Macworld March 2022

Intel’s Alder Lake processor is starting to become available in PC laptops and that means one thing: benchmarks! Macworld’s sister publication, PCWorld, posted a review of one of the first laptops with the Core i9-12900HK processor, code-named Alder Lake, and it inevitably got us thinking about Apple’s M1 Pro and Max. To be clear, PCWorld didn’t include Apple silicon in its review—they are reviewing Windows-based laptops and comparing Alder Lake to its predecessor and a new 8-core Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU. Many of the benchmark programs PCWorld used aren’t even available on the Mac or do not have native M1 versions, but PCWorld did run Geekbench and Cinebench, two benchmarks Macworld also uses. And we learned a lot from them. First, let’s check out the specifications for the laptops: 14-inch…

The year 2022 promises to be another big one for the Mac, with the second half of the Apple silicon transition bringing a new 27-inch iMac, a new Mac Pro, and a redesigned MacBook Air. While we’re excited about the performance gains and new designs, the conclusion of the switch to its own chips is also an opportunity to create some further feature parity between the Mac and our iOS devices. As much as we love our Macs, the iPhone has become our primary device throughout the day. So we’ve gotten used to the convenience the iPhone brings and find ourselves longing for many of its features when we turn to our Macs. Here’s are the ones we’d like to see come to the Mac after the transition to Apple…

In 1998, Steve Jobs introduced the first iMac, and it revolutionized the personal computer—not to mention giving new life to a struggling Apple. The iMac was a big hit, but after four years, Apple needed to update the computer. The updated iMac not only had to usher in new technologies, but also had the daunting task of proving that Apple’s design innovation wasn’t a fluke. So in 2002, Apple introduced the iMac G4, and the firm again turned the market on its head. And in doing so, it created the greatest Mac it has ever made. Here’s why it still holds up two decades later. THE DESIGN WAS TRULY UNIQUE Very early on in its history, Apple was known for making all-in-one computers. While most people associate all-in-one with the…

Researchers at security firm Eset have provided details on brand-new macOS malware that can be used to perform surveillance on a Mac. “DazzleSpy” is malware that may have infected users who visited a website that promoted democracy in Hong Kong. DazzleSpy is what security researchers call a watering hole attack, where a website infects visitors to that site. It is used when an attacker wants to target a specific group. DazzleSpy is documented with the ID of CVE-2021-30869 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, and was patched by Apple in Catalina and Big Sur updates in September. The Google Threat Analysis Group reported on the technical aspects of these watering hole attacks last November. Eset’s recent report provided details on the exploit and how Mac users come into contact with DazzleSpy. According…

Piriform’s CCleaner, which was initially created to help clean up Registry files on Windows-based machines, made its way to the Mac in the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion days and hasn’t looked back. It’s been a techie staple on Macs, Windows PCs, and Android-based computers for years now, and rightfully so. Designed as freeware with an option to pay for a professional version and its appropriate annual license, CCleaner achieves what it sets out to do: help clean up gigabytes of cache files and internet history files, and locate and purge large files on your Mac, all with an impressive level of control. CCleaner may not be as flashy as its competitors, but it gets the job done. You provide CCleaner with full hard disk access in the macOS Security…

Some people have unreasonable nostalgia for the good old days, when everything was somehow miraculously “better”—forgetting the invention of penicillin, modern electric cars, and ubiquitous internet access. Maybe scratch that last one. Then there’s John Siracusa, a programmer, podcaster, and opinion-haver who has reasonable nostalgia, sharing a feeling many of us have that certain aspects of macOS that Apple abandoned or changed were better. For Siracusa, that was pre–Mac OS X methods of window layering in the Finder. System 7 through Mac OS 9 let you click a single window in a non-foreground application that manages multiple document windows and have the entire set of windows for that app come into the foreground. Mac OS X, continued in macOS, brings a single document window forward. After relying on utilities for…