Macworld的October 2015目录

Apple’s iTunes gets a lot of criticism, including a lot that I dish out, and much of this criticism is justified. iTunes has lots of problems syncing iOS devices, iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library are confusing, and the interface, particularly in iTunes 12, is confusing. To be fair, though, iTunes does get a lot right. You can condemn it for many problems, but it’s good to sometimes take a step back and give it credit for the features that work so well that you hardly pay attention to them. I’ve picked ten things that iTunes does right. 1. CD RIPPING If you remember back in the days before iTunes, CD ripping software—at least on the Mac—was far less user-friendly than iTunes. You had to manually enter tags for your…

PYRAMID OF MAC TOWERS This is a combination of G5 Power Macs and 2008 Mac Pros. Apple used this basic tower design for over seven years. Apple is so focused now on lightweight, small computers, and the aluminum tower was everything but lightweight and small. With that in mind, here’s a disclaimer: Do not attempt to build your own pyramid of aluminum Mac towers. They are heavy machines, and lifting one above your knees is a difficult task. That tower up top? It nearly fell on my head when I tried to place it there. (The things I do for you people.) I really don’t want to hear about Mac enthusiasts inspired by this picture who were crushed by an avalanche of G5 Power Macs and Mac Pros. Don’t do…

MEAL-KIT DELIVERY SERVICE Blue Apron (blueapron.com) is a gourmet meal-ingredient service with an eponymous app that features seasonal recipes, how-to videos, and stories about the service’s farmers and suppliers. You can manage your account from the app, review the meals, and even share photos of your finished creations. Hello- Fresh (hellofresh.com) is pretty much the exact same kind of service that also has an app of the same name. It’s a way to ensure meals every night of the week!” Giphy Cam Giphy Cam (giphy.com/apps) lets you record a GIF on your iPhone, add effects to it (more than 40 overlays and effects are avail-able), and then share via Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook Messenger. Likealike Likealike (go.macworld.com/likealike) is similar to Meetup— where the older service is event-driven, Likealike…

There’s nothing wrong with a little vanity. After all, sometimes a perfectly good portrait is marred by small yet annoying stuff like a zit, makeup smudge, or stray hairs. Or maybe you captured an object in the frame you wish you hadn’t. Happily, the Retouch tool in Photos for OS X can come to your rescue (it’s not available in Photos for iOS). As you’re about to learn, Photos’ Retouch tool is more powerful than the one in iPhoto. HOW TO USE THE RETOUCH TOOL The Retouch tool works by copying pixels from one area of your photo to another and then blending them (blurring, really) into the pixels you click or drag atop. To use it, select an image in Photos and then press Return to enter Edit mode,…

Troubleshooting Continuity calls between Mac and iPhone Apple introduced Continuity in Yosemite and iOS 8.1 to allow better handoff among devices for phone calls, text messages, browsing sessions, and hotspot use. Among its many requirements is that devices with which you want to use any of the connected have to be logged into the same iCloud account and, for most, on the same Wi-Fi network Readers have questions about the phone-call portion of Continuity, and there aren’t great answers for each. Disabling FaceTime ringing Q: My experience is that if I don’t immediately pick up and answer on the iPhone, the Mac will continue ringing a time or two after I started talking on the phone. Annoying. —Ron Phelps A: I’ve noticed the same problem, and it is annoying! However,…

Three years ago Twitter broke its covenant with the third-party developers (go.macworld.com/twitter1) who helped fuel its initial growth and create some of its most innovative features. The message was clear: Twitter was in charge of its own platform, and while other Twitter apps would be tolerated, they would only be so in limited fashion and for a limited time. Today Twitter is a company in turmoil, with investors such as Chris Sacca clamoring for change (go.macworld.com/sacca) after the exit of former CEO Dick Costolo and the interim takeover of cofounder Jack Dorsey. What can’t be disputed is that Twitter’s Mac app—introduced in 2011—is an extreme example of how Twitter has squandered the past few years. It drove third-party developers off of its platform in order to exert control, and then…

SO YOU’VE BEEN USING SPOTIFY for a while, and you’ve got a sidebar full of playlists, with songs and albums you’ve been saving. That’s quite a digital collection you’ve got there. But now Apple Music (apple.com/music) has come on the scene, and you want to switch. Spotify won’t help you—you can’t export your playlists, at least not in any usable format—and iTunes has no way of importing your music. What do you do? Go through each and every song on Spotify and search for it on Apple Music? Nah, that’d take too long; you want to listen to music, not fuss around. Fortunately, the $5 Move to Apple Music can help you out. Working with both Spotify and Rdio, this app makes a pipeline between your accounts, finding what you’ve…

PHONESOAP The $60 PhoneSoap Charger (phonesoap.com) is a product we didn’t actually know we needed until now. “PhoneSoap Charger is proud to be the first and only cell phone charger that cleans and sanitizes your phone while it charges.” It bathes your phone in bacteria-killing ultraviolet light, cleaning the device without subjecting it to water or chemicals. VUDE The idea of virtual reality headsets is at once futuristic and retro—like something out of The Lawnmower Man. The $49 Vude Smartphone VR Headset (getvude.com) lets you play games on your iOS device—but instead of squinting your eyes at a small screen, you’ll be seemingly immersed in gameplay. This is an Indiegogo project; the makers say they need $11,000 to begin production. SPHERO The $130 Sphero SPRK Edition (store.sphero.com) is designed to…

I am a man of many Macs and have been for some time. When you use a platform over a long period of time, you’re bound to run into some problems. Enter my 2009 MacBook Pro. This hardy workhorse was my main machine for years. I upgraded the internal drive to a 250GB SSD and maxed the RAM out at 8GB. Even so, a Core 2 Duo doesn’t compare to an i5, even at a slower clock speed, so I eventually bought a MacBook Air with half the drive space and half the RAM. Now the two machines split duties. While I go about my daily work and play on my Air, the Pro sits in my home office, hosting my definitive iTunes and Photos libraries, my ancient emails, and…

There is a wonderfully private way to share digital memories with certain people: iCloud Photo Sharing. When you create or subscribe to a shared album, it appears on all of your devices. And since iCloud Photo Sharing doesn’t count against your allotted storage space for free iCloud accounts, it doesn’t cost you a penny! TURNING ON iCLOUD PHOTO SHARING To start the sharing spree, turn on iCloud Photo Sharing on all your devices (this has nothing to do with iCloud Photo Library). In Photos for Mac, choose Photos → Preferences and in the iCloud pane, turn on iCloud Photo Sharing. On an iOS device, tap Settings and then scroll down until you see Photos & Camera. Give it a tap and on the next screen, tap the switch next to…

PRODUCTIVITY? SWEET! Office 2016 for Mac was a long time coming, but it brings plenty of new features and better feature parity with the Windows version than ever. Microsoft has done a lot to streamline the experience, with a customizable, collapsible Ribbon as well as cross platform keyboard shortcuts, but with any major Office update, there’s bound to be a learning curve. These tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote should come in handy. Office 2016 is available for Office365 subscribers, with a wider release in September. 1. DON’T FORGET TO SAVE! This is probably our most important tip: Don’t forget to save! When Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions into OS X, many Mac users started losing our ingrained habit of hitting Command- S often. Unfortunately, Office 2016…

NO SINGLE MAC WEB DESIGN APP offers the ideal blend of power and accessibility. But Rage Software’s EverWeb (everwebapp.com) comes closer than most, helping you build attractive, useful sites with minimal hassle. A WEB-DESIGN APP THAT PLAYS NICE Every element of EverWeb’s simple interface is easily in reach when you need it, and out of your way when you don’t. The central layout window’s surrounded by your site structure on the left, a toolbar along the bottom of the screen, and a multi-tabbed Inspector pane for adjusting individual elements on the right. EverWeb includes numerous modern, fully editable templates, each with multiple page types and a mobile version. You can also build sites from scratch with a pleasantly powerful layout engine—though I did sometimes wish for adjustable guides or a…

GRIFFIN LIGHTRUNNER Finding a comfortable running armband for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 can be a challenge, but the $40 LightRunner (griffintechnology.com) is one of the best out there. Its adjustable neoprene band is comfortable even during longer runs of 5-plus miles, and a mixture of cloth and rubber will hold your iPhone securely in place without ever letting it touch your skin. The LightRunner also has a window that protects the phone’s screen while still recognizing touch, and there’s even a cutout for the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. But the LightRunner’s main purpose is safety: It has built-in flashing LED lights for night runs, and you can even choose between a slow, steady flash or a fast one.—CAITLIN MCGARRY MONOWEAR NYLON FOR APPLE WATCH Monowear’s $60 Nylon band may seem…

MEET BY SUNRISE If you use the free Sunrise calendar app on iOS (go.macworld.com/sunrise), then you already have the Meet keyboard on your phone. Add the keyboard in your Settings to quickly access your calendar. Meet lets you choose available meeting times and automatically creates a link where the respondents can chime in as to their availability. Once a date and time is confirmed by both parties, the event gets put in your calendar. ROXIE VISUAL KEYBOARD Want an easier way to find and use emojis in your everyday messages? Try the Roxie Visual Keyboard (go.macworld.com/roxie). This free third-party keyboard suggests emojis that best suit the word or phrase you’ve typed. For example, typing Love surfaces all the heart and kiss emojis. BITMOJI KEYBOARD The popular Bitmoji creations (go.macworld.com/bitmoji) are…

Brian Cahoon is concerned about where his photos and other media live. As a former Aperture user, he used its vault feature to back up his library. But with iCloud Photo Library, Apple gives you the option to always keep high-resolution copies locally. I don’t think I can just copy the library since some may only be in the cloud at full resolution and the export feature doesn’t create folders for years/ months—it’s just a dump of all files in one folder. I have 280GB of photos going back to 2001. Any ideas on how to get a full, verified copy of my photos on a backup drive? There’s no way around this: to ensure the ability of a complete backup, you have to anoint one computer as the place…