Macworldの March 2014 の目次

For its own sake and for ours, Apple needs to feel the heat of competition, and soon. Here’s why. Sometimes you’re just ahead of the game. Take, for example, the makers of exotic sports cars—Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini. From year to year, how much do their high-end products actually change? How much do their models even need to? In that respect, they share a thing or two with Apple. The comparison to high-end luxury automakers isn’t novel, but it struck me anew as I walked the floor of the L.A. Auto Show recently. A companion said that she was often less excited by those exotic cars than by more ordinary ones, since they didn’t undergo as many radical changes as consumer-oriented models. After all, it’s not as if people are going…

When Apple released Mavericks, some people wondered why it included the company’s Maps application (go.macworld.com/mavmaps). Having access to an interactive map on a mobile device is tremendously useful. But computers already have Google Maps (maps.google.com) running in a Web browser—so why put Maps on the Mac? I can think of several reasons. Integration The Maps application is the tip of a crucial iceberg: integration. Map data is about far more than providing pretty pictures in a single application. It’s also a way of sharing location information with other apps. When you create an event and add a location in the latest version of Calendar, that app automatically searches for the location; if it finds that detail, it displays a small map at the bottom of the event’s Edit window, with…

Apple recently acquired Topsy, a social media analytics company that studies a range of data from Twitter, and PrimeSense, a developer of 3D sensors that let devices respond to the environment in three dimensions. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple paid more than $200 million for Topsy, and the Calcalist (an Israeli newspaper) reported that Apple would spend $345 million for PrimeSense. Topsy provides software for making sense of data across the social Web and divining consumer sentiment. For example, marketers can use Topsy’s tools to measure the success of ad campaigns, identify thoughts and opinions over time, and search and analyze hashtags across years of online chatter. Topsy is one of the few companies (DataSift and Gnip are two others) with access to Twitter’s “firehose”—the complete stream of…

AUDIO Muse 2.0 4.0/4.0 $5; Industrious One; industriousone.com If you love Pandora, an outlay of $5 and a Mac lets you use Industrious One’s Muse, a desktop Pandora player that offers all the Pandora goodness of the Web browser version and a worthwhile bit more. When you first launch Muse, you see a window that serves as a container for Pandora’s website, with your stations, the New Station field for adding more stations, playback controls, thumbs-up and thumbsdown buttons, and any other elements Pandora puts on the page (including ads). But with Muse, you no longer need to keep your Web browser running to listen to Pandora. And the music continues to play when you close Muse’s window. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to such commands as Play/Pause, Next Song,…

Hosts 0.1.3 4.0/4.0 free; Lars van de Kerkhof; permanentmarkers.nl/software.html I recently had a problem with one of my mail accounts. The account, provided by Dreamhost, was on a mail server named one thing (‘mail.doombot.com’), but was secured with a certificate for a different mail server (‘mail.dreamhost.com’). So every time I opened Mail, I got an error saying the two certificates didn’t match. Fixing such problems involves editing a file on your drive called hosts, located in the hidden /private/etc folder. That’s where Lars van de Kerkhof’s free Hosts system preferences pane comes in. The hosts file is essentially a local override for the Domain Name Server system. DNS translates nice, pretty website addresses (like macworld.com) into their hard-to-remember, IP-address equivalents (say, 70.42.185.230). The hosts file lets you override the DNS…

As if shrinking seats, hidden fees, and being trapped inside a metal tube with a bunch of strangers weren’t bad enough, the Federal Communications Commission has issued a proposal that will make flying even more unpleasant than it already is. The agency convened a meeting in December to discuss allowing passengers to make phone calls and use cellular data while in the air. According to the Wall Street Journal, phone use would still be restricted during takeoff and landing, but anyone on the plane could make a phone call or, for example, check Twitter after the plane reaches 10,000 feet. The FCC proposed a similar idea back in 2004, but it faced objection from a number of groups and withdrew the proposal three years later, citing a “lack of technical…

The Elements in Action The Elements in Action ($4; go.macworld.com/elements) features beautifully filmed videos that explore and explain what makes each individual element in the periodic table of elements unique. To illustrate mercury, for example, it shows how a heavy cannonball floats weightlessly on top of a bath of ultradense mercury.—JOEL MATHIS Inbox Cube Inbox Cube (go.macworld.com/inboxcube) is a free email client for Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and AOL. It divides the components of email into “cubes”—one cube features just messages and their text; swipe over the cube, however, and you’ll see the Attachments cube, where you can visually find and sort through all sent and received attachments in one place.—JOEL MATHIS Awesome Note for iPad Awesome Note for iPad (go.macworld.com/awesome) ambitiously touts itself as an “all-inone life organizer,” having added…

GAMES In Piasa’s Grilly the Cheese (go.macworld.com/grilly) side-scrolling runner game, you play as a grilled cheese sandwich that has left its home—no explanation as to why. Grilly is just happy to roam about, collecting treasures along the way. The controls in Grilly the Cheese are very easy. Tap on the screen to jump, and tap again to jump even higher. As Grilly runs into obstacles, jumping is the way to avoid them. The main item to collect is coins, which you can redeem for power-ups that assist you during the game, or accessories to dress Grilly up. The game is free, but buying coins will cost you. It’s easy enough to collect coins, however; after ten minutes of play, I already had several hundred coins that I used in the…

GAMES Blackbar (go.macworld.com/blackbar) is an odd game—at once a politically literate tirade against censorship, an Orwellian adventure story told through half of a mangled email exchange, and a puzzle game based entirely around decoding blocks of text. As a downtrodden citizen of a dimly sketched dystopia, you receive a series of messages with parts blacked out by censors and must work out what the missing words are. Blackbar is easy at first, but as the game progresses it weaves its tangled internal logic until your head hurts. The game can be frustrating—I was stumped for days trying to come up with a single word needed to unlock the next screen. And the actual substance of the puzzles is thin. But Blackbar makes up for this by having a wonderful story,…

Now that we’ve been living with it for a few months, we’re familiar with all of the new features in OS X Mavericks, right? No? You aren’t using tags or tabs? You haven’t even tried to use the new Maps app? Don’t be embarrassed: Mavericks gives you a lot of new stuff to learn, and some of us have things other than “Explore Mavericks” at the top of our to-do list. But don’t miss out on some of your new operating system’s most useful and important new powers: Here are the basics about three such features. FINDER TABS You create tabbed windows all the time in Safari, and you can do the same in the Finder. Specifically, you can create a single window and then, within that window, create tabs–with…

Assuming that you aren’t already wedded to a third-party password-manager such as 1Password, the new iCloud Keychain can be a huge help: Like those third-party tools, it securely stores confidential information that you need to enter all the time—such as passwords and credit-card numbers—and makes that info available from any device that syncs to your iCloud account. Give it a try! 7 STEPS TO USING iCLOUD KEYCHAIN Turn it on: Open the iCloud pane of System Preferences. Put a check in the Keychain checkbox, enter your Apple ID password, and click OK. Create an iCloud security code: You’ll next be prompted to create and confirm an iCloud Security Code. By default the code is four digits long; to use more digits, click Advanced. You’ll also be asked to enter a…

WHAT IS IT? The Retina MacBook Pro has a high-density display—images and text look especially smooth and clean on it. Apple updated this model in October. WHO IS IT FOR? The demanding user who wants a portable computer that performs well (see chart at right)—it’s the fastest Apple laptop in our tests. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? The Retina MacBook Pro is available in screen sizes of 13 inches (go.macworld.com/retinambp13) and 15 inches (go.macworld.com/retinambp15). Apple sells the 13-incher in three versions. The $1299 model has a 2.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory, and 128GB of flash storage. The $1499 model has a 2.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and 256GB of flash storage. The $1799 model has a 2.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and…

WHAT IS IT? The Mac mini (go.macworld.com/macmini) is Apple’s entry-level desktop Mac. Though slower than Apple’s other desktops, it’s still fast enough for general-purpose use. WHO IS IT FOR? First-time Mac users. The Mac mini is also ideal as a secondary Mac in your home. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? What makes the Mac mini stand out is its small size. Apple sells two Mac mini models. The $599 model has a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 CPU and a 5400-rpm, 500GB hard drive. The $799 version has a 2.3GHz quad-core Core i7 processor and a 5400-rpm, 1TB hard drive. Both come standard with 4GB of memory and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor. The Mac mini doesn’t include a display, a keyboard, or a mouse, so you must supply your…

Tips, Tricks, and Tools to Make You and Your Mac More Productive Tap into the Web productivity suite’s many powers with these 14 tips. Google’s free productivity suite, Google Drive, is packed with tools to help people work together using little more than a browser. Make sure that you’re taking advantage of all it has to offer with these tips. 1. Search by Person Google recently added the ability to search not only by document name, but also by the name of anyone who shares documents with you. This is perfect if you can’t remember a document’s name, but you do remember who shared it. To use this feature, navigate to your drive in a Web browser, click the Shared with Me link in the navigation bar on the left,…

iBooks isn’t just for books—you can corral PDFs with it, too. Thanks to OS X Mavericks’s new iBooks app (www.apple.com/apps/ibooks), it’s easy to store and read your ebooks (as long as they’re in the .epub or .ibooks format). But you can also keep PDFs in iBooks, and even organize them—though Apple’s tools still leave a bit to be desired on that front. Add Your PDFs Adding PDFs to the iBooks app is easy. Just drag and drop them onto the iBooks screen, or select File → Add to Library (1-<Shift>-O) and select the applicable file. Unlike the old iBooks section in iTunes, the iBooks app doesn’t let you alter metadata for books you’ve added yourself—so if your PDF has a weird name and author, you may have to adjust that…

If you crave sound quality on a par with (or even better than) a CD but enjoy the freedom that comes from carrying music on your iPhone or iPad, it’s time to look at lossless audio. Files in formats such as Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) or Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) are larger than MP3 and AAC files, but they tilt the quality/size balance in favor of sound quality. The algorithms shrink the file size but allow the original to be reconstructed exactly. Lossless files come in at 40 percent to 60 percent of the size of uncompressed CD files. Listening to lossless files on an iOS device can be seamless or may require effort, depending on the format. For starters, Apple’s Music app for iOS natively supports the…

If you don’t need (or don’t want) Adobe’s 800-pound gorilla, consider these options. Using the Web for Video, Graphics, Publishing, Photography, and Other Creative Pursuits Now that Adobe has made Photoshop CC the linchpin of its Creative Cloud subscription strategy, photo enthusiasts are seeking alternatives to the engine that has driven the modern image-editing industry for more than 20 years. We found seven good alternatives that are suitable for most amateurs and photo enthusiasts. A couple of them, unsurprisingly, come from Adobe itself. Note that prices can vary; those listed below are the latest from the vendors’ websites. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Photoshop Elements ($100; 4.5/5.0; go.macworld.com/pse12) is a full-featured photo editor, a light version of Adobe’s Photoshop CC. Though it lacks certain advanced controls and high-end professional features such…

Planning to snap photos while you’re on the road? Here’s what to pack. You don’t have to be a National Geographic photographer to take your camera on the road, but you might need a few accessories to take the best photos and keep them safe. I’ve rounded up some gear designed for traveling photographers. Put it in a proper bag: If you’re still stuffing your camera into a backpack made for schoolbooks—or not using a bag at all—consider upgrading. You’ll find a million bags for sale, but you can narrow the field by looking for a design that suits your lifestyle and equipment (a backpack versus a messenger bag, for example). Select a bag with a healthy amount of padding and with compartments for lenses and accessories. Some bags also…

This image-collection tool shows that there is more to scrapbooking than just cutting and pasting photos. Review RATING 4.0/5.0 PRICE $50 COMPANY Realmac Software URL realmacsoftware.com Scrapbooking is an activity that many people perform for professional reasons: For example, some collect articles and website URLs for reference material, while others amass images for creative inspiration. This is the kind of work that Ember seeks to facilitate. The app is the successor to Realmac’s LittleSnapper, which let you grab a screenshot of a running app or webpage and store it or share it. With Ember, in addition to importing images, you can take shots of your entire screen, of a single window, or of a portion of your desktop. You can even take a screenshot on a timer—a useful feature when…

What do you do? I teach and do research on game theory and information economics. I try to understand how to channel selfish motivations into good social outcomes. My blog, Cheap Talk (cheaptalk.org), mostly concerns how to think about everyday situations through the lens of economics and game theory. Recently I started a venture modernizing pricing for sports, concerts, and the like called Purple Pricing (go.macworld.com/purple). My partner, Sandeep Baliga, and I are applying our gametheory research to remove gamesmanship from the ticketbuying experience. What hardware do you use? I have Macs everywhere. A MacBook Air is my portable, an old MacBook serves as a desktop at home, and an iMac sits in the office. My phone is an iPhone 5. For most of my adult life, I was a…

We’ve collected advice for Mavericks users in this issue, and readers sent some Mac tricks. Folks are also struggling with Touch ID (see page 32), and the song of the Mac Pro is in the air (see our review on page 12). TOUCH ID WINS AND WOES Scan the tips, edges, and sides of your finger. The technology works by stitching together a master template from the multiple scans. I scanned the bottom of my thumb, and made successive overlapping passes until almost my entire thumb, including the sides and edges, were part of the template. —lhudd, via Macworld.com I have two scans of my right thumb in slightly different angles. It still usually catches my primary one (which I tested by going into the Touch ID settings and tapping…

When it comes to Apple, I’m a pretty trusting guy. I trust that the company will protect my data to the best of its ability. I trust that it will continue to release new iPhones, iPads, and Macs every year. But in several important ways, I don’t trust Apple. And given how much I rely on the company, that’s a problem. Speechless Siri At times, Siri saves my reminders almost instantly, and composes and sends my iMessages as fast as I can speak. Those are examples of technology at its best. Other times, I get an infuriating canned response from Siri: “I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t take any requests right now.” Siri, like so much in life, is good only when it does what it’s supposed to…

For infringing on several Apple patents in designing multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million. The damages represent the full amount of lost profits and royalties that Apple had claimed as well as most of the cut of Samsung’s profits that it had demanded. With this latest verdict included, Samsung now owes Apple about $930 million. During the five-day trial, Apple said that it would have sold hundreds of thousands more iPhones if not for Samsung’s infringement, and therefore that Samsung owed it hundreds of millions of dollars in profits reaped from sales of infringing devices. Jurors said they awarded Apple the $114 million that it claimed in lost profits, an extra…

Coffitivity 1.0.1 4.0/4.0 free; Coffitivity; coffitivity.com Working at home can be hard when the silence becomes oppressive. If you miss the sounds of other people, let the free Coffitivity (go.macworld.com/coffitivity) perk things up with the sounds of a busy coffee shop. The app offers three appealing soundscapes: Morning Murmur, Lunchtime Lounge, and University Undertones. The mixes blend shop background noises—cash registers, coffee brewing, plates clinking, and the like—with unintrusive snippets of conversation. Those little bits enrich the background noise without ever becoming annoying—I never found myself distracted by the snatches of idle chitchat, even though that often happens to me in an actual café environment. Still, I wish the app had a fourth option (“Quiet Quarters,” maybe?) for library-like noise levels—page turns and coffee-cup clinks, but no chatting. The app…

There has been much discussion of troubles with Touch ID ever since Apple unveiled it with the release of the iPhone 5s last fall. (See Feedback on page 10 for a few reader comments.) Touch ID certainly isn’t perfect: As someone who has been using it since I got my iPhone 5s on launch day, I’ve experienced my fair share of frustration—especially because I swapped out my simple four-digit passcode for a multicharacter alphanumeric version. But despite its occasional malfunctions, Touch ID has become one of my favorite iPhone features. To make sure it remains one of your favorites, too, here are a few tips and tricks I’ve discovered to keep Touch ID working properly, as well as some advice about when you shouldn’t use it. Start With a Good…

Bid adios to stitched leather, friends who like to find other friends. Apple has released an update for the Find My Friends application, giving it an iOS 7–style makeover that brings it in line with the company’s other apps, including Remote, Podcasts, Find My iPhone, and iBooks. The origins of Find My Friends’ fetish for stitched leather are lost in the mists of time, but it’s rumored that Steve Jobs himself was a fan of the skeuomorphic texturing. The new aesthetic forgoes such flourishes for a more straightforward design, one that features a largely white interface with sparse color highlights. Upon launch, a map displaying your friends’ locations takes up most of the screen. Gone in this update are the dots representing your friends; now you’ll actually see their circular…

PRODUCTIVITY TextUs.Biz’s Receptionist (go.macworld.com/receptionist) gives companies a computerized system for handling clients, vendors, and delivery people when they arrive at the front desk. Once you enter administrative information and customize the system with your company’s logo, audio message, and list of contacts, you publish the data to make it available to the app. Visitors use the iPad as a kiosk to check in and announce their arrival by specifying the person they want to see. The system then notifies that employee. After a free 30-day trial, an account costs $49 per month for up to 24 contacts, unlimited messages, and visitor logging on one iPad; for $249 per month, you get all of the above plus 100 or more contacts and multiple-iPad support. I found updating info a bit kludgy,…

GAMES Mega Dead Pixel (go.macworld.com/megadead) is a runner—a type of game where the screen is constantly moving and you have to move your avatar. In this case, you’re a pixel, you’re falling, and you must avoid obstacles that look as if they were left behind by an Atari 2600 game console. You mostly score by “painting” an obstacle—that is, brushing past it by tapping on the left or right side of the screen to move your pixel out of the way. But Mega Dead Pixel isn’t just about avoidance. You can pick up coins to get power-ups, and run over white pixels to make your pixel bigger. With a bigger pixel, you can smash into obstacles to score, though each time you smash something, your pixel shrinks back to the…

Hardware Jawbone UP24 4.5/4.5 $150; Jawbone; www.jawbone.com The virtue of the ultraspare UP24 fitness-tracking wrist band is that it looks good even when worn with a traditional wristwatch. But in functionality, it’s playing catch-up with state-of-the-art trackers such as the Fitbit Force. The UP24 only now has Bluetooth syncing (for late-model iOS devices). Its activity and sleep tracking are standard fare. And without a digital display or a deeper data-tracking set, it can’t be called cutting-edge.—JON PHILLIPS FiftyThree Pencil 4.5/4.5 $50; FiftyThree; www.fiftythree.com Pencil is FiftyThree’s first foray into the stylus market. The Bluetooth-enhanced aluminum pen integrates deeply with FiftyThree’s Paper app to provide extra tools such as palm rejection and Blend mode. The pen has a rectangular rather than a round body, which makes gripping it after sketching awhile…

TO OPEN A NEW TAB Press 1-T or hold down 1 while double-clicking on a folder. …ANOTHER WAY Drag a folder from within a tabbed Finder window up to the plus (+) sign in the upper-right corner. …AND ANOTHER WAY Right-or <Control>-click on a folder and select Open in a New Tab; alternatively, hold down the 1 key and double-click the folder. TO NAVIGATE FROM TAB TO TAB Press <Control>-<Tab> to move left to right. Press <Control>-<Shift>-<Tab> to move right to left. TO TURN A TAB INTO A WINDOW Select Window → Move Tab to New Window. Or drag the tab out of the Finder window that it’s in; a new window will be automatically created. TO GATHER A BUNCH OF OPEN WINDOWS INTO A SINGLE TABBED ONE Select View…

Mavericks is available only as a download from the Mac App Store, and the downloadable installer doesn’t require a bootable installation disc. But if you want a bootable Mavericks installer, you can create one fairly easily. GET THE LATEST MAVERICKS VERSION Look at the date next to Updated (or Released) in the Info box on the Mavericks page of the Mac App Store. Then locate your downloaded copy of the Mavericks installer. In the Finder, choose File → Get Info, and look at the date next to Modified. If the Mac App Store date is newer than the Modified date on your copy of the installer, redownload the installer to get the latest version. To get it, you must first delete your current copy of the installer and then redownload…

WHAT IS IT? The MacBook Pro (go.macworld.com/macbookpro) has a standard, non-Retina display. WHO IS IT FOR? The user who wants a portable computer that doesn’t sacrifice a lot. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? The update to the MacBook Pro line in October reduced the non-Retina models to one laptop. That laptop is a 13-inch model with a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory, a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive, and an integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics subsystem. You can customize your order with a faster processor, more memory, a larger hard drive, or a solid-state drive. The standard MacBook Pro is the only Mac laptop with a builtin SuperDrive (for optical discs). It comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But it continues to offer ports that Apple has phased…

WHAT IS IT? The iMac is Apple’s iconic all-in-one model. Made of aluminum, it has a built-in display. It also offers top-notch performance (go.macworld.com/imac). WHO IS IT FOR? Both novices and demanding users. The iMac is ideal for someone who needs to buy a complete computer setup (keyboard, mouse or trackpad, and display) and wants to maximize workspace efficiency. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? Four models are available, along with certain upgrades. Two have 21.5-inch displays; the others have 27-inch displays. All iMacs come standard with 8GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive. The 21.5-inch, $1299 iMac has a 2.7GHz quad-core Core i5 processor and Intel Iris Pro integrated graphics. The 21.5-inch, $1499 iMac includes a 2.9GHz quad-core Core i5 CPU and a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics processor…

Get one-click access to the files and folders you use the most. OS X’s Finder is your window onto the documents, spreadsheets, photos, and other files you’ve tucked away on your Mac and on other connected computers and drives. One often-overlooked Finder tool is the sidebar, the left-hand section of every Finder window where you see small icons and names for folders and other items. The sidebar is intended to give you one-click access to the items you use most often. To make sure it serves your needs, tweak both what the sidebar displays and the way it displays it. See More or Less First, customize the Finder’s built-in guesses about what items matter to you. In the Finder, choose Finder → Preferences and click Sidebar. Here you’ll see a…

Hardware and Software for All Your Business Needs Hardware Angelbird SSD2go 4.0/5.0; $450; Angelbird; www.angelbird.com Do you like your portable drives with a splash of color? Check out Angelbird’s USB 3.0 bus-powered SSD2go. You can pick one color for the case and another for the backplate. The 0.4-inch-thick solid-state drive is the size of an iPhone 5c and comes in three capacities: 128GB ($280), 240GB ($450), and 480GB ($790). We tested a silver 240GB model with a blue backplate. Angelbird uses top-notch components in its drives—which probably accounts for its higher-than-average prices—and the unit we tested performed impressively. In our Mac tests, the drive wrote a 10GB file at 219 megabytes per second and read the same file at 403 MBps. It wrote a 10GB folder of files at 189…

Check out our guide to picking up some great reading. When you’re about to hit the road and you need some travel entertainment, grab a few free books before you hop on a plane, train, or automobile. The easiest way to pick up a book for your iPad or iPhone is to visit the iBooks Store. On a Mac, launch iBooks (if you don’t have it, download it for free at go.macworld.com/ibooksapp) and then click iBooks Store. To the right, you’ll see a Quick Links list; click Free Books. On an iOS device, tap iBooks, tap Store, and then tap Featured at the bottom. Scroll to Quick Links, and tap Free Books. Apple’s collection is divided into subcategories, topped by recommendations (including such scintillating titles as Apple’s own iPhone and…

iMovie 10 can help you make your movies short, sweet, and exciting. Standard iMovie projects allow you to piece together as much material as you like. But iMovie 10 also offers you a way to make videos that are necessarily limited to a running time of just over or under a minute. They’re called trailers and, like the countless movie trailers presented in theaters and appended to DVDs, they’re heavily templated. Here’s how they work. To create a trailer, first choose File → New Trailer, press 1-<Shift>-N, or click the Create button in iMovie’s toolbar, and choose Trailer from the menu. The resulting Create window presents 29 templates, including Action, Coming of Age, Holiday, Romance, and Travel. Select any template, and a Play button appears over its thumbnail. Click that…

Review RATING 4.0/5.0 PRICE $40–$60 COMPANY Macphun URL macphun.com A photo editor that specializes in enhancing details, Intensify works with various formats, including Raw and PSD (Pro version only). Although it is targeted at enthusiasts, the software will also prove useful to pros seeking a different take on an image fix. Intensify runs on 64-bit Macs with OS X 10.7 and above. The $40 stand-alone app is sold in the Mac App Store. The $60 Pro version, available on the Macphun website or loaded on 4GB SD cards for retail sale, features a plug-in that works with Adobe Photoshop CS5, CS6, and CC; Photoshop Elements 10 or later; Lightroom 4.0 or later; Apple Aperture 3.3; and iPhoto. We tested the Pro version of the program. Preset Action Some of Intensify’s…

The insider tips you won’t get from Apple. Answering Your Questions and Sharing Your Tips About Getting the Most From Your Mac Use Touch Camera Icon in Lock Screen to Turn Off Flashlight In iOS 7, Apple introduced Control Center, the collection of settings you can access by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. On the iPhone, one of those options is to trigger the flashlight. You probably think you need to swipe back up to Control Center again to turn the flashlight off. Nope; simply tap the camera icon on the lock screen to turn the flashlight off. Trigger Spring-Loaded Folders Even When They’re Turned Off With spring-loaded folders, you can drag a file over a folder, hold it there for a moment, and the folder pops…

Depending on your needs, the new Mac Pro may be just what you want (a state-of-the-art, multicoreprocessor, workstation-GPU computer that doesn’t waste space and resources on unnecessary expandability), or not at all what you want (a workhorse tower with tons of bays and slots for expansion). Apple has done away with the massive enclosure of earlier Mac Pros: The new Mac Pro is a small cylinder with a beautiful, unibody exterior made from a single block of aluminum. Its color is similar to the “space gray” finish of Apple’s current iPhone and iPad models. The cylinder is just 9.9 inches tall and 6.6 inches in diameter. Apple says the new model is about one-eighth the size of the 2012 Mac Pro, but that proportion doesn’t hit home until you see…

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group has finalized a new type of connector for USB cables that will fit into your computer whichever way the cable is oriented. But if a USB 2.0 cable can handle the job, you don’t have to wait: For several months, Tripp Lite has been shipping reversible USB 2.0 cables. The connector on the host end of the cable is in the middle of the shell and has electrical contacts on both sides; the side of the cable that faces up when you plug it into your system doesn’t matter. The end of the cable that plugs into the device you’re connecting, however, still needs to be oriented a particular way. But the frustration that most people encounter is at the host end anyway—especially when they’re…

My Passport Air The $150 My Passport Air is a 1TB external hard drive designed to complement the MacBook and MacBook Air: It comes in an aluminum enclosure and includes USB 3.0 compatibility. The device is powered, in fact, by the Mac’s USB port, and it’s compatible with Apple’s Time Machine backup feature (wd.com).—JOEL MATHIS Magic Number 2.0 People rarely start their day thinking about equations and formulas; but if you do, you’ll appreciate Seed’s $2 Magic Number, which creates beautifully formatted mathematical expressions and computes their results with ease. The app supports most common math operations that a scientific calculator can perform, and it provides a range of formatting options (magicnumber.me).—MARCO TABINI Most Powerful EyeBattery QuickerTek’s $500 Most Powerful EyeBattery weighs 2.2 pounds and is made from anodized aluminum,…

Liquid 4.3 4.0/4.0 free, but $3 in-app purchase unlocks all features; Liquid OS X; liquid.info Think about how much time you spend dealing with chunks of text, big and small: search queries you type into Google, words and phrases you look up on Wikipedia, and text blocks you copy from one app and paste into another. Liquid (go.macworld.com/liquid) makes performing those tasks a whole lot easier. Launch Liquid, and it sits quietly in the menu bar until you need it. Select a bit of text in an app, on a website, or wherever, and press Liquid’s keyboard shortcut. Up pops a window containing your selected text along with six menu options: Search, Reference, Convert, Translate, Copy, and Share, each with a letter or number next to it (S, R, C,…

Walk into an Apple Store from now on, and your phone might start trying to sell you those earphones you’ve been longing for. Apple’s new iBeacons system is part of an apparent attempt to expand in-store sales. New in iOS 7, iBeacons is designed to work with Apple’s official Apple Store app. It detects your location in the store, and if you walk near the accessories, for example, your smartphone will send you a push notification inviting you to take a closer look at the merchandise. I attempted to test iBeacons at the Apple Store in Center City Philadelphia. That store has three iBeacons locations, but I never quite made it work. For compatibility with iBeacons, you need an iPhone 4s or later or a third-generation iPad or later. However,…

Buying Apple products from your iPad just got much easier. More than three years after the company released an Apple Store app for the iPhone, an Apple Store app for the iPad has arrived. Shopping options for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod are prominently displayed. Once you’ve made your choice, you can place your order, set your delivery options, and check the availability of your selected product on a handy map interface. You’ll also see a heading for viewing information about the Apple retail stores; this section lets you quickly find nearby retail locations, make Genius Bar reservations, and view schedules of events. Gestures are supported as well. You can swipe through the galleries of high-quality images, and pinch to zoom in on most products in the main grid.…

GAMES Stealth Inc. (go.macworld.com/stealth) is a puzzle-platform game in which you control disposable clones to tackle the game’s seemingly impossible lethal levels. It’s essential in each level to first work out which door, elevator, or trapdoor each button or computer console activates, and then determine the best route to the exit. Stealth Inc. is a quiet little masterpiece: tricky, funny, and great-looking. But expect a fair bit of frustration, too.—DAVID PRICE iPhone/iPad | 4.5/4.5 $5; Curve Digital Games…

GAMES Similar to most tower-defense games, Fieldrunners 2 (go.macworld.com/fieldrunners2) gives you a straightforward mission. As waves of enemy troops attack, you must prevent them from reaching the other side of the screen. You do this by assembling gun towers in strategic combinations that funnel the bad guys into bottlenecks, where you can finish them off. Version 2 expands the range of towers, and the graphics are exponentially better. You can spend points on useful items—a dose of Spanish flu, say. The game also rewards you with achievement-style cards for feats and milestones. Fieldrunners 2 is as well-crafted and fun as the tower-defense genre gets.—DAVID PRICE iPhone | 4.5/4.5 $3; Subatomic Studios…

When Apple releases a new version of OS X, we tend to stick with the way we did things in the old OS, ignoring fresh features in the new one. Eventually we try the new things, and gradually they become the old habits we stick with when the next new OS X comes out. Well, it’s time to adopt the novel features in OS X Mavericks as your new normal. Mavericks has plenty to like, and it’s not that hard to get up to speed. So strap on your learning cap, and master the unknown.…

The Finder has had a labels capability for years. In OS X Mavericks, those labels have become tags—and they’ve also grown more powerful and capable. Here’s a more-advanced examination of the intricacies of applying and editing tags, as well as a look at how to view files that have already been tagged. 13 WAYS TO APPLY TAGS <Control>- or right-click a file: An all-purpose approach is to <-Control>-click or right-click a file, and then select a tag from the pop-up contextual menu. Drag the file: Drag the file from your Finder window’s main pane into the sidebar’s tags section, and from there onto the tag you want to apply. In the toolbar: Select a file or files, and then click on the Tags icon in the Finder toolbar. That will…

To this point in our coverage, we’ve focused on ways to speed up your computer workflow and keep your system accessible and uncluttered. But there are many other new features in OS X Mavericks that extend beyond tags, tabs, and iCloud Keychain. In this section we present tips that should help you take advantage of some of those newly introduced tools, including the operating system’s refined support for multiple displays, for power-management tools, and for more-useful notifications. 3 TRICKS FOR MANAGING MULTIPLE DISPLAYS See the Dock on nonprimary monitors: Usually, the Dock appears only on the primary monitor (by default, that’s the external display). But sometimes that’s not as convenient a place to view it as the other monitor would be. To see the Dock on your other display, simply…

WHAT IS IT? The MacBook Air (go.macworld.com/mbookair) is an ultrathin, ultralight laptop with two screen sizes: 11 inches (2.4 pounds) and 13 inches (3.0 pounds). WHO IS IT FOR? Anyone who is always on the go, who doesn’t want a regular-size laptop, and who needs a computer that’s more versatile than an iPad. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? All four MacBook Air models have the same 1.3GHz dual-core Core i5 processor and come with 4GB of RAM and integrated Intel HD Graphics 5000 technology. Apple claims a battery life of 9 hours for the 11-inch versions, and 12 hours for the 13-inchers. The versions differ mainly in storage. The 11-inch model ($999) and the 13-inch model ($1099) have 128GB of flash storage, whereas the 11-inch model ($1199) and the 13-inch model…

WHAT IS IT? The redesigned Mac Pro, Apple’s workstation, is a powerful and flexible machine (go.macworld.com/macpronew). WHO IS IT FOR? The Mac Pro is ideal for professionals who work with applications that can use as many processing cores as possible—video-editing applications, 3D programs, and the like. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFICATIONS? The Mac Pro comes in two standard configurations. Both have 256GB of flash storage. The $2999 version has a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon E5 processor, 12GB of memory, and dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics processors with 2GB of video memory. The $3999 Mac Pro has a 2.5GHz six-core Xeon E5 processor, 16GB of memory, and dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics processors with 3GB of video memory. Various build-to-order options are also available. Unlike the previous Mac Pro, the new model has…

iOS 7 is a radical departure from previous versions, and some people aren’t entirely comfortable with it. Here are some tips for making it easier to use. Make Text More Readable The text in iOS 7 is thinner than in earlier versions of Apple’s mobile operating system. If you have trouble reading it, tap Settings → General → Text Size and move the slider to the right. This increases the size of some of the text on your iOS device. Open the Notes app, for example, and you’ll see that the text size has enlarged. This is also true in Mail, Messages, and Reminders, but not in Contacts or Calendar. Still squinting? You can also make text bold by going to Settings → General → Accessibility and tapping Bold Text.…

Here are six ways Apple could improve the set-top box’s interface. With the recent proliferation of new channels on the Apple TV, the set-top box has gone from providing a simple way to consume online content to offering an embarrassment of riches. More than 25 streaming-content sources are available, and though managing them isn’t yet as daunting as scrolling through the channel guide on your cable box, it’s approaching that level of complexity. So it’s time for Apple, the company vaunted for its elegant and adroit handling of interfaces, to rethink the way users interact with its living-room device. Here are half a dozen steps Apple could take. 1. One Search to Rule Them All The fragmentation of streaming services today rivals that of the Android smartphone scene. Take Fox’s—ahem—dark-horse…

Find and organize ebooks, build sophisticated smart playlists, and more. Q&A This month I answer two questions about iBooks. I also discuss moving the contents of an iTunes library, and I outline how to make a smart playlist with nested conditions. Q: When I updated to Mavericks and my books transferred out of iTunes, some of my digital booklets (album liner notes) made the trip and some didn’t. I was able to drag them out of iTunes to iBooks, but not vice versa. Newly purchased digital booklets stay in iTunes unless I move them. Is there a way to get the booklets back into iTunes if I want them there? A: The solution depends on whether the items were in your Books library or Music library. In my case, those…

One striking difference between an iPhone camera and a DSLR or other large camera is the way they focus and control depth of field. On a DSLR, you can manage depth of field by changing the aperture. On an iPhone, you don’t get such flexibility, since it lacks an aperture dial. And the tiny sensor results in a large depth of field in most of your photos anyway. You don’t have to settle for that, though. Take control of your iPhone’s focus to capture the photos you want to achieve. Specify the focus: All but absolute beginners know that you can tell the iPhone where to focus by tapping the screen. To put the foreground in focus, tap something close to the camera. Want the background in focus? Tap a…

Review RATING 4.5/5.0 PRICE $5 COMPANY Apple URL apple.com Apple’s revamp of iLife has added great new features to each of its apps, and iMovie for iOS is no exception. iMovie feels faster and more fluid on both the iPhone and the iPad. The beautifully simplistic iOS 7 overhaul splits the app into three sections: Video, Projects, and Theater. One big change is the focus on easy clip viewing and sharing. The Video screen shows mini timelines of the clips in your Camera Roll. You can tap any filmstrip in Video mode to make it larger, as well as slow down or speed up the clip. Tapping the Create Movie option from the Share button sends your selected clip to the Projects screen, where you can share or export it,…

How Secure Is iCloud? Q: Both my iPhone 4s and my iPad Air are set up to use iCloud. I don’t like having passwords and personal information in the cloud, however, and consequently I’m thinking of attaching a password-protected storage device to my router so that I can create my own private “cloud.” Just how secure is iCloud? John McKnight A: I think it would be worth your while to read Apple’s iCloud: iCloud security and privacy overview document (go.macworld.com/icloud_doc), which spells out how your data is encrypted—both when it’s being transmitted between your computer and Apple’s servers and while it’s stored on those servers. The gist of the document is that Apple uses a minimum of 128-bit AES encryption. This is the encryption standard used by banks and other…