Macworld January 2018

If you’re looking for a way to save some money on new Apple products, try checking out the Apple Certified Refurbished store. You can find some good deals on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and more. Here’s a quick guide with links to the best deals you can find on the refurb store, along with a FAQ guide if you want to know more about the ins and outs of the Apple Certified Refurbished store. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE APPLE CERTIFIED REFURBISHED STORE AND THE APPLE STORE? The Apple Certified Refurbished store sells gently-used products that have been returned to the company. Apple repairs and tests these products to make sure they are in like-new condition. The Apple store, however, sells only new products that have never been opened and used.…

It’s funny, Apple crowing about its biggest Mac revenue year ever at a time when there seems to be quite a bit of unrest about the Mac out there on the Internet. Is the Mac doing well or is the Mac user base frustrated at the past few years of Apple’s stewardship of the platform? It might be a little bit of both. I detailed some of Apple’s controversial laptop design decisions recently. To be sure, there are classes of users for whom the latest generation of MacBook Pro models, introduced in October 2016, are appreciably worse than the previous generation models. But I’ve also talked to a lot of people who have bought new MacBook Pros and love them. It’s possible that this swirling dissatisfaction with Apple’s laptop direction has a…

The new iMac Pro will be Apple’s fastest Mac by a country mile. With 18 CPU cores, Radeon Vega graphics, and 128GB of RAM, there isn’t much Apple’s newest all-in-one won’t be able to do. But a recent discovery by Apple code spelunker Steven Troughton-Smith suggests an iPhone chip might be along for the ride. Troughton-Smith has gotten his hands on Apple’s new BridgeOS 2.0 software, which will presumably be part of the upcoming iMac Pro’s software package. And while it didn’t divulge quite as much as the HomePod firmware leak earlier this year that spilled the beans on the iPhone X, it does include some very interesting things. Chief among them is a reference to a version of Apple’s A10 Fusion chip, the same silicon that powers the iPhone 7. Why this…

The Photoshop CC 2018 update has plenty to look forward to beyond the typical annual upgrade of Adobe’s subscription desktop photo/graphic design app. It integrates support for emerging technologies like 360-degree spherical panoramas and the HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) image file format adopted by Apple for macOS 10.13 and iOS 11. Combined with new features like variable fonts, paint stroke smoothing, a symmetry tool, a Curvature Pen tool, direct social media sharing, instant access to synced Lightroom photos, enhanced search, brush management, layer copy and paste, and more, Photoshop CC 2018 welcomes newcomers by incorporating training directly into the app. Photoshop’s updates and new features reflect a profound thought process about meeting changing user needs—from variable fonts to Lightroom integration to brush organization—that may well encourage non-subscriber pro users to…

As a longtime Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom user, I periodically consider buying a digitizer, such as a Wacom tablet, to better take advantage of editing with brushes and other tools that work with pen-based input. I know photographers and artists who swear by them, but it would be a significant expense for my comparatively modest editing needs. It turns out, though, I already have an excellent pen-based touchscreen device: an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. More often than not, it’s usually on my desk at home or in my bag at a coffee shop. Astropad Studio ($79.99 per year) turns that iPad Pro into a digitizer. Most Wacom tablets incorporate a pen-sensitive surface that transmits strokes and taps over a wire. If you want to spend at least $800,…

Apple’s iMovie has been around for a long time, and it has always focused on one philosophy: ease of use in a clean and elegant interface. After many years, this hasn’t changed. It’s still a delight to use, if a little bit obtuse at times in its pursuit of minimalism. It lacks some of the formats and features supported in other programs, but what’s there is implemented beautifully. iMovie doesn’t offer the tutorials or wizards that some other programs for beginners do—though there is a neat movie-trailer–generation tool. Rather, it keeps the interface as basic as possible while guiding you with simple tooltips as you mouse over specific buttons and features. Total beginners might end up scratching their heads a little more than they would in apps with more explicit…