Macworld March 2019

It seems like it was only yesterday that I first used BareBones Software’s BBEdit, but in actuality, yesterday is so far away—25 years, in fact. With all the twists and turns across more than two decades of Apple as a company, Mac hardware, and the underlying operating system, you might think that BBEdit stands alone as a continuously-developed app shepherded largely or exclusively by the same independent developer—an app without a giant company behind it. As it turns out, BBEdit is one of several apps that’s been around the block more than a few times. The longevity of indie apps is more extraordinary when you consider the changes Apple put the Mac through from the early 1990s to 2018. Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 processors to PowerPC to Intel chips,…

Whatever else you may say about 2018, the year proved that plenty of developers still take the Mac seriously as a gaming platform. I’m fond of saying that we as Mac gamers enjoy quality at the expense of quantity, and standout titles like Subnautica and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire—both of which released at the same time as their PC counterparts—serve as proof of that. Nor did I have to struggle for this list: There are plenty of new enjoyable games like The Banner Saga 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset that deliver hours of entertainment but fall a tad short of the greatness of the following entries. Whether you’re looking for blockbuster action or retro-styled platformers, this year’s crop of games has many wonders to choose from. RISE…

Rumor has it that Apple is planning to produce its own CPUs and GPUs for Macs. Those T2 processors we have today are just a tiny first step—the big leap is to take something like the A12X and build a MacBook around it. It makes sense from the perspective of both power-to-performance ratio and a cost-to-performance ratio. Perhaps more importantly, it puts Apple fully in control of its whole platform, and allows the company to innovate in ways it can’t when it cedes the very heart of its computers to other companies. For these reasons and more, I think it makes sense to begin transitioning macOS to ARM and for Apple to produce computers with its own CPUs and GPUs inside. But that transition will take years. While that’s going on,…

Back in December, I wrote about what we could glean from Apple’s expansion into new physical locations in the U.S.. While studying the company’s personnel moves may cross a bit into reading tea leaves, you can often divine at least some big picture indications from where the company is putting its resources. Make no mistake, Apple’s biggest and most significant resources are its personnel. Granted, those personnel moves are happening on a consistent basis, though they don’t always rise to the level of reported news. They may not always be as splashy as expanding campuses, but there are plenty of hirings, firings, and reorganizations that can point to how Apple is adjusting its operational priorities. Over the last few weeks alone, for example, there have been several stories about Apple…

Premiere Rush CC, a brand-new video app from Adobe, emphasizes speed in the creation and sharing of online video targeted to the social media crowd. Unlike Premiere Pro, Premier Elements, and Premiere Clip (Adobe’s other desktop and mobile video apps), Rush operates across devices with nearly identical desktop and mobile versions that can save all footage in the cloud. Your movie is accessible anytime, anywhere via an auto sync feature that you can enable if you choose, or you can save your video locally. Rush, powered partly by Adobe’s Sensei artificial intelligence framework, is compatible with the latest version of Premiere Pro. Rush is super simple to use. You can shoot video from within the app on your mobile device or you can import video from your Camera Roll. Either…

Designed with on-location video production in mind, Sony’s PSZ-RA4T Professional RAID is not the fastest RAID box we’ve tested, but it’s certainly fast enough. Made for travel, the PSZ-RA4T is thoroughly ruggedized and especially easy on the eye. Add the ability of this dual-drive unit to function via Thunderbolt 2 or USB 3.1 on your cohort’s or client’s Windows machine as well as your Mac, and you’ve got a winner. DESIGN AND FEATURES The PSZ-RA4T has enough deft design flourishes that leave no doubt that folks who work with such products supplied more than a little input. Or there’s simply an especially brilliant and practical designer at Sony. Kudos to the company, whatever the scenario. The silicon jacket surrounding most of the PSZ-RA4T is the most salient evidence of…