users who simply close their lid at the end of the day and reopen it the next morning. The only time they might consider a restart is when a macOS update forces them to. I know because I was one of them. I’ve been a Mac user since 2000 (Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet), and I have never made a habit of…

If you’re looking to take full advantage of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on your M4 Pro Mac mini or M4 Pro or Max MacBook Pro and possibly circumvent Apple’s avaricious storage upgrade pricing, you should consider OWC’s Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 external SSD. The Envoy Ultra is hardly cheap, but it’s nowhere near what Apple charges. On the downside, there are more backward-compatibility issues than expected. THUNDERBOLT 5 COMPATIBILITY While the speed is alluring, and Thunderbolt 5 itself is backward compatible with older Thunderbolt specs, it’s not nearly as backward compatible as you might think, as we wish, or as is hinted at. First, do you need a Thunderbolt 5-enabled Mac or Windows PC to take full advantage of Thunderbolt 5’s 80Gbps transfer rates. 80Gbps? Yes. While you may have…

Hades was a huge hit when it first appeared back in 2020, so a sequel was pretty much inevitable, and Hades II was released as an Early Access game for Windows PCs almost a year ago. However, the game received a big update at the end of 2024 that added native support for Macs with Apple Silicon. The bad news is that the game requires macOS 12 or later and—unlike the original version—Hades II won’t run on Macs with Intel processors. The first game cast you in the role of Zagreus, the son of Hades—the god of death from Greek mythology—as he attempted to escape from his father’s underworld and eventually reach the home of the gods on Mount Olympus. This time around it’s Zagreus’ sister, Melinoë, who takes center…

We have become accustomed to the brick format of power banks. Anker has rounded the edges with its new power bank, which not only looks more appealing but also feels better in the hand. The official name of the high-capacity battery pack is the rather plain Anker Power Bank (25K, 165W, Built-In and Retractable Cables). Although it is not part of Anker’s high-end Prime line, the technical data is impressive: The 25000mAh battery capacity is very high but still approved for use in aircraft; 165W maximum output power; and four connections. The four connections are divided into three USB-C and one USB-A. Of these, one connection is on a retractable cable, one is on a fixed cable that becomes a carrying strap, and two are classic ports. The retractable cable…