Macworld November 2016

With macOS Sierra, Apple, as with previous desktop OS versions, integrates even more features that were introduced in iOS, the operating system for the company’s mobile devices. But Sierra doesn’t just add features found in iOS, it also does more to make your Mac and your iOS devices work together. Considering that nowadays, most people’s primary computers are iOS devices, it’s fitting that macOS Sierra does more to cater to those users’ needs. Before we dive into Sierra, let’s address the main question: Should you upgrade? First, you need to determine how compatible your Mac is. The older the Mac, the more likely a feature won’t work. You can check a list of Macs compatible with macOS Sierra (go.macworld.com/sierracompatible). (Apple also has information on what features are available based on…

When people ask me for the single best reason to upgrade to macOS Sierra, the answer I give them doesn’t involve Siri or Auto Unlock or iCloud Drive. It’s version 2.0 of Photos, the biggest update to Apple’s photo-management utility app since it debuted in the spring of 2015. I’ve been using Photos 2.0 extensively all summer as a part of my testing of macOS Sierra. My six favorite features make Photos almost singlehandedly worth the upgrade to Sierra. IT CAN FIND A ZEBRA IN A HAYSTACK Apple spent a lot of time at its Worldwide Developer Conference this summer promoting the machine-learning algorithm that sits at the heart of Photos for Mac and iOS 10. But you know what? It’s awesome. Apple’s not the first to go down this path—Google…

Siri, Universal Clipboard, Auto Unlock with Apple Watch—these are just three of the features that Apple showcases for macOS Sierra, the latest version of the company’s Macintosh operating system that made its debut recently. We go over the marquee features in our review, but there are a few features that go unheralded. We’ll shine a little bit of the spotlight on them in this slideshow. These are less glamourous, but they make your Mac a lot easier to use. MESSAGES: PER-CONVERSATION READ RECEIPTS Instead of having Messages send a read receipt for every conversation, you can do it on a per conversation basis. During a chat session, click on the Details link at the top right of the window. You’ll see information on your chat partner, and below you will…

CRITICS AND USERS alike love to throw shade at those built-in macOS and iOS apps—Mail is often panned for being out of date, most of us don’t want (or need) Stocks, and Maps still can’t hold a candle to Google Maps, four years after the latter was unceremoniously evicted from iOS 6. For me, Calendar is the weakest of Apple’s built-in apps (with Reminders a close second). While the Mac version is passable enough, the iPhone app is borderline useless, even with the month and list split-screen view enabled. GET BUSY After initially cozying up to the iOS-only Calendars 5 ($7 on the iTunes Store), I eventually settled on Fantastical 2 ($3 on the iTunes Store), despite initial reservations about the lack of a good month view on the iPhone.…

RAPIDWEAVER 7 ($100, $60 upgrade) offers several smart upgrades to its website-building toolkit. Unfortunately, it also inherits the central limitations of its predecessor. Between the increased price and the features that either aren’t present or cost extra, RapidWeaver 7 still lags the competition. WHAT’S NEW WORKS WELL I truly liked the new features in RapidWeaver 7, particularly the SEO Health Check, which scans your site and then guides you through a checklist of steps that will help your site get noticed by search engines more effectively. (One of those steps involves another new feature: the ability to automatically shrink your site’s CSS and JavaScript files for faster loading.) Each step is clearly explained, and bringing my sample site up to snuff only took a few minutes. RapidWeaver’s publishing engine was…

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER upgrade to Nuance’s Dragon ($300; $150 upgrade), their speech recognition solution. I reviewed version 5 last year, pointing out that “Dragon offers some of the biggest changes since this software was first introduced, both under the hood and on the screen.” Building on the changes made to the speech recognition engine in Dragon 5, Nuance has improved Dragon’s performance across the board. Boasting improvements in accuracy of either 15 or 24 percent (the company has cited both of these numbers), Nuance claims that Dragon offers “up to 99% recognition accuracy.” Naturally, “up to” covers a wide range of results, but this version of Dragon does seem more accurate than version 5. Nuance claims that this version of Dragon leverages “deep learning” to improve accuracy. Reading about this technology,…