Macworld April 2018

Months ago, Apple boldly asserted that the holiday quarter of 2017, its first financial quarter of this fiscal year, would be the company’s biggest in history. It wasn’t wrong. Apple’s holiday quarter generated $88.3 billion in revenue, blowing past even the high side of Apple’s estimates. By just about any way you measure it, this was a great quarter for Apple. But of course, the devil’s in the details, whether it’s line items in the corporate reports or in tidbits revealed during the company’s regular phone call with analysts. So here’s a look at four tidbits we learned about Apple’s big quarter. THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT Apple’s previous holiday quarter (which was in fiscal year 2017, but calendar year 2016) saw solid results, with slight sales growth. But as…

On the hunt for a fresh and exciting game to play this month? Luckily, there’s always something new worth checking out in the world of Mac games, and we’ve put together our picks for the 10 biggest and most interesting-looking titles recently released. Survival smash Rust recently exited Early Access, while Descenders is a frenetic new downhill biking game, Never Stop Sneakin’ is a speedy take on stealtha-ction classics, and Sailaway lets you explore the world’s oceans on a digital dinghy. Find out more about those games and others here, and don’t miss our earlier picks as well if you’re looking for further recent gaming options. 1. RUST ($35) Rust is easily this month’s biggest full release, and it’s one that has already been available via Steam Early Access for more than…

Someday far in the future, Apple will have settled fully into using its new macOS filesystem, APFS, and Macworld readers will stop being nervous and confused about it. Until then, I continue to receive queries in our inbox. APFS is a robust, more efficient, and futureproofed filesystem that has a lot of advantages. But the transition isn’t complete by any means. Reader Bill emailed wondering about the safety of upgrading his iMacs to macOS High Sierra, since each has a Fusion Drive, Apple’s hybrid of SSD and hard drive. He notes that he’d read Apple’s software engineering chief, Craig Federighi, had said at some point that APFS would come to Fusion Drives. (Federighi replied to a Mac user’s query via email, which that user then publicized.) While you can manually…

The next time you’re editing photos in Lightroom Classic CC, pay attention to how often your gaze darts to the Develop controls at the right edge of the screen. Nearly every adjustment is a slider, so it’s like watching a tennis match: move the mouse pointer to a specific control, change the value, look back at the image to see the effect you made, repeat hundreds of times. What if you could retrain your muscle memory and keep your eyes on the photo? The Loupedeck is a physical control panel, roughly the size of a keyboard, studded with dials and buttons that correspond to Lightroom controls. It plugs into a Mac or PC via USB, and works with Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom 6 under macOS 10.10 and later and Windows…

Before the USB Power Delivery 2.0 spec became reality, battery packs maxed out at a charge of about 15 watts (5 volts at 3 amps). PD 2.0 increased the max to 100W, but most of the batteries implementing PD 2.0 strike a balance of performance, heat, cost, and compactness by outputting about 30W. Some recharge at the same rate while others are much slower. However, the PD 2.0–based ZMI PowerPack 20000 ($80) offers 40 watts of power over USB-C to charge laptops while they’re in active use. And the 72 watt-hour/20,000 milliampere-hour PowerPack 20000 recharges itself at 45W. It’s faster in both directions than nearly every USB-C battery pack on the market. TESTING THE POWERPACK 20000 I used the PowerPack 20000 to charge a drained battery in a 2015 12-inch…

According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting behind a desk for as little as four hours a day increases your risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as 125 percent. And spending a few hours at the gym every week doesn’t significantly offset that risk. One of the clinic’s first recommendations: Use a sit/stand desk. I work in a home office in my smart home on a near full-time basis and was reluctant to make that investment. The customizable Evodesk XE Pro changed my mind, but not all its options are good values. Unlike some low-cost solutions that rest on top of your conventional work surface—mine is a six-foot-wide, 30-inch-deep sheet of ½-inch finished plywood sitting atop a pair of 27-inch-tall file cabinets—the Evodesk XE has a silky smooth motorized lift…