Inhaltsverzeichnis für March 2021 in Macworld

I’ve been a fan of tiny Mac laptops for years. From the 12-inch PowerBook G4 to the iBook to the 11-inch MacBook Air, I’ve always opted for the smallest laptop I could get my hands on. And yet, with the discontinuation of the 12-inch MacBook, the smallest Apple goes is the 13-inch MacBook Air. Is the Air as small as a Mac laptop can get? I don’t think so. And that’s why I think Apple should add another laptop to its product line and bring back the 12-inch MacBook. LET’S GET SMALL First, I’ve got to admit that the MacBook Air is a small laptop. Back in the days of the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air models, I preferred the 11-inch model. Casual observers of the MacBook Air might not realize that…

Sabrent’s new $70 HB-SIMC Thunderbolt 3 port hub alleviates a frustration that hits every iMac owner now and again: the lack of easily accessible ports. Don’t get me wrong, I—and just about everyone else I know—love the uncluttered styling and elegant long-term cabling solution iMacs provide. But geez, Louise, feeling around for a free USB port just to plug in a thumb drive can get old after a while. Especially if you do it a lot. Of course, you can always use standard docks, hubs, extension cables, but then it’s generally bye-bye, clean and uncluttered desk. To the rescue…the Sabrent hub. DESIGN AND FEATURES Sabrent’s Multi-Port USB Type-C Hub with Front Access USB Ports marries to a Thunderbolt 3 port on the back of the iMac, with the body of the port…

Apple on Monday announced that Dan Riccio, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will be leaving his position to focus on a “new project” and report directly to CEO Tim Cook. Apple did not give any details about the new project in its press announcement. Riccio has been with Apple for over 20 years and has worked on a large portion of Apple’s hardware lineup. He joined Apple in 1998, and in 2012 he became the senior VP of hardware engineering. “After 23 years of leading our Product Design or Hardware Engineering teams—culminating with our biggest and most ambitious product year ever—it’s the right time for a change,” Riccio said in a press release. “Next up, I’m looking forward to doing what I love most—focusing all my time and energy…

If you’ve got smart home stuff hooked up to HomeKit—for example, smart lights, plugs, or locks—you know how convenient it is to control them from your iPhone or iPad. But it’s also a little annoying to have to leave whatever app you’re in and then find and launch the Home app just to check the status of something, lock the door, or turn off a light. In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple has made this a lot easier. You can add HomeKit to Control Center to see a selection of your favorites right there, one swipe away, without having to leave the app you’re in. Here’s how it works. ADD HOME ITEMS TO CONTROL CENTER To add HomeKit items in Control Center, you’ll need to flip a toggle in Settings. 1.…

When you first upgrade to iOS 14, you’ll be treated to some obvious big improvements. The new and more customizable home screen, complete with widgets and the App Library, will make an immediate difference in how you use your iPhone. You’ll discover the usefulness of picture-in-picture video right away. But some of iOS 14’s best features aren’t the ones Apple pops up tutorial cards for; they’re buried layers deep in Settings or hidden behind interface actions you don’t make every day. Some of the best stuff in iOS 14 you wouldn’t know about if someone didn’t point it out. Hey, we’re someone! Allow us to point out some of our favorite lesser-known and hard-to-find features in iOS 14. 1. HEADPHONE ACCOMMODATIONS If you open Settings → Accessibility → Audio/Visual, you’ll see…

For those of us who rarely transfer files physically across devices, file-format capability may be a distant memory. It used to occupy a lot of attention. But it still crops up whenever you’re trying to put files on a USB thumb drive to hand off to someone else. If you’re both Mac users, swell; with Mac and Windows in the mix, you might be tempted to pick FAT32 when formatting that thumb drive. But FAT32 is distinctly out of date. Designed for an earlier time, it can’t handle files larger than 4GB. Instead, pick ExFAT, its replacement (and still quite old) format, best used on drives of 32GB or larger capacity. First ensure that you have a copy of any data on a drive you want to format as ExFAT,…

The AmazonBasics 12-outlet uninterruptible power supply (UPS) supports up to a rated 450 watts of attached equipment, which it can provide with enough battery power to run a tower computer system, monitor, and peripherals for about 3 to 10 minutes. This delay is sufficient to let a computer shut down automatically using built-in features in the operating system or in software provided for macOS and Windows if the electrical power doesn’t get restored quickly enough. For a midrange computer system that consumes about 200 watts, the estimated 10 minutes of runtime at that load is more than enough. For a more power-intensive system with a pull of 400 watts, the roughly three minutes of battery runtime might not provide enough time to complete a full shutdown. Above 400 watts, you…

Razer is stepping out of the world of gaming with the release of Opus, a pair of over-the-ear active noise canceling (ANC) headphones priced at $200. Opus is THX certified and has a very muted design (especially for Razer) and a fairly limited feature set. The sound is relatively clear and powerful and favors a bright sound stage, but the noise canceling is lacking against some of the top ANC headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM3 despite its advanced design. It’s available now on Amazon and Razer.com in Midnight Blue, with a Black option coming at a later date. SPECS AND FEATURES The Razer Opus features 40mm drivers inside a lightweight headset with plush leatherette memory foam ear cushions, weighing in at 265g. It connects by a 3.5mm analog cable (included) or Bluetooth…

Many people remember Mac OS X 10.6.8 fondly—not just 10.6 Snow Leopard, but particularly its very mature 10.6.8 release, the final one in that series. It’s considered a stable and perfectly fine version. It’s not a problem—until they want to migrate to a newer computer with the same files, preferences, users, and other elements as their current one. That’s particularly true when they want to keep their system and essentially brain-transplant it to the latest two updates, macOS Catalina and Big Sur, and find there’s no direct path. Apple offers Migration Assistant both when setting up a Mac (whether new or erased) and as an app within macOS, particularly to migrate user accounts and applications. As a source, you can use a Time Machine backup, a disk image copy of…

Trend Micro hasn’t changed much since we last reviewed it, which doesn’t necessarily work to its benefit. There’s no doubt, however, that Trend Micro Antivirus offers good protection. AV-Test’s latest look at it gave Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac a 100 percent protection score against 83 samples. AV-Comparatives’ tests are a little more in-depth since they test the antivirus against Mac and Windows malware, as well as against potentially unwanted applications (PUA) for Mac. Using 207 samples, Trend Micro stopped 99.5% of threats, which is good although not fantastic considering that Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, FireEye, and Kaspersky all scored 100 percent on this test. Against PUAs, Trend Micro scored 99 percent. That puts it behind the same leaders in the malware test with the exception of Kaspersky, which also scored 99…

I think we can all agree that there are times when the current reality could be a little…better. For several years, Apple has talked up the potential of the augmented reality space, and more recently, there have been rumors that the company is getting ready to take those ambitions to the next level by releasing a product focused on augmented reality, virtual reality—or both. But Apple isn’t one to take on projects casually: Despite the multitude of calls for Apple to enter this market or that, the company tends to be very conservative in what projects actually make it through the extensive gauntlet to become shipping products. As Steve Jobs once said, “innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” If Apple truly is ready to take the plunge into this…

Most people are surprised that Caller ID isn’t verified in any meaningful fashion. With the appropriate software or third-party service, a spammer, scammer, phisher, or abuser can set Caller ID to nearly any number, which will then appear on your phone. Or at least that was true until relatively recently, when a pair of systems—referred to by their amusing acronyms, STIR and SHAKEN—finally allowed carriers to use cryptographic means to track a phone call’s assigned number from its origin all the way to your phone. It requires a lot of moving pieces, as telecommunications firms all have to work together to enable the verification chain, but the FCC has heavily promoted it. Phone companies hope these systems will reduce the ocean of spam calls that occur. The majority of legitimate…

With iOS 14, Apple has finally given you the ability to customize the layout of your home screen to some extent. Instead of just repositioning icons, you can totally remove them thanks to the new App Library. With the new Widgets, you can finally fill your home screen with something other than just apps. But the new “aesthetic” iPhone trend goes a lot further. By combining Shortcuts with custom icons and highly customizable widgets, you can give your iPhone a dramatically different look. Here’s how to get started making your iPhone “aesthetic.” FIRST, GRAB SOME ICONS Before you do anything else, you’ll want to grab some images to use as icons. There are lots of designers with matching icon packs on the web; just search for what suits you.…

The full-disk encryption system called FileVault, introduced way back in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, keeps the data on your drive encrypted at rest. If your Mac is shut down, a malefactor can’t get at your data—they have to have a password to an account that can start up the system and unlock the encrypted data. That password must be provided when a Mac is booted, and it unlocks a key that in turn unlocks your drive’s data. Otherwise, villains are foiled. However, FileVault is managed on a per-Mac basis, as it is tied to hardware. If you migrate your data to a new Mac, either through Migration Assistant, restoring from a Time Machine backup, or using Disk Utility or third-party cloning software, you can wind up in a state…

Considering the JBL Live 300TWS’s price and relatively simple design, I expected an equally simple experience—but I shouldn’t have judged a pair of true wireless earbuds on its subdued looks. A couple of weeks on, the Live 300TWS’s features still dazzle me, and the music quality is far better than I expected from buds in this price range. The 2.7-inch-wide case alone looks as if it could come from a premium set of earbuds. Smooth, compact, and pocketable, its notification lights have a chic air reminiscent of luxury goods: A ring around the USB-C port along the bottom pulses white while the earbuds charge inside—the better to see where to stick the plug in low light—and it shifts to red once the cable is in. The act of opening the…

UNDERSTANDING HOW iCLOUD PHOTOS OPTIMIZES PHOTO STORAGE AND KEEPS YOUR ORIGINALS The old saw about one’s eyes being larger than one’s belly surely applies in an era when we can capture multiple-megabyte images and gigabyte videos and have infinite storage online—but we still have to contend with the size of the flash drives in iPhones and iPads and that of the SSDs in Macs. Apple squared that circle with iCloud Photos, one of the many attempts made to pair cloud storage and personal or professional media capture. With Google Photos, Google stores everything in your cloud account and uses its native and browser-based apps to peek into that storage. Apple, in contrast, makes a sort of copy of all your images available offline and online with iCloud Photos. For devices…

Apple’s “big announcement” in January of this year about its fund might not have been as exciting as a new iPhone, but the impact could be just as monumental. As part of its previously announced $100 million investment in the Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, Apple unveiled several ways that it will be using its sizable investment. First and foremost, Apple will be launching a “first-of-its-kind global innovation and learning hub” called the Propel Center (pictured above) in partnership with the Southern Company and “a range of community stakeholders.” Apple is contributing $25 million to the Atlanta campus, which “is designed to support the next generation of diverse leaders, providing innovative curricula, technology support, career opportunities, and fellowship programs.” The center will offer a wide range of classes, including a curriculum focused…

NETGEAR NIGHTHAWK RAXE500 Netgear’s newest router is a true tri-band Wi-Fi 6e device that operates three independent wireless networks using spectrum in the 2.4-, 5-, and the newly deregulated 6GHz frequency bands to deliver huge amounts of bandwidth—theoretical top speed of 10.8Gbps combined—with very little latency. The RAXE500 is powered by a 1.8GHz quad-core processor and is outfitted with a multi-gig (2.5Gbps) WAN port for those with very fast broadband connections. Two of its five gigabit ethernet ports can be aggregated for either 2Gbps LAN or WAN connections. The batwing-shaped router also has dual USB 3.0 ports. —MICHAEL BROWN REOLINK ARGUS 2E A fairly basic security camera that works reliably with a minimum of fuss, the Reolink Argus 2E offers 1080p video, two-way audio, and passive infrared motion detection.…

Apple’s no stranger to introducing and popularizing new technologies. The original iMac wasn’t the first to use USB, but it drove adoption of the standard. Multitouch displays existed before the iPhone, but it was the first real commercial product offering it. Sometimes those technologies take a while to gestate, though. And there may be no better example in recent years than Apple’s take on ultra wideband, or UWB. Like those other technologies, ultra wideband isn’t new as a concept, but it’s something that hasn’t really found a home in the consumer market. In 2019, Apple released the iPhone 11 series and included a custom chip dubbed the U1. During the introduction, Apple talked up the amazing properties of the U1, and how it not only can be used to track…

There are a lot of things the Fitbit Sense does that the Apple Watch can’t. Fitbit’s latest smartwatch can track your stress level and help you calm down. It records your nightly skin temperature to help predict if an illness is coming on. It lets you choose between Alexa and Google Assistant (or at least it will soon). And the battery lasts for days and days. But while Fitbit has done an admirable job of building a smartwatch that’s truly different—and in some ways better than Apple’s latest wearables—the Sense ultimately tries too hard to be an Apple Watch alternative. Where Apple has slowly added features to its Watch in an effort to keep things simple, Fitbit’s quest to leapfrog over Apple has given the Sense too many things to…

Apple has a new version of macOS. It’s called Big Sur, and it’s version 11.0. In this article I’ll go over how you can create a bootable macOS Big Sur installation drive. But before I give instructions on how to create the drive, I’ll go over the items you’ll need and how to get them. These instructions are for the officially released version of macOS Big Sur, not the public/developer beta. It was performed on Macs running macOS Catalina, and again on Big Sur. GET AN EXTERNAL DRIVE AND MAYBE AN ADAPTER The macOS Big Sur installer software is over 12GB, so you need a USB external drive that can hold that much data. The drive can be a thumb drive, a hard drive, or an SSD. If you have…

It’s been more than two years since we reviewed NordVPN, and the last time around we awarded it top honors as our favorite VPN for its speed, features, and overall value. NordVPN offers a fantastic service, and NordSec, the umbrella brand for NordVPN parent company Tefincom S.A., has gone beyond VPNs with new products including a password manager and a file encryption app for the desktop. But NordVPN is one of those services with an exotic location and, until recently, an anonymous leadership. To use a VPN with any degree of confidence, you have to implicitly trust the company, which is why we prefer to know who’s running things, and it’s fantastic that co-founder Tom Okman is now someone we can point to as leading NordSec. Despite any promises about privacy,…

When you want to subscribe to a podcast, it’s usually as easy as clicking a link—often a link labeled Add to Apple Podcasts or to another popular podcast app, like Castro, Overcast, and Pocket Casts. However, I increasingly find that a benefit of membership to editorial sites, many kinds of creators’ patronage campaigns, and subscription podcast networks includes a custom podcast feed tailored to you or only available to members. To prevent it from becoming widely distributed, creators may make it not quite as easy to add with a click. Here’s how to add a podcast feed to the four most-popular podcast apps using its URL. GET THE PODCAST URL A podcast URL uses the RSS format for creating a machine-readable list of discrete entries, as in a blog. For…