Macworldの June 2018 の目次

It’s been a rough year for Apple’s batteries. After announcing a program to replace batteries in the iPhone 6 and 7 earlier this year, Apple has now launched a program to swap them out in the 13-inch non–Touch Bar MacBook Pro (affectionately known as the “MacBook Pro ESC” due to the presence of actual function keys). So if you have a laptop that’s been dying out mid-way through your day or just noticed some performance oddities, you might be able to get your battery replaced with a new one. Here’s everything you need to know about the new program: WHAT’S THE REASON FOR THE PROGRAM? Apple has said that a component inside “a limited number” of 13-inch MacBook Pro units could fail, “causing the built-in battery to expand.” Apple did not…

There was some minor news recently: In another step along the transition to 64-bit apps, Apple began warning users of 32-bit apps (see the prior article) that these apps would need to be updated or they will stop running. The warning was news, but this is actually a story long in the making. Last year, Apple warned Mac developers that 32-bit apps would stop running “without compromise” this fall with the release of the successor to macOS High Sierra. The writing’s been on the wall, more or less, since all the way back in 2009 when Apple began its 64-bit transition with the release of Snow Leopard. The writing’s been on the wall, more or less, since all the way back in 2009 when Apple began its 64-bit transition with the…

Keynote 8 for Mac hasn’t reached the apex of its perfection, but Apple clearly didn’t have a wishlist of features to push it forward. The latest release for Mac brings it up to date with simultaneous releases of Keynote for iOS and Pages (Mac and iOS) and Numbers (Mac and iOS). GETTING UP TO SPEED We haven’t reviewed Keynote since version 6.5.3 in 2015, so it’s worth a look of what’s changed since then. Apple continued to push forward development through incremental releases from 7.0 to 7.3, which restored a number of features that we found lacking in 6.5.3. Version 7.0 added a beta of collaborative real-time editing. Version 7.1 offered up one of the most significant changes: an Object List that made creating complicated builds vastly easier, as selecting and ordering items in the…

Police and other law-enforcement agencies now have inexpensive access to a hacking device that can crack iPhone and iPad passwords in a matter of minutes. First reported in early March by Forbes, GrayKey, from a company called Grayshift (go.macworld.com/gshf), is designed for turn-key cracking of iOS passcodes. In mid-March, Malwarebytes explored the device in greater depth, noting that a four-digit PIN could be cracked in a couple of hours and a six-digit PIN would require as many as a few days. Motherboard extended this reporting recently, with more details about how GrayKey has been used in the field. And security researcher Matthew Green posted a message on Twitter showing the theoretically fastest cracking time possible given the parameters he knew, which brought the issue back to the fore given the potential…

Apple thinks it is critically important that everyone learn how to code. It may not help you in your job directly, but it teaches useful skills and creates a basic knowledge of the fundamental workings of the products and tools we all use every day. It’s not just something kids should do at school, but an important part of an ongoing education for adults. So, the company created an initiative called Everyone Can Code that aims to make it easy for anyone, from kids to adults, to learn the basics of writing code. Naturally, it’s centered around Apple’s Swift programming language rather than, say, C++ or JavaScript. And it all starts with Swift Playgrounds, a cute iPad app that teaches the fundamentals of coding in a way so simple even young…

Keynote for iOS has always been designed around interaction more than its macOS counterpart, partly because it’s more likely you’ll be using a single screen to present than multiple monitors. That shows clearly in this minor update. And many of the new features bring Keynote for iOS into feature parity with its macOS counterpart, as well as a consistent interface and set of options alongside Pages and Numbers on both platforms. APPLE PENCIL SUPPORT Just as you can in the other iWork iOS apps (Pages and Numbers), the Apple Pencil or your finger can be used to create drawings on iPads with Pencil support. This a useful improvement for Keynote—making as much sense here as in Pages—with the added benefit that Keynote for iOS can animate the drawings you create by effectively…

OVIVO Ovivo is an inventive little platform game that has drawn raves since hitting iOS. What makes it so distinctive? Aside from the minimal, monochromatic aesthetic, Ovivo’s biggest hook is the ability to shift a little orb between the white and black areas of each level while gravity flows downwards in white and upwards in black. The point of all this is to make your way across uneven and often oddly-shaped terrain, and you can only do so by swapping the ball between the black and white areas. And there’s more to it than that: You may also need to use these shifts to build momentum for overcoming larger gaps or obstacles, and some levels even find you escaping large pursuers. It’s pretty mesmerizing stuff. PROJECT HIGHRISE If you have…

We’ve known for awhile that Apple is going back to the drawing board with the Mac Pro. Apple signaled as much a year ago, while making sure everyone understood that the newly revamped model wouldn’t come that year. In speaking with TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Matthew Panzarino, Apple straight-out confirmed that the new Mac Pro will be a 2019 product. Apple was keen to clarify the date (an unusual move for the company) because it doesn’t want customers who are currently considering the iMac Pro (go.macworld.com/byim) to hold off, anticipating a Mac Pro launch later in the year. The TechCrunch feature doesn’t give us much in the way of hard information about the Mac Pro revamp, but it’s still a fascinating read. The focus is on Apple’s new product development methodology for…

Spotify announced a major upgrade to its mobile app at an event at the Gramercy Theater in New York City today. The service will no longer treat its free users as second-class citizens. Now, whether you’re one of Spotify’s 90 million free users or opt to pay $10 a month to unlock the full experience, your music will take center stage, with curated playlists, on-demand listening, and smarter playlist creation. It’s so good, in fact, some users might want to consider downgrading to the free tier from the premium one. Here are five reasons why you might want to switch (and five reasons why you shouldn’t): 5 REASONS TO GO FREE 1. It’s way more personal When you sign up for the free plan inside the new Spotify app, you’ll be…

Astell&Kern is back with another reference hi-res audio player: the Kann. Paired with exceptional headphones and top-notch recordings, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more blissful sonic experience from a hi-res audio player at this price point. Just be warned, Kann’s price tag is as big as its bulky size. A BOLD DESIGN Every Astell&Kern player has a bold, distinctive design that breaks the mold. Kann is no different. The Kann’s aluminum mass is sculpted into a trapezoidal work of art that is remarkably natural to hold and use. The Kann comes in a choice of Astro Silver and Eos Blue finishes. My review sample came in the former. The Kann’s sides are ribbed. Slightly scalloped lines traverse the back. I tip my hat to the industrial design team; the…

Folks with more coding knowledge than I have (and a greater willingness to potentially brick a $2,400 machine) have been hooking up external graphics cards to Macs for years, but the support now comes bundled into macOS 10.13.4 High Sierra. In layman’s terms, Apple officially supports some graphics cards that you’d normally only find in a bulky PC tower—so long as you have a separate external chassis to stick them in and a Mac with Thunderbolt 3. I hoped eGPU support would be revolutionary. Beyond that, I hoped it’d allow me to break with PCs entirely, as I really only use them for gaming these days. Anyone who watches Apple Arcade knows I’ve been a little frustrated with the current state of Mac gaming, and an external graphics card struck me…

Over the past year or so, Apple’s spent a lot of time talking up its Services division—which includes not only Apple Music, but also the likes of iCloud, the iTunes Store, and Apple Pay—and for good reason. Analysts have been paying a lot of attention to Apple’s Services, not least of all because it’s shown solid growth, even at times when other segments of Apple’s financial results have been more lackluster. So you can bet that Apple’s not about to walk away from the services business anytime soon. In fact, if recent reports are any indication, the company is devoting even more effort to the segment, with at least two brand-new services in development and the shifting of two of its biggest storefronts to a more subscription-focused angle. DIGITAL NEWSSTAND…

Numbers for Mac has always occupied an awkward position. It’s not powerful enough to replace Excel or Google Sheets for many business purposes, and it’s designed partly to be an interaction, quantitative-information presentation tool. Numbers for iOS had even more of a bias towards presentation until the latest update brought it a little more power. However, Apple keeps pushing forward, and Numbers 5 for Mac has only a single significant change that Apple mostly underplayed, as most of the changes improve feature parity and seamless interchange between Numbers for Mac and iOS (), while also making the apps more consistent with Pages (Mac and iOS) and Keynote (Mac and iOS). NEW FEATURES The big macOS change is relatively boring but very practical: the ability to import field-based data exports from databases, apps, and…

Raise your hand if you remember The Daily. Back when the iPad still had a 30-pin connection port, Apple teamed up with News Corp to bring a new type of publication to the burgeoning tablet market featuring exclusive, interactive content, rich animations, and touch-focused games. It cost a buck a week or $40 a year and was delivered to Apple’s Newsstand app on the iPad each morning. It lasted less than two years. The biggest problem with The Daily was that it was too middle-of-the-road. Even after the early bugs were squashed, The Daily’s content was too generic to find a dedicated audience, a death knell in today’s 24/7 news culture. But Apple hasn’t given up on making subscription news a feature on iPhones and iPads. Just last month Apple…

You’re tapping along on your iPhone or iPad, and suddenly an ordinary letter or word gets replaced by something bizarre. We’re all used to autocorrect picking up weird expansions, which happens partly because Apple has introduced machine learning into how it predicts what you might intend to type. However, you might also be the victim of a prank, and if you have children or people with child-like humor around you, you probably know who did it, too. A Macworld reader whose identity I shall wisely keep secret in order to spare them further embarrassment, wrote in with this question: When I type in the letter I, I get the following “i see dem jeanzzz,” and when I type in the word “hi,” I get “You a big green stankie bugger.” How…

Apple views Numbers for iOS as a tool for visualizing and presenting data, rather than as a workhorse spreadsheet app. But the latest update offers improvements on both sides of that equation. While not piling on features, Apple has brought the iOS version more in line with the Mac version, as well as harmonizing features with Pages (Mac and iOS) and Keynote (Mac and iOS) for consistency. This kind of parity and consistency means less frustration when moving among apps and between platforms. WHAT’S NEW Numbers 4 for iOS adds only two real flagship changes, although the importance of one of them is buried. The company promotes the addition for drawing using an Apple Pencil or your finger on iPads that have Pencil support. Because Numbers sheets can be quite elaborate and used…

Pull it off the shelf at the Apple Store, and you’d be hard-pressed by sight alone to distinguish the new sixth-generation 9.7-inch iPad from last year’s model. And under the hood, it’s not much different, where there’s simply a speedier A10 processor. The new iPad is, well, an iPad. What’s truly new is support for the Apple Pencil, the sleek stylus that formerly only played nice with the iPad Pro. But never doubt that the Pencil support marks a bold move on Apple’s part. Combined with the new chip, the formerly capable iPad is transformed into something that’s now a serviceable substitute for an iPad Pro—for a mere $329 ($299 if you’re shopping for a school; $309 if you’re a student, teacher, or faculty shopping on Apple’s Education Store). Some will…

Exactly a year after Apple called a bunch of reporters to its headquarters to talk about the future of its professional-level Macs, the company is once again putting its stake in the ground. In an interview with TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino, several Apple executives have laid out the thinking behind the as-yet-unannounced Mac Pro, which is expected to debut in 2019. What’s more interesting than the Mac Pro’s existence, however, is the approach Apple is taking to building it: bringing in actual pro users to see their workflows and figure out how to best accommodate them. It’s a side of Apple that, publicly anyway, we’ve rarely seen. But, as you might expect from Apple, details on this new Mac Pro are still being kept tightly under wraps. But there are some…

We get lots of pitches from Bluetooth speaker manufacturers, and not all of the products that come through the door turn out to be shining beacons of audio fidelity. Anker’s SoundCore Boost proved a pleasant surprise, especially in terms of the low-end frequency response it delivers for its modest price tag. DESIGN AND FEATURES The SoundCore Boost is a black rectangular box with rounded (in the vertical) corners that measures approximately 8- by 2.8- by 2.7 inches and weighs a hair over 20 ounces. A firmly attached captive rubber plug hides a full-size USB port for charging other devices, a micro-USB port for charging the speaker, and a stereo 3.5mm auxiliary input. It feels very solid, though some of that no doubt comes courtesy of the hefty 5,200mAh battery. Five…

Problems with an Apple AirPort? It could be a hardware failure Hardware fails in very different ways. Sometimes, it’s catastrophic and abrupt, and you hear terrible sounds coming from inside your hard drive. Other times, it’s subtle, and a failing component or system causes hardware to limp along, throwing out errors you can’t troubleshoot, because they aren’t consistent. I spent months with one of these problems in early 2015. However, it’s much clearer resolving issues with Apple’s seemingly now-retired line of AirPort and Time Capsule base stations. Apple hasn’t commented on the record as to whether the products will ever be updated, and the most recent versions remain on sale. But it’s been years since the last hardware improvements, and reports indicate the AirPort product team was disbanded. Apple’s base stations…

Apple’s transition from 32-bit to 64-bit technology on the Mac has been in the works for a while for the company and developers, but so far users haven’t really been affected. That started to change beginning in mid-April. NEW 32-BIT ALERTS IN MACOS 10.13.4 HIGH SIERRA If you’re using an old 32-bit app on a Mac, macOS will display an alert to let you know that it may not run optimally and that you should check with the developer to see if an update is available. The alert is similar to the ones that appeared when Apple transitioned iOS from 32-bit to 64-bit. The alerts appear only when a 32-bit app launches, and will have a Learn More button that takes users to an Apple Knowledge Base article that explains…

Pages 7 is the latest in a series of ongoing and gradual improvements to the 2013 “reboot” of Apple’s iWork suite or productivity apps, which also includes Numbers and Keynote. That reboot rewrote the apps from the ground up, but also omitted features that users had relied upon for years. Over time, many of these features were restored even as the apps expanded what they did in other areas. Pages 7 continues on this path. While it’s numbered as a major release to keep it in harmony with Pages for iOS, the iOS release has a greater number of significant additions. BOOK CREATION The flagship change includes book templates for interactive EPUB ebooks, allowing an end-to-end workflow for creating rich digital documents without the compromise of starting with templates and pages…

AVANTREE TC418 BLUETOOTH TRANSMITTER For gear manufactured before the age of Bluetooth, there’s the Avantree TC418. Connect your non-Bluetooth device via USB, optical, AUX, or RCA, and then the TC418 can stream to your Bluetooth devices. For audio only, it streamed perfectly within about a 45-foot unobstructed radius. But due to the nature of Bluetooth, you’ll notice latency issues with video soundtracks. Overall, the TC418 is affordable, easy to use, and small enough to tuck out of the way.— JON L. JACOBI EVOLUENT VERTICALMOUSE C RIGHT WIRELESS The Evoluent VerticalMouse C Right Wireless was designed combat repetitive strain injury (RSI), at least for the right-hand dominant. The company claims the palm-down position used to operate conventional mice twists your forearm and puts you at risk of injury over time. The…

As a technology columnist, it’s tempting to spend a lot of time noting the places where Apple can improve its products. There are always glitches, bugs, and design trade-offs to pick on. But, on the flip side, it’s worth calling out the places where Apple has made great strides, not just in terms of introducing new features, but also for those capabilities that actually improve our everyday lives, or even just refining the technology that already exists to make it that extra little bit better. So to shift gears a bit in this week’s column, I’d like to mention a handful of Apple innovations that I’m pretty thankful for—even if they could occasionally still use a tweak here and there. APPLE PAY IS DARING Apple Pay is one of those technologies…

With Pages 4 for iOS, Apple shifts the app’s focus from being a fancy word processor with modest page-layout tools, to something that’s substantially more. Even as the app broadens its range of tasks, Apple also improved existing ones that lagged or were incomplete. As a result, Pages is a stronger overall app, and it also offers greater coordination and parity with the new Pages for macOS. BOOK CREATION Pages 4 now comes with book templates for creating interactive ebooks, providing an end-to-end workflow instead of just an export option. These books can be nearly as richly capable and interactive (with a few exceptions) as those produced by iBooks Author. You can also now create drawings and use the Smart Annotation beta for graphical markup and highlighting with either an…

Oddmar Here’s a stunning 2D platform-action affair that looks and plays like a full-blooded console game. Oddmar hails from the team behind the excellent Leo’s Fortune, and it’s similarly lush and inviting. This time around, you’ll command the titular Viking, an outcast who stumbles upon an opportunity to redeem himself by embarking on a grand quest. Trick Shot 2 The original Trick Shot was a delightfully low-key, obsession-worthy gem from a couple years back, and now Trick Shot 2 has dribbled onto the court with some ball-bouncing challenges of its own. The core objective remains the same: You’ll need to fling a ball into a box, with bonus points for a swish. Sounds easy enough, right? Of course, it rarely ever is. Brew Town Got a thing for craft beer? If you…

Apple’s Camera app is just fine. It’s fast, and simple, and offers a few nifty features like panorama shots and slow-motion video. But if you really want to make the most out of your iPhone photo and video experience—if you want more than “just fine”—you’re going to want a third-party camera app. From precise expert controls to top-notch filters and the ability to save RAW images, there are lots of great reasons to keep a couple of camera apps on your home screen. A lot of these apps cost a few bucks, and even the free ones usually have paid add-ons. Don’t let that scare you off! Snapping photos is one of the most important features of our iPhones, and the ability to do it better is worth a few…

Wi-Fi networking is poised for a major update: The transition from 802.11ac to 802.11ax promises a modern networking hub that can cope with the burgeoning number and diversity of wireless devices that need access to your broadband connection. At the dawn of the modern smartphone era in 2007, even a highly unplugged home might have only a handful of hardware connecting to its wireless router. Now—if you use tablets, smart-home devices, media streamers, smart TVs, gaming gear and security cameras—you could have 20, 30, or many more. And that number won’t get smaller in the future. With 802.11ax, the IEEE engineering group that drives standards like wireless local area networking (WLAN) has pushed hard in several directions to make these complicated environments work. There are a lot of benefits for…

British speaker manufacturer Q Acoustics has taken the wraps off its all-new 3000i loudspeaker series. The company says the new lineup builds on the success of its original 3000 speaker series and features innovative audio and design technologies taken from its $6,000 flagship, the Concept 500. I had a chance to audition the new lineup first hand and left favorably impressed with the price/performance ratio on offer. At first listen, it looks like Q Acoustics has once again delivered bona fide hi-fi performance at mainstream price points. The three models target varying budgets and living-space constraints: The compact 3010i, mid-sized 3020i bookshelf, and floor-standing 3050i. Q Acoustics also announced the 3090Ci center channel and Q3060S subwoofer for home theater applications, but those weren’t available during the demo. PREMIUM FINISHES Sometimes…