Índex per July 2014 a Macworld

Apple has only “60 days left to either come up with [an iWatch] or they will disappear,” analyst Trip Chowdhry told CNBC in March. The company “will become a zombie if they don’t come up with an iWatch,” he predicted. It’s easy to point and laugh, because what this analyst said was stupid. But it’s also worthwhile to think about why people who make such proclamations regarding Apple (and the tech industry as a whole) are so clueless. Reason number one: People want to be entertained. For the past few years, the tech industry has been supremely entertaining. New products, even new product categories, that change the way we live? Especially exciting. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad have definitely been so. Steve Jobs was a master of converting the slow,…

AT THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Broadcasters trade show held in early April, Intel revealed that Thunderbolt Networking would expand to allow direct connections between Macs and PCs. Owners of Thunderbolt-equipped Macs already have Thunderbolt Networking available to them, as Apple added that capability with the release of Mavericks. To take advantage of Thunderbolt Networking on a Mac and a PC, the user must install a PC software driver. Intel has not announced the availability of the PC driver at this writing, but the company was performing demonstrations in its booth at the NAB show. In a Technology@Intel blog post (go.macworld.com/inteltbolt), Dan Snyder, the company’s technical PR manager, said that Thunderbolt Networking’s performance is comparable to that of 10-gigabit ethernet. “By offering simple and fast file-sharing, Thunderbolt Networking enables backup or…

OUR EYES HAVE feasted on 4K TVs, and 4K monitors are coming. Now Samsung is introducing its first Ultra High Definition, 4K display meant for desktop use. The UD590 is a 28-inch desktop monitor with a resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels. But the best part is its price: $700, according to Samsung. Other models due out this year will cost $1000 or more. Capable of connecting via HDMI or DisplayPort, the UD590 boasts a 1-millisecond gray-to-gray response time, 370 cd/m2 brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. It uses LED backlights with a TN panel that offers 170-and 160-degree viewing angles—good, but not as wide as the viewing angles of monitors based on IPS or LPS panels. The display features Samsung’s Picture-in-Picture 2.0, which allows you to view two…

GAME In the crowdfunded game The Banner Saga, you enter a world inspired by Viking legend. The gods are dead, and humans and the horned giants known as Varl must work together to fight an invading menace. This installment (the first of three) hints at greater things to come, but you’ll embark on a satisfying 8-to-10-hour journey here. The story and characters change according to your decisions, too. The gameplay consists of travel, decision-making, and combat. Every day consumes supplies. You can also rest, which heals warriors and boosts morale, but expends precious resources. Your caravan frequently stops to deal with problems, enemies, and more. A certain choice or a lost battle can leave a major character dead or see you wandering the wastes starving and losing caravan members, while…

PRODUCTIVITY APP The latest version of Dragon Dictate has something new under the hood, as Nuance has radically improved the software’s speech recognition. I’ve dictated stories and blog posts, and read Web articles, using Dragon Dictate 4, and in all cases the speech recognition was excellent. If you use Gmail on the Web, a new browser extension lets you manage Gmail through voice commands. As always, you can dictate into almost any app, but Dragon Dictate works best when you dictate into its own Note Pad; it also works well with Microsoft Word or Pages ’09. With those three apps, you can dictate and edit without confusing the software; in other apps, if you try to do any editing, things can get messy. I’m running the app on the same…

UTILITY If you often wrangle text, regular expressions—sequences of characters and variables that can help you perform powerful searches—can save you time. Working with regular expressions (aka regex or grep) takes practice and involves some trial and error, however. The Patterns app simplifies the creation of regex search patterns and gives a live view of the results. You paste the text you want to search. Then you enter a regular expression; as you type it in, the utility highlights the matching text. Click the Replace tab, and a Replacement field appears, with the lower half of the app window morphing into a side-by-side, before-and-after view. As the Search Text pane on the left highlights matched text, the Replaced Text pane on the right shows the results of your replacement pattern.…

Our residences are overdue for a technological makeover. Through the years, more and more electronics have infiltrated our houses and apartments. Small internal computers run most modern appliances—thermostats, ovens, washing machines—and wireless networks carry significant amounts of data throughout many dwellings. It stands to reason, then, that all the pieces are finally in place for home automation to transition from an out-there luxury to a commonplace aspect of every home. What’s missing is a unifying technology that allows all your appliances to communicate. Although Apple hasn’t announced any specific plans in this regard, it has been quietly building technologies that could turn iOS into the hub of our homes. I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE Home automation is not new. Systems that allow you to manage your lighting and heating remotely…

Farewell, iPad 2—you had a good run. Apple has discontinued the model and replaced it in the lineup with the fourthgeneration iPad with Retina display (go.macworld.com/endipad2). Apple introduced the 9.7-inch iPad 2 in 2011, and released its successor in late 2012. The iPad with Retina boasts an A6X processor, a 5-megapixel iSight camera, a FaceTime HD camera, support for LTE cellular networking (on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon), 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi support on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 2048-by-1536-pixel Retina display. Available only in a 16GB configuration, the newer model retails for the same price as its predecessor—$399 (Wi-Fi only) and $529 (Wi-Fi plus cellular)—but offers much more bang for the buck. The biggest question is how this shift will affect Apple’s bottom line. Even at $399, the…

SECURITY APP AgileBits’ 1Password is a standout in the increasingly crowded field of data security apps for Mac and iOS. It offers a consistently superior user experience, and the latest release for iOS is no exception. The most obvious change in 1Password 4.5 for iOS is a redesign of the interface to bring it in line with iOS 7’s look and feel. This version feels lighter and cleaner than its predecessor, with lots of little details that make using the app a pleasure. In particular, AgileBits’ developers strike a fine balance between form and function, putting the app’s capabilities at the user’s fingertips for a clean, efficient, and pleasant experience. The design borrows heavily from Apple’s paradigms, which makes 1Password feel familiar from the outset. With version 4.5, AgileBits has…

SECURITY APP Everyone knows the importance of making sure their data is secure, but for most of us, network security probably ranks below flossing in our priorities. That’s why I’m so fond of Bourgeois Bits’ Cloak. The app and its attendant data service ensure that your communications remain secure—and best of all, they require little intervention. Cloak is straightforward: You designate certain networks as trusted—for most people, that’s their home and office networks. Then you tell Cloak to secure your connection whenever you’re not on one of those networks. Cloak secures the connection by using an encrypted virtual private network (VPN) service, the same technology many of us rely on when connecting to our work networks from outside the office. Once you advance past the initial setup, the whole process…

PDF MARKUP TOOL PDFpen 1.7 for iPad ($15) and iPhone ($5) work as adjuncts to the PDFpen Pro desktop app from SmileOnMy-Mac. Although it’s great to have access to portable PDF editing tools, the iOS versions fall short. PDFpen for iPad and iPhone offer extensive tools for creating new PDF documents, as well as for marking up and editing existing ones. Importing documents into PDFpen is easy. You can import the files from a compatible service, such as Box, Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive, or from apps that support iOS’s ‘Open in’ menu. You can create new documents based on a template, photo, or clipboard item. Tap a document to open it. A title bar at the top offers document management and editing tools. On the left side are tools…

You can individualize the look of your iOS device’s screen by adding images to its lock and home screens. To do so, go to Settings Wallpapers & Brightness and, in the Wallpaper area, tap Choose a New Wallpaper. Then select a dynamic pattern (one that moves), a still image created by Apple, or (from the Photos area) an image of your own. A preview of the selected image will appear on your device’s screen. Move it around by dragging it, and scale it with pinch and stretch gestures. When you have it where you want it, select suitable options from among Set Lock Screen, Set Home Screen, Set Both, and Perspective Zoom (On or Off). You can turn Perspective Zoom off if you dislike its quasi-3D appearance. To restore it,…

6 WAYS TO LIMIT CELL DATA USE 1. Monitor your data use: To see how much data you’ve used in the current period, go to Settings Cellular, and scroll down to Cellular Data Usage; to zero out the amount listed there, tap Reset Statistics at the bottom of the screen. To create a reminder in Calendar to perform this step regularly, find the billing cycle dates on your phone bill. Create a new event on the morning of the first day for each cycle, and set it to repeat monthly. 2. Monitor data use by individual apps: Go to Settings Cellular and scroll through the app list. Under each program’s name is a listing of the data it has used in this billing cycle. Scroll to the bottom to see…

COPY OR BLIND-COPY MAIL When sending email messages, you may want to carbon-copy (Cc) people other than the main recipient(s), and you may want to blind-carbon-copy (Bcc) someone so that person will receive the message without the knowledge of the other recipient(s). To send either type of copy, tap the Compose button in Mail and then tap the Cc/Bcc, From line, which expands to show individual Cc, Bcc, and From fields. Tap the Cc or Bcc field, enter the address(es) of the recipient(s) you want to include there, and then continue composing your message as usual. If you have multiple email accounts—or multiple addresses for a single account—set up on your device, you can choose which one to send the current message from (and thus determine which address will receive…

If you don’t have a phone number for a contact, you may be able to call that person by using FaceTime Audio, which routes audio over the data portion of your cell network (à la Skype) instead of over the phone portion. Such usage will come out of your data plan, rather than counting against your overall voice minutes. In the Contacts pane of the Phone app (or in the Contacts app itself), select a contact and tap the phone icon next to the FaceTime entry. During a Face-Time Audio call, just as during a normal phone call, you can tap Mute or Speaker, and you can switch to a video call by tapping the FaceTime button. To access your Contacts list, tap the Contacts button.…

Although you can find any number of spreadsheet apps for the iPad, the market changed dramatically the day that Microsoft released the full Office suite for iPad, including a solid version of Excel. Microsoft has done an excellent job of transferring the power and capabilities of Excel for OS X to Excel for iPad. The program loads quickly, and it deftly handles the transition from keyboard-and-mouse input to a full touch interface. THE INTERFACE Excel for iPad’s interface is surprisingly well thought out. The window features six small buttons along the top left and right of the screen, plus five tabs in the center. The toolbar is small and tidy, unlike the one in the desktop version of Excel, which I often find too big and too cluttered to navigate…

PowerPoint for iPad lets you open, edit, create, and present native PowerPoint files on your iPad—no file conversion required. This is a boon for anyone who often uses Power-Point on a Mac or PC but prefers the iPad’s portability. Compared to PowerPoint for OS X 2011 (4.5/5.0 go.macworld.com/powerpoint2011) and Apple’s Keynote 2.0 for iOS (4.0/5.0 go.macworld.com/keynote), however, PowerPoint for iPad has offers a lackluster set of features. OFFICE 365 As with the other Office for iPad apps, you must have an Office 365 subscription ($10 per month, $100 per year for the Home edition) if you want to create or edit presentations on your iPad. (For more on Office 365, turn to page 65.) Each subscription includes access to the OneDrive cloud storage service, which you’ll need to transfer files…

Keeping your data and software in sync when you have more than one Mac poses quite a challenge. Apple’s iCloud service offers some sync capabilities for passwords and user account data, but it doesn’t widely support app data. When you get a new computer, you either have to clone the old drive to the new system or copy non–Mac App Store applications. Also, a Mac laptop has much less storage than its desktop Mac cousins. But you can make your laptop into the perfect satellite computer with just a few tweaks—and conserve its hard drive space. Here are some tips for syncing your computers with the cloud. SYNC SELECTIVELY Your Dropbox folder lets you store files inside it on one computer and have them appear instantly in that folder on…

The recently introduced Amazon Fire TV is a lot like the Apple TV of the past few years. Now is the time for Apple to release a revised version that keeps it (at least) one step ahead of its competitor. FIND AND SEEK The Fire TV doesn’t offer the breadth of content that Roku and the Apple TV do, but Amazon is emphasizing discoverability—making digital video content easier to find by avoiding countless menus and submenus, and by minimizing users’ need to tap out search terms on a controller. If the Fire TV’s voice-search capabilities work well, they may help the box one-up both the Apple TV and Roku. Dedicating voice functions to search also avoids the problem of unwanted sound (especially from the content you’re watching) potentially confusing the…

Q: When I add a title to a photo in iPhoto and then drag that photo to the desktop, the file reverts to its original name, such as ‘IMG_0697.jpg’. Is there a way to title an image in iPhoto and make that name stick when I export it? Ed Dorroh A: There is, and you’ve unwittingly uttered the key word.export. As you’ve observed, when you drag a file from iPhoto to the desktop, it retains its original filename. An image that was originally in the JPEG or PNG format also retains that format. Raw images convert to JPEG images. Any metadata that you attached to the image.a title and description, for example.vanishes. However, if you instead use the Export command (File Export), you can export images with your added information.…

Recently I struggled with a distinctly first-world problem: I had too many computers. There was my main iMac, which I loved. There was my “power” laptop, a mid-2010 15-inch MacBook Pro (with a 1680-by-1050-pixel display and a recently installed 750GB SSD), which I loved. And there was my “light” laptop, a mid-2012 11-inch MacBook Air, which I loved (and which replaced an older 11-inch Air). So what was the problem? I didn’t travel often enough to justify owning two laptops. Generally I took the Pro when I needed the extra screen space and the more powerful (or so I thought) CPU; otherwise, I took the Air. But then I also had to remember which one held the files I required for each trip. It was a horrid setup, and it…

If Yukari Iwatani Kane’s Haunted Empire teaches us anything, it’s that a dogged newspaper reporter who wants to write a book about Apple needs a narrative hook. In Kane’s case, Apple is now an empire that is haunted by its departed emperor, Steve Jobs, and is crumbling before our eyes. The book pounds that premise endlessly. Apple’s foundation, Kane writes at one point, is “a cult built around a dead man.” It’s a shame, because inside Haunted Empire she offers some solid reporting, most notably a detailed description of Apple’s manufacturing processes based on interviews with Chinese factory workers. Kane’s summary of Apple’s recent legal issues is good too, as are the biographical sections about the key players at post-Jobs Apple. But elsewhere the book shows a writer trying too…

Every year at the Macworld/iWorld show, Macworld’s editors survey a list of products submitted in advance by vendors, but most of the work involves scouring the show floor to find worthy candidates. We then gather back at headquarters, and—after a long, pizza-fueled debate—we determine the winners. Here are the recipients of our 2014 Best of Show awards. Akitio Palm RAID: The slim and compact Palm RAID (akitio.com) houses a pair of mSATA SSDs and offers a tethered Thunderbolt cable. The bus-powered portable storage device comes in 256GB and 512GB capacities. ArcSoft Simplicam powered by Closeli: This home monitoring system (arcsoft.com) combines a camera and an easy-to-use iOS app. Its facial detection lets you set alerts for specific people so that it records only when necessary. BusyContacts: Offering customizable views, tagging,…

COLOR INKJET PRINTER Aimed at advanced amateur photographers looking to supersize their prints, Canon’s Pixma iP8720 uses six inks to make borderless prints as big as 13 by 19 inches. If you own a camera in Canon’s Rebel line of digital SLRs, it’s a great fit. Along with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, the printer uses photo black and photo gray. It ships with setup cartridges, but is compatible with standard cartridges ($75 a set) and high-capacity cartridges ($113 a set). Canon’s print-yield data estimates indicate that printing a 4-by-6 color photo on photo paper will cost you about 24 cents with the extra-large cartridges and 37 cents with the standard ones. The iP8720 weighs 18.6 pounds and measures 23.3 by 13.1 by 6.3 inches closed. When you extend the…

SECURITY UTILITY As concerns about data security grow daily, you might want to keep your files away from prying eyes. Hider 2 promises to make that task easier. The app builds on MacPaw’s older MacHider by adding a Mavericks-refined interface, a systemwide menu, AES-256 encryption for both files and folders, and support for notes, tags, and external drives. You get one vault—you can’t create separate vaults for, say, work and personal items. Simply drag files or folders into the vault window to tuck them away. Hider 2 doesn’t just make your files invisible to snoops: It copies the files into its own private, encrypted space on your drive and deletes the items from their original locations. When you switch an item to Visible, Hider 2 copies the item to its…

GAME In the five-part adventure The Wolf Among Us, you play Bigby Wolf, sheriff of Fabletown and formerly the Big Bad Wolf. With another grisly murder on his hands in Episode 2, “Smoke & Mirrors,” Bigby must investigate more crime scenes, question suspects, and manage his complicated relationships with other “Fables” (fairy-tale characters who now live in New York after being forced out of their homeland). This setup leads to great character development and top-notch writing. Your choices directly affect events and outcomes. The consequences of the decisions you made in the first episode are well represented here. It’s great to see the world react to Bigby with hostility or grudging respect. Episode 2 will probably take you only 90 minutes to complete. It can feel rushed and is light…

Are you worried that Siri didn’t get enough love in iOS 7? Apple is not done with the intelligent assistant just yet, if a recent acquisition yields any clues. Last year the company picked up UK-based Novauris Technologies, a firm that specializes in speech recognition (go.macworld.com/novauris). Novauris was essentially an incarnation of the research and development team at Dragon Systems UK, the British subsidiary of Dragon Systems, which created voice-recognition and dictation applications including Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Dragon Dictate. Nuance, a company that provides speech recognition for Siri, now owns Dragon Systems. So what should we make of the acquisition? Obtaining the best talent is clearly a major factor, but elements of Novauris’s technology suggest Apple’s possible plans for Siri. For one thing, Novauris has been developing software for both…

IFTTT Version 2.0 of IFTTT (go.macworld.com/ifttt), a free universal productivity app, still connects social media, photo, and Web services, but it can now also access iOS’s notifications, and it boasts an iPad-specific interface. It also features a new “recipes collection” full of tricks for using the app to make your phone and tablet do the stuff you want. —JOEL MATHIS STARLOG The free Starlog app for iPhone (go.macworld.com/starlog) by Carlos Douglas Barbosa allows you to record detailed observations of the night sky in a simple fashion: Just add the object you viewed, the time you saw it, and the equipment you used, along with any notes you have on the topic. Explore Jupiter via a telescope to your heart’s content.—JOEL MATHIS CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Gameloft’s $3 game for…

PHOTOGRAPHY APP Dropbox has jumped into the photoapp fray with Carousel, which presents all the images in your Dropbox account in the form of a timeline. Carousel is heavy on the nostalgia factor, but its big weakness right out of the gate is that you can’t tell it what not to sync. My Dropbox contains a copy of my iPhoto library, but it also includes backups of ten years’ worth of artwork, app icons, videos, introducand the like. My timeline certainly offers welcome flashes of nostalgia, but they’re often adrift in a sea of random icons and rejected drawings. You can hide images you don’t want to view in Carousel, but you can delete only those images you’ve already hidden, which makes for a protracted process. We all occasionally take…

CALENDAR APP Flexibits’ $10 Fantastical 2 for iPad gives you everything that’s great about the iPhone version of Fantastical, in an interface that takes full advantage of the iPad’s larger screen. To adapt the iPhone version’s vertical orientation to the iPad’s wide screen, the company devised the three-pane Dashboard, with a large DayTicker across the top, a scrolling event list on the bottom left, and a monthly calendar on the bottom right. Swipe down on the DayTicker to get a detailed week view. Swipe a second time for a full-screen calendar. The Dashboard offers the same views and options in both landscape and portrait orientation. The three Dashboard sections stay in sync: Scroll one, and the other two keep up; tap a date, and the other sections jump to that…

IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH TO GET STARTED on an iPhone or iPad: They’re pretty much pick-it-up-anduse-it devices. But mastering them takes a bit more effort. Some useful settings aren’t immediately obvious, specific workflows can take a while to remember, and certain apps do things in less-than-linear ways. That’s why we’ve compiled, in the pages that follow, a list of things that we think all savvy iOS users should know how to do. If you’ve been using an iPhone or iPad (or reading Macworld stories about them) for any length of time, you probably already know a lot of this less obvious stuff. But as we’ve said before in similar stories, we bet you don’t know all of it. SETUP MANAGE YOUR RINGERS To choose tones for calls, texts, and the…

1. Handle the basics: Siri can perform many tasks for stock iOS apps: Calendar, Clock, Contacts, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Phone, Reminders, Safari, Stocks, and Weather. 2. Search the Web: Siri can also run Web searches (using Bing, Google, or Yahoo), get answers to questions via Wolfram Alpha (“What’s the square root of pi?” “What’s the population of Mantua?”), find reviews of businesses (on Yelp), search Wikipedia, find reviews of movies (on Rotten Tomatoes), make restaurant reservations (using OpenTable), and find sports results (via Yahoo). Ask a naturallanguage question and tap a search result to go to the source site (or app). 3. Teach Siri relationships: Instead of saying the full name of a person in an instruction to Siri, say “[your wife’s name] is my wife”—and Siri will…

A virtual private network encrypts Internet data flowing to and from your iOS device, to combat eavesdropping on Wi-Fi networks. Providers such as Cloak (getcloak.com), PublicVPN (publicvpn.com), and WiTopia (witopia.net) offer paid VPN accounts. iOS 7 provides built-in support for several common types of VPNs. To configure it with your account settings, go to Settings VPN Add VPN Configuration, fill in the details for your account, and tap Save. To turn the VPN on or off, go to Settings VPN and tap the on/off switch. Some VPN providers offer their own apps that further simplify configuration and use. For instance, you can configure the Cloak app to activate your VPN automatically when you’re on an untrusted network.…

Mail in iOS 7 doesn’t have the seven multicolored flags of Mail in OS X, but you can flag any message to make it easier to find later. To flag the message you’re viewing, tap the flag icon followed by Flag; to remove a flag, tap Unflag. (In the same control, you can tap Mark as Read/Unread or Move to Junk, as needed.) You choose whether a flag in a message header or list will look like an orange dot or an orange flag icon. Go to Settings Mail, Contacts, Calendars Flag Style, and tap either Color (for a dot) or Shape (for a flag). Any item you flag in Mail for iOS appears with a (red) flag in Mail for OS X.…

In the Reminders app, tap the information (i) button next to an item, slide the switch for Remind Me at a Location, and tap the Location field. On the following screen you can search for an address or select a prefilled location option. Your selected location will appear on a small map, beneath a set of buttons for specifying whether to send the reminder when you arrive at the location or when you leave it. Drag the handle on the perimeter of the circle around your location to indicate how near you should be when the reminder goes off. Return to the Details screen and tap Done. The location will appear in small text below the reminder item.…

There’s been an uproar over the pricing model for Microsoft’s Office for iPad. The apps are free to download, and you can use them to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. However, you can’t use the apps to edit existing files or to create new files without buying a subscription to Office 365, Microsoft’s online Office-everywhere service. The Home edition ($100 per year or $10 per month) is the appropriate choice for typical home users. So should you pay that price to create and edit documents with the iPad Office apps? The answer depends on how you use the apps on your computer(s) and/or tablets, and how many computers your household has. I NEED THE FULL OFFICE SUITE ON iOS If you need full access to the Office suite on…

Lots of excellent Web-based apps are available for tracking your business’s finances (see go.macworld.com/cloudaccount), but if you don’t like the idea of keeping your company’s financial information in the cloud, a traditional Mac application is your best bet. I looked at four apps for managing your business invoicing and finances: Cognito Software’s MoneyWorks Gold, the Acclivity Group’s AccountEdge Pro, Intuit’s QuickBooks for Mac, and Marketcircle’s Billings Pro. The first three are traditional invoicing and accounting applications; Billings Pro has compelling features but requires additional software to complete the package. All of these apps offer excellent tools for managing your business finances. TOP CHOICE: MONEYWORKS GOLD 7 The most familiar accounting programs for the Mac are AccountEdge and Quick-Books. Although Cognito Software’s MoneyWorks Gold 7 ($499; go.macworld.com/mwgold7) isn’t as well known,…

The PonoPlayer, a new digital audio player that offers highresolution digital audio, will begin shipping in October. The device pairs with a digital music download store filled with high-res audio files in the FLAC lossless format, and it promises better-quality sound than you get from iTunes and Amazon files. High-resolution audio supposedly matches the quality of analog audio by encoding music files in 24-bit depth and at a sample rate of 192kHz (24/192), as well as in other ranges such as 24/96. Proponents of high-res audio say that the extra aural bandwidth will let you hear music from classic albums as if they were playing on an analog stereo system. PONOPLAYER PROMISES To get top-notch audio, you need a highresolution audio source and high-res versions of your recordings—which, in the…

FIND AND DELETE DUPLICATES IN 1PASSWORD Lately we’ve been inundated with one news story after another about this or that website being hacked, and all of its user IDs and passwords falling into the hands of ne’er-do-wells. It has never been more important to (a) employ good, strong passwords and (b) use some kind of password manager to keep track of them all. That’s why we like the advice that Gabe Weatherhead recently posted over at Macdrifter.com: He pointed out that 1Password (5.0/5.0 go.macworld.com/1password4), the password manager of choice for many Macworld staffers, offers some excellent tools for not only storing and recalling your assorted passwords but also determining whether they’re any good. Specifically, he reminded 1Password users of the app’s built-in Security Audit tool. Open that section of the…

Writer, teacher WHAT DO YOU DO? Since 2001, I’ve been teaching at NYU, working on the social and economic effects of the Internet. I wrote a couple of books about social media—Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus. WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE? Right now, I have a Chromebox as my work machine, an 11-inch MacBook Air as my home machine, a 15-inch MacBook as the family computer, and an Ubuntu netbook as the 3D-printer base station. The kitchen machine is a cheap Chromebook, which is fine for recipes and playing NPR. My other work machine (at my office) is a 15-inch MacBook with a dead screen that I use as a desktop. My actual “carry it with me” laptop is another 11-inch MacBook Air. I have two Kindle Paperwhites (I…

Thunderbolt is both fast and flexible. While the original version is capable of bidirectional throughput at 10 gigabits per second on each of its dual channels, Thunderbolt 2 can reach a maximum of 20 gbps on a combined channel. The technology can transport PCIe, USB 3.0, FireWire, Mini DisplayPort, and gigabit ethernet data. And that’s not all: You can daisy-chain up to six compatible devices on each Thunderbolt port on your Mac. With six available Thunderbolt 2 ports on the new Mac Pro, that adds up to a plethora of peripherals. In Mavericks, Apple added the ability to create a 10-gbps connection between Macs via IP over Thunderbolt. Considering that Intel is planning to bring the same functionality to Windows computers for the first time (see page 13), Macworld Lab…

When you’re shopping for a portable drive, you need to keep a few things in mind. First, portable drives rarely offer data redundancy, so don’t expect to store sensitive or irreplaceable files on one (or at least plan to back up that data). Determine how you’ll use the drive, too, and evaluate whether you need superb speed or massive capacity. Of course, there’s also the expense to think about; to compare costs across different storage capacities, calculate the price per gigabyte. Other considerations: A bus-powered drive operates on power from its data connection, so you don’t need to carry around a bulky power brick. A reliable manufacturer is a significant bonus, as well, and don’t forget about the product’s warranty—drives do fail, and sometimes you get stuck with a lemon.…

AUDIO APP File this little app under controversial: AirPlay Recorder is designed solely for capturing iTunes audio streams—namely, songs that play over iTunes Radio—for later playback. Technologists call such practices “time shifting” and justify them by saying that consumers can find plenty of tools for capturing audio on a Mac. The fact remains, though, that you use this app to make a copy of music you didn’t buy. Some people might say that a legitimate use is to record an iTunes Radio station so that you can listen to it on the go without using up your cellular data, or listen to it on either an iPod touch or a Wi-Fi-only iPad while you’re out of Wi-Fi range. Rights holders, though, could reply that your license does not grant you…

UTILITY As someone with various weekly appointments and meetings—work meetings, after-school sports for my kids, and so on—I always find it helpful when someone who wants to schedule a meeting mentions the proposed day of the week along with the date and time. If, for example, the planned date is July 8 and I know that July 8 is a Tuesday, I can reply immediately that I can’t do meetings after 3 p.m. that day. And that brings me to my biggest gripe about OS X’s Date & Time menu-bar display: It shows only the current date and time. You have no option to display, for instance, a monthly calendar by clicking the menu bar. Sometimes I’m on the phone or writing an email invitation to set up a meeting,…

PRODUCTIVITY APP Although the initial offering of OneNote for Mac is unlikely to dethrone Evernote, Microsoft’s app is an interesting competitor. The free OneNote includes 7GB of online storage. If you pay for an Office 365 subscription, you get 20GB and can buy up to 200GB of extra space. Offline access to files comes at no charge. You can share any document you create in the free app, and collaborators can edit it simultaneously, though presently you cannot track the changes others have made. You can create as many “notebooks” (documents) as you want, and section them off with tabs. Each tab may contain an unlimited number of pages. You can color-code, name, and rearrange tabs. To enter notes, just click on a page and type. You can then format…

What We’re Raving About This Month Sonnet says its $399 device “is ideally suited for use with high-bandwidth networking cards, host bus adapters, and storage interface cards.” The chassis supports low-profile, single-width PCIe 2.0 x8 cards, including the majority of 16-gigabit and 8-gigabit Fibre Channel products, 10-gigabit ethernet, and SAS and SATA host bus adapters, as well as RAID controller cards (sonnettech.com).—JOEL MATHIS BIOSHOCK INFINITE: BURIAL AT SEA EPISODE 2 Aspyr’s $15 port of 2K Games’ popular title is, shockingly, set right after the conclusion of Burial at Sea Episode 1, and features a story that involves nearly every major character from the original BioShock and from BioShock Infinite (aspyr.com).—MARCO TABINI WEATHERWALL 1.0 WeatherWary’s $100 app is designed to bring up-to-the-minute data to the serious weather enthusiast’s desktop. The software…

THE DEMISE OF THE iPad 2 (see page 34) isn’t the only change Apple has made recently to its mobile product offerings. Some of Apple’s international stores are now offering an 8GB version of the iPhone 5c, although the model is not for sale in the United States. The model, which Apple has made available in countries including Australia, China, France, Germany, and the UK, generally costs about 8 to 9 percent less than the 16GB one. Of course, in most of those countries Apple sells the iPhone unlocked and without a subsidy from local carriers, meaning that the prices are much higher than in the United States. But the price difference between the 8GB and 16GB iPhone models in most locations seems to be much smaller than that between…

Corners4 The Corners4 (iPhone 5 and 5s; $40) is a set of four corner reinforcements made from aircraft-grade aluminum. They fit right on top of your handset to provide protection where your phone needs it the most. The corners are available in red, pink, black, bright silver, satin silver, or gold (go.macworld.com/corners4). HARD CORE The Hard Core (iPhone 5 and 5s; $60) offers high-impact protection against falls of up to 12 feet, with raised edges and reinforced corners for maximum ruggedness. Ballistic offers the case in black, black and pink, or black and red, and the product has a built-in screen protector (go.macworld.com/hardcore). ITALIAN FLASHCARDS The Italian Flashcards case (iPhone 5 and 5s; $40) from Kate Spade New York offers a slim and secure fit. The white hard-plastic case features…

REMINDER APP We all make a lot of lists to organize our busy days, and the smartphone is an ideal tool for that task. Though I appreciate the handiness of Apple’s Reminders app, when I want real power I turn to Snowman’s $6 Checkmark 2 for iPhone. What sets Checkmark apart is its excellent set of tools and its slick, simple interface. Recently redesigned for iOS 7, the app also has a bunch of new features. Perhaps the coolest part is its ability to create location groups. Say you need to pick up some milk—just set a location-based reminder. If you frequent multiple grocery stores, Checkmark can alert you when you’re near any of them. Granted, it can’t automatically detect those locations; you have to enter them. Checkmark can also…

TABLET STAND The success of the Gogo Stump Stand stems from its simplicity: The stand has no moving parts to break, and you don’t have to fiddle with it or adjust it to find the right position. The Stump Stand is simply a solid block of material, molded from a chunk of silicone, with a groove sliced out of it. Yet it offers three ways to position your iPad (it can also hold an iPhone). The lean—middle—position inclines your iPad at just the right angle for easily glancing down at it. The upright angle is useful when the device is closer to eye level, as when you recline in a chair, and the ramp position is perfect for working at a standing desk. The Stump supports both landscape and portrait…

1. Make the text larger and bolder: The Helvetica Neue font can be difficult to read at times. If you have trouble reading text on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings General Accessibility Larger Text to increase the default font size on your device. To make that font size even larger, enable Larger Accessibility Sizes in apps that support the feature. And to make Helvetica Neue show up just a bit bolder, visit Settings General Accessibility and enable the Bold Text slider. (You’ll have to restart your iPhone after doing this.) 2. Bring back the buttons: iOS 7 has ditched most of the traditional buttons that past versions of the mobile OS offered. But if you’re jonesing for that old familiar arrow shape, you can enable it via Settings…

From any home screen, swipe down from the top of the screen. Type search terms in the ’Search iPhone’or ’Search iPad’ field at the top of the screen; results will display as you type. From that search field, you can look for items in various categories: apps; email; contacts; notes; calendar events and reminders; voice memos; messages; and music, videos, audiobooks, and podcasts. To choose which types of items the search results should display, go to Settings General Spotlight search. Tap a category to check or uncheck it, and drag categories up or down in the list to change the position where they will appear in your search results. To search for text in the bodies of email messages, you must use the Mail app itself. Tap a mailbox, and…

You can use your finger as if it were a marker to highlight new text or to expand an existing highlight. And you can print the notes you’ve made. When you select text, a pop-up menu will appear; tap Highlight and select a color. Or touch some text, and when the magnifier appears, start dragging; everything you touch will be highlighted in the current default color. Expanding an existing highlight works in the same way: Touch, pause, and drag. If you fail to pause, you’ll flip the page instead of highlighting the text. An AirPrint printer can print notes from your iPad; or you can email the notes to yourself and pick them up later on a computer that has printer access. The procedures are the same for both operations…

To set up a musical reveille in the Clock app, tap the Alarm button, tap the add (+) button, and set the time. Then tap Sound, tap Pick a Song, and choose a song in your list. The song will begin playing, so you can confirm that it’s the one you want; tap it again to stop it. (The Sound list holds up to five songs, for easy selection.) Next, tap Back and then Save. To assign music to an existing alarm, tap Edit on the main Alarm screen, tap an alarm, and pick up with the instructions earlier in this paragraph, starting at “tap Sound.”…

REVIEW Almost as soon as the iPad appeared in 2010, people wondered when Microsoft Office for the tablet would arrive. The theory was that once the Office suite was available, the iPad would finally become a real business-computing device. Well, the iPad has long since become just that, even without Office. So when Microsoft finally released Excel, Word, and PowerPoint for iPad, that move didn’t rock the world. That’s too bad, because the wait was well worth it. With Excel and Word particularly, and even PowerPoint to some extent, the migration to the iPad has been a huge success. These aren’t just Mac apps ported to the tablet—they’re tablet apps through and through.…

Sleek, streamlined, and well organized, Word for iPad offers everything that’s great about the desktop app, without any of the clutter. That said, Word for iPad is different from any Office application you’ve used before. While you can download the app for free, it requires a subscription to Office 365 ($10 per month, or $100 per year) if you want to do more than just view Word documents. (See “Office 365: To Subscribe or Not to Subscribe?” on page 65.) Once you’ve set up your subscription, Word opens to a template browser, where you can either create a fresh document from one of 15 templates, or open existing documents stored in your Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage service or in any other location supported by Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software. Word for…

Despite all the technology at our fingertips, the tasks of scheduling and planning meetings are a pain. You can use your Mac, your iPhone, and the Web to make the process go more smoothly. AUTOMATE CONFIRMATION When people schedule meetings far in advance, changes in plans or forgetfulness can cause problems—so send out meeting confirmations on the day before the meeting. Each day, check the next day’s scheduled meetings, and send out email reminders to all of the participants. To automate this process, use a fill-in TextExpander snippet. For instance, when I type meetingconfirm in an email window, TextExpander creates a custom email message that lets me fill in the recipient’s name, the agenda, and the anticipated length of the meeting. RESERVE MEETING TIMES Finding a mutually convenient time to…

Q&A This month we consider how to create a smart playlist with specified ratios of songs from different genres—as well as questions about organizing iTunes media files, accelerating slow-syncing iOS devices, and recovering a lost Apple ID password. Q: I recently bought a new MacBook Pro, which I love—but I do miss using MediaMonkey (mediamonkey.com) music management for Windows. When I edited a song’s title, artist, or genre, MediaMonkey automatically edited the files on my computer the same way. So if I deleted those songs from iTunes and reloaded them, they would be organized the way I wanted them to be. It gave me an easy way to edit multiple music files at once. How can I do this with iTunes? A: I assume that by organized you have in…

Speed Up a Sluggish iPhoto Library Q: I am a casual photographer who has amassed about 10,000 pictures in my iPhoto library. iPhoto now runs so slowly that it is essentially unusable. I just want to organize photos by date and event, and do very light editing. What do you recommend that’s faster? Marty Schettler A: The higher-priced spread will be overkill—Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop offer more features and complexity than you need. Even Photoshop Elements 12 may demand a longer leap than you wish to make. Although you could look at some less expensive and less complicated options such as the $20 Lyn (www.lynapp.com) or the $30 Pixa (www.pixa-app.com), or even the free but kind of clumsy and ugly Picasa (picasa.google.com), I suggest that you stay…