Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2017 in Macworld

Apple employees will begin the process of moving to the company’s new campus in April, and in six months more than 12,000 people will work in Apple Park. Steve Jobs conceived of the 2.8 million-square-foot building, which evokes a flying saucer with panels of curved glass, and Apple will honor its late founder’s memory with a 1,000-seat auditorium named Steve Jobs Theater. Apple Park sits on 175 acres of land designed to be part nature refuge, part center for collaboration and creativity. The campus replaces Hewlett-Packard’s cocrete jungle with 9,000 trees, two miles of trails for employees to walk and run on, plus an orchard, meadow, and a pond. Apple claims its new HQ is the world’s largest naturally ventilated building and won’t need heat or air conditioning for nine…

Shaving off annoyances in macOS is always worth a few bucks, and if you manipulate audio sources and volumes frequently, it should be worth $10. Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource 3 provides splayed-out, easy access to the settings divvied up in the Sound system preference pane, and only partly available through the system audio menu item. In the Sound preference pane, options are split among Sound Effects, Output, and Input. These are shown instead as separate sections in a long menu from a system menu-bar icon that belongs to SoundSource. From this menu, you can see every audio input and output source available; switch system input, system output, and sound effect output; and change the volume of each of those as well. (Some devices reserve volume controls to hardware settings, and Sound- Source…

Even after a slew of Lego video game adaptations over the years, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($40 on the Mac App Store) is able to offer new elements and add humor and replay value. Beginning with the Battle of Endor from Return of the Jedi, the game has you and your Ewok allies take on the Imperial forces while Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader team up against Emperor Palpatine aboard the second Death Star, the game running you through its tutorial segments all the while. From here, you then hop into the plotline of The Force Awakens, taking on the roles of Poe Dameron, Finn, Rey, Han Solo, Chewbacca, BB-8, and others. Like its Lego-adapted predecessors, the basic gameplay style of “enter a new screen, smash everything, collect…

Taking your iPhone to any place but an Apple store or Appleauthorized repair shop for a screen fix used to automatically void your warranty. That’s apparently no longer the case. According to an internal memo circulated to Apple retail stores and published by 9to5Mac, iPhone repairs that would be covered by your device’s warranty will still be covered, even if you had your screen fixed by a third-party shop. There’s a caveat, though: If there are signs that the third-party repair work caused damage to your iPhone, or if the repair is related to the display, you’ll have to pay the out-of-warranty price for repair at an Apple store or authorized repair shop. Apple has become a little less strict about screen repairs over the last year. Back in September,…

The iPhone camera has come a long way, but as good as Apple’s quad-LED True Tone flash may be, it’s still no match for external lighting. LuMee Duo ($69.95 MSRP; available on the Apple Store and on Amazon is a case for iPhone 6, 6s, 7 or 6/6s/7 Plus that supplants Apple’s built-in flash with pro-quality light of its own. Available in Black, Gold, or Rose, the Duo features a thin strip of LED lighting built into soft rubberized front edges and a rugged plastic shell, which sports a center dimmer switch on the back. At 3600 Kelvin temperature, the lamps are significantly brighter and warmer than the iPhone’s own. Pressing the switch once provides 2000 Lux on the front for higher quality selfies, while a second press lights up…

Apple announced its smarthome control system, HomeKit, in 2014 at its annual developers conference. It started enabling it in iOS in mid-2015 and had a more complete rollout later that year. With iOS 10 in September 2016, HomeKit finally got its own app and better integration. But HomeKit remains an immature technology with few choices even for die-hard Apple equipment owners. This was emphasized at CES, a trade show at which Apple never exhibits, but where products from third parties aimed at the ecosystem often get their debut. For HomeKit, it was mostly crickets. Amazon’s Alexa ruled the roost, with a large number of integrations with third parties, extending its voice-controlled system. This is certainly part of a larger sense of malaise across all smart-home systems. While the promise remains…

A Twitter user recounted a familiar story of a lost iPhone that resonated with a lot of people just a few days ago. The person behind @afronomics_ said she found another woman’s phone in the bathroom. She noted, “I asked Siri what’s my name. It pulled up her info. Cool. I asked Siri who do I call most. Pulled up her recent calls. Cool.” The whole thread is good reading. (The account owner uses colorful language and may be inappropriate to peruse at a workplace.) I tested the list of things she noted, and I had slightly different results, but no less concerning. Siri required that I unlock my phone when I asked, “Where do I live?” but when I said, “Directions to my home,” iOS provided those without a…

Some photos turn out great, but most are merely okay. As anyone who has picked up a camera will tell you, everyone shoots both kinds. But let’s be honest: the majority of the photos we capture on vacation fall into the “just okay” category. Thumbs make their way into shots. People and objects show up that we failed to notice when composing the shot. The sun can wash your photos out or cast harsh shadows. Not enough sun can turn what should be a beautiful moment into a grainy mess. The good news is that, with the right hardware and software, most of these issues can either be improved upon or avoided altogether. To help you up your photographic game before your next adventure, I present a two-part travel photography…

Instagram has become something of an art form. To avoid cluttering your friends’ feeds, you have to pick the best photo from a day or an event, the one that perfectly encapsulates the experience. Then you artfully edit the image by choosing the perfect filter and tweaking it in advanced options. A sardonic or heartfelt caption rounds out the post, which you then share and wait for the likes to come rolling in. But today, Instagram is changing the game. You don’t have to share just one photo per post anymore. In an update rolled out for iOS and Android users on February 22, Instagram lifted its limitations with multiple images and videos per post—up to 10, to be exact. This is a feature that Instagram actually launched two years…

In a departure from the norm, Apple just announced the dates and location of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. This year, the event will be at San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center instead of San Francisco’s Moscone Center, though Apple is keeping its usual June time slot. Apple unveiled the dates and venue change in a recent press release. The company typically holds off on revealing WWDC details until much closer to the event, but Apple execs wanted to give developers plenty of time to make travel arrangements, according to The Loop. The convention center in San Jose is comparable in size to Moscone and will still be able to fit about 5,000 developers and 1,000 engineers, who flock to WWDC every year to learn about Apple’s latest updates to iOS,…

After establishing a solid reputation as a slick third-party email iOS client, Spark (free; available on the App Store) recently leapt from mobile to the Mac desktop. This marks Ukrainian developer Readdle’s second full-fledged macOS application after PDF Expert, an excellent document viewer/ editor that finally got me to kick the Preview habit for good. Although Spark for iOS is quite good, the idea of using different email clients on mobile and desktop never appealed to me. I do the bulk of my daily work on an iMac, so having the same application available on my iPhone and iPad is a must. Now that Spark for Mac has arrived, is it finally curtains for Apple Mail? The short answer is: Almost. Many of the best iOS features are present and accounted for,…

WATERFIELD DESIGNS’ MAVERICK LEATHER LAPTOP MESSENGER BAG Waterfield Designs’ $289 Maverick Leather Laptop Messenger Bag oozes enough style to make anyone look like a professional. The Maverick is available in two sizes— Compact and Full, which are respectively designed to fit a 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook in a fully-padded compartment. Pick between three color schemes: Black, Chocolate (dark brown), or Grizzly (light brown). While it’s not weatherproof, the Maverick is certainly weather-resistant. While testing the bag, I got caught in a rainstorm. I was relieved to find that after walking close to a mile in the downpour, my laptop and other belongings were still bone dry when I opened the Maverick up. Despite its clean lines and slim profile, the Maverick still offers plenty of space to tote along a…

There are a few pretty good MFi-approved game controllers for iOS, but most of them seem more ideally designed for iPad than iPhone. It makes sense to prop up your iPad and use a gamepad from a few feet away, but would you do the same with an iPhone and squint at the smaller screen? Some controllers offer iPhone-holding clips, which is a fair solution, although it can be awkward depending on the size of the phone and/or controller. Thankfully, the Gamevice is a better solution for bringing physical controls to your iPhone. The newly-released second-gen version supports the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (as well as 6/6s and 6/6s Plus), and as the name suggests, it clamps around the top and bottom of your phone to surround the screen…

BeCasso BeCasso ($1, iPhone and iPad) “transforms your snaps and photos into unique, high-resolution oil, watercolor and cartoon paintings.” The filters are adjustable to get precisely the effect you desire, after which you can share the images on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The app also has support from canvaspop.com, which can print your images and have them delivered to you. 5K Trainer 5K Trainer ($4, iPhone and iPad) helps take you from the couch to ready to run a 5K race in just eight weeks. The app features “carefully timed alternating walk / run intervals for all skill levels” and provides a “growing community” of supportive 5K runners on Facebook. Polarsteps Polarsteps (free, iPhone and Apple Watch) has been around for awhile, but this week’s update lets you create Polarsteps…

What is now known as iOS first debuted as iPhone Software 1.0 almost 10 years ago. Given how huge the iPhone has become over the past decade, it’s pretty fun to go back to the way Apple explained the software that drove the iPhone way back then. “It runs Mac OS X,” we wrote (and put on the cover!) at Macworld. Apple was showing that the iPhone was a real computer at its core, with the same underpinnings that ran the Mac. Of course, we know now that Apple’s two primary operating systems are pretty different, though they share a common core. In the intervening years, iOS—as it was renamed when it became clear that this platform was going to extend beyond the iPhone—has grown and expanded. If we define…

A new file-encrypting ransomware program for macOS is being distributed through BitTorrent websites, and users who fall victim to it won’t be able to recover their files, even if they pay. Crypto ransomware programs for macOS are rare. This is the second such threat found in the wild so far, and it’s a poorly designed one. The program was named OSX/Filecoder.E by the malware researchers from antivirus vendor ESET who found it. OSX/Filecoder.E masquerades as a cracking tool for commercial software like Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Microsoft Office for Mac and is being distributed as a BitTorrent download. It is written in Apple’s Swift programming language by what appears to be an inexperienced developer, judging from the many mistakes made in its implementation. The application installer is not signed…

Welcome to the second part of Have Gear, Will Travel’s digital photography special. In the previous section, I talked about the camera gear, hardware, software, and apps I use to make myself look like a semi-competent photographer. Depending on where I’m going and what I plan on doing while I’m there, the photography gear I jam into my backpack can range from dirt cheap to questionably expensive. All the tips I’m providing here, however, come at the low, low cost of free. In order to better illustrate these techniques, tweaks, and suggestions, I spent a week in Montana this past November taking in the sights in Bozeman, Pray, Yellowstone National Park, Three Forks, Butte, the ghost town of Bannack, and all points in-between. My time there was cold, the landscape…

How to manage multiple family members' media within a single Photos library Q: The iPhones all have separate names, and in iTunes they all are separate entities. But Photos just puts all the photos together. Now we’re up to 60,000 photos and when I look at my library, I don’t want to see all my teenage daughter’s headshots. We tried separate Photos libraries, but it just took a few mistakes—not logging out of one—and our libraries were a mess. — Heather Dowdee A: You’ve already tried one of the most obvious ways to deal with it, which is creating separate Photos libraries and selecting them on launch. With five people, that’s obviously both a pain and didn’t work. You could set up separate macOS logins so that each family members…

Why use one processor when two will do? Recently, Bloomberg reported that Apple has developed an ARM-based chip that it will integrate into future Macs to handle some of the low-power responsibilities, thus taking pressure off the main, more power-hungry Intel processor. Here’s the thing: This multipronged approach is nothing new to Apple. And while I do believe that Apple is investigating building computers based solely on the same type of ARM architecture it uses in its iOS devices, this latest report doesn’t necessarily draw a straight line to that future. After all, the Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor in the new MacBook Pro already rely on an ARM chip dubbed the T1. Mainly, it’s another example of Apple mixing and matching technologies where appropriate so that it always has the…

When it comes to the web, smaller is always better. If an image-heavy site takes too long to load, visitors will just click over to something else. While there are plenty of software tools for optimizing image files on the Mac, few do it with the simplicity and speed of Squash. CRUSHING IT Over a year ago, I reviewed a useful Mac utility called JPEGmini, which reduces image files with no discernible loss in image quality. Although limited to JPEG, the software was easy to use and produced impressive results, but at $99, it’s clearly not aimed at casual users. Enter Squash ($20; available on the App Store, which offers the same quality and simplicity for less, and does it faster. The premise is the same: Drag and drop one…

While the iPad has certainly matured since its humble beginnings, it still has many of the same shortcomings it did at its debut in 2010. Even with productivity-minded accessories like the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, the iPad is still a far cry from the super computer Apple’s new tagline would have you believe it is. And you only need to look at the latest sales figures to see that people aren’t into it as much as they once were. Of course, Apple isn’t resting on its laurels. According to oft-accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, on the docket for this year is a 10.5-inch model with super skinny bezels, pushing the 9.7-inch model to low-cost status and presumably killing off the iPad mini altogether. A move to a larger lineup would further solidify…

Headphones with active noise cancellation (ANC) can filter out the noise pollution that accompanies modern travel, whether it be the low-frequency rumble of a jet engine or the drone of a train or bus on your daily commute. Basic ANC technology has been around for years, and batteries are becoming good enough that it can be used with wireless models. Manufacturers have also started adding features that make ANC even more effective. For Libratone, that means giving you the power to control how much of the outside world is allowed in. The $249 Q Adapt wireless headphones don’t look all that special, but they do sport Bluetooth 4.1 and they support the high-quality aptX audio codec. If your smartphone, digital audio player, or other source also supports aptX, then you…

CANARY Canary’s All-in-One Home Security Device ($199) lets you stream real-time HD video of your home and protect your home with a 90 decibel siren, as well as monitor air quality, temperature, and humidity to make sure your home is helping keep you healthy. And yes, you can monitor all this via an app on your iOS device. NANOTIPS It hasn’t been a super-cold winter, but Nanotips ($20) will help you convert your regular gloves into iOSfriendly touchscreen-compatible gloves. How? A liquid solution you apply to the fingertips—it’s virtually invisible, but makes it easy to use your iPhone without having to remove gear. There’s one version for leather gloves, and another for fabric gloves. SNAP SPECTACLES Here’s an accessory built specifically for social media: Spectacles ($130) feature a button—press it…

Apple has rarely released sales figures on particular models of products they offer, but I have to imagine they shipped at least hundreds of thousands of its two Apple LED Cinema Displays (24-inch and 27-inch) based on the number of people who want to connect them via USB-C to a 12-inch MacBook or a 2016 MacBook Pro. I purchased several adapters and cables that can take the LED Cinema Display’s Mini-DisplayPort (not Thunderbolt) and convert it into something that passes over USB-C in a compatible chain that allows you to connect to the USB-C– equipped MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro. My testing shows three affordable and viable options, plus a reasonable option for a full-featured USB-C dock that requires just a simple adapter. Apple made multiple generations of its displays:…

MacBook Pro users can now insert a hyperlink in their Word document using the Touch Bar. Recently, Microsoft released Touch Bar support to all Office for Mac users. This gives the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps new contextual capabilities on the new MacBook Pro. Microsoft first announced Touch Bar support in October, and a preview was released to members of the Office Insider program earlier this month. MacBook Pro users can access these features by going to Help → Check For Updates in any of their Office for Mac apps. The public version includes new capabilities for Office users. In Word, you can use the Touch Bar to insert photos, hyperlinks, or comments in your document. In Power- Point, the Touch Bar gets “view-specific controls” to present a slideshow. Microsoft…

You may buy and rent digital movies, or even get digital copies of your films when you buy DVDs so you can watch them easily on an Apple TV or iOS device. But not all movies offer digital copies, and you may not want to buy movies from the iTunes Store; you may want to own hard copies of your favorite films. Or, you may, like me, buy DVDs of concerts and operas, or have a collection of older DVDs, such as my box sets of The Honeymooners and The Twilight Zone. Fortunately, it’s easy to rip DVDs and add them to your iTunes library so you can use them more freely and watch them when you want. Here’s how. GET SOFTWARE The go-to tool for ripping and converting video…